Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 276 to 300 of 1185 results

276. Three Days To See

Mark 10:46-52

Sermon

Helen Keller

... few remaining hours, but I am afraid that on the evening of that last day I should run away to the theatre, to a hilariously funny play, so that I might appreciate the overtones of comedy in the human spirit. At midnight my temporary respite from blindness would cease, and permanent night would close in on me again. Naturally in those three short days I should not have seen all I wanted to see. Only when darkness had again descended upon me should I realize how much I had left unseen. But my mind would be ...

277. Life Always Springs New!

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Sermon

Donald Zelle

... that the worst was yet to come. And it did! In 586 B.C. the Holy city was demolished. The temple of Yahweh God already stripped of its gold, which was sent as tribute money to Babylon, was burned. The worship of God by means of animal sacrifice ceased. Hopelessness struck the hearts of most Jews, as also Ezekiel. The vision of the valley of dried bones is symbolic of the feelings of the people. The nation was gone! The city was gone! The temple was gone! The Ark of the Covenant was gone and the people ...

278. Choices

Drama

J. B. Quisenberry

... their seats, Mary and Joseph exit.) Prayer (in unison) Dear Lord, who gave your only Son for our Salvation, fill our hearts with the simple, steadfast love of a child. Keep the spirit of Christmas forever young in our hearts, so that, like shepherds, we may never cease to wonder at Thy love. Help us, Father, to come to you today, and enter into the boundless joy that the shepherds felt on that holiest of nights. In the name of him whose birth we remember today, cleanse our souls, so that we might become as ...

279. Step Six - Willingness

Jn 5:2-9a · Heb 4:14-16 · Is 1:12-20

Sermon

John A. Terry

... "Best in the County" are not what God is looking at. Worship and preaching and singing are not intended to please people, but to glorify God. How can we measure the quality of worship? How can we determine the quality of our confession? Isaiah makes it plain. "Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fearless, plead for the widow." This is the litmus test to measure our worship and life together. Where have we turned our own lives and our world from evil to good? In ...

280. Making Christmas Last

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

Brett Blair

... resigns for Watergate and cover-up 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear incident 1981 IBM announces the personal computer; 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident *1989 Berlin Wall comes down; Chinese dissidents massacred in Tiananmen Square 1991 The Soviet Union officially ceases to exist; Persian Gulf War *1994 End of apartheid in South Africa, Nelson Mandela is elected President *1995 Federal Building in Oklahoma City bombed; Yitzak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, assassinated; HIV/AIDs epidemic estimated to ...

281. The Christian's Tears of Failure

Matthew 26:69-75

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... chance, he turned his failure into success by having no further problems with the Law. Failure, to be sure, is a common experience as a part of life. Failure brings tears of disappointment and remorse. But, when we know that God can transform failure into success, our tears cease flowing. Failure may be God's way of making us more faithful disciples. This causes us to be patient with ourselves and others. It is like a sign on a pastor's desk: "Be patient with me, for God has not yet finished with me."

282. I Cried All the Way Home

John 16:17-33

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... made the men leave all and follow him. Love is that wonderful thing that draws us together, cements our relationship, and is not content until there is a oneness with the beloved. Love cannot stand separation in body or spirit, it is a spiritual magnet that never ceases to draw us together. Separation and the point of departure cause tears to come to our eyes. We are sorry that we must part. You can see tears of love, when at an airport, wives and/or sweethearts hug and kiss and cry when their loved ones ...

283. Peacemaking - Active, Not Passive

Sermon

Alan Bacon Bond

... , make it a personal effort and; thirdly, center ourselves in Christ. Having come this far, we are now ready to take the next step on the Sevenfold Path to Peace. Prayers of the Church Quiet me down, O Lord, until all my inner strivings cease. Generate in me the powerful energies of peace. Take the anxious strivings, myriad doubts, and most hidden fears which drive the mechanisms of inner turmoil and world-wide wars; and, as in a chemical process, change their molecular structure until, at last, those same ...

284. Winning Isn't the Only Thing ... It's Irrelevant

Luke 13:31-35

Sermon

Carl Jech

... cries also over some traditional forms ofarrogant witnessing that go on in his name yet today. When the Gospel that calls us to be self-giving and self-emptying channels of God's grace is converted into a Gospel that makes arrogant claims, then we have ceased to tell the true, original, old, old story of Jesus and his love. There is a huge difference between proclaiming the grace of God as seen in the stories of Jesus and claiming that anyone who doesn't accept a particular theology about Jesus is lost ...

285. Will the Real Jesus Christ Arise?

John 20:1-18

Sermon

Carl Jech

... contexts and for quite different reasons. The world-view behind reincarnation is that life is an endless cycle of death and reincarnation, and that the ultimate goal is to escape from the world of physical bodies into Nirvana - to be absorbed into God and to cease to exist as a separate entity. Reincarnation talks a lot about the physical body, but doesn't really take it seriously!Reincarnation is also tied together with the doctrine of Karma, which is mainly designed to prove that life is fair (in the long ...

286. Jesus Meets Buddha and Confucius

Luke 24:36-49

Sermon

Carl Jech

... so much for Jesus to meet Buddha as for Jesus to surrender his identity to Buddha, to become just another "enlightened one," just another spiritual guide among many. In other words, when Jesus is defined so completely in terms of the Buddhist worldview, Jesus ceases to exist as a unique, historical symbol, as the very thing that the New Testament writers clearly want him to be! Jesus may be more than an historical figure, but the stories about him are clearly and deliberately set in a particular historical ...

