Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 3826 to 3850 of 4939 results

3826. A Place for You

Ruth 1:16-18

Sermon

Mark Trotter

I heard about a man who was an obituary writer for the newspaper. He took the job because you have to start somewhere, and he wanted very much to be a writer. He even dropped out of college because he figured that if you are going to write, then you ought to start writing. An obituary writer's status became immediately apparent to him. He was assigned to the city desk, which was a large working area, shaped like a horseshoe. The city editor was at the apex, and his desk was clear down at the bottom of the ...

3827. Dig In

Jeremiah 29:1-14

Sermon

Mark Trotter

There is a story about a businessman who checked into a hotel late at night. He decided that he would stop in the lounge for a nightcap. Pretty soon he called the hotel desk, and asked, "What time will the lounge be opened in the morning?" The night clerk answered, "9:00 a.m." About an hour later he called again. The phone rang. The night clerk answered it. The businessman again asked, "What time will the lounge be opened in the morning?" He said, "9:00 a.m." He called a third time, and every hour ...

3828. Christmas Eve\Christmas Day

Luke 2:1-7, Isaiah 9:1-7, Psalm 96:1-13, Titus 2:1-15, Luke 2:8-20

Sermon Aid

Marion L. Soards, Thomas B. Dozeman, Kendall McCabe

OLD TESTAMENT TEXTS Many of the Advent themes reappear in the Christmas Eve lessons as present realities rather than as future hopes. Isaiah 9:2-9 picks up the imagery of the light of Zion that was hoped for in Isaiah 2:1-5 and turns it into a present time celebration, while Psalm 96 does the same thing with the royal theology of Isaiah 11:1-10. Taken together our Old Testament lessons describe the new reality that God ushers into our world. Isaiah 9:2-7 - "Seeing the Light" Setting. Isaiah 9:2-7 is a ...

3829. Don't Look Back, Remember Lot's Wife

Genesis 19:24-26

Sermon

James W. Moore

When I was in the tenth grade in high school, I was a sprinter on the Memphis Tech High School track team. Back then, tenth grade was the first year of high school, so I was a real rookie on the track team. I had been running: - The one hundred yard dash. - I was also running on the sprint relay teams. - In addition, I was doing the long jump and the high jump. One day in a practice track meet, the coach suddenly decided to try me in the two hundred and twenty yard dash. I had never run this event before, ...

3830. With Jesus No Mission Is Impossible

John 6:1-14

Sermon

James Merritt

I heard about a young preacher who was going to preach his very first sermon, and he was going to preach from the text that I will be preaching on this morning. As he introduced it he said, "I want to talk to you about how Jesus fed five men with five thousand loaves of bread and two thousand fish." Well, there was a man in the church that loved to intimidate preachers and he jumped up and said, "Great day, that's no miracle, I could do that!" This young preacher was just shattered and couldn't even preach ...

3831. Just the Right Touch

Mark 5:25-34

Sermon

James Merritt

The fifth chapter of the gospel of Mark is a menu of miracles. There are three miracles in this chapter, each of which illustrate the authority and the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the first miracle, a man comes to Jesus bound in chains, bleeding from cuts, controlled by demonic forces. Jesus cast out these demons. He frees this man from the hounds of hell that have hunted him and haunted him, and changes him from a child of the devil to a child of God. Then Jesus encounters a woman with a ...

3832. Prime The Pump!

Luke 17:1-10

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

I love an old story called “The Legend of Desert Pete.” According to the story, a man was walking across a desert in the summer of 1933. He was dying of thirst and desperately needed water. Imagine his relief and delight when he came upon a pump, right out in the middle of the desert. There was a baking-soda can tied to the handle of the pump, and inside the can was a note. The note read: “This pump is all right as of June 1932. I put a new sucker-washer into it, and it ought to last five years. But the ...

3833. Hurts Can Heal

2 Corinthians 4:1-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Have any of you ever looked through “night vision goggles.” [Or, if you can get a pair to show to the congregation . . . . ] Do any of you know what these are? Night vision goggles. Used by the military, and in all good spy novels, the special light source used in “night vision” technology allows you to see someone as much as 200 yards away on a moonless night. Night vision goggles project out either a near infra-red light source, or ultraviolet radiation, to detect the presence of individual photons. The ...

