Sermon and Worship Resources

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Luke 3:7-18

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... don’t investigate their meaning, we can lose the weight (pun intended) of their message. In the case of wheat, everyone in John’s day would have easily understood his message about wheat! For most, that message was “good news!” For a few, those designated by John as “vipers,” the news wouldn’t be so good. This passage can be seen as quite similar to the kinds of passages we read in Revelation. The text sounds scary, but it was written as “good news” for those following Jesus! Their lives ...

2952. Seating Arrangements

Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon

John B. Jamison

... us, “Here is what you must believe and what you must do!” They will teach different procedures and rules that we must follow. They will sell us their books and videos to teach how to be even more safe and secure, and they will entertain us with their promises designed to make us feel special and safe. They will do whatever they can do to convince us they can guarantee us that seat on God’s right side, if we follow them. Jesus said we must be careful to not be deceived by those telling what we must do ...

2953. Night and Light

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

... Jesus was increasingly revealed. As the last of these miracles, the raising of Lazarus in chapter 11, was noised about, John told us that “Greeks” came seeking an audience with Jesus (12:21). “Greeks” was a code-term John used for “the world,” the larger designation of all peoples on earth, both Gentile and Jews. Remember how Jesus put it in his famous words? “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son…” (John 3:16). This was the language of Jews for the rest of humanity. Jesus ...

2954. Faces at a Funeral

John 18:1-19:42

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

... , and vengeance that pummeled away any other sound. The world grew chill and still. Most of the time I am an optimist. I like to think of my outlook as a holy confidence, a trust that God exists and that all things must work together for God’s good designs. But sometimes life is not fun, and the events of those horrible weeks linger with me as a shadow not easily erased. This is what the gospel, the horrible good news, reminds us of today. Look At The Faces This is the story that changed everything. It is ...

2955. Faithfulness In These Days

Romans 10:8b-13

Sermon

Bonnie Bates

... lives, we may not always feel Jesus with us ― and yet he is there. I want to recount a story from my own life. In my seminary days, I participated in a spiritual group working through the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius. Originally designed as a thirty-day retreat for those determining a call to the religious life, the nineteenth annotation was developed for a weekly experience. Thus, each day of the original program was studied as a week. The first seven weeks were focused on learning about ...

2956. Learning Our Role

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Sermon

John B. Jamison

... ? Don’t you think it is possible you might have had some second thoughts about why you were there or who you were supposed to be? The young man had the dream of starting his business for many years. He had developed a new model for designing learning activities for those who struggled with traditional learning and he had spent the past twenty years demonstrating how well it worked. It was going to be a business with one goal of helping others; helping them become the person they dreamt of becoming. But it ...

2957. The View from Cloud Nine

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... happiness, joy, bliss, or euphoria. Most sources attribute the phrase to the US Weather Bureau’s classification system employed since the early 20th century, in which each category of cloud was subdivided into nine types. The ninth or cumulonimbus was designated the “highest” in the atmosphere, also invoking a metaphor of “being on top of the world, with hints of being in a dream-like, floating state.”[2] Linguist Suzanne Arnold notes also that the Oxford English Dictionary additionally merges ...

2958. There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Will Willimon

... they had to be placed elsewhere in the home. The actual wording does not really say “there was no room in the inn” but rather “there was no appropriate place in the guest room.” In the typical Middle Eastern home, says Bailey, there is a designated room for overnight visitors It would be unthinkable, according to the dictates of Eastern hospitality, for out-of-town relatives to be sent to an inn by their own family. Mary and Joseph were among relatives. They were back in Bethlehem because Joseph was ...

2959. An Up-Close Nativity

Titus 2:11-14

Sermon

Heather Sugden

... few years we had that nativity set, I would place the figures in the places I had been taught to place them from my own childhood: Baby Jesus in the middle, Mary and Joseph right there alongside him, the angel up high in his own little designated nook, and animals scattered on the outside periphery with the shepherds. But as my daughter and then son got older, they started to play with the scene and move the characters around. That was fine — although I did find myself sometimes putting everyone back in ...

2960. No Excuse

Luke 13:10-17

Sermon

Dean Feldmeyer

... of a tough, demanding enterprise, even if that enterprise was only a game. He wanted them working together to overcome problems, in other words. One of the problems they had to overcome was wind sprints, an often grueling series of all-out dashes, one after another, designed to build up an athlete’s strength and lung capacity. The fact that wind sprints are a good idea, however, didn’t make it easier to get the kids to do them. At the end of each practice and after each game the coaches would call ...

2961. It Goes Without Saying

Luke 17:5-10

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... the same in our relationship with God! Remember those metaphors in which God is always the rich merchant, the vineyard owner, the owner of the estate? Remember our role? We are the manager, the steward, the worker, the servant – the one with the designated job description! And we have a “contract,” a “covenant” with God to fulfill our role. When we expect extraordinary praise simply for doing what we responsibly should as a worthy disciple of God’s kingdom, we are “out of line,” says Jesus ...

2962. Sterile or Defiled

Illustration

J. D. Pentecost

A surgeon who selects a scalpel in the operating room rejects a scalpel with a minute spot of defilement on it as readily as one that was severely defiled, because even the smallest spot means the scalpel is defiled and cannot be used in surgery. The degree of defilement is inconsequential. The fact of defilement is what matters to the surgeon. A thing is sterile or defiled, clean or unclean. A person is holy or unholy. God is not concerned with degrees, only with the absolute.

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