Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 3676 to 3700 of 5000 results

Drama

Jon Joyce

... differentiation most easily left to the audience’s imagination, unless you wish to construct a door to admit Judas to the room in the high priest’s palace where the encounter takes place. The outdoor half of the set is at stage right and may be marked with a palm tree or other foliage appropriate for spring in Israel. The indoor set, at stage left, is a beautifully appointed room in Caiaphas’ palace. This set requires three or four chairs, a cocktail or coffee table laden with wine and fruits, and any ...

3677. Incalculable Riches by Bishop Roy C. Nichols

Ephesians 3:1-13

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... is backwards." Indeed, for the contemporary church progress may be backward, to a point where we begin to study the Bible again and accept the fullness of its content; to see Jesus Christ, not as just an image of theologians but as Matthew and Mark and Luke and John portrayed him, walking and living in the midst of people, grappling with evil, showing compassion to those who were disdained, hanging upon a cross (a real one, where there was sacrifice and suffering), and then being delivered by God’s ...

3678. The Deeper Meanings of The Christian Faith by Dr. Bryant M. Kirkland

Romans 8:18-27

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... the mode of a child, I acted like a child, but when I became a man I put away the mode of childish thinking and became mature in Christ. In fact," says St. Paul, "I don’t even think that I have arrived now, but I press forward toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of the fulfilling of my life in Christ. I am hopeful that I may attain to the resurrection of the dead." Where are you in your growth or thinking? Are the modes of your thinking of God, of Christ, of the church, your ...

3679. Miracle On Main Street by Dr. George A. Buttrick

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... me, but how can he forgive himself?" Thus the doubt of God even while the fact of creation points to him. II. But we return to God, if only to ask how truth survives in a world of lies, advertising lies, political lies (the Viet story is pock-marked with them), church lies, white lies, black lies, grey lies. Only a Power beyond our life keeps truth alive. As for love, how does love survive in our brutal world? Even our doubts testify to God. We can’t doubt nothing: nothing is nothing. So what we doubt ...

3680. God Is No Gentleman

Luke 1:67-80

Sermon

Allan J. Weenink

... the crown they gave him to mimic his royalty was made of thorns. And the inscription about the cross was a provincial mockery which read, "The King of the Jews." Condemned, reviled, and spat upon, he nevertheless took this least of royal occasions to mark it with a nobility and sublimity which cannot be paralleled for its glory, by the loving words of forgiveness for a benighted and bedeviled humanity. And so the prophecy of Zechariah revealed the gospel of a compassionate God: "The dayspring on high hath ...

3681. Only the Wounded Can Serve

Hebrews 4:14-5:10

Sermon

Allan J. Weenink

... trials of human existence. In our humanness we find so many areas where we do what we know to be wrong and where we leave undone what we know to be right. We know so often the sense of sin and failure and frustration. Again and again we miss the mark. Can anyone know the utter futility and desolation that, at times, we feel? Yes! Jesus Christ has walked the same lonesome trail. Our problem lies not in what he does or might do for us, but in our own lack of confidence in what he can do. Fearing his superior ...

3682. The Cunning Craftsman, God

Luke 18:9-14

Sermon

Allan J. Weenink

... in its pure sense it indicates skill, wisdom and ability. The phrase then really means that the Master artist God can take our blundering efforts and still make something useful out of them. He takes our mismanaged lives, our failed efforts, our missed marks, our shameful deeds, our alien attitudes, our sinful lives and out of his divine resourcefulness he saves the day by creating something new, worthy and wonderful that still has usefulness and beauty in the divine plan of things. It is a reassurance that ...

3683. Running With Patience

Hebrews 12:1-13

Sermon

Allan J. Weenink

... heart ready and the soul set. What appeared to be regression was really preparation. What seemed despair was really patience working out its slow wisdom. What looked like time wasted became the most fruitful of all experiences. And looking back on what appeared to be marking time, the awareness comes that we were really making time. That is running with patience. Let me say one more thing. I have an unshakable faith in the providence of God. More often than I want to admit, I have tried to hurry it along ...

