Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 3676 to 3700 of 4944 results

3676. The Devastating Influence of Faultfinding, Nay-Saying, and Nitpicking

John 12:1-8

Sermon

R. Robert Cueni

This is the fifth and final Sunday in Lent. In today’s gospel reading, it is the Saturday night before a crowd lined the streets of Jerusalem to give Jesus a parade, throw palm branches in his path, and sing, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” (v. 13). In spite of that enthusiastic welcome, by the following Friday night, Jesus was in a grave. In the previous few weeks, it was increasingly evident that things were headed in that direction. There had been serious run-ins with the ...

3677. The Ascension Day Experience

Luke 24:50-53

Sermon

R. Robert Cueni

The official ecclesiastical designation for this day is “The Feast of the Ascension.” In keeping with its name, it commemorates the day the risen Christ ascended into heaven. Saint Augustine contended this holy day was first observed in the apostolic era. That would make it one of the earliest Christian holidays. By tradition, the date was established as the 39 days after Easter. That means it should always fall on a Thursday. In many European nations, Ascension Thursday is widely celebrated as both a ...

3678. Thinking Big

Illustration

Charles E. "Tremendous" Jones

It's tremendous to be learning that no matter how big you see things or how simple you keep them you'll never reach the ultimate. No man has ever seen things as big as they could have been or kept them as simple as they might be. Sometimes we do well in one area at the expense of the other — like the little boy on the corner with his flop-eared pup. A salesman passed the corner each day, and after a week he began to pity the boy who was striving to sell his puppy. The salesman knew the boy didn't "See It ...

3679. Carried to His Room

Illustration

Peter Marshall

In a home of which I know, a little boy, the only son, was ill with an incurable disease. Month after month the mother had tenderly nursed him, read to him, and played with him, hoping to keep him from the dreadful finality of the doctor's diagnosis—the little boy was sure to die. But as the weeks went on, he gradually began to understand that he would never be like the other boys he saw playing outside his window. Small as he was, he began to understand the meaning of the term death, and he too knew he ...

3680. The Problem with "Fawneys"

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

Sermon

King Duncan

Webb Garrison tells us about a common ruse among con artists in Ireland many years ago. These con artists would place a ring which looked expensive, but was in effect virtually worthless, in a public place where someone was sure to find it. This ring in the Irish dialect was called a “fawney.” Sure enough, sooner or later someone would come along and discover the ring thinking they had found something quite valuable. Invariably this person would look around fearing that the real owner might see their find ...

3681. The Field House

Isaiah 2:1-5, Matthew 4:23-25

Sermon

Lori Wagner

The Allen Fieldhouse on the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas is home to the Kansas Jayhawks men’s and women’s basketball teams. Dedicated in 1955, the Allen Fieldhouse is noted as a historical and rave-worthy building, hosting NCAA regional tournaments, NBA exhibition games, famous concerts, and high-profile speakers. But its notoriety comes not from the building itself but from what happens within the building. Shouts, whoops, cheers, roars! Yes roars! In fact, on February 13, 2017, the Allen ...

3682. Metathesiophobia

Ecclesiastes 11:1-6, 1 Corinthians 3:1-23

Sermon

Lori Wagner

We all have fears. No one is immune to fear. It’s only when fear overwhelms us and dictates our life that it becomes what we call a “phobia.” Some have arachnophobia, fear of spiders. Others have agoraphobia, fear of public places. Still others may have claustrophobia, fear of small spaces. Many people have some form of aerophobia, fear of flying. One of the biggest phobias in the world? Glossophobia. Have you heard of it? It’s the fear of public speaking. We keep coming up with new phobias all the time. ...

3683. Daddy's Love

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

King Duncan

Some first graders were asked to draw a picture of God in their Sunday school class. Their finished products contained some interesting theology. One child depicted God in the form of a brightly colored rainbow. Another presented him as an old man coming out of the clouds. An intense little boy drew God with a remarkable resemblance to Superman. The best entry, however, came from a little girl. She said, “I didn’t know what God looked like, so I just drew a picture of my daddy.” (1) Today is Father’s Day. ...

