Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: thirstiness, dryness, parched, craving, strong desire, longing, yearning, avidity, hunger, voracity, keenness, eagerness, lust, appetite, passion, love, crave, want, covet, desire, hunger for/after, lust for/after, hanker for/after, have one's heart set on

Antonyms: aversion, distaste, apathy, dislike, hatred, antipathy, disgust, disregard, abhorrence, acrimony, wet, animosity, animus, antagonism, bad feeling, bitterness, be averse to, detestation

Showing 3526 to 3550 of 5000 results

3526. The Foolishness of God

1 Corinthians 1:25

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

Object: An aspirin. Good morning, boys and girls. Today we are going to show you something that I am sure is difficult to understand, and must have been very difficult for people a long, long time ago to understand. Let’s suppose that you have a headache. The pain is fierce and you think that your head is going to drop off if something isn’t done. Show me where you think that it would hurt if you had a headache. [Let them show you.] ...

3527. The Sealed Secret

Colossians 1:25-26

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

Object: A large envelope with a wax seal. Good morning, boys and girls. How many of you can keep a secret? I want to know if you can keep a secret for a long time. It isn’t so hard to keep a secret for a little while, but to keep a secret for a long time like a week or a month is almost impossible. I know how hard it is for some people to keep secrets about birthdays or Christmas gifts and things like that, so you can imagine how hard it must be to keep a secret as wonderful as ...

3528. Hungry for Anything?

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... the central desire in man. "The fact is," he said, "that I most eagerly aspire after future eminence. My whole soul burns most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centers around being someone of importance." Anatole France wrote: "At a tender age, I had a longing for renown. I said: ‘I am going to make the whole world know my name.’ " And so the struggle that you see on every side is the struggle of people to make a name for themselves, to achieve significance, to be SOMEBODY. I was watching one ...

3529. A Time for Tears

John 11:17-37

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... call Him, it is not the least significant to say of Jesus that He was a gentleman - a GENTLE MAN. And, perhaps, one of the rediscoveries that we are making in our day is that that combination is possible. A man can be GENTLE and be a MAN! For a long time now, it was almost verging on an insult to call a man a "gentleman." You CAN be gentle, and you CAN be a man, simultaneously. In some places in our current literature and drama, there is a curious attention being shown to the STRENGTH of TENDERNESS. We are ...

3530. Freedom Can Be Frightening

Leviticus 25:8-55

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... Israelites, were only trusted with it (and that in a very moderate form) two years out of every century. Chesteron said it back in 1918: "The world will never be made safe for democracy, because democracy is a dangerous business." This? This that we have so long taken for granted as the inalienable right of every human being - this is dangerous? That’s incredible, ridiculous! But at last, in these past years, we are, at least, I think catching a glimmering of what all this means. We look around us in the ...

3531. Chapter III

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Frank H. Seilhamer

... rolls up his or her sleeves, and offers to dig in - but they are so painfully slow in doing it, and so painfully few step up. And the reason for all of the reluctance is that people don’t want to put themselves on the line for any long-term, demanding, involvement, even though they know that the problem we are facing in those hell-holes is explosive. Instead of getting personally into the situation most of us are content to sit in front of our televisions and cluck our tongues. We shake our heads and sigh ...

3532. Jesus' Flight Plan

Luke 18:31

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... the first astronaut said he was going to do when he reached the moon, and he did it. The scientists here on earth wrote down a long time ago what the first astronaut would do when he first stepped out on to the moon. Now why do you suppose I told you all ... ) Right, and did you know that the Old Testament told Jesus what his plan was going to be? Do you know how? God told men a long time before exactly what Jesus' life was going to be like and how one day he would go to Jerusalem and he would die for our ...

3533. Growing Up

Judges 17:1-13

Sermon

Michael J. Anton

... it so hard to admit that we could be guilty since we’re cut from the same mold as Adam? The Communists didn’t teach white America how to discriminate against the hired man and the black man and their fellow white man. That was happening long before the Bolshevik Revolution and Chairman Mao came along. The communists didn’t teach us how to make the rich man richer and the poor man poorer. That’s the trademark of American capitalism. Nor did the communists teach us how to exploit the natural resources ...