3684. Virtue Won’t Hurt You

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... I reached out and grabbed the apple. Opening my young mouth as wide as possible, I took a gigantic bite out of the heart of the apple. Then, I hastily replaced it on its pedestal. Needless to say, the shiny apple with its hole and teeth marks became the subject of great merriment on the part of our class. The teacher, of course, did not find the event to be so amusing. Her scowling face indicated that the culprit, if caught, would be in serious trouble. She began an intense interrogation of each student ...

3685. Manufactured Christianity: Jesus Sells, Jesus Sells!

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... , witnesses will give different or conflicting accounts of the same incident. Consequently, when different witnesses corroborate a story, you can be fairly certain that it is of exceptional clarity and veracity to them. The writers of the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, fall into this phenomenon. Some of their stories are disputed by each other. On some they agree. All three synoptic writers agree on a significant incident: the temptation of Jesus, following his baptism. All three writers relate ...

3686. Forgiving Is Forgetting

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... people are willing to forget the harm they think others have done them. I have seen families healed by understanding the principle that to forgive is to forget. On the other hand, I have seen a lot of love go down the drain due to remembrance of a single incident. Mark Twain once remarked, "We should be careful to get out of an experience all of the wisdom that is in it - not like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again - and that is well: but also ...

3687. In Which Direction Do You Travel?

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... few religious "arguments;" he simply related his life-style to individuals in need of a change. We can learn much about helping people change the direction of their lives through examining Jesus’ method of "relating" himself to others. The fifth chapter of Mark contains an account of an unusual experience. Jesus encountered an extremely hostile person one day. This man was so hostile in behavior that his neighbors claimed he was possessed by demons. When Jesus asked the man for his name, the reply was ...

3688. Love of God and Love of Country

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... Christian gospel, our country will be like the horde of gorillas sitting down before complex computers. We will drown in our own garbage! Too often we think the gospel is supposed to comfort the distressed. Yet, in essence, it is meant to distress the comfortable. Mark Twain said it best when he uttered that what troubled him about the Bible was not what he failed to understand, but what he understood quite clearly and could not stomach. On the other hand, love of God and the Scriptures should motivate us ...

3689. Hooray for Humility!

Philippians 2:1-11

Sermon

Barbara Brokhoff

... ought to get to know each another. I’m a small town editor from Emporia, Kansas, My name is White." The quiet man replied: "I’m a small town doctor from Rochester, Minnesota. My name is Mayo." Beautiful, isn’t it? The humility of those two men stands in marked contrast to the principal who said to his secretary: "The trouble with some people is that they don’t admit their faults. I’d admit mine - if I had any!" Following a revival service, a few weeks past, a man shook my hand and told me that a ...

3690. God’s Generosity Resented

Matthew 20:1-16

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... of the late Bishop Frederick Bohn Fisher took an Indian child up in her arms, she did not know that the burning body of the child was tortured with typhus; but three days later, she was dead. Her heartbroken husband wrote the tribute for the stone that marked her resting place: "She died serving." Let us remember that the difference here is in the motivation to serve. Let us recall always that God is generous, and that God has encouragement for us. The story tells us that God is kind. We have a warning - to ...

3691. Being Set Free

John 8:31-41

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... at pleasing everyone - doing what others do and want - worrying about what other people say or don’t say. When we are freed as one of Christ’s disciples, we don’t worry about what other people will think, and we concentrate on what God thinks. Mark Twain tells a quaint story of the man who spent years in prison, only to walk out one morning when he discovered that the door had never been locked! We are often that way with our Christian discipleship. We come to worship, we receive forgiveness, and ...

3692. For Those in Church: Joy and Service

Matthew 23:1-39

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... They extended those commandments to include 613 rules! The Commandments were simply two principles: reverence and respect. Reverence was the first three commandments and included reverence for God, for his day, and for the parents that he gave us. Respect marks the last seven commandments; respect for life, possessions, personality, good name, and one’s self. The principles were correct - reverence for God and respect for people. But, the scribes and Pharisees took these simple principles and made them a ...

