Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 3726 to 3750 of 4999 results

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

... said, "I wish My Mom and Dad could step out of this picture and be here with me right now; that’s what I want for Christmas." Touched by his sadness, the two of them cried together. When we confess our faith in our Savior Jesus Christ, it’s a kind of boasting we do about him. To confess means to declare the wonderful deeds of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. To confess means to give witness to all the great things that Jesus has done for us and still keeps on doing. There is ...

3727. No Longer Afraid

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

... Jesus was perfect for us, in our place. Because of him God counts us perfect also. Saint John tells us that no one would ever have known God except for the fact that Jesus made him known. The way that Jesus was to the people - accepting, forgiving, kind, and loving - is how God really is. "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love," scripture tells us (Psalm 103). He forgives all our iniquities. Precisely because God is this way, he sent Jesus to be our Savior. He sent ...

3728. A God Pleasing Savior and God Pleasing People

Malachi 1:1-5

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

... there is one more person to please. Actually, it’s a great deal more than a person; it’s God. In addition to all the other demands that are placed on us, Christians also want to please God. In response to God’s love for us, moved by his great kindness and mercy, touched by his redeeming grace, we want with all our heart to obey God and live for him as Jesus lived and died and rose again for us. But this, also, is something that often produces nothing more than frustration, for we know that we sin and ...

3729. Coping with Fear, Worry, and Anxiety

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... our anxieties have anxieties." We stare into the abyss until we topple over and are consumed by it, As one woman wrote to a friend: "I’m seriously considering having a nervous breakdown." We need not let phobias "scare us to death." Almost everybody has some kind of phobia, and behind many phobias are sensible explanations. When my wife and I started our preaching career, she had a phobia that was worrying her, and I knew nothing about it. She felt like going into a panic when she was crowded. This was a ...

3730. A Good God and the Problem of Suffering

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... get one thing straight: suffering is not to be enjoyed. You do not lie down and let it run over you. You fight against suffering and all shapes of evil. Jesus fought it victoriously every day of his ministry. Science fights it; God fights it. Suffering may be a kind of tunnel you pass through to get to higher ground, like a pass in the Alps. There the vista of life opens up and the air is clear. "You can see forever." There is the wholesome elation of altitude. The tunnel itself is not pleasant. It is dark ...

3731. Coping When It Seems Impossible

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... Bruce Larson, in a recent book,[1] says, "Doctors have been telling me for years that ‘You can’t kill a happy man.’ " He continues, "Happy people rarely get sick and tend to recover quickly when they do get sick. The unhappy person is the target for any and every kind of illness." Larson goes on to share the secret of his ability to cope with life: "We Christians, of all people, have a good reason to hope. Hope is a gift of God based on the belief that God created us and is our friend and helper. If I ...

3732. Service

Mark 10:35-45

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... skeptical and bitter, sitting around a bar exchanging morbid introspections about the impossible human situation. Where To Serve A college student was discouraged, feeling he ought to "go to the mission field;" yet, through no fault of his own, circumstances prevented it. A kindly, deeply spiritual college chaplain - himself a returned missionary - reminded the student of the old gospel song: I’ll go where you want me to go, dear Lord, O’er mountain, or plain, or sea; I’ll say what you want me to say ...

3733. Twenty-First Century Reformation

John 8:31-41

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... . I also live in the faith that all of us may have a part in it. Perhaps the best tribute ever paid to the great sixteenth-century reformer was by his faithful, understanding, loving wife. Some weeks after Martin’s funeral, Katherine Luther wrote her sister Christina: Kind, dear sister! I can easily believe that you have hearty sympathy with me and my poor children. Who would not be sorrowful and mourn for so noble a man as was my dear lord, who much served not only one city, or a single land, but the ...