3534. Free to Be

Acts 4:23-31

Sermon

Michael J. Anton

... my security. All around our country today there are numerous groups of people living in communes. They have become so numerous they have rated special television reports. The idea of the commune, of course, is not new. It has been tried in our country as well as others long ago. It was even tried in the early Church, as Acts 4 tells us: "Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common ...

3535. Like a Mother’s Trust

Sermon

Michael J. Anton

... as we drive in first gear. Moving beyond that speed puts us in danger. Somehow we can discuss the stewardship of time and talents all year long with no repercussions, but when we pull the string on the pocketbook, we have hit the sciatic nerve. But let’s just take that chance and throw caution to the wind. Indeed let’s depend on the wind of the Spirit to blow through here for a while as we ...

3536. A Reason to Hope

Lamentations 3:1-66

Sermon

Michael J. Anton

... result was the total wipeout of the city of God. The poet needed little extra incentive to pen his lines of hopelessness. All around him rose the stench of death. The ashes of the city smoldered before his eyes. His own people were herded together for the long trek to political captivity. Darkness was all he could see. He strained his eyesight to catch the glimmer of light, but the sky was black with defeat and gloom. It requires only a flick of the imagination to transport ourselves from 586 B.C. to the ...

3537. BARBER

Ezekiel 4:1-5:17

Illustration

Stephen Stewart

... we heard that before? Today’s youth aren’t quite so modern as they would like to think! The hair of the head, also, was a matter of great care and concern, particularly during the New Testament period. The wealthy were very fond of wearing it long, a practice that disgusted St. Paul (1 Corinthians 11:15). Depraved young men, says Josephus, would sprinkle their hair with gold dust to make it more brilliant. Old men like Herod, again according to Josephus, dyed it. And, again, unkempt hair was a sign of ...

3538. GOLDSMITH

Nehemiah 3:8; Isaiah 46:6

Illustration

Stephen Stewart

... , still later, Herod built his, the lavish use of gold was breathtaking. Since they were performing such a valuable service, it is only natural that the goldsmiths were held in very high esteem. This was particularly true during the Middle Bronze Age (long before even the monarchy), when the special technique called "granulation" was developed, by which tiny globules of gold were arranged in patterns and soldered onto a gold surface. In looking back at the texts, you might read again the one from Nehemiah ...

3539. JEWELER

Exodus 28:11

Illustration

Stephen Stewart

Exodus 28:11 - "As a jeweler engraves signets, so shall you engrave the two stones with the names of the sons of Israel; you shall enclose them in settings of gold filigree." In Palestine, the use of jewelry seems to have been common as long as 10,000 years ago. These ancient peoples wore ornaments of shell, bone, and fish vertebrae. In all times, both men and women wore jewelry, although in later times, aside from the very wealthy and the royalty, the men became more subdued in their ornamentation. Men ...

3540. LOGGER

2 Kings 6:5

Illustration

Stephen Stewart

... , sent cedar, cypress, and algum wood, presumably in the form of logs tied together as rafts. These were sent to Solomon by sea and were used in building the Temple. In the New Testament, the translation is "beam," rather than "lag," a beam being a long, shaped piece of lumber. There is an interesting parallel in the Babylonian Talmud to Jesus’ comment in Matthew 7:3-5. The Talmud says, "Rabbi Tarfon (@A.D. 120) said: ‘I wonder whether there is anyone in this generation who would accept reproof. If one ...

3541. POLICEMAN

Acts 16:28

Illustration

Stephen Stewart

... rights of other people and because he knows that everyone must respect laws if he himself is to be protected. In every group, however, some people refuse to obey the laws in the hope of gaining something. Because there are such people in every group, it has long been recognized that making laws is not enough and that it is necessary to have certain people to enforce the laws. Through the centuries the men who have done the work of law enforcement have had many titles. Today, in most parts of the world, they ...

3542. STONECUTTER

1 Chronicles 22:2

Illustration

Stephen Stewart

... he initiated. For example, we are told that his palace, and the house built for the Pharaoh’s daughter, were made of costly stones. We may today see examples of Israelite stone work in the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem. A stone from the old city walls is fourteen feet long and 3 and 3/4 feet square. And, to further show how wide-spread the use of stone was in ancient times, there are remains of quarries in many places of the Holy Land. Today, of course, we see deep gouges in many places in our land, where ...

