Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 3351 to 3375 of 4508 results

3351. The Run (A Drama about Going the Distance)

Drama

Dave Marsh

Director's Notes: This was a drama I did a couple of weeks before Promise Keepers where I was encouraging the congregation to 'Go the distance.' Christianity is not a sprint. It's a long distance race and we need to run to win. The race in this script obviously is a metaphor to our own walk with Christ. At first, it looks so easy and we have so much joy but it's easy to get tired. We need to help...

3352. Love Your Enemies Doesn’t Mean Don’t Make Any

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Mike Rowe has made a career out of doing disgusting stuff. As the host of the Discovery Channel series “Dirty Jobs,” Rowe would muck-out, dig under, flush, slog, and slide through some of the most filthy and foul places on the planet. But whether he has been hanging from rafters or slipping through sewers, Rowe consistently showed his viewers how even the most grungy, grimy, gross job still has i...

3353. A Guide to Christmas

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

If you talk about the blind and guides you are talking about seeing-eye dogs. If you discuss Alpine mountains and climbing, you must think of a Swiss guide. If you are ignorant and in college, your guide is a professor. So it is with foreign lands and tour guides, taxes and tax consultants. But what of Christmas? I think many of us feel that Christmas is so easy to find that we don't need a guide....

3354. Living “I Don’t Know” While “In the Know”

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

In every elementary school class, in every high school and college course, in every job, in every church, in every denomination, on every floor of every building, there seems to be a resident “know-it-all.” You know the type. As much as we despised and resented those resident know-it-alls, we love the current universal know-it-all. It’s name is . . . . . Google. But even in a world where the phra...

3355. A Career in The Kingdom

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

When Sadie and Bessie, the famed "Delany Sisters," were in the early years of their second centuries (103 and 105, respectively) they told interviewers, "God only gave you one body, so you better be nice to it. Exercise, because if you don't, by the time you're our age, you'll be pushing up daisies." Fitness gymnasiums ought to put the Delany Sisters on their billboards and quote them into larger ...

3356. Proper 21

Bulletin Aid

B. David Hostetter

READINGS Psalter - Psalms 78:1-4, 12-16 First Lesson - A miracle is required for God to provide water in the wilderness for the thirsty Israelites. Exodus 17:1-7 Second Lesson - Paul gives the Philippians the prime example of genuine humility that all of us require. Philippians 2:1-13 Gospel - Jesus uses some provocative language and a parable in replying to the chief priests and elders of the peo...

3357. Proper 21, Pentecost 19, Ordinary Time 26

Bulletin Aid

Amy C. Schifrin

Litany Divide the congregation into four voices. I: Traveling to see friends, traveling to see relatives, II: show me your way, O Lord, and teach me your paths. III: To white-capped mountains, and clear rushing streams, IV: show me your way, O Lord, and teach me your paths. I: Sometimes in new neighborhoods, sometimes in familiar homes, II: show me your way, O Lord, and teach me your paths. III: W...

3358. Close, but No Closer

Illustration

Glenn L. Borreson

The wife of Henry IV, King of France, in the 1600s, had numerous intense enemies including the Roman Catholic cardinal and her son who became king. On her death bed, however, she promised to forgive all her enemies, including the cardinal. The priest hearing her confession asked her, "Madame, as a sign of reconciliation, will you send him the bracelet you are wearing on your arm?" "No," she stated...

3359. It Isn’t How the Journey Starts, It Is How It Ends

Illustration

Michael A. Sherer

The great wit, C. S. Lewis, started out a doubter. He saw British Christianity a pale and bloodless business. It did not excite him. In fact, to his reasoned, calculating way of thinking, Christianity made very little sense. It smelled of superstition and made promises about the future he was sure it could not make good on. But C. S. Lewis came to see that he was missing something. He began to sl...

3360. “Show Me Now!”

Illustration

Richard Dake

There's a wonderful scene near the end of the movie "My Fair Lady" in which Liza Doolittle sings words that God must also sing. She says, "Words! Words! Words! I'm so sick of words! I get words all day through; first from him, now from you! Is that all you blighters can do? Don't talk of stars burning above; If you're in love, Show me!… Never do I ever want to hear another word. There isn't one I ...

3361. The Politics of True Faith

Sermon

Lori Wagner

Today, out there, all you hear about is politics, right? And we’ll hear about politics for the next couple of months until the election. Each candidate running for whatever office wants to convince you that you should believe in their position, support their causes, but most of all, believe that he or she can do the job better than anyone else. It’s your job to look at the evidence, the facts as ...

3362. Words Are Not Enough

Sermon

Roy Howard

It may be helpful when considering this text to remind ourselves that each of the gospel writers had a purpose in mind when writing the good news. They all shared a common purpose in telling the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, but each had a particular community to which they were writing, and they shaped their gospel in ways peculiar to their listeners. That means we have to discer...

3363. Which Coaching Is Better?

Illustration

King Duncan

Bonnie St. John Deane in her book, Succeeding Sane, tells about the movie, Hoop Dreams, a true story. For four years a documentary film team takes cameras and follows the lives of two talented young basketball players from one of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago. The young man with more natural talent gets a high school scholarship, a posh summer job, and a coach from hell. However, the consta...

