Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 3601 to 3625 of 4977 results

3601. Four Cornerstones

Ephesians 2:11-22

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... at what's virtually their first outing as apostles of Christ. Their new-found eloquence and evangelical fervor had filled them with optimism for the cause of Christ. Despite Jesus' own dire predictions and ultimate experience their immediate incarceration must have been quite a surprise. Yet it was when they were called before their enemies that Jesus' followers became their most ardent and articulate. And each time they came before a notable entity or enemy the name of Jesus spread ever more widely and ...

3602. From Black Holes to Red Holes

Luke 18:18-30

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... puzzles in the universe. There is a compelling amount of evidence that black holes exist in the universe. Although we cannot see black holes because their gravitational pull is too great for even light to escape, we can rely on the indirect evidence that builds quite a compelling case for the existence of black holes. One theory about black holes is that there is one super-massive black hole at the center of every galaxy and that is what holds all the different solar systems together. Wile the all-consuming ...

3603. God for Dummies

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... testifying to the risk of violent robbers is laying on the road bleeding. But the Good Samaritan cares for the wounded man by using up some of his own traveling provisions. He takes the injured traveler to the nearest inn--although inns themselves could be quite dangerous places. He not only entrusts the unknown innkeeper with money to care for the hurt man, but tells the innkeeper to run a tab-putting himself at considerable monetary risk. All this for a man he can see is Jewish, a bitter enemy. Such ...

3604. Let the River Flow

Colossians 1:15-23

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... omnipotence, just before we begin the weeks of Advent that contemplate Christ's entrance into this world as a frail and tiny helpless infant. In Disney's animated Aladdin story, the zany Robin Williams as the big blue genie describes this eternal conundrum quite nicely. Summing up a genie's most essential elements, he explains it to Aladdin in this way: "IMMENSE UNIVERSAL POWER . . . itty bitty living space." Even homes that reverberate only with the drone of the television set eleven months out of the year ...

3605. Taking Aim

Acts 2:14-41

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me." Christ's bloody, brutal crucifixion and death is a shocking, slaughterous event. Its sheer brutality sums up the unspeakable horrors and unnamable capabilities of the human condition quite succinctly. The one in all of history who was wholly innocent – that one was unjustly accused, horribly abused, and intentionally sacrificed out of fear of the future and hope of personal gain, a death perpetrated for reasons of political convenience and ...

3606. The Devil Takes Visa

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... join in the madness! All God wants is for us to receive God's covenant, the Master's Card, which enables us to Forgive, when you feel like condemning. Accept when you feel like blaming. Love when you feel like hating. Give more when you feel like quitting. Return when you feel like running. The Master's Card entitles us to . . . Be wild. Be weird. Be predictably unpredictable. Do not, under any circumstances, be normal. It's the Devil who takes Visa, and shops until the hooves drop. The Master's Card is the ...

3607. The Lamb's Book of Life

John 1:29-34

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... modified. But the kind of genetic modifications we're now doing permanently changes the species itself. Does this not bother anybody? Or consider the delicious excitement circulating in scientific circles when it was discovered, as the decoding work continues, that human beings are not quite as unique as we thought. A gene is a stretch of DNA, about 5,000 letters long on average. While biologists predicted a figure of about 60,000 to 100,000 genes for humans, only about 30,000 genes could be found in the ...

3608. The Shadow

Genesis 3:1-24

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... its midst. What gardens have your shadow-side gotten you kicked out of in your lifetime? · Did fear of rejection keep you from reaching out in friendship to someone you admired? · Did fear of judgment by others keep you from befriending someone who didn't quite measure up in the eyes of some? · Did fear of those who are different than you move you into the wilderness of hatred? · Did fear of vulnerability keep you from loving one who offered you love? · Did fear of failure keep you from ever knowing ...

