Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 3351 to 3375 of 4943 results

3351. Resurrection: From Sin to a Second Chance

Psalm 23:1-6

Sermon

Leonard H. Budd

The afternoon sun was waning as the shepherd boy, David, led his sheep down the well-worn path that led from the green pastures to the pool of still water where his flock would quench their thirst before heading back to the fold. He glanced back at the flock following him; then stopped and looked more closely. Where was Ayin, his big ram? One of the lambs was gone, too. The shepherd boy shaded his eyes against the late afternoon sun. In the distance he saw the big ram lumbering down the hill along a ...

3352. Let’s Climb a Mountain

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

James W. Robinson

How would you like to climb a mountain? Right now. Too tired? Completely exhausted after a week of commuting to the office or working around the house? What if you could take the hike without leaving your seat? Don’t scoff! It can be done. No leg work is required. All you need do is exercise your imagination. So, off we go, up the Sermon on the Mount, crossing the ridge to a lookout that offers us a view of the loftiest peaks of the Mount. Those peaks have a name. Collectively, they are known as the ...

3353. How Can We Live Wisely?

Job 26:1--31:40

Sermon

Edward Chinn

When you think of Christ, do you see him as an idealist or as a realist? There are those who see him as primarily an idealist because he talked about love in an unlovely world. He talked about forgiveness in an unforgiving world. He talked about goodness in an evil world. He talked about a loving heavenly Father in a world of earthquakes, fire, flood, and other natural disasters. How then do you see Christ? Was he an idealist or was he a realist? I believe there is a neglected side to Christ’s personality ...

3354. A New Kind of Teaching

Mark 1:21-28

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

Teachers and teaching have existed as long as humankind. Early man taught his children how to survive -- how to hunt, how to plant and harvest, how to provide shelter and protection, how to fight, how to raise his family in the tribal ways. Learning and teaching took a great stride forward in classical Greece 450 years before Christ with the arrival of Socrates and his brilliant student, Plato. The radiant light of learning was passed on from Plato to Aristotle, and the world ever since has been their ...

3355. As We Remember - Memorial Day

1 Chronicles 11:10-25

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

Memorial Day is primarily a national holiday on which we remember and honor the men and women who have given their lives for our country. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, "it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this." It is fitting and proper for us to observe Memorial Day not only as Americans but also as Christians. There should be no conflict between our loyalty to our God and our loyalty to our country. These loyalties reinforce each other. For God has not set us to live our lives in ...

3356. Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand

John 6:1-15

Sermon

Brett Blair

Lance Armstrong. Going for his eighth Tour de France. His heart is nearly one-third larger than that of the average man. At resting, it beats an average of 32 times per minute, during peak performance, 200. He burns up about 6,500 calories every day for three weeks while in the race. One of the stages of the race is 120 miles long-that day he will burn 10,000 calories. You and I burn 3,500 and that’s on a good day. His lungs can take in twice the oxygen. His body fat level is 4 percent. Yours is 16. He has ...

3357. You Do Have A Prayer

Luke 11:1-13

Sermon

James W. Moore

Some years ago, when Leonard Griffith was pastor of the famous City Temple in London, he wrote a fascinating book entitled Barriers to Christian Belief. In that book he dealt with some problems that have over the years been real obstacles and stumbling blocks for people in their faith pilgrimage… specific problems that hinder people, that burden people, that disturb people… and keep them away from the Christian faith. One of the barriers he listed was…"unanswered prayer." It does seem to be a fact of our ...

3358. Congratulations, Joseph, It's A God!

John 1:1-18

Sermon

King Duncan

A man had fallen off a fishing pier into deep water and was about to go under. Another fisherman nearby, hearing his cry for help, said, "How can I help you? What can I do?" The drowning man said, "For God's sake, give me something to hold on to!" This is the first Sunday of a new year. Marjorie Holmes once said that each New Year is like opening an intriguing mystery story. What's going to happen? Where will it lead? Charles Lamb once contended that New Year's Day is every person's birthday. He was more ...

