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Showing 326 to 350 of 609 results

326. A Thanksgiving Question

1 Corinthians 4:1-21

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

There is an old story told about a farmer who received a visit from his pastor. The farmer had purchased the farm just three years earlier. Together they walked around and admired the healthy corn, rising as high as a basketball goal. The soybean crop was coming on strongly. The pastureland was knee-deep in good grazing for the cows. The pastor said, "My friend, God has certainly blessed you richly." The farmer nodded and replied, "Maybe so, but you should have seen this place when God had it all by ...

327. 'Nevertheless': A Word of Faith

Luke 5:1-11

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

Conventional wisdom has it that Billy Graham got his big push toward success from newspaperman William Randolph Hearst. In 1949 Graham's first major crusade was being launched in Los Angeles, and Hearst owned both major newspapers there. Supposedly, Hearst sent a brief message to his editors, saying, “Puff Graham.” But Billy Graham has a different understanding of his launching. In his autobiography, Just As I Am, he tells about a retreat he attended just a few months before that crusade. One night he was ...

328. The Burden Bearing Christ

Matthew 11:25-30

Sermon

Brett Blair

There is a wonderful legend concerning the quiet years of Jesus, the years prior to his visible ministry. The legend claims that Jesus the carpenter was one of the master yoke-makers in the Nazareth area. People came from miles around for a yoke, hand carved and crafted by Jesus son of Joseph. When customers arrived with their team of oxen Jesus would spend considerable time measuring the team, their height, the width, the space between them, and the size of their shoulders. Within a week, the team would ...

329. Reviving Our Moral Responsibility

2 Chronicles 36:15-23

Sermon

Donald Macleod

Some years ago I spent several weeks during the summer indexing and classifying the Scripture texts in all the volumes of published sermons on my study shelves. Many interesting trends and preferences emerged from this tabulation; for example, among some 4,000 printed sermons only two preachers had ever done a sermon from the Book of Chronicles. And little wonder, someone might very well say. Here is an Old Testament book which in 65 chapters attempts an accounting of a confused and confusing mishmash of ...

330. Send Me!

Isaiah 6:1-13

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

Certain events - often cataclysmic ones - stand out in bold relief in our memory. Those of you who are over 35 or so, think of where you were or what you were doing when you heard the news that President John Kennedy had been shot. You may not remember the date - it was November 22, 1963 - but you will probably remember other things about that day. Or if you are sixty or more think of what you were doing when you learned that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Chances are some things about that day are etched ...

331. A Man Who Lost His Head

Matthew 11:1-19

Sermon

R. Blaine Detrick

In the last chapter, we considered Daniel, a prophet who lived in captivity in the land of Babylon. After the inhabitants of Judah had been carried away as slaves into Babylonia and remained there for a period of approximately seventy years, some of them were permitted to return to the city of Jerusalem. The city had been destroyed and left in ashes. Under extremely difficult circumstances, they began to rebuild: the walls ... the temple ... the city. Some of the outstanding leaders of that period were ...

332. Augustine, Defender of the Faith

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

There is a way of looking at the personal stories of certain women and men to learn of the richness and the potential of human life lived by the grace of God. We are going to do that over the next weeks in this series of sermons we have chosen to name "Saints Who Shaped the Church." The people we will consider convey something of the breadth of Christian history. They are a rich assortment of young and old, learned and ignorant, people of action and people of thought, whose common denominator is simply ...

333. Discipleship - Path to Fulfillment

Mark 10:35-45

Sermon

James W. Robinson

"Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." It was with that abrupt request that disciples James and John one day approached Jesus. I don’t know how that strikes you, but, to me, it smacks of impertinence. How would you have responded? In kind, I suspect, with "Oh, you do, do you!" But Jesus, always the gentleperson, made patient reply: "What do you want me to do for you?" Perhaps he smiled indulgently as he spoke. "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand, and one at your left, in your ...

334. Confronting Hypocrisy With Humility (I)

Matthew 23:1-39

Sermon

Brett Blair

With Election Day upon us, I thought this text about hypocrisy was appropriate. I am reminded of a story about Theodore Roosevelt. During one of his political campaigns, a delegation called on him at his home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. The President met them with his coat off and his sleeves rolled up. "Ah, gentlemen," he said, "come down to the barn and we will talk while I do some work." At the barn, Roosevelt picked up a pitchfork and looked around for the hay. Then he called out, "John, where's all ...