3609. Trash Cans or Treasure Chests

1 Corinthians 1:18--2:5

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , from the One who was, and from the One who is to come. Good evening, saints. Good evening, sinners. We are all here. And all that we are is here. I am delighted to be here. Have you had a good summer? How many of you had guests this summer? Quite a few of you. Do you know what the three most beautiful lights are in the world? Sunlight, moonlight, and taillights. I am about "guested" out. I have had a great summer. I have been writing at home. I work on the East Coast, but am actually a legal resident ...

3610. Your Cheatin' Heart

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... good portent of your information future. Some of the more talented computer wizards are able to recover portions of all you "saved" on your now deceased hard drive. But like that favorite doll salvaged out of the toilet by the plumber, it never seems to be in quite the same shape when you finally get it back as it was when it went in. Recovered files, like recovered toys, take a lot of cleaning up. Crashing your computer's hard drive is such a disaster because the hard drive is the heart of your machine ...

3611. The Crowd that Watched God Die

Luke 23:26-43

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... way of passing the awful time away. The soldiers are also here with us today. The church has in its membership indifferent souls. They come to church out of duty and are thoroughly bored. They would rather sleep late or be off playing at some game. And quite often the indifferent ones are the youth of the community. They wouldn't set foot inside a church but their parents make them come. Like the soldiers they are under orders of Caesar. And they gamble their time away at the foot of the cross. Stop and ...

3612. How High Is Your Faith Quotient?

Jeremiah 30:1--31:40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... an FQ: Faith Quotient. But first we have to understand what the test of an FQ might really be. Before there were IQ tests, or Iowa tests, or (heaven help us!) driving tests, the whole notion of what a test was and what testing entailed was quite different. Our word test comes from the Latin ‘testum.’ A testum described a kind of small, earthen vessel or pot, also called a cupole. Later the term testum came to specifically refer to a special vessel used for purifying silver or gold. To bring something to ...

3613. What's the Value of Your Life?

Genesis 28:10-22

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... valued according to an entirely new set of rules. How many of you have some knickknack or kitchenware cluttering up your home that is stamped "Made in occupied Japan," or "Made in West Germany"? According to Violin Lesson #5, those objects are now valued quite differently than they were at the time of their creation. The world has changed and now an occupied Japan or a West Germany stamp makes these objects unique and significant. They're valued according to new standards. For years we have been collecting ...

3614. What's Your Status Symbol?

Acts 10:23b-48

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... white pigeons. You know that favorite city-bird, responsible for all the disgusting white guano in the park on the benches, on your car, fondly known as "rats with wings." This is the status symbol that accompanies Jesus' moment of baptism. Not quite what one would expect. Peter's recitation in Acts also highlights a few other status symbols for his Gentile listeners. After preaching and healing his own people in Judea and Jerusalem, what great thanks and honor do these kinsmen of Jesus' offer – they ...

3615. The Uncloudy Cloud?

Hebrews 11:1-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... dreams. It's their old house, of course. We all live with at least a few big dreams. Some are those caviar dreams and champagne wishes (Robin Leach, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous") we don't really ever expect to come true, but we refuse to quite let go of them. Some big dreams fire us up, fuel us, give us persistence and purpose: Dreams of a college education; Dreams of owning a home; Dreams of retiring early; Dreams of a loving life-partner; Dreams of a happy family; Dreams of making a difference ...

3616. Life's Four Big 'Ds' and One Bigger 'D'

Galatians 2:11-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... the pile of catalogs away. Occasionally she does order something. But never until it has survived at least two or three such gleanings. But sometimes seeing all that stuff . . . all that stuff we could stuff ourselves with, yet all that stuff we can't quite lay our hands on, can be torture. The images of what might have been, what I could have, tantalize and torment. When everything beyond reach is so fiercely and brilliantly illuminated by desire, that which is all about us, those true belongings (i.e ...

3617. The Spiritually Incorrect Spirit

Romans 8:1-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... -abled or challenged, veiling whatever the genuine limitations with a gauzy curtain of innuendo and suggestion. The strengths and weaknesses that differentiate individuals are so disguised by our fuzzy correctness that half the time we can't quite figure out what we're trying to say. (For instance, Smith College once defined the politically incorrect attitude of "ableism" as oppression of the differently abled, by the temporarily able (as referenced by Dan Wakefield, Spiritually Incorrect, [Woodstock ...