3734. The Acid Test of Wisdom

Proverbs 10:1-32

Sermon

Alton F. Wedel

... the poor." The acid test of wisdom, faith, religion! If a well-dressed person, decorated with gold rings and chains and bracelets, wellbathed and sprayed, should sit beside you in the pew at worship, and at your other side a poor man sharing the aroma of another kind, and you become a judge with evil thought, what good is it? "The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the maker of them all." That’s the point where God applies the acid test. The opening preface to the Proverbs reads, "The Proverbs ...

3735. The Marriage of Adam and Eve

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Alton F. Wedel

... he would bestow, he designed the counterpart and complement - someone like him, yet not identical to him - a counterpart of equal rank. This was the crowning act of goodness in a series of creative kindnesses that God designed. "It is not good that the man should be alone!" It is not good that the man should think of no one but himself, seeking nothing but his own, be self-contained in his own "rights." There has to be another. So God created woman, brought her ...

3736. Your Undivided Attention, Please

Deuteronomy 6:1-25

Sermon

Alton F. Wedel

... , shelter and whatever else we need, the necessities of life and for a few of us a luxury or two. He surrounds us with a family of loved ones and a faithful friend or two, guards us against all danger, protects us from all evil. He assures us of his kindly disposition with a love that has delivered us from pain of sin and fear of death and threat of hell - that Egypt land where we were held in bondage until he brought us through the water of baptism into Christ. He has given us the hope of everlasting life ...

3737. And He Shall Reign

Jeremiah 23:1-8

Sermon

Alton F. Wedel

... be their judgment under God in the worst humiliation the land had ever known. Lessons from History There is history here that we should know about, for not to know it is to live it through again, and we are dangerously close to that. It is not the kind of history that one hears about in Sunday school, as familiar as eye-popping stories of the heroes, Joseph, Moses, Daniel. Jeremiah doesn’t get much ink in children’s literature, except as a frustrated prophet. His word was for the most part doom, and its ...

3738. The Reality Of The Resurrection

Luke 24:36-49

Sermon

Brett Blair

... resurrection amazes me. We are told by the scriptures that when Jesus walked into the room where the disciples had gathered and said, “Peace be with you” it startled them. They were frightened. It was a ghost. What else could it be? They were not the kind of men who were easily convinced. These were men of common sense, so they doubted. What else could they do? And this is one of the central reasons why the resurrection is a reality. This is a plain story. Simple. To the point. Realistic. Not contrived ...

3739. The Friends of Jesus

John 15:1-17

Sermon

Brett Blair

... than to lay his life down for his friends. No longer do I call you servants, but I now call you friends.” Who were these friends? What did they have to offer Jesus? What did he have to offer them? I First, who were the friends of Jesus? What kind of people were they? Where did they come from? What was it that caused them to respond positively to Jesus. In some ways I suppose it may be easier to turn the question around and say who they were not. We know, for example that, with some exceptions, they were ...

3740. The Reality of the Resurrection - Sermon Starter

Luke 24:36-49

Illustration

Brett Blair

... us today. 300 years ago on June 17, 1703 a young boy named John was born to Rev. Samuel and Suzanna Wesley in Epworth England. It was perhaps no surprise that John grew up to become a priest himself. What was a surprise is the kind of ministry he implemented. He formed a small religious study group, which put special emphasis on methodical study and devotion. They had communion often, fasted twice a week, and as they grew they added other things: social services, visiting prisoners, care for the poor, and ...

3741. Greatness

Mark 9:33-37

Drama

Robert F. Crowley

... of bread, James -- two thousand, eight hundred and seventeen pieces of fish, Peter -- one thousand twenty-eight." JOHN: I guess that tells the tale, eh, Peter? PETER: Well, I didn't know we were in a contest. I was trying to be kind to people. JOHN: The Master wants rulers in his kingdom who can do miracles, be kind to people, and get the job done fast and efficiently. Some of us do that better than others, that's all. I'm going to tell you my secret. I pray a lot. That's why I have so much faith. Look ...