3834. A Blast from the Past

Deuteronomy 6:20-25

Sermon

James Merritt

I heard about a man who had retired, and he got up one morning and the first thing he did was read the obituary column to find out who had died. Well, on this particular morning he read that column and the newspaper by mistake had put his name in the column and reported that he was dead. He was not only shaken he was irate. He called the editor of the newspaper and fussed him out. Finally the editor said, "I'll tell you what we'll do. In the morning we'll put your name in the birth column and give you a ...

3835. Jesus, The One And Only

Philippians 2:5-11

Sermon

James Merritt

Napoleon, the man who one time ruled over all of civilized Europe spent his last days exiled on the Rock of St. Helena. He was reflecting on all that he had accomplished in his life. He called a loyal friend, Count Montholon, to his side and said to him, "Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?" The Count refused to respond. Napoleon then said this: Well then, I will tell you. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and, I myself, have found a great empire; but upon what did these creations of our genius depend? ...

3836. Guided by the Spirit

John 16:12-15

Sermon

David R. Cartwright

There are two main ways to go about teaching someone something. You can teach them what you think they need to know, or may need to know sometime later on. Or you can teach them what you think they're ready to understand at the moment. These two approaches are the basic ways of going about teaching. But sometimes these two methods can come into conflict. I began my ministry as an associate minister in charge of youth and education. It was the typical associate position. It did not take me long to learn ...

3837. A Tax Collector Becomes Rich

Luke 19:1-10

Sermon

John Wayne Clarke

This chapter of Luke brings us ever closer to the end of Jesus' public ministry. Jesus enters Jericho, just fifteen miles or so from the holy city of Jerusalem. It is here that Jesus transforms the life of Zacchaeus, the tax collector. This is one of the few stories that is peculiar to Luke and is a wonderful human-interest story. The fact that Zacchaeus is willing to climb a tree to see Jesus is a clear indication that he really wanted to see and meet the carpenter from Nazareth. His eagerness to see ...

3838. Fish or Cut Bait

Mark 1:14-20

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

You may have heard the story about the fisherman who had a fantastic reputation for his ability to catch fish. Everyday he would go out in his boat and bring back an incredibly large number of fish, and his reputation spread far and wide. One day a stranger came to the camp and wanted to go fishing with him. The fisherman said, “Come back to tomorrow morning at 4:30, and we’ll go. The stranger was back the next morning, and two men got into the boat. The stranger was puzzled at what he saw. All the ...

3839. Why Do People Suffer?

John 9:1-7

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

There is an old story about a construction worker who attempted to lower a barrel of brick by means of a rope and pulley. The bricks however, were heavier than the worker. The man went up as the brick came down. The two collided in mid-air, injuring the worker's shoulder. Upon impact, the bottom of the barrel ripped open. The brick spilled out. Now, the worker was heavier than the brick. As the man came down at high speed, he collided with the barrel coming up, causing injury to his shins. This time the ...

3840. We Believe in the Holy Spirit

John 14:15-18, 25-27

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

Let us begin this sermon with a prayer. Let us pray: “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful And kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created And you shall renew the face of the earth. O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit Did instruct the hearts of the faithful, Grant that by the same Holy Spirit We may be truly wise and ever enjoy his consolations. Amen. We believe in the Holy Spirit. We baptize our people in the name of the Father and of the Son and ...

3841. When to Take the Shirt off Your Back

Matthew 21:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

One of the most gruesome, hopeless places in early nineteenth century England was “debtor’s prison.” Charles Dickens described it, but thousands of England’s poor lived it first-hand. Everything the debtor owned was confiscated. Nothing was left. If any debts still remained, debtors were imprisoned until the balance owed could be paid. Which, of course, could never be, because the debtor was locked up. It was a situation without hope. That was “civilized” nineteenth century England. But according to ...

3842. From Emptiness to Fullness

Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17

Sermon

Robert A. Hausman

Today, we learn from two women. The first is the woman we met last week, Ruth. Her story takes up a whole book of the Bible. We hear her speak, listen in on her deliberations, and follow her story. The second woman is nameless and speechless. She appears in only one short vignette in Mark and functions as an object lesson that Jesus uses in the gospel narrative. We are to learn from what she does. They are rather different stories, but they have two things in common: They are both about widows and they are ...

