Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 2951 to 2975 of 4884 results

Isaiah 11:1-16

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... hunger for more stuff? (Their mother's side of the family? Their father's side?) But as we've thought about it and talked about it this past week, their behavior took on a different kind of interpretation. First of all, although the kids knew perfectly well they weren't getting anything that day and that they certainly weren't going to get everything in the store, they weren't afraid to ask, with delight and enthusiasm. We have long-established, fairly strict family rules about the kind of toys our ...

2952. Set Life Free

Matthew 13:1-23

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Zucchini, cantaloupes, pumpkins, and watermelon larger than Shetland ponies dot viney landscapes. · Single corn stalks that each produce enough ears to feed a starving family of six. Then there's the lure of more exotic fruits and veggies that promise bumper crops, perfect nutrition, healthy plants and beautiful colors – despite the fact that you know none of them will grow north of the Mason-Dixon line. No matter how splashy or no-nonsense the seed catalogs that arrive in the middle of the cold, dark ...

2953. Someone to Watch over Me

Luke 15:11-32

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Anybody here remember how much you always wanted your parents to watch you when you were little? Go back in time. Remember swimming at the local pool as a child? No matter how poor or perfect your swimming skills, you always kept on eye on Mom or Dad so you could catch their attention. Whether you were diving, dog paddling, or just hanging on the edge practice-kicking, your refrain was a constant "Watch this!" "Watch this!" "Watch me!" "Watch me again!!!" All of us were ...

2954. The Longest Running Parade in History

Psalm 118:1-29

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... moving in good times and bad? Will you throne Christ as head of your life come what may, no matter what? Join the Jesus parade, and you celebrate. You party. You wave your hands and dance for joy – not just when life is going your way – but even when that Perfect Storm called Good Friday hits with all its might.

2955. WaterFire Disciples

Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... economy. An "urban revitalization" consultant was hired to recommend new approaches to reversing the downward spiral that Providence found itself in. After extensive study, he made his proposals. Chief among which was the suggestion that the city blow up its perfectly good downtown bridge in order to give people "water experiences" like Providence offered its citizens in earlier days. Much to everyone's surprise, Providence was in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the world's widest bridge - two ...

2956. Can You Smell the Perfume?

John 12:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... me"). In a fallen world, there will always be the pains of life. Injustice, disease, prejudice, despair we will always have with us. Opportunity to deal with issues of poverty will always be present. Not until God's kingdom comes will we have a perfect world with no social and economic disparity. Here was woman who understood that the right moment for doing certain things quickly passes. Here was the Incarnate God in their midst in the flesh. Incarnations are fleeting. Can we not laugh and love, eat and ...

2957. How High Is Your Faith Quotient?

Jeremiah 30:1--31:40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... 's design, the unity of God's love and law. The highest FQ people have come to see the nature of the ultimate test and who the real test is: Jesus, the Christ. In the New Testament we're presented a testum, a new test, a new covenant, the most perfect, most beautiful vessel (cupole) for purifying life and everlasting life. Jesus is the testum, the vessel, the Test that saves us and redeems us and turns all our dross into gold. Do you know this Jesus? Have you passed this test? All you need to do is put your ...

2958. Is God Showing through You?

2 Peter 1:12-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , images that are much more accurate and representative. But the act of piling up or peeling away those transparency pages still fascinates young children. There's something about being able to slowly strip away the skin, the muscles, the various systems that work so perfectly together within the body, that remains riveting. It's like getting a secret peek at a collection of hidden miracles. The human fascination with getting a glimpse of that which is usually kept out of sight is part of the power of the ...

2959. What's the Value of Your Life?

Genesis 28:10-22

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... your congregation has some jadite for you to hold up as you're discussing it.] But unfortunately not long ago another Jadite collector, Martha Stewart, began using her collection in her TV show, mixing this week's cookie in a big Jadite bowl, serving some nauseatingly perfect concoction on a green Jadite platter, pouring batter from a funny Jadite pitcher. Thanks a lot, Martha! Now Jadite is as scarce as hen's teeth and its price has gone through the roof so that only the rich and famous can collect it. The ...