3693. While We Watch for the Coming

Matthew 24:1-35

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... . We are the conscience of our community, and there are always those who would like to silence conscience. So it is true, if we practice discipleship, we’ll encounter persecution. If we haven’t experienced it, perhaps we are falling short of the mark of being Christ’s people. Howard W. Smith writes, "When the Roman Emperor threatened to banish Chrysostom, the early Christian preacher, he answered: ‘Thou canst not, for the world is my father’s house. Thou canst not banish me.’ When the emperor ...

3694. Life: Sacred or Stupid?

John 20:1-9

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... always looking for - the source of life. The heart of it is someone. It is the breathtaking news that the love of God given to us in a Risen and Living Lord is the Ultimate power in this universe! What is human life? Oh, we’ve all heard the cynics. Mark Twain said: "Life would be worth living, if you could be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen." Fred Allen said that "there is no value to anything in life, except what can be put into a coffin." Or Don Herold, who said: "Life is just ...

3695. Embalmed Leaders

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... of the civilization of the world He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish a system where chaos reigns. He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile people, and of all of our race, he has marked the American people as his chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine mission of America, and it holds for us all the profit, all the glory, all the happiness possible to man. We are trustees of the world’s ...

3696. The Hard-to-Believe Promise

John 14:5-14

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... just before going to bed. Quite understandably, she inquired: "Is it because the rates for long distance are cheaper at night?" The objects of our prayers, and the answers to them do seem like a long, long distance away. Do you remember the incident in Huckleberry Finn where Mark Twain has Huck make a very human observation? "Miss Watson took me into a closet and prayed, but nothing came of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for, I would get. But it weren’t so. I tried it. Once I got ...

3697. Justification and Reconciliation

Romans 3:21-31

Sermon Aid

T. A. Kantonen

... . Basically it is the equivalent of the Hebrew word basar, the material side of man’s nature which ties him up with "all flesh," the whole bundle of created life. Sarx must be distinguished from soma, the body, the concrete, individual human being marked off from other men and the rest of nature by his physical structure. At times Paul uses sacx in a morally neutral sense to denote natural earthly human existence in its solidarity and its weakness and mortality over against God. It is simply leading ...

3698. Drastic Surgery

Matthew 5:27-30

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

... 1966. 2. Blaise Pascal. The Provincial Letters, No. 10. Great Books edition, Vol. 33, pp. 71-80. 3. Igal Mossinsohn. Judas, pp. 8-9 (translated from the Hebrew by Jules Harlow). New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1963. 4. William Barclay. The Gospel Of Mark, p. 239. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1954, 1956. 5. Albert Camus. The Stranger, p. 142 (translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert). New York: Vintage Books, 1946. 6. James Baldwin. No Name in The Street, pp. 9-10. New York: The Dial Press, 1972 ...

3699. Blinding Specks

Matthew 7:1-6

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

... more sympathetic toward them. Robert Burns wrote: Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman; Though they may gang a kennin wrang, To step aside is human. One point must still be greatly dark, The moving Why they do it; And just as lamely can ye mark How far perhaps they rue it.8 When Helen Keller was still quite young, she read Macaulay’s Life Of Samuel Johnson. She said that her heart went out "to the lonely man who ate the bread of affliction in Grub Street, and yet, in the midst of ...

3700. Hindering Riches

Matthew 19:16-30

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

... or her money in the interests of persons or causes which do not promote one’s own welfare in some way. The fifth chapter of the Letter of James has some pretty rough things to say about rich persons. A cartoonist pictures a modern-day church leader marking through that chapter and saying to its author, "About this fifth chapter, James, remember: we have the poor always with us but the big givers we have to cultivate."8 The "big givers" may not be those who have the most money. Their amounts may be large ...

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