Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 3851 to 3875 of 5000 results

2 Samuel 5:1-5

Sermon

Roger Prescott

... blind man many years later was to know that too: Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth [going by], he began to cry out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" - Mark 10:46-47 Prayer: O God, we know that we cannot do everything, or even very much sometimes. But help us to do something.

3852. Back in the Swing

2 Samuel 12:1-31

Sermon

Roger Prescott

... ; and she bore a son, and he called his name Solomon. And the Lord loved him. - 2 Samuel 12:24 This child was the son destined to be David’s successor but no reason is ever given why Solomon, rather than one of his brothers, should have been marked out to succeed David. Indeed, we are surprised. We might have expected that the union between Bathsheba and David, based as it was on murder and adultery, would never be blessed. We stand awed by the mystery of the grace of God. God can, truly, carve tunnels of ...

3853. Bonhoeffer of Berlin

Acts 5:17-42

Drama

Michael L. Sherer

... /professor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the one who was suddenly cut off the air when broadcasting an anti-Nazi program last January, was involved in helping to set up the organization. Predictions are that all those who attended the meeting at Wittenberg will be marked men by the current regime. ANTAGONIST: Now, was that wise? PROTAGONIST: Was what wise? ANTAGONIST: Organizing the Pastor’s Emergency League. How did they know there was even an emergency? I mean, the government hadn’t even had a chance to do ...

3854. What Would We Do Without Friends?

Mark 2:1-12

Sermon

Brett Blair

... , he had a theological need. The scribes did not mind Jesus taking care of the man’s medical need but they could not forgive his dabbling in the theological. What about the crowd? We are told that the crowd marveled at what they saw. In Mark's Gospel the people reply: "We never saw it in this fashion before.” And no one ever has sense. Any minister who takes preaching in earnest cannot look out over congregations like this, Sunday after Sunday, without thinking of all the unadvertised needs that must ...

3855. Religion in Focus

Mark 8:27-30

Sermon

Richard Patt

... life again. Yes, in Christ we can begin living again! His cross can mean the end of the guilt that shackles and spoils life. The stakes are high when it comes to a sure direction and course for our daily living. Indeed, one of the characteristic marks of living today is a loss of direction, the sense that modern life no longer makes any sense. Unemployment, breakdown of family, the looming nuclear outbreak, and fears about advancing old age can bring any of us near the brink, where we feel as though we ...

3856. Do Children Like You?

Mark 10:13-16

Sermon

Richard Patt

... still had a heart - and the time - for these little children. Sometimes we claim that we can’t be bothered about anything, because we’ve got things on our mind. But when don’t we have things on our mind - something that distracts us, something causing question marks, something we’re thinking about? The height of our love in such times will be to realize that others are "going through things" too. We all have our needs, and most of the time we need the touch and concern of those we find around us. In ...

3857. Going The Wrong Way On A One Way Street

Mark 2:23-3:6

Sermon

Ron Lavin

... ." To know God means personal first-hand relationship with God. That is the real meaning of faith. Faith is more than head-knowledge. Faith is also more than following the rules. The ancient Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with the rules. In Mark 2:23-28, the accusation against Jesus is sabbath breaking. The Pharisees tithed, prayed regularly, debated the religious regulations regularly, and were generally regarded as the most religious folks around, but many of them got trapped in the vice of religious rules ...

3858. The Healing Community

Mark 5:21-43

Sermon

Ron Lavin

... is not always at its best. Sometimes churches are legalistic or judgmental. Instead of bringing healing, they bring sickness. The church can only be at its best when the members center on and conform themselves to Jesus, the Healer. Jesus, the Healer. Our story (Mark 5:24b-34) is about Jesus the divine physician, and an anonymous woman with a twelve-year-old hemorrhage. This woman suddenly appears on the scene as Jesus is on his way to heal Jairus’ daughter. Just as suddenly, she disappears, never to be ...