3684. OK Boomer

Matthew 21:28-32

Sermon

King Duncan

(Pastor, if you use Youtube clips in your service, you might consider this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYo9QgVqAW8 for this sermon) OK boomers, we’ve got some things we need to talk about today. Of course, we’re not all boomers. I realize that. How many boomers do we have in the congregation today? To qualify as a boomer you had to be born roughly between 1946 and 1965. [That didn’t sound right. I said you had to be born “roughly” between those two dates. You didn’t have to be born “roughly” at ...

3685. Wavering Notes by an Uncertain Trumpet

2 Peter 3:1-18

Sermon

Ron Love

Benjamin Gilman served in the United States House of Representatives for thirty years. He retired from Congress in 2003. Gilman represented New York’s 27th congressional district. Gilman served as the chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and he was the congressional representative to the United Nations. Gilman, a Republican, was an outspoken critic of President Bill Clinton’s foreign policy. He especially disapproved of the favoritism that Clinton showed Russia over the former Soviet Republics ...

3686. Standing in the Forecastle

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

Sermon

Ron Love

Bob Keeshan entertained children for years as the jovial Captain Kangaroo. The television show Captain Kangaroo ran on CBS for nearly thirty years, from October 1955 until December 1984, making it one of the longest-running nationally broadcasted children’s television programs. In Keeshan’s autobiography Growing Up Happy, he shared the moment when he realized life would be marvelous. Shortly after the Second World War, Keeshan, an eighteen-year-old Marine, was on board the troopship USS Rockbridge Ranger ...

3687. Imagine

Revelation 21:10, 22-26

Sermon

Will Willimon

''And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light…” Today's lesson speaks of the New Jerusalem, the Heavenly City. ''Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first...had passed away'' (Rev. 21:1). When God gets finished with Durham, there will be no sun or moon because the glory of the Lord, present among his people, will be so bright, no other light will be needed ...

3688. And That’s All I Need To Know

John 10:11-18

Sermon

Timothy W. Ayers

As many Sunday school teachers do, Miss Johnson pulled together her young students so they could prepare to memorize Psalm 23. She approached the pastor wanting to have the students present their memory work to the whole congregation on Sunday morning a month from that date. Little Bobby was initially excited about the memorization and being able to recite his part before the church. He wanted to invite his grandmother to watch him do it. Unfortunately Bobby froze when it came to memorizing just about ...

3689. Tales from the Field

John 10:11-18

Sermon

Lori Wagner

Some of you may have once heard the story of the “City Mouse and the Country Mouse,” one of Aesop’s well-known tales. In the story, two mice have very different assessments of the world, and different preferences of how to live in it. The two meet up and exchange greetings and perspectives. The country mouse invites his cousin from the city to visit him in the country. But upon visiting, the city mouse is disappointed with having to hunt for his dinner and eat sparingly. The city mouse explains that he ...

3690. Lazarus, Arise!

John 11:1-44

Sermon

Will Willimon

We're in Lent, the season of the cross, moving steadily, somberly, week by week, toward the inevitable death of Jesus. You know how the story ends. Which makes it a bit surprising that here, on the fifth Sunday of Lent, the church should place this story, the raising of Lazarus. Shouldn't we wait until after Easter for this one, sometime after the resurrection? Not here in Lent, the season of death? Why would John put the Lazarus story right before Palm Sunday? No matter, it's a good story. Lazarus is ...

3691. The Days Are Coming

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Sermon

King Duncan

Every actor deals with the fear that something will go horribly wrong when they step out onto the stage. Forgetting a line. Tripping over your own feet. A wardrobe malfunction. Fortunately, actors are taught to think on their feet and improvise if something were to go wrong in a scene. Actress Jennifer Laura Thompson recalls how her cast mates in a stage play of “The Wizard of Oz” tried to improvise when the set machinery didn’t work. Thompson was playing the role of Glinda, the Good Witch, who is supposed ...

3692. Devour And Conquer

Mark 12:38-44

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

In recent decades, archaeologists have turned their attention to ancient cooking pits and trash heaps because these reveal what ordinary people were doing a long, long time ago. Instead of assuming history is what the rich and powerful rulers were doing in ancient empires, the trash heaps and cooking pits of so-called ordinary people tell us what real life was like. They tell us about what matters to people. They give us insight into value, which may have very little with price. Trash heaps often include ...