3618. Are You Living the Three Advents?

Romans 13:11-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... each one of us on earth. The Third Advent is the final return of Christ to earth. The liturgical calendar that marks this Sunday as the First Sunday of Advent announces the “First Advent”—-the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. It is really quite fitting that during this First Advent children and adults experience the passage of this time so differently. The First Advent is the first move from “chronos” to “kairos” time. The “chronos” time of the world, the passage of days and years, seasons and ...

3619. Will You Still Listen?

Jeremiah 1:1-19

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... more exciting because they involve a vastly longer journey. Like the explorations of Magellan and Columbus, a Mars journey will take up a significant chunk of any explorer's lifetime. Long-distance travel in the twenty-first century isn't quite the same isolating experience it was for the first European explorers to the new world. NASA engineers are in constant contact with their creations. Both Spirit and its companion Opportunity are ceaselessly monitored by hundreds of scientists checking thousands of ...

3620. Death by Chocolate

Hebrews 9:11-28

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... 's grace. Jesus transformed human death from an ending into a beginning, from failure and defeat into a triumphant new life, an eternal existence in Christ. As the Apostle Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians, "These troubles and sufferings of ours are, after all, quite small and won't last very long. Yet this short time of distress will result in God's richest blessing upon us forever and ever! So we do not look at what we can see right now, the troubles all around us, but we look forward to ...

3621. Squeaky Wheels

Mark 10:46-52

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... trying not to feed is the squirrel's universally hated naked-tailed cousin . . . the wood rat. A bird feeder alive with the twittering presence of juncos, nuthatches and chickadees is one thing. A feeding station squirmingly full of fat and sassy rats is quite another! Have you seen any of those video-tapes (you can purchase them) that chronicle the tireless, sometimes hilarious, often balletic attempts of the wily squirrel to beat all the safety devices humans install to keep them away from the birdseed ...

3622. The Longest Distance in the Universe

Mark 10:35-45

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... their status, their standing among the twelve when their master is at last recognized as Messiah and given the glory he so richly deserves. Their plotting and planning appears almost embarrassingly transparent to our twenty-first century savvy sensibilities. Quite obviously James and John could never have mastered some of the more Machiavellian machinations that define corporate structures and hierarchies today. But for their day, these brothers have it all figured out. They hit up Jesus before he had ...

3623. Inside-out Living

Mark 7:1-23

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of the strip club and one of his stripper girlfriends drugged Jack's drinks to enable the robbery to take place. The money was quickly recovered, tossed in a nearby garbage bin. The question remains whether Whittaker's reputation can be pulled out of the trash quite as easily. In today's gospel lesson Jesus offers us one of his hard sayings identifying who is clean and who is unclean. If you think this language of clean and unclean is a little strange, think about how when someone does something bad we say ...

3624. Transmission

1 John 3:11-24

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... notion out there that every child should make up his or her own mind. No, sorry. God gave these children to you. It's our privilege as parents to transmit the values and virtues by which we live. If we don't, there are plenty people out there who are quite willing to give our kids something to rebel against. Either we believe the values we live by, or we don't. Either our life is an affirmation of something, or it isn't. On this Mother's Day, the Scriptures are saying that we need to transmit to future ...

3625. Atlas or Jesus?

1 John 1:1-4

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... self-reliant city that calls itself the greatest city in the world, there is an enormous steel likeness of Atlas, back bent, head down, arms outstretched, muscles rippling, steadfastly holding up the world. The statue is huge, his muscles are huge, his ongoing effort is quite obviously huge. [Show the image of Atlas if you can.] Here's Atlas, strong enough to take on the world, strong enough to take on all comers (except maybe pigeons). It's impossible to gaze for any length of time at Atlas without getting ...

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