Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: touch, feel, sense of touch, tactile sense, tactility, contact, using one's hands, sensation, sense, suspicion, sneaking suspicion, notion, inkling, hunch, fancy, apprehension, presentiment, premonition, foreboding, love, care, affection, fondness, tenderness, warmth, warmness, emotion, sentiment, emotional state, compassion, sympathy, empathy, fellow feeling, understanding, concern, solicitude, solicitousness, tender-heartedness, brotherly love, sensibilities, sensitivities, self-esteem, ego, pride, opinion, belief, view, impression, intuition, instinct, estimation, guess, theory, hypothesis, thought, way of thinking, point of view, atmosphere, ambience, aura, air, mood, climate, character, overtone, undertone, tenor, spirit, quality, flavour, colour, aptitude, knack, flair, bent, talent, gift, skill, art, trick, faculty, ability, propensity, inclination, sensitive, warm, warm-hearted, tender, tender-hearted, caring, soft-hearted, sympathetic, compassionate, empathetic, responsive, receptive, intuitive, thoughtful

Antonyms: bad feeling, acrimony, animosity, animus, antagonism, antipathy, aversion, bitterness, detestation, disgust, dislike, disrelish, enmity, friction, grievances, grudges, hatred, hostility, loathing, malevolence, malice

Showing 3501 to 3525 of 4770 results

3501. Put Within Us

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Sermon

R. Kevin Mohr

... inaugurated in Jesus and made available to all people through faith in his life, death, and resurrection. The Reformation is often understood and interpreted as a time in which great theological doctrines were formulated and explained clearly for the masses. But that way of viewing the events of the sixteenth century misses the main point. Luther, in his despair, did not need new doctrines; he needed a way to be in relationship to God. In Jesus Christ that is what he found and was so eager to share with ...

3502. Making Something Out Of Nothing

Haggai 1:15b—2:9

Sermon

R. Kevin Mohr

... to survive under difficult conditions. What made the situation worse was the memory of how things used to be. Though the final 100 years of Judah as a state had been played out under pressures from the surrounding empires, the communal memory viewed the time before the exile through rose-tinted glasses. The hardships that came from being kicked around as a political soccer ball by Egypt, Assyria, and then Babylon, were conveniently forgotten. All that was remembered was how good things supposedly had once ...

3503. Pilate's Dilemma

John 18:28-40

Sermon

King Duncan

... at the drop of a hat. Pilate got in bad with the Jews from the very beginning. As soon as he took office in 27 AD, he needlessly provoked the pious folks in Jerusalem by riding into the city with his troops bearing their standards in full view. On the top of every flagpole that the soldiers bore was a carved image of Caesar. For the Jews this was a transgression of the commandment to have no graven images. Even more grievously, because of the Roman custom of emperor worship, Pilate’s action smacked of ...

3504. Pet Peeves and Pet Pleasures

Luke 3:21-38

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... s pleasure at his baptism empowered Jesus to live a life pleasing God. And a life spent experiencing God’s pleasure is always a life of joy. No wonder Jesus was always gathering together friends for dinner. No wonder Jesus was viewed askance by the “seriously religious” as an almost scandalous “party animal” — eating, drinking, talking and kanoodling with all sorts of questionable characters. Jesus felt God’s pleasure, every day of his life, and the gift of that approval brought him unlimited ...

3505. Be a Bethany

John 12:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

We never truly appreciate “home-grown,” or “home-style”,” “home-spun” or “down home” until “home” is in our rear view mirror. For college students, Mom’s meatloaf suddenly take on a whole new luster after a semester of college cafeteria food. A burger from McDonald’s, a Pizza Hut pie, or some KFC, tastes like heaven after an extended tour of duty in Afghanistan. It is the simple tastes, the ...

3506. Blessed Are Those Who Believe

John 20:19-31

Sermon

King Duncan

... of the most illustrious in the fields of science, had ranged themselves on the side of the Gospel, he resolved to let the Bible speak for itself. As a result he wrote a book called Thoughts on Religion, showing why, from a merely human point of view, everyone should be a Christian. He concluded, “Unbelief is usually due to indolence, often to prejudice, and never a thing to be proud of.” (6) He’s right. Unless you have been taught to doubt, the evidence for belief in God is overwhelming. Look at how ...