3742. Clear and Clean and Good

Titus 2:1-15

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

... . "The grace of God," says the apostle, "has made its epiphany for the salvation of all men." "Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own." He goes on to say, "When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior made their epiphany, he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:4-5). The chief enemy of the light of epiphany ...

3743. His Baptism and Ours

Matthew 3:13-17

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

... the prophetic word in Isaiah 43:1, "Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him." Jesus was not appointed by God to be the kind of Messiah that the people expected, a glorious national hero who would lead them to war against Rome. No, he was to be the kind of Messiah described in the book of Isaiah. There we learn that the Messiah is the Suffering Servant of God, the only righteous one who identifies himself with the sins of the many, bears their sins ...

3744. The Communion of Saints

Hebrews 12:1-13

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

... . After a roll-call of past heroes of the faith, the apostle describes them as a cloud of witnesses surrounding us. They are a kind of cheering section urging us who are still on the playing field to put forth every effort to "win with them the victor’s ... ’t you recognize a saint when you see one? The closer to God a man is the more keenly aware he is of his sin." That is the kind of saints we are at best. This is what Luther had in mind when he said that a Christian is a saint and a sinner at the same ...

3745. True Freedom

John 8:31-41

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

... be beheaded. She paused and bowed before the clay statue of Liberty and exclaimed, "O Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name!" One of the most common mistaken ideas of freedom is that one is free when he can do as he pleases. This is the kind of freedom that the prodigal son craved while at his father’s house. But what happened when the father gave him this freedom? His money gone, his health gone, his reputation gone, kneeling at the trough, trying to snatch a morsel before a hog got it - what ...

3746. The Gospel for Labor Day

Matthew 20:1-16

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

... hours to the hot sirocco wind come last and each receives the same wage as those who worked for only one hour in the cool of the late afternoon, trouble was sure to come. What are we to make of this strange teaching? Surely organized labor would not approve this kind of wage scale. And the time is long past when an employer can say, "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?" But our Lord is not setting up any wage scales or bargaining procedures. He simply affirms the fact that the men ...

3747. Paul's Thorn In The Flesh

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... will be given to us in sufficient quantities to handle anything that we must face. That grace enables us not only to cope with a thorn but also to bring some good out of it. Bill Bouknight, pastor of Christ Methodist in Memphis tells a story about this kind of grace: Years ago, he says, he visited a boy of about 12 in a facility for children with major medical problems. Tony was born with a spinal deformity; he was paralyzed from the waist down. Because of multiple surgeries he had spent lots of time in a ...

3748. God’s Wounded Healers

Jeremiah 8:4--9:26

Sermon

Gregory J. Johanson

... our wound, and "love is not love until love is vulnerable." Have you found your wounds sometimes to be a bridge into the country of another person’s being? He who would bind another’s wounds must first allow his own wounds to be found. God has only one kind of healer in this world, and that is a wounded healer. As I say, I learned to resist baring my wounds or even acknowledging that I had any. I learned to cover my hurts by being and appearing positive, and to cope with my inner ache by externalizing ...

3749. Dying to Become

2 Corinthians 5:17

Sermon

Gregory J. Johanson

... loving and enduring relationship. A third way of resisting the level of consciousness that offers the possibility of becoming is the reaction of simply conforming. This mode of resistance to genuine change is neither an offensive nor a defensive reaction. Persons using this kind of resistance to change simply comply; they just capitulate. They don’t "die to become" changed persons; they just die, period! They don’t "die" to what is past in order to become "new beings," they just give up. Conforming is a ...

3750. The Gifts of the Left Hand

Luke 7:36-50

Sermon

Gregory J. Johanson

... value the accomplishment of the little guy and used to fiercely defend his Bill of Rights, has atrophied. We, who until now, were "Uncle Simon," in terms of the parable, find ourselves to be more like the woman - driven by our need to find a more lasting kind of acceptance in this world. Yet, if we trust the story, it may be good news that we are no longer Simon and now identify ourselves with the sinful woman. And perhaps our lying and spying and killing behavior can be taken up into the greater potential ...

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