335. Getting Ready

Mark 13:24-37

Sermon

Brett Blair

It is hard for us to understand Jesus' delay in his coming. God's time clock is certainly out of sync with ours as Little Jimmy learned one day as he was laying on a hill in the middle of a meadow on a warm spring day. Puffy white clouds rolled by and he pondered their shape. Soon, he began to think about God. "God? Are you really there?" Jimmy said out loud. To his astonishment a voice came from the clouds. "Yes, Jimmy? What can I do for you?" Seizing the opportunity, Jimmy asked, "God? What is a million ...

336. Overcoming Loneliness

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

In the overcrowded conditions of our modern world loneliness has possessed us: "He’s a real Nowhere Man, Sitting in his Nowhere Land, Making all his Nowhere Plans for nobody." Such emptiness, such frustration, such loneliness depresses us. What’s to be done about it? This feeling of hopelessness has been around a long time. The ancient writer of Psalm 22 cried out: Dear God, right now I feel like a worm, not a person. I feel so used by other people. And to make it worse, I feel resented by the very same ...

337. Be Careful How You Live

Ephesians 5:15-20

Sermon

Brett Blair

There are two birds that fly over our nation’s deserts: One is the hummingbird and the other is the vulture. The vultures find the rotting meat of the desert, because that is what they look for. They thrive on that diet. But hummingbirds ignore the smelly flesh of dead animals. Instead, they look for the colorful blossoms of desert plants. The vultures live on what was. They live on the past. They fill themselves with what is dead and gone. But hummingbirds live on what is. They seek new life. They fill ...

338. What Must I DO to Receive Life?

Mark 10:17-31

Sermon

Brett Blair

I heard about an expert in diamonds who happened to be seated on an airplane beside a woman with a huge diamond on her finger. Finally, the man introduced himself and said, "I couldn't help but notice your beautiful diamond. I am an expert in precious stones. Please tell me about that stone." She replied, "That is the famous Klopman diamond, one of the largest in the world. But there is a strange curse that comes with it." Now the man was really interested. He asked, "What is the curse?" As he waited with ...

339. A Voice to be Heard

John 1:19-28

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

It had been a long time. History seemed more moribund and leaden than ever. Hope was either frozen or fanatic. Cynicism was the daily fare and optimism the dream of fools. So it was in those days of long ago. But now there was a stirring in history's corridors -- not in the throne rooms of Rome or Alexandria, not in the libraries of Athens or the armies of Caesar -- but in little backwater towns of a troublesome, rebellious, backwater country. The first of the stirrings began in Jerusalem with a tired old ...

340. Be Careful What You Wish For, You Just Might Get It!

1 Samuel 8:1-22

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Graduation. Big time. Congratulations on a job WELL... DONE - the emphasis for parents is on WELL, but we know the emphasis for you graduates is on DONE. I appreciated what the President said to the graduates Friday at Chelsea's commencement: "I ask you at the beginning to indulge your folks if we seem a little sad or we act a little weird. You see, today we are remembering your first day in school, and all the triumphs and travails between then and now...Though we have raised you for this moment of ...

341. John the Baptist

Matthew 3:1-12, Matthew 3:13-17

Sermon

David E. Leininger

A time to put your imagination to work this morning. The scene is a large, ornate room in the palace of Herod the king. In it, you and others who comprise the best and the brightest in all of Judea - religious leaders, politicians, courtiers. There is an air of expectation in the hall, for you are about to meet a man whose reputation has spread across the land. The king's men have arrested him after reports that he has denounced Herod's marriage to Herodias, until recently the wife of Herod's brother ...

342. The Power to Change the Past

Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

David E. Leininger

You are no doubt familiar with the name Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi hunter. Wiesenthal was a prisoner in a concentration camp in Poland. One day he was assigned to clean out rubbish from a barn the Germans had improvised into a hospital for wounded soldiers. Toward evening a nurse took Wiesenthal by the hand and led him to a young SS trooper, his face bandaged with filthy rags, eyes tucked behind the gauze. He was perhaps 21 years old. He grabbed Wiesenthal's hand and held on for dear life. He said ...