3359. When Someone Else Gets The Honor

Matthew 20:1-16

Sermon

King Duncan

We have been dealing the past couple of weeks with some of the most basic human emotions--anger, hatred, resentment. This morning we want to deal with another--envy. A popular form of humor recently has been light bulb jokes. For example, "How many Wall Street brokers does it take to screw in a light bulb?" The answer: "One, The broker holds the light bulb and the universe revolves around him." Or, "how many Exxon officials does it take to change a light bulb. Ten. One to turn the bulb and nine to handle ...

3360. Whoever Would Have Thought?

Mark 4:26-29, Mark 4:30-34

Sermon

King Duncan

There comes a time in everyone's life when they are just about at wit's end. Teachers have certainly experienced this. Helen Mrosla remembers teaching a ninth grade class "new math" a number of years ago. Her students were working hard, but she could tell that they just didn't understand the new concepts. And they were growing more frustrated and edgy with each passing class. Then one Friday afternoon Helen decided to depart from her lesson plan. She instructed each student to list each person's name in ...

3361. Fighting Over Daddy's Will

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

King Duncan

Permit me to do a little prying. It's for your own benefit. How many of you have made a will? You don't have to raise your hands, but it could be an important question for many of us. Many family squabbles have erupted over the lack of a wellthought out will. There is a book titled THE 400WORD WILL. It contains some interesting wills from Japan. Listen to a few of these. I quote: "After you finish a simple funeral," wrote Mitsuyo Honda, 43, housewife, "I would like you to grab a handful of ashes and get on ...

3362. The Problem With Keeping All The Rules

Luke 18:9-14

Sermon

King Duncan

Photographer Wendy Ewald travels around the world teaching children to use photography to express their thoughts and feelings. Take a child who is relatively powerless and give him a camera, and suddenly that child is empowered by the chance to express himself. Ewald recalls a little Indian boy named Pratap. When Ewald handed him a camera, Pratap began to shake all over. He explained that he was a Harijan, a member of the lowest, untouchable caste in India. Harijans aren't allowed to hold cameras. Pratap ...

3363. Caught Between God And Caesar

Matthew 22:15-22

Sermon

King Duncan

Tony Campolo may be the closest thing we have to a prophet in the church today. Many of you are familiar with him. Tony is a well-known Baptist preacher. And he is a professor of Sociology at Eastern College in St. David's, Pa. Like the prophets of the Old Testament, Tony takes unpopular stands. Anyone else taking the same stands would get run out of the country. But Tony is so fundamentally sound in his theology and such an entertaining speaker, we have to pay attention to what he says! For example, Tony ...

3364. If Your Eye Offends You

Mark 9:42-50

Sermon

King Duncan

When I read these words of Jesus, that "if thy hand offend thee, cut it off," or "when thy eye offend thee, pluck it out," I am reminded of the story of a rich man who was trying to hire a chauffeur and he interviewed three men for the job. He pointed to a high cliff near his home and he said to the three men, "Suppose you were driving me on the edge of that cliff--how close to the side could you safely come?" One man said, "I could easily drive the car within 6 inches of that cliff, and not think anything ...

3365. The Sower and the Seed

Matthew 13:1-23

Sermon

Brett Blair

The Kingdom of God was the main emphasis of Jesus’ ministry and this is accepted by most. But defining precisely what the Kingdom was is a bit more difficult. Indeed, even Jesus himself was often elusive about it. He did not speak in absolutes; rather, he spoke in parables. Such is our scripture text for this morning. Jesus compared the Kingdom to a sower going out and spreading seed. Some of it falls upon hard ground and is unable to take root. Some of it falls on shallow ground, and although it initially ...

3366. To Hell and Back

Luke 15:1-7

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

Visitors to Michigan never fail to be amused when they discover that our state contains both a Hell and a Paradise, Michigan. Paradise is in the Upper Peninsula, and Hell is not too far from Ann Arbor. I have no idea what that means. The first week I arrived in Ann Arbor, I recall reading a startling headline in the Ann Arbor News. I kid you not, this is what it said: “Dam water recedes; Hell out of danger.” In this sermon I would suggest that, Biblically speaking, Hell is never out of danger as long as ...