3507. A New Kind of Authority

Acts 9:1-19a

Sermon

King Duncan

... help himself. Every time he would get near an officer of the law he would feel this terrible sense of anger and murder and rage within him. But one night in the south of France, in a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Eldridge Cleaver had a vision, an inner view, of the face of Jesus Christ, coming out of his boyhood to him. It drove him to reading the Scriptures. He read Psalm 23 over and over again. He said that ever since that time on the balcony, he had never had that feeling of hatred again. He ...

3508. On God's Side Or In God's Way?

Acts 11:1-18

Sermon

King Duncan

... Acts, the early disciples of Jesus are confronted with a critical turning point. All the members of the early Christian community had been Jewish. This was important to many of them. The Jewish faith had drawn much of its strength from its exclusivity. Jews viewed themselves as set apart to be a holy people. Even those Jews who had become Christians clung to this belief that Gentiles were in some way unclean, unfit to belong to the body of Christ. Then something quite unsettling occurred. Word was spreading ...

3509. Luke 7:1-10

Luke 7:1-10

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... . Luke’s text turns from Jesus’ preaching and teaching to prophetic power and miracles in today’s reading. The focus of Luke’s narrative narrows down to Jesus for the first half of this encounter. The disciples and other followers drop from view. As Jesus enter Capernaeum his reputation precedes him, since he is known to a certain “centurion” — that is, a Roman soldier in charge of one hundred men. Remarkably this centurion sends members of the local “gerousia,” the board of elders in the ...

3510. Just-Say-The-Word Disciples

Luke 7:1-10

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

3511. Between a Rock and a Hard Rock Thrower

Galatians 1:11-24

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of Jesus have meant the most to them.] When other religious traditions think of holy sites, like Muslim and Jews, for example, they think of places sanctified by some sacred event that occurred there and is recorded in their Scriptures. Christians have an entirely different view. From the very earliest times, when follower of Jesus went on pilgrimages, they journeyed not to pay tribute to a place, but to enter the presence of a person -to try to touch, even to take away a portion of, the clothing or dead ...

3512. A Matter of Trust

Galatians 1:11-24

Sermon

King Duncan

... as prenuptial contracts or at least a long period of living together before jumping into something that may or may not work. As for trusting your employer? It seems to be a thing of the past. Employees, even of large and stable corporations, view themselves increasingly as independent contractors ready to move at a moment’s notice to greener pastures. Why? Because they feel that their employer would be equally eager to shed them if it would improve the bottom line. Corporate loyalty has gone the way ...

3513. Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... barriers, with no front porches, only back patios and private decks. “Pre-fabricated” neighborhoods could be very lonely places. In today’s gospel text Jesus is confronted by a legal expert, sent specifically to “test” him on the orthodoxy of his views. This lawyer begins by asking about what he can “do” to insure his inheritance of eternal life — that is, the gift God offered to those who lived righteous lives. When Jesus directs this legal mind to the instructions of the Law, this ...

3514. The Two Ultimate Questions of Life

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

King Duncan

... much of as to give his precious blood for it; therefore, despise it not.” In short, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was saying, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” For many of us such an answer is idealistic it will not work. That was the view of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. In his book Civilization And Its Discontents, Freud wrote that love is a valuable thing and must not be thrown away. Love imposes obligations and sacrifices. The loved person must be worthy of love. Freud wrote that ...

3515. Mary AND Martha, Heart AND Home

Luke 10:38-42

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... at all times. But tourists being tourists, you know the rest of the story. The video shows cars parked along the access road with all their windows and doors wide open, and people hanging out every which way in order to get a better view. In this case what everyone was gawking at was a herd of gazelles being chased down by two amazingly speedy cheetahs. Suddenly the whole chase changed course and headed into the roadway. Predator and prey came racing through the lineup of parked cars, then disappeared ...

