Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 3826 to 3850 of 5000 results

3826. "Wow!"

Mark 9:2-13

Sermon

David E. Leininger

It starts off ordinary enough. Jesus and his three closest friends - Peter, James, and John - go up on a high mountain. Nothing unusual. Jesus often went off from the crowds to pray and rest. All very ordinary. But from here on, ordinary ends. No sooner do they arrive than Jesus is suddenly "transfigured." He "glowed." As the text has it, "his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them." Not only out of the ordinary, but absolutely out of this world - which, of course, is ...

3827. Hungry People

Matthew 14:13-21

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Every time I hear the story of the feeding of the five thousand, I am reminded of reading of a man packing a shipment of food for the poor people of Appalachia. He was separating beans from powdered milk, and canned vegetables from canned meats. Reaching into a box filled with various cans, he pulled out a little brown paper sack. Apparently one of the pupils had brought something different from the items on the suggested list. Out of the paper bag fell a peanut butter sandwich, an apple, and a cookie. ...

3828. Angels

Psalm 91:1-16

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Familiar stories. Two of the approximately 300 direct or indirect references in scripture to angels. That is a lot of talk about angels. Lots MORE talk in the world. Best seller lists regularly have popular titles about angels; book stores have whole sections devoted to angels. On TV Patty Duke hosted an NBC special called "Angels: The Mysterious Messengers." Michael Landon starred for five years as an angel sent to earth to assist mortals in "Highway to Heaven," and CBS currently has one in the same vein ...

3829. The Language of the Heart

Psalm 100:1-5

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Music, music, music. In the words of Carlyle, "Music is well said to be the speech of angels."(1) Or Longfellow, "Music is the universal language of mankind."(2) Shakespeare: "If music be the food of love, play on."(3) Music. Sometime back public school music teachers compiled some answers that youngsters gave to test questions:(4) • Refrain means don't do it. A refrain in music is the part you better not try to sing. • A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals. • Handel was half German, half Italian ...

3830. Salvation

Psalm 118:1-29

Sermon

David E. Leininger

"...the salvation of your souls." That IS what we are here about, isn't it? People come to churches, synagogues, temples and mosques because, in some sense this issue may be said to be the ultimate concern of all religion. Salvation. In a very real sense, our Bible is a book of salvation from beginning to end. Some simplify it by saying, "Jesus and I, bye and bye, in the sky, when I die." A minister was preaching and during the course of his sermon asked, "Who wants to go to heaven?" Everyone held up their ...

3831. When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough

Ecc 2:1-26

Sermon

David E. Leininger

"If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear, does it make a sound?" You have heard that one. Or one more serious: if a person lives and dies and no one notices, if the world continues as it was, was that person ever really alive? What brings that question to mind is that sadly cynical passage from Ecclesiastes a moment ago in combination with a motion picture that is currently making the rounds called "About Schmidt."(1) When we were in Florida a couple of weeks ago, one of our ...

3832. Do You Hear What I Hear?

Luke 1:46-56, Isaiah 61:1-11

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Years ago, a wise teacher of preachers advised us to prepare our sermons with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. His point was that sermons had to be relevant to the day-to-day lives of our people, and the best way to insure that would be to focus on what is going on in our people's world. Good advice, don't you think? So what has the newspaper (or the TV or radio or internet or whatever) had for us this week? Well, early on there was the story of the failed mission to Mars. After the ...

3833. Going Fishing

Mark 1:14-20

Sermon

David E. Leininger

An old-timer sat on the river bank, obviously awaiting a nibble, though the fishing season had not officially opened. A uniformed officer stood behind him quietly for several minutes. "You the game warden?" the old-timer inquired. "Yup." Unruffled, the old man began to move the fishing pole from side to side. Finally, he lifted the line out of the water. Pointing to a minnow wriggling on the end of the line, he said, "Just teaching him how to swim."(1) Mark Twain once spent a pleasant three weeks in the ...