2960. Son-burned, Wind-blown, Earth-Stained

Luke 12:35-48

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... (my friend Landrum Leavell III) who signs-off his letters and e-mail with this adios: "Keep the Son In Your Eyes." Do you always, everywhere, in every season, Keep the Son in your eyes? Wind-blown: Faithful servants of the Son are never perfectly coiffed, never freeze-dried into rigidity. Although the master hasn't yet returned home, the Holy Spirit, the companion whom Jesus promised to send to all his disciples, blew into town long ago, ruffling feathers and tossing aside our pre-conceived, hair-sprayed ...

2961. My Precious, My Precious

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Event Shows Amish Latest in Traditional Technology," Star-Press (Muncie, Indiana), July, 2004. With thanks to Jim Beckley for this reference. There are two kinds of churches in this world: there are pristine churches and there are patina-ed churches. A pristine church stays clean, perfect, untouched. It's proud of how it looks and presents itself. It's beautiful. A patina-ed church gets dirty quick. No matter how many times you clean it up, it takes on a deeper, richer glow because of all the use it gets ...

2962. Living Outside the Box

Luke 16:1-15

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... size for crocodiles to reach. They simply increase at an optimum rate of about one foot per year. In the wild the toll of available prey, predators, old-age, and disease makes it unusual for any individual to make it past 15-20 feet (15-20 years!). But given perfect conditions and health it's possible a crocodile could grow as large as 30 or 40 feet in length. Indeed, that's the point. There's no proven upper size limit for the creatures. So how could Newberry's sell to a kid a crocodile that could grow up ...

2963. Go Meditate!

Revelation 19:1-10

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... ! Throughout all these different family images, whether saccharine-sweet or disorderly real, the theme remains the same: the family together at table, sharing what families always try to share, love for each other. Family love doesn't always look pretty and perfect. Sometimes it's sloppy and messy. Sometimes it's loud and obnoxious. Sometimes family love sounds more like scolding than sentiment. Sometimes family love feels tough instead of tender. The thing that keeps all families together isn't the right ...

2964. Make Me a Sheep

Revelation 5:1-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , surviving Root of David, for the one destined to take up the scroll. But when John looks for this herculean figure, he sees instead a humble lamb. A helpless, innocent, unassuming lamb. There's a Lamb of God Lutheran Church in Humble, Texas. How perfect. Even worse, this lamb stands before him as if it had been slaughtered, a position of complete innocence and vulnerability. How could such a helpless, defenseless creature possibly be equated with the Lion of Judah, with the Root of David? How could a Lamb ...

2965. Palm Pilot

Philippians 2:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... a real pilot guiding us through schedules so varied and harried that we could never navigate the way on our own. But palm pilots are small, delicate, tricky things. They can be left on a restaurant dining table or easily stolen from an overcoat pocket. Those perfect little stylus pens can seem to drop into black holes the moment you reach for them. Worst of all, your electronic brain, your life in a little black box, can fry a few silicon chips and turn your future into incomprehensible, blinking blips or a ...

2966. Be Ready!

Matthew 24:36-51

Sermon

King Duncan

... if she ever left. Eventually, Helen was able to leave Germany. She emigrated to Canada, where she had a cousin. He offered to let Helen work as a maid in his household. She was penniless and didn’t know a word of English, so it seemed like the perfect situation for her. Except that Helen’s cousin was an evil man who raped her repeatedly. He knew she had no resources and no way to escape. When Helen became pregnant with her cousin’s child, her cousin and his church forced her to leave town. She moved ...

2967. Wherever You Are, You Are Always at Home

Luke 2:41-52

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... . And this same Jesus wants to make his home in us in you and in me. Will you enter this New Year with wonder and excitement? Or will you enter '08 with fear and trembling? Whether you turn 16, or 60, or 100 this new year, '08 is the perfect year to inaugurate a fresh journey in your own unique relationship with God. The life and death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ took down the barrier of sin that keeps us separated from God. Christ makes it possible for all of us to experience that same immediacy ...