3843. Training for Delinquency

Illustration

Charles Swindoll

How to Train Your Child to be a Delinquent When your kid is still an infant, give him everything he wants. This way he'll think the world owes him a living when he grows up. When he picks up swearing and off-color jokes, laugh at him, encourage him. As he grows up, he will pick up "cuter" phrases that will floor you. Never give him any spiritual training. Wait until he is twenty-one and let him decide for himself. Avoid using the word "wrong." It will give your child a guilt complex. You can condition him ...

3844. When We Are Tempted

Luke 4:1-13

Sermon

King Duncan

Pastor John Jewell tells about a 20/20 episode sometime back in which some children of about four years of age were forced to deal with the ancient scourge of temptation. They were left alone in a room. Sitting in front of them was two or three M&Ms. They were told they could have a whole package of M&Ms if they would wait five minutes for a bell to ring before devouring the two or three M&Ms in front of them. The struggle of temptation was recorded through a two way mirror. The result was hilarious, says ...

3845. Tarzan He Was Not

John 15:1-17

Sermon

King Duncan

The Week magazine often contains quirky news items collected from periodicals around the world. Back in 2005 they carried a story about a Romanian man who was recovering in the hospital after trying to escape from his wife by swinging from tree to tree on a vine like Tarzan. Stefan Trisca a 66-year old man, of all things - -had wanted to join his friends for a night of drinking, but his wife locked him in his bedroom. This did not stop Stefan. He was on a mission. He climbed through the bedroom window and ...

3846. Making One's Calling and Election Sure

2 Peter 1:1-11

Understanding Series

Norman Hillyer

Greeting 1:1 The opening of 2 Peter is along the conventional lines of a NT letter, giving sender, addressees, greeting (see commentary on Jude 1 and Additional Notes on Jude 1–2). The sender identifies himself as Simon Peter. Most Greek MSS of 2 Peter transliterate the sender’s first name as Symeōn, the Hebrew form applied to Simon Peter elsewhere in the NT only in Acts 15:14, in the appropriate Jewish-Christian setting of the Council of Jerusalem. The author further calls himself a servant and apostle of ...

3847. Pressing on Toward the Goal

Philippians 3:12-4:1

Understanding Series

F. F. Bruce

Paul's Ambition Whatever others may claim for themselves, Paul knows that he has not attained perfection yet. So long as mortal life lasts, there is further progress to be made. Not until the end of the race is the prize awarded. 3:12 Paul now passes from the language of accountancy to that of athletic endeavor (cf. 2:16). He is running a race; he has not yet breasted the tape or won the prize, and he must keep on running until he does so. Some of his converts elsewhere imagined that they had attained ...

3848. Judah and Tamar

Genesis 38:1-30

Understanding Series

John E. Hartley

Judah and Tamar: The account of Judah and Tamar is set as an interlude in the Joseph narrative. It adds to the suspense of the Joseph story, as the reader wonders what is going to happen to Joseph. The action takes place in four scenes: the failure of Judah’s sons to have an heir (vv. 1–11), Judah’s relationship with a supposed prostitute (vv. 12–23), Tamar’s vindication (vv. 24–26), and Tamar’s bearing twins (vv. 27–30). Although this account appears to interrupt the long, closely knit Joseph narrative, ...

3849. The Revolutionary Values of the Kingdom of God

Luke 18:31-34, Luke 18:18-30, Luke 18:15-17

Teach the Text

R.T. France

Big Idea: In the kingdom of God accepted human values of status and importance are turned upside down. Understanding the Text As the journey to Jerusalem nears its end, encounters with others on the way illustrate the principle expressed in 18:14b, and in so doing they reveal how far those around Jesus still are from grasping the true nature of God’s kingdom and the necessary pattern of Jesus’s own mission. Their incomprehension focuses especially on the issue of wealth, and thus it provides an opportunity ...

3850. Ready for the Big Date?

Matthew 25:1-13

Sermon

King Duncan

A young woman busied herself getting ready for a blind date. She was to have dinner at an exclusive restaurant with live music and dancing. She was excited. She went out to have her hair done, spent time getting her makeup just right, put on her best dress and was ready for her date’s arrival. However, his expected arrival time came and went. After waiting an hour, she decided she had been stood up. Disheartened, she took off her dress, let down her hair, put on her pajamas, gathered a box of chocolates ...

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