3516. The Dirt on Jesus

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Sky Sports” in which the gods “who can see feelings” watch us on our planet splatting each other paint-ball-style with projected envy, greed, lust, etc., marveling all the while “at this deft/gift of ours for shifting misery/that makes such great viewing.” In today’s gospel text parable Jesus makes it all too clear how “life” and “stuff” are not one and the same. The rich man, enjoying a bumper crop, congratulates himself on his plans for safely storing all his valuable stuff, and looks ...

3517. Real Heros

Hebrews 11:1-40

Sermon

King Duncan

... I am a follower of Jesus, God will bless my life and protect me and those I love from all harm. Indeed, more than that, don’t many of us believe that if we follow Jesus, God will prosper us in every good thing? According to a very immature view of life and faith, that’s the way life ought to work. But it doesn’t work that way, regardless of what some of the television preachers may say. In their theological studies, these preachers must never have gotten as far as Hebrews. The idea that if we follow ...

3518. Love to Life

Luke 13:10-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... single out and call forward a woman to the center of the synagogue during the Sabbath, was highly unusual. Jesus not only called a woman forward. He called an obviously diseased woman into his presence. In an era when disease was still viewed as a sign of divine displeasure, this woman’s condition was seen as both pitiable and as justified punishment. Her physical malady suggested a spiritual shortcoming. In his relationship with her, Jesus demonstrates both divine authority and unique compassion. He saw ...

3519. Luke 13:10-17

Luke 13:10-17

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

3520. Re-thinking Our Mission

Luke 14:1-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... put it: “Church culture in North America is a [mere] vestige of the original Christian movement, an institutional expression of religion that is in part a civil religion and in part a club where religious people can hang out with other people whose politics, world-view, and lifestyle match theirs.” (2) That description of the church hits the nail squarely on the thumb. We want to be around people who are like us. That’s only natural, but it does not make it Christian. The Rev. Bob Stump tells about ...

3521. Wake Up Call

Romans 13:8-14

Sermon

Timothy J. Smith

... waiting they believed that Jesus would return any day. Much of Paul’s writings reveal the notion that Jesus would return within a short period of time. Expecting Christ’s return any day would certainly alter the way you live your life and what you view as important. We do not have that same sense of urgency today as Paul and the early believers. Nearly 2,000 years have passed and we are still waiting for Christ’s triumphant return. Advent reminds us that our faith is future oriented, propelling us ...

3522. The Church Is the Place

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Sermon

Timothy J. Smith

... they needed to be in ministry, they had all the gifts they needed as Paul wrote, “You are not lacking in any spiritual gift.” However, spiritual gifts were misunderstood and even abused in that church by some who thought too highly of themselves and viewed them as a means to for their own personal edification. They momentarily forgot that all spiritual gifts come from God and are not of our own device but are meant to be shared within the congregation and used to build up the church. What Paul ...

3523. Divided We Fall

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

Sermon

Timothy J. Smith

... bought up foreclosed farms and built beautiful homes in the hills. They were accustomed to fine furnishings, and they detested what they had dubbed, “the Victorian Leviathan” that dominated what otherwise was a plain church building. However, the Clyde family viewed the couch in a different light. Their farms had fallen on hard times. They looked at the couch each Sunday and fondly remembered that their great-grandfather Cedric had founded the church. Although their tractors were rusting in the front ...

3524. Grow Up!

1 Corinthians 3:1-23

Sermon

Timothy J. Smith

... claim later in his letter. When one person’s gifts are used in conjunction with other gifts within the congregation the church will thrive. Neither pastor tried to elevate himself either as Paul reminds his readers. Both were servants of the risen Lord. Paul viewed his role as planter, like a farmer who plants seeds, so Paul began the church. For growth or maturity to take place someone would have to water the seeds. In this case it was Apollos who followed Paul. But neither gentleman should have received ...

3525. A One Sentence Legacy

Luke 14:25-35

Sermon

King Duncan

... . This evaluation, says Munsey, is bringing a transition from “me” to “we” and from “take” to “give.” That’s a healthy transition. By necessity, perhaps, boomers are moving from a “more-is-more” to a “less-is-more” world-view. (4) German psychologist Erik Erikson called this shift the developmental stage of “Generativity vs. Stagnation.” This is when people become aware of the need to live beyond themselves and begin the difficult task of leading a meaningful and useful life ...

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