Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 3201 to 3225 of 4986 results

3201. Why the Church?

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... , suffer any ostracism, for the opportunity of gathering together with their fellow Christians. It was a cold and cruel world out there, and they had to huddle together for warmth. They would not be able to understand why any Christian would choose to stay away. When we speak of the Church we should mean that Universal Fellowship of all those who believe in Jesus Christ...living and dead.In the old traditional Communion Service we sing: Therefore with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven ...

3202. What’s the Good Word?

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... important dimension: “the word became flesh and lived among us.” During the 1950’s a hit Broadway musical began with these words: A song is not a song until you sing it; A bell is not a bell until you ring it; Love wasn’t put into the heart to stay, For love isn’t love until you give it away! Well, that is the way it is with God. God is Love, but it is in the nature of true love to do something, to reach out, to communicate. A Word is not a Word until it is spoken, and ...

3203. Christmas and the Condensed Bible

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... take down and move to another location as they followed the grazing of their livestock. One can see these nomadic Bedouins with their tents in parts of the Holy Land today, although the government of Israel has been trying for years to get them to stay in one place so they can be counted and taxed! But God, like the Bedouins, is unpredictable. God is likely to show up anywhere and everywhere. Who would have believed in a stable out back of an inn in Bethlehem? (Preaching the Good News, Englewood Cliffs ...

3204. Jesus: The Life of the Party

John 2:1-11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... 's "first-born" Son, which seems to indicate that there were more children later on. (Cf. Luke 2:7) One wonders where Joseph was in all of this. Another legend says that he had already died by this time, and that may be the reason why Jesus stayed at home so long - perhaps until He was thirty years of age or so - carrying on the family business, fulfilling the responsibility of the first-born Son. So it might have been the wedding of one of Jesus' brothers or sisters. The most radical suggestion about the ...

3205. Born Again? When?

John 3:1-21

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... not think so anymore, for we insist on calling ourselves “middle-aged” right into retirement! At the very least Nicodemus had lived long enough to realize that change is not easy. As we grow older, it is easy to get ourselves into a rut and stay there. Perhaps Nicodemus’ question actually reflected a certain sense of despair in his heart. That is the dangerous peril which confronts all of us: the hardening of our spiritual arteries, the feeling that life has passed us by, that it is too late for us ...

3206. Jesus and the Divorced Evangelist

John 4:1-26

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... an old familiar poem and came up with the following: Come live with me and be my love, And share the pain and pleasure of The blessed continuity, Official posslquity; And I will whisper in your ear The word you love so much to hear. And love will stay forever new, If you will be my POSSLQ! It all sounds so new, so modern, (and in the age of AIDS, so dangerous)! But here we have Jesus, nearly 2000 years ago, sitting by a well, confronting a woman involved in just such a living arrangement. And the curious ...

3207. To Who Can We Go?

John 6:60-71

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... . He was playing the lead in one of the Father Brown mystery stories written by G.K. Chesterton, and they were filming on location in a little village in France. One night when the filming was finished, Guinness began to walk home to the village inn where he was staying. He was still wearing the priest’s garb that he had worn for the film, thinking to change when he got home. It was a very dark night. As he began to walk along the village lane, he heard footsteps running behind him. It was a little French ...

3208. The Glorious Interpolation

John 7:45--8:11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... of sheep stealing. In that cruel age both were branded on the forehead with the letters “S.T.” for “Sheep thief.” One of the brothers became permanently embittered, left the community to go into a foreign land, and died forlorn and alone. The second brother stayed home and faced the music, repented of his sin and determined to win back the respect of his neighbors. As the years passed he achieved a reputation for honesty and integrity and goodness. One day a stranger saw the old man with “S.T ...