3367. One Bad Apple

Matthew 26:47-56

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

At Saratoga, on a battlefield that once was covered with British and American blood, there stands a monument, 155 feet high. The monument is there to commemorate that decisive struggle in which the British made their last stand over two centuries ago. Around the base of this monument are four deep niches, and in each niche appears the name of one of the American generals who commanded there. Above the names stand giant bronze figures on horseback. In the first stands Horatio Gates; in the second, Philip ...

3368. Living Lightly

Genesis 45:1-28

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Our scripture lesson for the message today comes from the 45th chapter of the Book of Genesis. I’m beginning with the 4th and ready through the 20th verses. Joseph said to his brothers, come near to me I pray you, and they came near. And he said, I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life, for the famine has been in the land these two years and there are yet five years in ...

3369. Put To Death The Old; Put On The New

Colossians 3:1-17

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Last week we talked about our lives as Christians being hidden in Christ with God. Today we pick up the theme again, for the larger theme is what it means to live the new life Christ gives us. Baptism is Paul's reference point for talking about life "hidden with Christ in God." A Christian's baptism is not unlike Jewish circumcision, Paul says. In baptism we are marked as Christians. This is a circumcision made without hands, the circumcision of Christ in which we are "buried with Him in baptism." He then ...

3370. Declaration Of Freedom

Galatians 5:1-15

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

It was in the newspaper back in the mid-1950's, during the height of the civil rights movement. An unforgettable picture, which captured not only the emotion of one man, but the deep sense of freedom and joy and release and affirmation of a whole race. A black man, who must have been over 100 years old, was being carried on the shoulders of a group of young men. They were taking him up the steps of a courthouse in a Southern town to register to vote. The caption beneath the picture said he was born a slave ...

3371. Escape from the Island of Spiritual Sloth

Matthew 6:16-18

Sermon

Frank G. Honeycutt

I was noodling around on the internet not long ago, doing some research on the "Seven Deadly Sins," and came upon what has surely been an overlooked theological resource in explaining the mysteries of what Gregory the Great, in the sixth century, called "a classification of the normal perils of the soul in the ordinary conditions of life." There is quite a bit of material out there referring to the deadly list of seven but by far the most intriguing theological website was one I discovered titled, "The ...

3372. Homesick For a Future: New Life for the New Millenium

Genesis 12:1-8

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

I don’t know how it is with you, but occasionally I have flashbacks. Sometimes these are connected with a task at hand, or a decision with which I am struggling, or when I am wrestling with what I perceive as a call of God upon my life. Occasionally these flashbacks are connected with my preaching. It happened a couple of months ago. I was struggling with personal direction issues, but had also begun to think of the assignment of preaching on this occasion. The words of a young man named Nicholas in The ...

3373. Honest Abe

Genesis 12:1-4a

Sermon

Bill Mosley

There's an oft-told story about someone going to church to hear the new young preacher give his first sermon, and someone asks him, "How was the sermon?" And the person said, "Well, it was about faith and sin, but I don't know which he was for and which he was against." This is a sermon about faith, and I want it clear right up front that I'm for it, if it's honest faith. There are two definitions of faith. One is that faith is tenets, beliefs, doctrines. You can "belong to the Christian faith," or the " ...

3374. Effective Suffering

Romans 8:26-39

Sermon

Jeff Wedge

Many people have heard a part of this lesson before. Most particularly, the last two verses, the part about "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." These verses are often a part of funeral services. In the context of a funeral service, these verses are a source of comfort for those in attendance, a consolation for ...

3375. Prime Time Waiting

2 Peter 3:1-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

After five years of bad attitude and an ear-splitting squawk, our Senegal parrot named Aquinas hasn't yet learned any words or cute whistles. In fact, he has managed to mimic only one distinct sound: he can beep just like the microwave. Sadly, this may say more about the frequency of microwaved meals coming out of the Sweet kitchen than it does about his ability to learn the precise frequency of the microwave beeper. But at least Aquinas did listen and learn something. The big thing today in seminary is ...

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