343. A Story Worth Sharing

Mark 8:27-30

Sermon

David E. Leininger

WATCH YOUR MOUTH! What a lesson. There is a classic story about a minister who comes to church one snowy Sunday morning to find that only one lady has been able to make it to worship. As it happens, the text and sermon for the day came from this third chapter of James and focused on the damage done by gossiping. It also turned out that, of all the people in the congregation, this one lady was more guilty of this particular sin than anybody! So, one-person congregation or not, the pastor proceeded as if ...

344. A Fool and his Money

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

David E. Leininger

A fool and his money. Are soon parted, right? Someone has rewritten it to suggest that "A fool and his money are some party!" OK. Some of us are old enough to remember Adlai Stevenson, Governor of Illinois, UN Ambassador, two-time Democratic candidate for President, and rare wit. Stevenson once said, "There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody."(1) Amen? Amen! Of course, this link between a fool and money (or possessions) goes back along way, all the way to ...

345. Messies Anonymous

Philippians 3:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

Mary couldn't get her leaky faucet fixed because she was ashamed to let a plumber see the inside of her cluttered home. Jane was pregnant and didn't know where she would put her new baby because she had so much "stuff" piled in every room of her apartment. Lorene's house was so messy she couldn't bring her terminally ill husband home from the hospital to die. These people (whose names have been changed to protect the sloppy) and thousands more have been aided by a self-help group appropriately named ...

346. Are You Going Down?

Luke 2:1-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... t give a nice Jewish lady a room. How absolutely astonishing it would have been to that humble first family of our faith huddled in that crude stable had they realized that the birth of the Christ child would become an orgy of materialistic indulgence. In the cartoon, Sally Forth, Sally says to her mother after she has just viewed the large family Christmas tree with all the packages lying under it: "Have you ever noticed how one particular emotion gets real strong at Christmas?" Her mother answers: "I sure ...

347. Walk In Love

Ephesians 4:1-16

Sermon

King Duncan

An insurance agent filed this claim on behalf of one of his clients: The Insured operates a dude ranch and we insure all of his ranch buildings and his pickup truck. He had been having trouble with coyotes and had rigged up an ingenious sapling cage trap to catch the animals, after which he would shoot them. This time he decided to try something different, and instead of shooting the coyote, he tied a stick of dynamite to its neck and lit the fuse, opening the cage door at the same time. The coyote ...

348. Where Are Your Loaves And Fishes?

Matthew 14:13-21

Sermon

King Duncan

A thirteenyearold boy once read about Dr. Albert Schweitzer's work in Africa. He wanted to help. He had enough money to buy one bottle of aspirin. He wrote to the Air Force and asked if they could fly over Dr. Schweitzer's hospital and drop the bottle down to him. A radio station broadcast the story about this young fellow's concern for helping others. Others responded as well. Eventually, he was flown by the government to Schweitzer's hospital along with four and onehalf tons of medical supplies worth $ ...

349. Hey! I Want To Believe!

John 20:24-31

Sermon

King Duncan

David McKechnie tells a great story about a rather unlikely speaker who came to Bob Jones University sometime back. Bob Jones is a stronghold of fundamentalism. According to the story the speaker told the young people, "You are naive. You cannot continue to take the Bible and apply literalism to it. For example," he said, "take the Old Testament. The Hebrew for `red' and `reed' is the same word. When it talks about Moses leading the children of Israel through the Red Sea with the Egyptian army in pursuit, ...

350. Connections In High Place

John 15:1-17

Sermon

King Duncan

There is a story about professional golfer Gary Player that sounds like it could have happened to you or to me. Once in a major tournament Player tried to ricochet a ball off a stone wall. "I tried to be fancy," admitted Player. The ball hit the wall where it was intended, but instead of finishing on the green, it ricocheted back and hit Player on the cheek. The force of the blow actually knocked him out cold. "Finally, I regained my senses," says Player, "at least a portion of them. Still groggy, I ...

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