Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: Levi, disciple, evangelist, tax collector, the 12, the twelve, apostle, sermon on the mount, jewish audience, beatitudes, lord's prayer, great commission, parables, olivet discourse, mount of olives, olivet, synoptic

Showing 3401 to 3425 of 4968 results

3401. Sim Lev!

Mark 13:1-31, Mark 13:32-37, Matthew 24:1-35, Matthew 24:36-51

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... would lead us astray. Hold sway, Jesus tells us. Don’t lose faith. Look sharp. See Jesus as the Savior he is. The clues are all around you in beautiful reminders of His love and care. You just need to “pay attention.” Jesus tried his best to remind his disciples that they were not alone, would not be alone in the times to come. But by following him, they were guaranteed a different kind of life, an assured future, in which they would be loved and cared for. “I will give you a new heart and put a new ...

3402. Turmoil Brewing, Herod Stewing, Prophecy, and Porridge

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare. Many of them will stumble; they will fall and be broken, they will be snared and captured.” Bind up this testimony of warning and seal up God’s instruction among my disciples. I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the descendants of Jacob. I will put my trust in him. Here am I, and the children the Lord has given me. We are signs and symbols in Israel from the Lord Almighty, who dwells on Mount Zion ...

3403. A Restless Spirit

1 Samuel 28:1-25

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... change God’s mind. This keeps him not just from moving forward, but causes him to act in ways seem downright absurd. The good news for us is that Jesus knows this about us already. It is the story of the Road to Emmaus, in which Jesus’ disciples cannot recognize him in the darkness of their grief until he reminds them of His Life and Light. It is the story of Peter, who when Jesus comes in his post-resurrection appearance, must remind him with the metaphor of the “net” of his mission going forward ...

3404. Third Day

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... . But the phrase “in the sweet by and by” is a lot like a phrase we encounter heavily throughout the Hebrew scriptures, and also in Jesus’ teaching to His disciples. In fact, it’s a phrase used by John, the gospel writer and disciple of Jesus, to describe a time when something strange and extraordinary happened just after Jesus called His first disciples. The phrase is “on the Third Day,” and the event is a wedding –a wedding feast at a town called Cana in Galilee. Far from a simple consent to ...

3405. Scroll Bread and Honey

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... of our salvation is the sweetest prophesy in the world! The good news truly is “soul food.” John the Baptist also had the gift of prophecy. God’s words are his food, his diet. John lives off of a pure “scripture diet.” Just as Jesus says to His disciples when they ask if He is hungry, “God’s word is my food,” John too exists from what we call an ascetic diet –one of locusts and honey! Whether you call it “bread of heaven” and scripture jam or locusts and honey, John’s diet was a ...

3406. Let 'Er Rip

Mark 13:1-31, Mark 13:32-37, 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... this works in social networking and in the power of the Holy Spirit in his book, “Viral” (Waterbrook, 2012). Based on the Story Lectionary Major Text Paul’s Advice to the Thessalonians to Hold Fast to God and Be Loving to All (1 Thessalonians 5) Jesus Tells His Disciples to Heed the Signs of the End of the Age (Mark 13) Minor Text The Story of Noah (Genesis 5-7) Abraham Attempts to Sacrifice His Son Isaac but Due to God’s Sign Declines (Genesis 22) Hold Fast to the Lord and You Will Receive God’s ...

3407. Via Maris

Luke 4:14-30, Matthew 4:12-17, Matthew 4:18-22, Matthew 4:23-25

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... story, the good Samaritan restores one unrecognized as God’s son or daughter, Jesus Himself went out of His “way” to retrieve and restore those who had disappeared into the culturally mixed stew of the north. “Go and cultivate (we could also say rescue people) disciples from all “ethne” (cultures of people in the great populace), Jesus told us.** He asked us to do no more than He had previously done Himself. And yet His work is never finished. In the way that the Via Maris was the way to a ...