3209. How Do You Explain the Resurrection?

John 11:17-37

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. It is just over the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem, about two miles from the Holy City. Bethany served as sort of a “bedroom community” for those who lived and worked in Jerusalem. When Jesus visited Jerusalem, he usually stayed in Bethany, and commuted into the Holy City from there. Jesus goes to Bethany, the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Martha, always the busy one, hurries out to meet Him. She greets Him with what might be considered a rebuke, “Lord, if you ...

3210. Love Is Extravagant

John 12:1-11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... last week in His life. Today, the village is called “el-Azariyeh,” from the Greek Lazarion, “the place of Lazarus.” The only people from Bethany mentioned in this Gospel are Lazarus, and his two sisters Mary and Martha. This implies that Jesus was staying at their home and that the supper recorded was served there. The fact that Martha served the meal confirms this. Lazarus was present, he whom Jesus had raised from the dead, and who was the object of a considerable amount of natural curiosity among ...

3211. One Commandment, Slightly Used

John 13:31-38

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... are Christians by our love,” but unfortunately, the world hasn’t had very much experience of this kind of Christian love. No less a theologian than Huckleberry Finn in Mark Twain’s famous “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” said that he once found himself staying with a very pious religious family. They went to church every Sunday, and when they did, they stacked their shooting irons out in the narthex so that they could pick them up again after the service and resume feuding and fussing and fighting ...

3212. God Doesn’t Take Vacations

John 5:1-15

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... while we rest. The story is told about the eccentric Methodist Bishop Quayle, who sat up worrying about a problem one night. In the middle of the night, so the story goes, the voice of God came to him: “Quayle, you go to bed and get some rest. I’ll stay up and do the worrying for you.” That’s a message we all need to hear. I have always thought that we could learn from Martin Luther in this regard. One day, as the great Reformer sat in a tavern, he said something like this: “It is comforting to ...

3213. Slippery Rock

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... ASKING FOOLISH QUESTIONS. Take the “Transfiguration,” for instance. Jesus took the “inner circle” of Peter, James, and John up into a high mountain. There they had an unforgettable religious experience: a vision of who Jesus truly was. Peter was thrilled. “Why can’t we stay here?” he asked. It is a recurring problem in the Church: how to get religion out of the Church and into the stream of everyday life. Don’t blame Peter for his foolish mistake. We all make it. We tend to think of religion ...

3214. One Bad Apple

Matthew 26:47-56

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... before the party was over, and went to Jesus’ enemies and led them to the Garden of Gethsemane to find Jesus and arrest Him. After he had done the dirty deed, there would have been no reason for him to stick around, but he seems to have stayed around to see what would happen. There are several versions of what he did in the New Testament, the most plausible of which is that he gave the money back, saying that he had shed innocent blood, and then went out and hanged himself. Interestingly enough, there ...

3215. Jesus and the Baptists

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... who perfectly performed the will of God. Why was Jesus baptized? What did the Baptism of Jesus mean? Barclay suggests four things: For Jesus, it was: The moment of Decision, Identification, Approval, and Equipment. It meant DECISION. For 30 years (roughly) Jesus had stayed in Nazareth, subject to family responsibilities. He must have waited for a sign, and the ministry of John was that sign. As William Emerson says so cleverly: “John was the dynamite cap that set Jesus off!” (THE JESUS STORY, New York ...

3216. Wining and Dining with Jesus

Mark 2:18-22

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... of the strict Pharisees. The same people who got angry at Jesus for the company He kept, would be the ones we have been reading about in the newspapers recently who are rioting in Jerusalem over the fact that some movie houses choose to stay open in the Holy City on Friday nights, the Eve of the Sabbath. (God save me from fundamentalists of whatever stripe, be they Christian, Jewish, or Muslim!) To eat a meal with someone in Biblical times meant to have communion (fellowship) with that person. Therefore ...

3217. Afraid of Sanity

Mark 5:1-20

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... their midst? William Barclay, the great Scots Biblical commentator says that “One would have thought that they would have regarded the whole matter with joy; but they regarded it with terror. And one would have thought that they would have besought Jesus to stay with them and exercise still further His amazing power; but they besought Him to get out of their district as as soon as possible.” (Daily Study Bible, Westminster, Phila., 1956, p. 120.) I am surprised that Dr. Barclay is surprised. That ought ...

