Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 3551 to 3575 of 4957 results

3551. Straw Polls and Soul Quakes

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... particular wisdom or advanced knowledge, had discerned for themselves that a pecking order of spiritual gifts should be established. Instead of celebrating the variety of spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit bestows on believers, some members claimed spiritual precedence for themselves and their special gifts. The manifestations of the Holy Spirit that empowered the rest of this congregation – whether it be healing, prophecy, bricklaying, cooking, sheep-tending, or whatever – were second-class. Paul ...

3552. True Disciples

Isaiah 1:1-31

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of like a bird-watcher's life list), these single-minded fans developed their own culture, dress, set of values, and lifestyle. They genuinely became a unique subgroup within late 20th-century culture. Truly they became Dead Heads. Yet as radical as they claimed to be – living for sex, drugs, and (primarily) rock 'n' roll – the Dead Heads today are reduced to a kind of 21st century version of the Shakers. You say, "What?" How could a rigorously celibate, quiet, devoted band of religious enthusiasts who ...

3553. Your Cheatin' Heart

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... a new pair of sneakers on your feet, no matter how many are already cluttering your closet floor. MasterCard wants your indebtedness, not your family's financial stability. There are other heart stealers among us as well. · The television that claims your attention when you could be playing with your kids. · Your job – when it consumes all your energy, all your time, all your inspirations. · Your addictions - be they drugs, alcohol, food, tobacco, sex, gambling, shopping - whatever you find yourself ...

3554. The Weakest Link

1 Timothy 1:12-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... one, the stumbling block, became the "cornerstone" of faith and salvation for all humanity. The joke's on us. God uses the weakest to do the greatest. Maybe all those game-show contestants aren't so far off after all. Maybe we should all claim our cracked and crazed, wrenched and rusted, weakest-link status. It is our very "hanging-by-a-thread" nature that makes us ripe for divine intervention, for the re-forging gift of salvation, the miracle of stronger-than-steel, magnolia faith. We ARE the weakest ...

3555. Who Put It There? (Mother's Day)

1 Peter 5:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... is Mother's Day and so we naturally think of those special qualities of life and love that make a mother. Perhaps it's also true that each of us as Christians, regardless of gender, are called to mother the world for Christ's sake. Jesus himself claimed the image of a mother hen who longs to cluck and call her scattered chicks up under the safe protection of her wings. Like good mothers we must all keep alert, a constant vigilance against the ravages and rampages of evil in this world. Like good mothers ...

3556. Y'all, What's in Your All?

Colossians 3:1-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... the first and foremost recognition in any Christian life. For disciples who would tap into the inclusivity of God's power and the saving redemption of God's promises, we must first make Christ our in all and with all or these other all promises cannot be claimed. I cannot get out of my head a newspaper story from a few years back. (--as found in Donald Dunn, When Heaven is Silent [Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994], 187.) It told of a young secretary who, one day during her lunch hour, climbed out on the edge ...

3557. Son-burned, Wind-blown, Earth-Stained

Luke 12:35-48

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... a formal affair. For my parents, the pricier the trip, the more formal the attire. Last month, the ranks of the newly-trained and assigned sky marshals filed a complaint with their commanding offers about their dress code requirements. U.S. sky marshals claimed that the type of clothing they were required to wear made it difficult to do their jobs on two levels. First, the required slacks, jacket, shirt, tie, and dress shoes were accused of restricting their abilities to move around quickly and freely. How ...

3558. My Precious, My Precious

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... " of the ring, Gollum fails to notice he has danced right off the edge of the precipice and is falling into the molten lava center of the mountain, even while he chortles over his treasure repeating, "My Precious, My Precious." What are you claiming as "My Precious?" Are you living a self-service life, clutching to your bosom more and more things for which you have to rent bigger and bigger storage bins? Are you tumbling into eternity clutching your baubles and rings, "My Precious, My Precious"? Or ...