287. No Grey Area

Acts 15:1-21

Sermon

Carl Hoefler

... and penitence - weakens the power of the cross and places limitations on Christ as our total savior. If a bridge to heaven has only one rivet of human steel to hold two beams together, under pressure and stress, it will break down at this joint; it will cease to be a bridge at all. As one scholar put it, "Even if Christ be conceived as carrying us 599 miles on the way to the throne of God, anything merely human for the last mile would drop us all crashingly into the depths of hell." The theological ...

288. When Faith Rejects Redemption

Luke 13:31-35

Bulletin Aid

Carl Hoefler

Call to Worship Pastor: When faith rejects the Author of faith it ceases to be a source of redemption. People: We do not want to feel so righteous that God is unable to redeem us. Pastor: Jesus loved Jerusalem, but their faith made them reject his love; so he could not save them. People: We pray for faith that is daily nourished by ...

289. The Prodigal Son

Luke 15:11-32

Sermon

Brett Blair

... that a life that begins and ends only in self is a life of unfulfillment. Home is found only in relationships and the ultimate relationship is God. We can’t go home the way we left but you can go home once you have come to yourself, once you have ceased saying “give me,” come to the father and say “make me.” Amen.

290. ASAPH: The Fish Who Taught Courage

Jonah 1:1-17

Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

Jonah 1:15 & 17 So they took up Jonah and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging ... And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. What is your very favorite place to hide in the whole world? You do have a favorite hiding place where you like ...

291. The Box

Drama

Cynthia Mercati Prigge

... dislikes ... SECOND PERSON: Think about all the places you want to go, all the things you want to do. FIRST PERSON: I'm trying. SECOND PERSON: If I ever got caught in a predicament like yours I don't know what would happen. Our church would probably cease to function. FIRST PERSON: Really? SECOND PERSON: Oh, yes, [Consciously modest] I hope it doesn't sound as if I think I run the church, but - well, I certainly do my share. Keep thinking - me, me, me. FIRST PERSON: I am. SECOND PERSON: No, I simply can ...

292. Living Passionately

Luke 4:14-30

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... slaves, all crammed into the arches of the Colosseum, and all wretched. And then, in this tasteless heap of gold and marble, HE came, Light enclothed in an aura, emphatically human, deliberately provincial, the Galilean, the Christ. And at that moment, gods and nations ceased to be, and MAN came into the glory of his being." Yes, there was a vitality in the early Christian culture, so that a handful of slaves and outlaws could easily dump over the whole imperial facade without even raising a weapon. The ...

293. Nothing More to Say

John 20:19-23

Illustration

A certain medieval monk announced he would be preaching next Sunday evening on "The Love of God." As the shadows fell and the light ceased to come in through the cathedral windows, the congregation gathered. In the darkness of the altar, the monk lighted a candle and carried it to the crucifix. First of all, he illumined the crown of thorns, next, the two wounded hands, then the marks of the spear wound. In the hush that fell, he blew out the candle and left the chancel. There was nothing else to say.

294. On Staying Awake

Luke 12:35-48

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... course, the church is sometimes the worst place to find God. "... It seems," says Paul, "that your church meetings do you more harm than good!" (1 Corinthians 11:11b, Phillip’s translation) Most of us have our own chapter and verse on this. The church has never ceased devising ways to anaesthesize us against God. On the whole, the record of the church is good. We would do well to take the church seriously if we are trying to stay awake before God. Luke says that Jesus went up to the synagogue, "as was his ...

295. Tomb for Sale

Luke 7:11-17

Sermon

George Bass

... say, or who wanted to say, "Do not weep," as Jesus said to the woman whose son had died for an unknown reason but with many of the same results. But this time - for once - things were really different; Jesus gave the widow and the mourners reason to cease crying and wailing for the dead man. At least he must have taken them by surprise when he put his hand upon the funeral bier and spoke to the dead man. People weep over the dead - before and after they are buried - but, outside of seances and dreams, dead ...

296. The Footwashing

Luke 7:36-50

Sermon

... . That’s why our Lord said to him, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house, and you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but ... she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment ... I tell you, her sins, which are many are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little." Simon didn’t love people very much. At ...

297. Lord, Teach Us to Pray

Luke 11:1-13

Sermon

He (Jesus) was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." And he said to them, "When you pray, say: "Father, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread; and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive ...

298. Counsel for Discouraged Disciples

Habakkuk 1:1-4

Sermon

... that faith and love must have in them a backbone of courage if they are to make a significant impact on the lost and sinful world. Jesus’ emphasis on prayer must also have special consideration. Pray to your heavenly father, he said; pray without ceasing. Do not be discouraged if you seem not to be getting the answers you expect. To him prayer obviously was communion and fellowship with God. It was habitual and continuous, not occasional or whimsical. Prayer was what enabled him to testify that he was ...

299. A Touch of the Master's Hand

Luke 13:10-17

Illustration

... Going for three --" But no, From the room, far back, a gray-haired man Came forward and picked up the bow; Then wiping the dust from the old violin, And tightening the loose strings. He played a melody pure and sweet As sweet as a caroling angel sings. The music ceased and the auctioneer With a voice that was quiet and low, Said what am I bidden for the old violin? And he held it up with the bow. A thousand dollars, and who'll make it two? Two thousand! And who'll make it three? Three thousand, once; three ...

300. If Only We Would Let God Mold Us ...

Jeremiah 18:1--19:15

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... say. (18:1, TEV) The story of the potter was written about 600 B.C. when Judah had a weak king, Jehoiachin, and had fallen under foreign domination. Within a few years the monarchy, which had begun four hundred years earlier with Saul and David, would cease to exist. The Babylonian captivity had begun. It was the worst tragedy the Israelites had ever known. Jeremiah did not stop preaching that Judah would be destroyed, but from that day on there began to be a new hope in his message. Yahweh had shown him ...

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