3408. The Healing Tree

Revelation 22:1-6, Luke 8:1-15

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... 3: The Lord’s Wisdom is a Tree of Life The Prophet Hosea Compares Israel to Poisonous Weeds Plowed into the Sowed Field (Hosea 10) Israel Must Break Up Its Unplowed Ground and Return to the Lord (Jeremiah 4) Jesus’ Parables of Seed and Harvest as Told By His Disciples (Mark 4, Luke 8, Matthew 13) Paul Warns that You Reap What You Sow (Galatians 5 and 6) The Parable of Seeds and Harvest That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a ...

3409. The Alabaster Jar

Mark 14:27-31, Mark 14:12-26, Mark 14:1-11

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... humility, and pour out her devotion to Him, anointing him in a prophetic act that will define his coming journey to the cross. Mary broke the seal on the alabaster jar. And as she broke that seal, she entered fully into relationship with Jesus as a disciple with Lord, in full faith, and in full knowledge of who He was. The breaking of the seal is the start of a new covenantal relationship, and the sign of fulfillment of God’s ancient promise. The time had come. And Mary had recognized the significance ...

3410. Turf Fights and Rewrites: That's What Stiff-Necked People Are Made Of

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... regulations. Just step up to God’s Growth chart and see how far you’ve come each month! Sounds good, no? Attended church –check Prayed –check Gave weekly offerings –check Bought someone coffee –check It would be awesome, wouldn’t it if we as disciples could just stand up and be “measured” by our deeds and our accomplishments --but God doesn’t work that way. And thank goodness! Because for those of us who mess up now and again, or more than now and again, that accomplishment ladder could ...

3411. A Spooky Kind of Love

1 Samuel 28:1-25, Matthew 28:11-15

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... through faith. We trust in Him, trust to come close to Him, trust to be in relationship with Him, trust that He is with us no matter where we are, and that we can always find refuge in His loving arms. But Jesus also says to His disciples, “when the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on earth?” For in the days of Noah, God looked everywhere and could not find a “resting place.” Only in Noah, whose name means “resting place” could God dwell, and as the “ark” waded through the turbulent ...

3412. Deep Well

John 4:1-26

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... . Underwater caves and turns have made it difficult to get out or to find one’s way to the surface. Like the frontier of space above the earth, the world under the earth is equally as mysterious, and as fascinating to us. Jesus told a parable to His disciples in which he describes a valuable “pearl” hidden in a vast field. He points out that a merchant would buy the entire field just to search for that one small pearl hidden somewhere in the earth. And that, Jesus says, is what it’s like to seek the ...

3413. Against the Grain

Mark 3:13-19, Isaiah 28:1-29

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... to be weighty to survive on the threshing floor of life. You have to have substance to stay stable when the winds of life and time blow through. In our scriptures for today, Jesus calls upon a selection of his apparently many disciples to become “apostles” –those who will “go out” into the “threshing floors” of life, where the whirlwinds of culture sweep by with every passing fad and agenda, where the hurricanes of opposition may blow downstream. Into this testy environment, Jesus sends his ...

3414. The Art of Keeping Quiet

Luke 1:5-25, Ezekiel 3:16-27

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... conceive. For God, conceiver of the universe, conceives for us so much more than we can possibly imagine. And God’s salvation gift of a messiah to come will go far beyond what anyone could possibly plan for. God’s art of quietness, bestowed upon his disciples and servants, is not punitive, but a gift –the gift of peace, rest, faith, and trust in the power and reality of God. For only God holds the secrets of the universe. Only God entrust us with the secrets of His blessings and promise through faith ...

3415. The Tempest

Jonah 4:1-11, Jonah 3:1-10, Jonah 2:1-10, Jonah 1:1-17

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... us, abide by us, and love us, and to offer us hope that a new reality will come that will bring us peace. The hope of that kind of peace is the message of Jesus. In the gospel of John, we see Jesus re-writing the story of Jonah. Jesus’ disciples are worried and stressed about life and what’s going on in Jesus’ ministry. They are afraid of the authorities and worried about how they are going to get through it all. Out on the boat together, the wind and waves are crashing and a storm is raging –a ...