3559. DodgeGod

Amos 8:1-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... raise a nest of new baby bowerbirds. In today's Old Testament text, Amos addresses merchants who may appear to be serving the needs of the community. But their greedy, grasping motivations exploit the poor, and eventually destroy the very society they claim to be serving. When these merchants "win," the whole nation ultimately loses. By grinding the poor so far down that the impoverished had no choice but to sell themselves into slavery in order to survive, the very foundation of Israel's vaunted ...

3560. Living Outside the Box

Luke 16:1-15

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of it yet" (Philippians 3:13 NEB). If Jesus instructed his own hand-picked disciples to accept their limitations, to wait for wisdom from on high, to remain open to the new insights and knowledge that time and the Spirit would reveal, on what basis can we claim full disclosure or complete understanding for ourselves? On what basis can we be arrogant and condescending? To be open to the future is . . . to be open to what you don't know. In fact, when it comes to things of the Spirit, it almost seems that the ...

3561. Building Bridges While Getting Shot at from Both Shores

Revelation 22:1-6

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... . Christian priests have served with the Tamil Tigers and the IRA. Sikh bodyguards killed Indira Gandhi to avenge an assault she had ordered on a Sikh temple to halt Sikh terrorism. Hindus demolished a sixteenth-century mosque and took (and lost) many lives in claiming the site. A Buddhist sect released nerve gas on the Tokyo subway to help purify the world of negative karma." (For more see John Whale, "Get Away from the Texts," Times Literary Supplement, 23 Jan 2004, 24.) And late in the first-century, two ...

3562. The Christian's Wild Card

1 Corinthians 15:12-34

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... God's back. The resurrection means the door is always open to the future. No matter what happens in your life . . . no matter how good things get, no matter how bad things get, the door is always open to the future. God is back. Mahatma Gandhi once claimed that there's a kind of wild card within each of us, a wellspring of strength and creativity we don't know even exists until we learn how to tap into it through spiritual practice. Easter is the Christian's wild card. Resurrection is the wild card that ...

3563. Palm Pilot

Philippians 2:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... palms of the hands has an ancient history. People seek answers to such questions as "Where are we going?" "What lies in the future?" "How long will I live?" "What will life bring my way?" "What's the future of this relationship?" Palm readers claim to be able to discern answers by studying our palms. Life-lines, wealth lines, health lines, love lines, success, family all the answers lay in the palms of our hands. "Believers" take their palm predictions seriously. More people than we care to admit actually ...

3564. Will You Still Listen?

Jeremiah 1:1-19

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... him. How many of us regularly listen for the voice of God in our lives? Today not unlike in Jeremiah's day admitting you hear God speak to you isn't necessarily viewed as a good thing. Pharmaceutical medicine has a whole host of chemicals they eagerly offer people who claim to hear God's voice. And we've all seen the carnage left by those who declared that God had their ear and their mouth. Jonestown and Waco, Hamas and Al-Quaeda can only be mourned as the works of madmen. An yet this world and all of us ...

3565. The Dash of Discipleship

Luke 3:1-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... for the glad tidings of great joy: "For UNTO YOU is born a Savior." But the promise of Advent is even greater than that for unto you is born a Savior. Christ is not just born unto us. Christ wants to be born IN us. Meister Eckhart claimed that all disciples become mothers of Christ conceivers of Christ's presence and power in our world. The incarnation is not something that happened only once. As Welsh poet/priest R. S. Thomas would put it, the incarnation is not witnessed by only one star in one place ...

3566. Death by Chocolate

Hebrews 9:11-28

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... your identity, to your resources, to your security: these are all non-Jesus. The way of maximum security is the way of Satan. The ways of self-expenditure are the ways of Jesus. Are you, am I, like the child in the womb? Are we prepared to claim God promises? Will you trust God? (With thanks to John A. Huffman, Jr. for jogging my memory in his "God's Answer to Death," 4 November 2001, St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach, California.) Acts 13:36 summarizes King David this way: "For when David had ...

3567. The Whole Shebang in Six Words

John 11:38-44

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... up in. It's called scientific materialism also known as reductionism or reductive naturalism. Neurologists have found fifteen religions leaders who they surmise had epilepsy in the last 2000 years (Paul, Mohammed, Joan of Arc, etc.). That is enabling some of them to claim that the brain's temporal lobes are the place where you can find God. In other words, God is nothing more than an electrical charge in your skull a God circuit in the brain. Nobel Laureate Francis Crick gives classic expression to this ...