2968. What's Left Is Right

Mark 9:33-37

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... hasn't whispered to themselves, “failure.” A nice family TV-movie demonstrated just how angst-inducing it was to be parents and siblings of such underachievers. Did anyone here see "A Walk in The Park?" It was about a young man who was perfectly happy and fulfilled in his work, which provided a necessary service for Manhattanites. He was a dog-walker. His embarrassed mother introduced him as an animal behaviorist. His financier brother kept trying to get him to join his brokerage company. At the movie ...

2969. Inside-out Living

Mark 7:1-23

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... prayer. Do you remember your first trip to Disney World? Do you remember your biggest disappointment? The centerpiece of Disney World, its most familiar icon, is the beautiful Sleeping Beauty's Castle. Its tall towers, fluttering banners, imposing size, and fairy-tale perfection draw every child (and isn't that all of us?) towards it. But at Disney World, with all its technological wizardry and attention to detail, that centerpiece castle is a disappointment to first-time visitors. At least it was for me ...

2970. Transmission

1 John 3:11-24

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... the most vile body fluids a child could ever produce. It's love that gets parents out of bed early Saturday morning to take youngsters to their baseball practice. It is love that has the patience to sit through ten-in-a-row tries to play a perfect scale and celebrates the final success. It is love that determines a family garden will be planted, tended, watered, watched, and harvested by everyone together. It is love that sits the family down together to say grace, eat a meal, talk about the day, hear each ...

2971. Atlas or Jesus?

1 John 1:1-4

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... the communities he served. Those who touted their identity as children of God believed they had the ability to be sinless, whole, and self-reliant. They saw no need for divine help or intervention. They felt completely capable of living a perfected, righteous life without the continual need to acknowledge any (nonexistent) sins, without relying upon the merciful petitions of the advocate God had provided in Jesus Christ. These "on their own" self-righteous ones were the Atlases of the first-century church ...

2972. Dirty Laundry or Angels?

John 20:1-9

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of a child or spouse in their room by the trail of discarded clothing they leave behind. Socks fly off in one direction, pants and shirts get dropped later, pajamas and underwear end up in one heap by themselves. The clothing trail makes its own kind of perfect, if messy, sense. Knowing the end of the Easter story helps us to think about what the two separate piles of clothing may have indicated to Peter and the Beloved Disciple. A head shroud, plucked off by a living hand, would be taken off first, then ...

2973. Catch the Fever

Mark 1:29-34

Sermon

James Caldwell III

... him to do. But then we see the fever which turns our notions upside down is still flaring. Because after Jesus casts these demons out, why in the world does he shut them up, and order that they not reveal his identity? I mean, this would be a perfect way to prove that he's positively who he eventually tells us he is. This would help spread the Gospel quicker. It would give him the respect he's entitled. Hmmm. Could it be that by not broadcasting his power and success through every available means, Jesus is ...

2974. Looking for Shoots or Roots?

Matthew 11:1-19

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of Herod Antipas’s dungeon. Obviously, what people went out to see on the banks of the Jordan was “a prophet.” Jesus now asserts that John is “more than a prophet,” citing scripture (a combination of Malachi 3:1 and Exodus 23:20) to make perfectly clear John’s prophetic identity. Just as Jesus had used Isaiah’s text about the days of the Lord as a messianic text, he now uses Malachi’s text proclaiming Elijah as the prophet announcing the day of the Lord as a messianic prediction text. John ...

2975. In Life Nothing Works but the Impossible

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... virgin”) for “alma” (“young woman”). In the Old Testament oracle, however, there is no inference of any divine conception. The mother-to-be is simply still a virgin at the time of the pronouncement. For Matthew the prophetic text fits perfectly into the puzzle of Jesus’ dual heritage. The name “Emmanuel” is obviously NOT the same as the name the angel had just delivered to Joseph as the child’s intended moniker. Yet for Matthew “Emmanuel” or “God with us” literally describes ...

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