3859. Job - A Probe Into the Shadow World of Despair

Job 6:1-7:21

Sermon

... " (Job 7:3, 4, 6). These are words from this morning’s encounter with Job. The poetry, the style, the intelligence, and the insight into and identification with suffering, both physical suffering and mental-spiritual confusion, are of high genius and are marked by personal experience. Job is a haunting challenge that you as well-educated Christians must be able and willing to face head-on if you are to be effective instruments of Christian mission in the corporate, educational, and medical worlds that you ...

3860. Divine Alka-Seltzer

Mark 8:31--9:1

Sermon

... one. A second response to suffering by people of faith is a rather different one. It is a response which seeks not to avoid the suffering, but to use it. This second response to suffering is in fact the response of Jesus in our gospel for this morning. Mark writes: "Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." Jesus suffers, but he suffers for a reason. Oh ...

3861. The Jamie Farr Connection

Joshua 24:1-27

Sermon

A vivid introduction marks this sermon, using a popular TV personality, local color, and the hint of grace that is in it all. The introductory material keeps surfacing throughout the sermon, giving it a unifying force. Biblical examples do their work economically, not permitting the listeners to go their own way because the instances ...

3862. The Gospel in Two Words

Mark 7:31-37

Sermon

... is at the center of the gospel is embodied in the words that Jesus spoke to the man who was deaf and had a speech impediment: "Be opened." In those two words lies the center of what the gospel brings. The incident unfolds in three stages. Stage one: Mark sets the background in just a few words: "They brought to Jesus a man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech." We have become more sensitive to how isolating handicaps are. If they are so today, they were even more isolating in Jesus’ day. No ...

3863. Strong Faith For Tough Times

Mark 5:1-20

Sermon

James W. Moore

... IS THE PRINCE OF PEACE. I believe with all my heart that the way to a lasting peace resides in Jesus Christ – in what He came for and stood for and died for; in His intense pursuit of truth, love, and justice. That is precisely what this story in Mark 5 is all about. Christ walks into the tormented life of the Gerasene demoniac, this madman, who is at war with everybody and whose life is coming apart at the seams… and Jesus turns it around for him. He gives him the healing he needs… and brings peace ...

3864. Cultural Revolution or Spiritual Problem?

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

... not sound very attractive; and yet the scriptures say about him, "There was a man sent from God, and his name was John ..." (John 1:6). While John may not sound very attractive by description, nevertheless there was something about him that attracted people to him. Mark tells us that all of Judea and all the people in Jerusalem came out to see him. Multitudes of people were attracted to him and believed what he had to say because they were baptized by him. All kinds of people came - tax collectors, soldiers ...

3865. A God Pleasing Savior and God Pleasing People

Malachi 1:1-5

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

... do it this way for now in order to fulfill all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15). Let’s do it this way, Jesus said, so that I can accomplish all that you can’t do for God to be pleased with you. And John baptized him. Then the heavens were opened, Mark tells us, the Holy Spirit appeared, and God said, "This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased." The heavens were opened for us and what God said to our Savior, he really said to all of us who believe in his Son. Because of Jesus, God is ...

3866. Butterflies and Jesus

Mark 9:2-13

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

... s a message there that no human art or genius, tongue or pen, can do justice in representing the spectacular event that happened when Jesus was transfigured. What happened at the Transfiguration is that Jesus’ physical body was metamorphosed into his spiritual, godly person. Mark tells us the Lord’s garments became intensely, glistening white, like nothing else on earth could ever be. They were far brighter than the snow is on a sunny day, when your eyes burn from looking at it. This description of our ...

3867. Lifting the Burden of Guilt

Mark 2:1-12

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... are forgiven, go and sin no more.’ He will forgive you and sustain you." I never found out who called me that night. I hope she got the message and found her peace. How did Jesus handle those people who came to him paralyzed by guilt? Here is the picture (Mark 2:1-13). Jesus is preaching to a large crowd in someone’s home. Four friends are trying to carry a paralyzed friend to Jesus for healing. The crowd is too great. They can’t get near the Master. They climb up on the flat roof and cut a hole ...