3568. There Will Be No Adults in Heaven

Mark 10:13-16

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , pajamas, etc.-to display here. Like Scooby Doo underwear.] In today's gospel reading Jesus' words brought validity, importance, and divine intentionality to two facets of human life that had been deemed theologically insignificant by society. First Jesus re-claimed marriage, endowing it with the stamp of divine approval. Marriage was not just a legal contract with limited validity. Marriage was God's blueprint for human relationships. Jesus then addressed the role and status of childhood an identity that ...

3569. Do You Have a GPS - A God Positioning System?

Galatians 3:1-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... story of Abraham with new awareness. He hears a new/old eternal truth in God's gift of righteousness "reckoned" to Abraham. Abraham has done nothing deserving of being reckoned as righteous. He has carved out no great mission. He has preached no great message. He has claimed no great insight. All Abraham has at this point is faith, a trust in God that overrides all fears and even common sense. Faith allows him to move forward on the basis of God's voice alone. This faith, not all the actions that follow, is ...

3570. Warts and All

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... who openly prays, talks theology, and touts the power of faith. He may not look like a Christian, with gargoyle ears and pointy tail, three-fingered hands and harpoon teeth. But he talks and acts more like a Christian, as Steve Beard has claimed, than any other fictional character in the history of Hollywood. One of the most intriguing features of Nightcrawler is his superhero costume. Nightcrawler's dark-blue skin is blanketed with tattoos, one for each of his sins. These self-inflicted symbols of an ...

3571. Not What We Expected

Isaiah 11:1-16

Sermon

King Duncan

... a crate and lit it with the burning ember. Soon, all the men in the bunkhouse had gathered around. The light reflected off bony shoulders and hollowed cheeks and sallow skin. But the eyes of all the prisoners were filled with the light of that candle. Brandt claims that the light from that candle filled the whole bunkhouse and seemed to meld with the light of the stars outside. None of the men had seen a candle glow so brilliantly as that half-eaten candle did. A priest broke the reverent silence to remark ...

3572. The Oneness of Twoness

Romans 14:1--15:13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... and you will warp the very place you are intending to arrive at. Act in the present with an eye only to the here and now, and you will fail to prepare for a future the very nature of which is uncertain. . . .” “Trapped between colliding opposites, buffeted by competing claims, we have to learn to act as if we contained two opposites within ourselves. We have to be and not be, do and not do, exist in the now and exist in the then, start in the future and work back to the present at the same time we start ...

3573. Follow Me!

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

James McCormick

... follow Jesus.” It was a deeply moving time for us as we renewed our commitment to be his disciples. I’d like us to sing it together today as our song of commitment: “I have decided to follow Jesus - no turning back, no turning back.” Prayer: Thank you Father for claiming us as Your own and calling us to follow Jesus. Help us to recognize him as the way, the truth, and the life. Help us so to live with him and to learn from him that we begin to look and sound like him. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen ...

3574. The Church on Main Street

Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon

James McCormick

... that is done simply and authentically, it is not arrogant or self righteous; it is just, as D.T. Niles put it, “One hungry person telling another hungry person where to get something to eat.” We must tell the story by word and deed. Second, we must claim that world out there for God and seek to shape it according to God’s purposes. There are ways of living that lead to life and ways of living that lead to death. We are to shape the world in humane, compassionate, life-giving ways, in accordance with ...

3575. Vanilla, Chocolate, and Strawberry

1 Corinthians 9:1-27

Sermon

James McCormick

... . It is essential for us to know the difference. Too often religious people insist that their preference is the treasure. It is not. It’s okay to have preferences. We all do, and we all will. That’s okay. What is not okay is, in the name of Jesus, to claim exclusive validity for our preferences. What is not okay is to say, in the name of Jesus, “As long as I get what I want, I don’t care about what others want. I don’t care whether this is a welcoming place, a place of holy hospitality.” We can ...

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