3834. The Nightmare before Christmas

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

David E. Leininger

What a week! The confluences of history have flowed together as never before. On the one hand, bombshells in Baghdad; on the other, bombast in Washington. For someone who is as much of a history buff as I am, these would seem to be exciting times, but instead they are just sickening. As one congressman noted in the impeachment debate on Friday, this is "The Nightmare before Christmas." Under normal circumstances, you would have found me glued to the tube on Friday and Saturday. After all, this was history ...

3835. The Original "Average Joe"

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Do you know the name Melana Scantlin? She is a former NFL cheerleader, a former Miss Missouri. She is beautiful, she is blonde, she is brainy. Melana is the beauty who squared off against 16 "beasts" in television's latest surpassingly strange reality series, "Average Joe." The premise for the show was that, while it is a no-brainer to be attracted to a hunk with washboard abs and $50-million in mutual funds, it is something else to fall for someone who is plain and unexceptional, a toothy geek with a ...

3836. The Lord's Prayer: Hallowed Be Thy Name

Matthew 6:5-15

Sermon

David E. Leininger

An old, old story has a minister going from Sunday School class to Sunday School class one morning to meet with the students to see how their studies were going. He came into one first-grade group and began to question them as to what they had been learning. They had been studying about God and eagerly, the youngsters shared their knowledge. One little boy said God created the whole world and everything in it. A little girl said that God loves us very much. Another little girl said that God had a son named ...

3837. The Lord's Prayer: Please Forgive Us as We Forgive

Matthew 6:5-15

Sermon

David E. Leininger

In the book written by the widow of Robert Louis Stevenson called Prayers Written at Vailima, there is an unusual incident recalled. As you may know, Stevenson was an exceptionally religious man who insisted on family worship every evening... Scripture, hymns, prayers - all were included. But this one particular evening, Stevenson suddenly left the group before the worship was over. He had not been well, so his wife was concerned and went after him to see if he was all right. As Mrs. Stevenson recounted it ...

3838. The Lord's Prayer: "Lead Us Not Into Temptation"

Matthew 6:5-15

Sermon

David E. Leininger

I recently read of the Rev. Martin Perelra of the Roman Catholic Our Lady of the Airways parish in Moulton, Ontario. It seems he was downtown bringing Communion to a sick member but was unable to find a place to park. So he DOUBLE-parked and left a note on the windshield. It said, "This is a priest. I circled the area for 20 minutes but couldn't find a spot. Will be back in five minutes. `Forgive us our trespasses.'" When he returned he found a parking ticket with its own note attached. It read, "I have ...

3839. The Jump to Judgment

Matthew 7:1-6

Sermon

David E. Leininger

I heard a story once. A Mr. Jones picked up the wrong umbrella in a hotel, and the umbrella's rightful owner called his attention to it. Embarrassed, Mr. Jones offered his apologies, picked up the right one, and went on his way. But the incident served to remind Mr. Jones that he had promised to buy umbrellas for his wife and daughter, so he went across the street to a store and purchased one for each of them. As he came out from the store and began to get in his car - THREE umbrellas on his arm now - the ...

3840. The Incomparable Christ

Matthew 11:1-19

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Life was difficult. It always was for prisoners. Meager rations. Hard labor. Sometimes restrained and tortured by the stocks or collar. Left with festering wounds in damp, abandoned cisterns converted to maximum security dungeons. Why was he here? His only crime was criticizing the king for stealing his own brother's wife, Herodias. Herodias wanted John killed, but Herod Antipas was reluctant - he knew the people thought highly of John. John's ministry had begun in the wilderness where he subsisted on an ...

3841. Ask the Average Person...

Matthew 11:25-30

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Are you an "average person?" Not in terms of ability or common sense or something that might be quantifiable, but in the sense that your opinions would be more or less typical? What I mean is, if someone began a statement with that phrase, "Ask the average person," would the rest of the sentence sound like something you might say? For example, "Ask the average person, and he would say the sky is blue." Or "Ask the average person and she would say she does not have quite enough money (no matter how much she ...

3842. The Apostle's Creed: Jesus Christ...Our Lord

Matthew 16:13-20

Sermon

David E. Leininger

"I believe in God, the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary..." After all, we call ourselves CHRISTIANS...CHRIST-ians. Of course, we believe with Simon Peter that Jesus is the Christ. Let me press you on that. Be specific. What exactly do you believe about Jesus? Some years ago, in my seminary days, our first course in Systematic Theology dealt with that question. Our professor described Jesus as "the ...