3218. Men Like Trees Walking

Mark 8:22-26

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... , and to love them as Christ has first loved us. I once read somewhere that each of us, as Christians, needs two conversions: The first from the world to Christ; and he second, from Christ back to the world again. Far too many of us seem content to stay with the first one. Years ago in seminary I came across a verse in the Book of Exodus which struck me oddly. Chapter 17, verse 21, says: “All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages...” Of course the author ...

3219. Salty Saints

Mark 9:42-50

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... David Redding writes: “Consider the Connecticut Yankee and his bicycle factory. It will take more than strikes and taxes to put him out of business. Foul weather and flat tires won’t keep him from work. A houseful of company can’t make him stay home at night if he’s needed on the job. Competition doesn’t break his spirit; he will make do, think of something, try everything, even to working on Sunday, and he will simply ‘never say die.’ But imagine some Presbyterian excommunicated. He would ...

3220. God’s Strange Arithmetic

Mark 10:1-12

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... he called the “hardness” of people’s hearts. When we speak of a Christian position on divorce, then, we must recognize this: there are people who, under certain circumstances, simply must be permitted to divorce. I do not believe that Jesus would insist that people stay together in a situation of pain and suffering no matter what. We must never forget that our Lord had immense sympathy for anyone who was suffering. When He dealt with people, it was never on the basis of Law, but of Love. He ate and ...

3221. What Do You Want Me to Do for You?

Mark 10:46-52

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... great gift to us in Christ has a certain validity to it. But the crowd often obscures Jesus for us. The crowd all around us keeps us from seeing Jesus. Back there, the crowd wanted to see and hear what was going on, and so they said to Bartimaeus, “Stay back there in your place!” They wanted front-row seats for the spectacle, and here was this blind beggar, causing a fuss, trying to elbow his way through the crowd to come to Jesus. But the blind man would not be put off. “...he cried out all the more ...

3222. Not the Seasons for Figs

Mark 11:12-19

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... allow God to do so. We’ve got lots of leaves. The question is not, “Where’s the beef?” as the old commercial had it, but “Where’s the fruit?” A church in Kansas City is reported to have the following slogan: “Wake up, sing up, preach up, pray up, stay up, pay up, but never give up or let up or shut up until the cause of Christ in this church and in the world is built up.”

3223. Jesus and the IRS

Mark 12:13-17

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... became guilty of what some have called “premature morality.” He saw the wickedness of that war before the rest of us did. But, unlike some, Pastor Doten’s son refused to claim exemption as a student, nor did he to flee to Canada. Instead, he stayed here and openly defied the draft. For that he went to prison. About that time, his father’s church was producing a special dramatic program...something like we will be doing tonight when the Covenant Players visit us. In order to make room for the pageant ...

3224. On Keeping Quiet about Easter

Mark 16:1-20

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... message of the Gospel would fail, his throat would soon become unable to swallow. Sangster threw himself into his ministry with renewed vigor. Figuring that he could still write, and he would have even more time for prayer, he worked harder than ever. “Let me stay in the struggle, Lord,” he pleaded. “I don’t mind if I can no longer be a general, but just give me a regiment to lead.” He wrote articles and books, and helped organize prayer cells throughout England. He would say to people who pitied ...

3225. Palm Sunday (Prologue)

Matthew 21:1-11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... faltering footsteps of a donkey.” Luke’s account of the Palm Sunday parade begins in Bethany, which was sort of a bedroom community for Jerusalem, located just two miles east of the Holy City, over the Mount of Olives. Bethany is where Jesus usually stayed when in the Jerusalem area, probably at the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. On this particular morning, as Jesus started for Jerusalem, He sent a few of His students on ahead to secure for Him a special means of transportation. There is symbolic ...

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