3416. Why Can’t I Have It All?

Genesis 3:1-24, Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... efforts at risk aversion, Jesus takes the greatest risk of all –He gives up His life to redeem ours. And in doing so, Jesus again invites us into relationship with Him. We get a second shot at putting entitlement behind us and assuming a role as a worthy disciple, a mature human being, and servant of God. In coming to us in human form, God in Jesus tries to reconnect us to our true selves, to show us what true love looks like, what investment and service look like, what being created in the image of God ...

3417. Let’s Really Know Jesus

John 14:1-4, John 14:5-14

Sermon

David & Marian Plant

... up inquiry from Philip. “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?” Again, as we have seen throughout so many passages in this lectionary cycle, the disciples often get Jesus’ meaning wrong. Almost 2,000 years later we continue to get it wrong. For me, that poignant phrase, “if you have really known me” keeps lingering around the edges. I don’t want to linger anymore. As much as I want to be ...

3418. Good for What Ails Us

Matthew 9:35-38

Sermon

R. Kevin Mohr

... are part of God’s answer to the prayer for laborers to bring in the harvest. The one who prays, does what God wants done, and the one who prays is ready to go where the need is and where God sends. There’s simply no escaping it: like the disciples before us, we are an integral part of God’s remedy for what ails the world. Ordinary people like you and me are called by God for his extraordinary work in the world. Jesus’ ministry is also ours: to do no harm, but to embody in our words and actions ...

3419. Cross Choices

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

R. Kevin Mohr

... works its miracle on us, in us, and through us when, through prayer and praise and Bible study together with other believers, when we fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith. God’s Spirit is the one who makes us fit to be Jesus’ disciples in the world, willing and able to share with others how to find life by, paradoxically, giving it up for Jesus. To choose the cross of Christ is the best choice of all. You will never regret it! Amen. 1. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York ...

3420. Who Are You Following?

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

Roy Howard

... of humanity is to glorify God and enjoy God forever.” What is our primary purpose in life, and how will we arrange everything around that purpose? At this point Jesus had come to the moment when he needed to be as clear as possible with his disciples about the way of life that was before them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously called this “the cost of discipleship” and cautioned that it was not cheap. Do you remember playing Follow the Leader? Of course, you do! The rules are simple. The leader gets to go ...

3421. Jesus' Advance Man

John 1:6-8; 19-28

Sermon

King Duncan

... , Andrew and John, were originally followers of John the Baptist. You will remember that one of the most gifted and influential preachers mentioned in the book of Acts was a man named Apollos, who, according to Acts 18:25 was originally baptized as a disciple of John. Yet consider the humility of this man John. “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” This says a lot ...

3422. Wake Me Up!

Romans 13:8-14

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... loving God’s people. In three years, Jesus transformed this motley crew into a super evangelistic machine who would build a church and heal a multitude. Each and every church in each and every place in the world is still like those first disciples. Seldom will you ever find a church that is singularly the same. More than not, your church is filled with people with diverse backgrounds, opinions, affiliations, and beliefs. And yet one thing holds them all together: Christ, crucified, risen, and coming again ...

3423. Measure for Measure

Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... persecuting her, “he who is without sin can throw the first stone.” Remember Jesus’ message today to his disciples in Matthew 18 when asked how often Peter should forgive? Jesus says, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times ... own eye? Forgive and you will be forgiven. This concept was so important to Jesus that he placed it into the very prayer he taught his disciples. Say it with me now (silently or out loud): Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done ...

3424. The Word Above All Earthly Powers

John 8:31-36

Sermon

Albert G. Butzer III

... other three because John’s gospel helps readers have faith in Christ, while the other gospels tell stories about Christ.4 And that brings us to today’s gospel text from John chapter eight, where Jesus said, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” In this single sentence, John brought together two of the great words of his gospel — word and truth. Let’s consider them one by one. As you may recall, John began his gospel ...

3425. The Jesus Straightway

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... must engage in a sloughing off process, a repentance process. There is no salvation without repentance. This is the message that John so direly needs us to understand. And it’s the same message that Jesus will drive home throughout his 3 year ministry to His disciples, the Pharisees, and others. To prepare our journey with Christ, we must prepare ourselves by repenting of our sins, the things that trip us up and make it hard for us to walk with Jesus in a consistent and long-term way. We must remove from ...

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