3543. TEACHER

1 Chron. 25:8; Rom. 2:20

Illustration

Stephen Stewart

... . Classes were held from sunrise to sunset, and the discipline in these schools was extremely strict. For example, in one long lament of his school day tribulations, one student wrote, in part: "The fellow in charge of Sumerian said: ‘Why didn’t ... ! Moon-lighting, too, is an ancient practice, it seems! Also, teachers were exempt from paying taxes. And, one for which many teachers long today, teachers in the past could discipline their students in any way they liked; one favorite method was the use of a ...

3544. SANTA CLAUS OR CHRIST?

Drama

G. William Genszler

... fill Of Christmas expenses, for I pay the bill For a good many years I trimmed up these trees ‘Till I feel like the man on the flying trapeze. Christmas tree: (addressing audience ... sings or says) "O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum How lovely are thy branches" (speak) Not for long, not for long I don’t have a chance to remain very neat For they came in the forest and sawed off my feet. (Two or three small persons dressed like kids come in and dance around "tree" once or twice and then on knees try to peek at ...

3545. The Kingdom of God Is a Party

Matthew 22:1-14

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... Bill pointed to another man. The expert studied him and said, "That's a preacher." Bill approached the man and asked, "Are you a preacher?" "No," said the man. "I'm just seasick; that's the reason I look so sad." How strange that many Christians have a long-faced reputation. Jesus could not have been that way; if he had been, children would not have clung to him so readily. We in the church should be rippling with joy. We are constantly adding to our number those who have just learned that God loves them in ...

3546. The Heavier the Purse, The Tighter the Strings

Mark 10:17-31

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... adding this heart-felt plea to our daily prayers: "Lord, protect me from the addictive power of money." The great preacher Halford E. Luccock once described two persons whose deaths made the papers. The first was a woman who died in London. Her obituary was long, with a picture and bold headline. She was known as the best dressed woman in Europe. She had over a thousand dresses. But, said Luccock, "in each dress she had the same unseeing eyes, the same deaf ears, the same enameled, painted face." The second ...

3547. The Might of the Mite

Mark 12:41-44

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... ,FIRST, NOT BY ITS COUNT BUT BY ITS COST. Some members of this church give $50,000 per year. Some give $50. I cannot tell you which of those gifts is larger, unless I know how much it cost you to give it. Every good gift must express sacrifice. Long ago King David set us a standard when he said, “I will not offer to the Lord something that cost me nothing.” Jesus' complaint about the gifts of the rich folks was that they gave out of their surplus; no sacrifice was required. Mother Teresa of India has ...

3548. The Land of Beginning Again

John 8:1-11

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... but God is righteous enough to exact the ultimate penalty, to take away life itself. Then Jesus knelt and wrote again. I wonder what he wrote this time. Maybe these words: "Someone must die for her sin; but not her. It will be me." There was a long silence, broken only by an occasional "thud" of dropping rocks. The Pharisees had just enough integrity left to turn and slink away. Finally, everyone had departed except the woman and Jesus. He stood, looked into her eyes and said, "I don't condemn you. Go and ...

3549. Watch Your Language!

Matthew 5:33-37

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... us among his disciples, oaths ought to be unnecessary. A person's word should be binding enough. One of the great construction companies in the southeast is the Daniels Construction Company. Mr. Daniels, the founder, died just a few years ago, but for as long as he lived, he operated with verbal rather than written commitments. Many projects involving millions of dollars were sealed simply by his word. So it should be with Christians. Our text for today is about the words we speak, the commitments we make ...

3550. A Thanksgiving Question

1 Corinthians 4:1-21

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... I once knew a family that had a large cat named "Gris Gato." I think that name means in spanish "grey cat." Gris gato was huge, with long hair; he looked like he had a lot of Persian in him. Gris Gato was clearly the head of the house. He would let you pet him ... we showed God that we wanted to do things our way rather than his way. But God never gave up on us. His love pursues us as long as we live and breathe. Gris Gato's family trapped him. God will not do that to us. He calls us. His love for us is ...

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