3843. The Judas Gene

Matthew 26:14-16

Sermon

David E. Leininger

As part of a study, a group of researchers from Harvard contacted an elementary school teacher at the beginning of a school year. They told the teacher that they had designed a test that would correctly predict which students were going to grow intellectually during the coming school year. (Someone called it "The Harvard Test of Intellectual Spurts" because he said it told which students were going to 'spurt' that year). The researchers promised it would indicate the right students. The test was said to be ...

3844. The Forgiveness Factor

Mark 2:1-12

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Did you happen to see that wonderful story in Thursday's paper about five-year-old Branden Lake in Youngsville who called 9-1-1 last Sunday morning to get help for his Mom who was lying unconscious on the bathroom floor?(1) Adding spice to the account was the fact that the emergency dispatcher on the other end of the call was the boy's Dad, Todd Lake. Everything turned out all right - mother Karen's collapse was due to dehydration brought about by a viral condition, and she was back home from the hospital ...

3845. The Healing Touch

Mark 5:21-43

Sermon

David E. Leininger

She must have been desperate. Year after year it had gone on. Not only were the hemorrhages dangerous to her health, they made her a social outcast. She was not even welcome in the Temple. UNCLEAN, they said. She had tried everything. Doctors, of course, but all they had affected were her finances. She tried the recommendations of the Talmud which offered no fewer than eleven remedies - some of them were tonics and astringents, some just superstition like carrying the ashes of an ostrich egg in a linen rag ...

3846. A Lesson in the Snow

Mark 10:13-16

Sermon

David E. Leininger

O, what a beautiful morning O, what a beautiful day, The grass and the trees are a-greening, The snow is all going away! Amen? Amen! And that is not April Fools!!! Snow, snow, snow. I have had enough. You too? But did you notice how the kids responded last Sunday when I asked them if they had had enough snow this winter? NO-O-O-O!!! Ugh! Why the difference of opinion? Simple. Adults look at snow and see all the images such weather conjures up - dangerous driving, accidents, heart attacks, cancellations... ...

3847. Sunday's Coming

Mark 11:1-11

Sermon

David E. Leininger

The six-year-old came home from Palm Sunday services proudly carrying his palm. Mom and Dad quizzed him on his Sunday School lesson for the day. He responded enthusiastically, "Jesus came to Jerusalem on a donkey. And the happy people waved their palm branches and sang, O Suzanna..."(1) Happy people singing. What a special day! Jerusalem was going to be Camelot, and Jesus was going to be King Arthur. The crowds were dreaming of trumpets and towers, capes and sashes, flowing robes and sparkling scepters. ...

3848. When Your Church Provokes You

Matthew 13:1-23, Hebrews 10:19-39

Sermon

David E. Leininger

...And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. And now you know where the strange sermon title comes from. True enough, the church often DOES provoke us in the wrong way. You may have heard me tell of my father's response when, years ago, I asked him what the hardest part of being a minister was. I had posed the question just after he had ...

3849. The Trouble with Stables

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Are you ready for Christmas? Foolish question. We still have 2½ weeks to go. I was visiting with Mary Knapp in the hospital yesterday and we got on the subject of Christmas - she said, "Why are you thinking about this now. You're a MAN. You've got LOTS of time." Good point. For what it's worth, if you ARE thinking about it, and you are wondering what you might get for that special someone who is difficult to buy for, I may be able to help. This week on the internet was news you can use.(1) Now available: ...

3850. Gold, Circumstance, and Mud

Luke 2:8-20, Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

David E. Leininger

The children in a small Sunday School were putting on the annual pageant. A small girl was chosen to be all the Magi. They practiced and practiced until everyone had the story ready to perform for the whole congregation. When it came time for the Magis' entrance - she majestically swept up the aisle - draped in all the jewels from many garage sales and robes of bits and pieces of all the fine fabrics collected from the remainders box at the local discount store. Pausing and bowing before the infant's crib ...

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