3868. Service

Mark 10:35-45

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... of the whole self to God’s purposes, whatever, wherever, and whoever those purposes entail. We do not pick and choose once the commitment is made. "Are you a wilted flower or do you have a calling?" queried the dean of a School of Nursing. The key verse in Mark’s Gospel is 10:45: "For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (I learned that my freshman year at Maryville College Bible 101.) This is ministry in its complete definition. Can a ...

3869. Spiritual Blindness

Mark 10:46-52

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

"Go your way; your faith has made you well." (v. 52) Blind Bartimaeus! What a haunting theme; what a never-to-be-forgotten scene. It is the concluding narrative in Mark. The setting is Jericho, some fifteen miles from Jerusalem. The point of this dramatic occurrence is simple: Only a blind man saw Jesus. The Sermon At one time, every minister has preached on this text. How could any clergyperson be so unimaginative as to miss it? How vividly I recall ...

3870. Not Far From the Kingdom

Mark 12:28-34

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... denied a similar inflooding of the Holy Spirit? The day was May 24, 1738, and John carefully recorded the events. At 5 a.m. he read from 2 Peter 1:4: "There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises." Later that morning he opened his Bible to Mark 12:34, reading "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." At noon Wesley attended services at St. Paul’s where the choir used Henry Purcell’s rendition of Psalm 130: "Out of the deep have I called to thee, O Lord." (Never berate the choir or the ...

3871. Counting The Cost?

Mark 12:41-44

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... . James Russell Lowell reminds us: He gives only the worthless gold Who gives from a sense of duty; And then: For the gift without the giver is bare; Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.2 Selfishness A mark of self-centered people is that they judge others. A member of my church, was very critical of a certain former governor for not remembering the church in his will. It was the perpetual topic of her conversation. In due time that unmarried lady died ...

3872. Ode to Wisdom

Job 26:1--31:40

Sermon

Alton F. Wedel

... when God’s creation wonder was in progress, and wisdom is at hand in his continuing creation process. Wisdom is the principle behind all other principles in God’s design. And wisdom is the principle we need to know behind that great design expressed today in St. Mark’s Gospel, where the word is given: "The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and when he is killed, after three days he will rise." This would scarcely be called wisdom in the laboratories of human ...

3873. Questions Without Answers

Job 42:1-6

Sermon

Alton F. Wedel

... bestowed on Job your special favor, thrown a hedge around him and his house, blessed his labors, multiplied his wealth?" "You see, God," Satan said, "Job finds that you are a successful God, and he enjoys success, but if you strip him down to nothing, put a question mark behind your operation, then watch what he will do. He will soon come over into my camp, and he will curse you to your face." So this is what God did: He gave Satan his permission to afflict Job, strip him of his wealth, destroy his children ...

3874. The Marriage of Adam and Eve

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Alton F. Wedel

... place than marriage. Now the purposes of marriage have been fouled - a way to "legalize" the bed, to satisfy the urge and be respectable about it; or for many in our time, a stifling way of life to be avoided lest they cross the forty mark without their fair share of variety, experience, and personal thrill. With consciences anesthetized, their preference is to sleep around, or shack up without commitment, until one morning they awaken to an image in the mirror of a wasted face, a wasted life, and one ...

3875. The Lord Has Saved His People

Jeremiah 30:1--31:40

Sermon

Alton F. Wedel

... , and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, ‘The Lord has saved his people.’ " But it seems to this observer who is more than casual in his observing that the church has punctuated Jeremiah’s praise with question marks instead of exclamation points. "The Lord has saved his people?" Has he, indeed? Do we look like God’s saved people? Do we march with confidence and courage and conviction to our mission? Do we radiate the gladness of salvation? Or has our faith ...

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