3364. A Man of Commitment

Illustration

King Duncan

Among the thousands of victims of that attack on the World Trade Center was Father Mychal F. Judge, the fire department chaplain who, while ministering to the fire fighters working at Ground Zero, was killed by falling debris from the Towers. In Father Mychal's pocket was this prayer that he always carried with him: Lord, take me where You want me to go; Let me meet who You want me to meet; Tell ...

3365. Proper 21

Bulletin Aid

Paul A. Laughlin

First Lesson: Exodus 17:1-7 Theme: The apparent absence of God Exegetical Note At first it appears that the thirsty (and by now weary) Israelites are expressing merely a pressing physical need and resulting discontent with their leader, but that Moses inflates their complaint to include God. Verse 7, however, suggests that the people's complaint had indeed included God. Their question stemmed fr...

3366. Proper 21

Sermon Aid

Marion L. Soards, Thomas B. Dozeman, Kendall McCabe

OLD TESTAMENT TEXTS Exodus 17:1-7 is the first account of God providing Israel with water from a rock. Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16 is a historical psalm that recounts God's merciful guidance during Israel's wilderness wandering. Exodus 17:1-7 - "Is the Lord in Our Midst or Not?" Setting. Exodus 17:1-7 is one of the early wilderness stories. The Lord has delivered Israel from Egypt in Exodus 15 and t...

3367. Polite Disobedience

Sermon

Steve Molin

The title of this sermon is “Polite Disobedience.” I was going to call it “The Gospel of Eddie Haskel” but that reference is from so long ago, I figured half of you are too young to know of it, and the other half of you are too old to remember it! Eddie Haskel was the best friend of Wally Cleaver on the “Leave it to Beaver” TV show of the 1950’s. Eddie was the kind of kid you’d just kind of like ...

3368. Walk the Talk

Sermon

Lori Wagner

When God speaks, God acts. Did you ever notice that? Our God is an active, acting God. God doesn’t merely dwell in some cloud millions of miles away, but God actively intervenes in our lives and in our world. God’s most blatant intervention? Jesus. In the form of Jesus, God broke through into the created world, touched down in the middle of the desert, and started a ripple movement that would c...

3369. Church People Beware!

Sermon

William J. Carl

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think much of the choices Jesus offers in this passage. Think about it with me for a moment. Two sons. The father tells each one to go and do a little work in the vineyard. It’s not much to ask, like mowing the lawn every once in a while. Parents don’t ask their children to do that many chores around the house. Besides, it’s the least they can do to earn their k...

3370. When Yes Means No and No Means Yes

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

What’s your opinion? If you have two sons, and you tell one of them to do a job, and his answer is no, then afterwards he does it, and you tell the second one to do the same job and his answer is, "Sure, I’ll go," and he doesn’t do it, which one is doing what you told him and following your will? That’s the story Jesus told the crowd, and that’s the question he posed to the religious leaders of hi...

3371. Time For Action

Sermon

King Duncan

There is a humorous story about Bob Zuppke, the colorful football coach at the University of Illinois. Zuppke was trying to get his team prepared to play the University of Iowa. "Men," he roared, "I want you to get in there and die for Illinois. Nobody will be taken out unless he's dead. Get that? Unless he's DEAD!" The inspired but overmatched Illini played Iowa to a standstill until late in th...

3372. Parables of Responsibility

One Volume

Gary M. Burge

Jesus first addresses the Jerusalem leaders with three parables that indict them for abdicating their leadership role in guiding Israel in righteousness (21:32). In the parable of the two sons (21:28–32), Jesus contrasts the son who, though initially disobedient, repents (the Greek term is rendered variously as “changed his mind” and “repent” in 21:29 and 32) and obeys his father with the son who ...

3373. The Parable of the Two Sons

Understanding Series

Robert H. Mounce

21:28–32 The parable of the two sons is recorded only by Matthew. It is the first of three parables directed against the religious leaders of the day. Jesus calls on them to give him their judgment about which of the two sons did the will of his father. When the first (some take prōtos to be the older) was asked to work … in the vineyard, he refused, but later changed his mind (he was “smitten wit...

3374. Let's Get Serious

Sermon

Mark Trotter

I confess that I have been struggling on how to approach this sermon this morning. We are coming into the season where we talk about stewardship and ask that you consider what your support to the Church will be in the next year. My instinct on these matters is always to be non-direct. But the gospel lesson for this morning, you heard it, makes it hard to do that. It is anything but non-direct. It...

3375. Good Intentions

Sermon

King Duncan

Here is something you might find interesting. It is from the Guinness Book of Records 1995. The record for an unreturned and overdue library book was set when a book published in 1609 was borrowed from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Great Britain by Colonel Robert Walpole in 1667. It was found by Professor Sir John Plumb in a library at Houghton Hall, Norfolk, Great Britain and returned 288 yea...

Showing 3351 to 3375 of 4508 results