3693. Fool's Gold

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

Lori Wagner

Sir Martin Frobisher was an English adventurer, seafarer, and explorer, who thought he struck gold on Baffin Island in what we now know as Canada. Excited and beaming with pride, he mined and brought back 1350 tons of his prize to Queen Elizabeth in 1578 only to be told that his beautiful, sparkling find was not gold, but in fact pyrite with some other minerals mixed into the ore.[1] Labeled a fool, he was forced to forego his royal seafaring grants and seek other employment. Yet today, scientists have ...

3694. Revolutionary Rules For Living

Luke 6:27-36

Sermon

Derl G. Keefer

Author Bob Welch observed that in Les Miserables that the uprising that Victor Hugo observed occurred in June, 1832 as a small Parisian insurrection that lasted only a short time. It was more of a street riot with a tragic outcome. Quoting Hugo, Welch said that the uprising was a defiance against the royalist government of France as a reaction to three problems of the day. First it was a defiance of man by the exploitation of his labor. Second, it was in opposition of the ruination of women by starvation ...

3695. Christianity: A Worldly Religion That Makes Sure That Even Animals Matter

Revelation 5:11-14

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

Christianity is all about salvation — the salvation of our souls, right? That’s why the church needs to keep its nose out of politics and all this stuff about polluting the environment. A 2016 Pew Research Center poll found that nearly 1 in 2 of us (47%) feels this way about the church keeping out of politics. And a 2017 poll by Pew found that just over 1 in 2 of us (55%) rank ecological destruction as a major problem. We have had a president who does not want Americans to do much about it (such as Trump’s ...

3696. Bigger, Better, Basta!

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

Lori Wagner

Have you ever seen a hoarder? A true hoarder? I don’t mean someone who collects teacups, baseball cards, or precious stones. A collector displays selected objects for all to see. A real hoarder stuffs things away for fear of not having enough. In fact, a hoarder never has enough! Hoarding is a very private disorder, one that usually accompanies isolation, fear, and phobia. A psychological disorder, hoarding is not only isolating, but it can be dangerous, causing problems in living conditions, cleanliness, ...

3697. Christ's Grand Entrance Song

Luke 2:1-14, (15-20)

Sermon

King Duncan

Do you have a favorite song you listen to when you want to pump yourself up, get yourself motivated, intimidate an opponent perhaps? Some of you might be familiar with the world of mixed martial arts. As if traditional sports like boxing and wrestling weren’t violent enough, there is a somewhat recent amalgamation of some of the most violent of these known as mixed martial arts, sometimes known as cage fighting. Since 2005 fighter Rory MacDonald has been a top-ranked competitor in mixed martial arts. ...

3698. The Sound of Silence

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

King Duncan & Angela Akers

I want to ask everyone this morning to take a moment and listen to the sounds around you. Do you notice that there are sounds going on all around us that we ordinarily block out? We can hear our own breathing. We can hear the church heating system, or the sounds of traffic outside, or our neighbor tapping their foot on the floor. We are constantly surrounded by some kind of noise, whether we realize it or not. There’s a man named Gordon Hempton who travels around the world recording sounds--especially ...

3699. Beloved

Matthew 3:13-17

Sermon

Lori Wagner

How do you know that someone loves you? Whether it’s your spouse, partner, parent, friend, or someone you’ve been dating, relationship therapists tell us to look for certain “signs” that you are feeling love toward that person, or that that person loves you.[1] Those signs are pretty straightforward, and I’m guessing every one of us has encountered at least some of them. If you’ve been fortunate enough to encounter them all, you know what it means to share a loving relationship: You feel safe with them. ...

3700. Singing the Lord's Song

1 John 3:16-24

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

A father took his little girl to Church for the very first time. After the service he asked her if she liked it. She replied, "I liked the music, but the commercial was too long." I promise that this mornings commercial won't be very long. We are celebrating Heritage Sunday. As Methodists part of our heritage is music. So this morning, I would like to take Wesley's directions for singing and interpret them for everyday life through this passage from John's first letter. In 3:18 John writes: "Little ...

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