Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 3926 to 3950 of 4508 results

Sermon

Phyllis Faaborg Wolk

I was visiting with a friend who told me that there was a time in her life when she felt that the end of the world was coming soon. During a period of her teenage years, she lived with a great sense of urgency. She expected that the world would see Jesus in a week, or maybe in a day or an hour. She thought every day about the second coming of Christ. She dreamed about what it would be like, and tr...

3927. Sleepers, Wake!

Eulogy

Barbara G. Schmitz

Part 2 Homilies Canticle: Benedictus Dominus DeusMusic: Sleepers, Wake! One of the most powerful hymns I have ever experienced is the Advent hymn, "Sleepers, Wake!" It was written and composed by a pastor in Westphalia during an epidemic rage in which over 1,300 of his parishioners took ill and died. As he stood by his flock, watching them collapse to the epidemic one after the other, he wrote "Sl...

3928. Alleluia, He Is Risen!

Eulogy

Barbara G. Schmitz

Canticle: Christ Is Risen or Pascha Nostrum Music: He Is Risen, He Is Risen The liturgy for the dead, the Burial Office, for which we have come here today, is an Easter liturgy. And since we are in the midst of the Great Fifty Days of the Easter season, it is doubly an Easter liturgy. Therefore, we call today a celebration: a celebration of Jesus' resurrection, and the celebration of the sure and ...

3929. I Go To Prepare A Place For You

Eulogy

Barbara G. Schmitz

One of my favorite stories is the true story of a young couple who had a little girl and had just returned home from the hospital with a newborn baby boy. Their little girl kept begging to go into the nursery alone with her new sibling. The parents were afraid, as they had heard stories of children being jealous of newborn siblings, and thought she might want to harm the baby. She kept asking to b...

3930. Joy At Midnight

Sermon

Erskine White

But at midnight there was a cry, "Behold, the bridegroom comes!" (Matthew 25:6) I went to the hardware store the other day to buy a snow shovel, because we all were told about a storm coming that night. Needless to say, I was not alone. The hardware store was full of other last-minute shoppers looking to do the same thing. As I stood there in line with my shovel and my bag of salt, I thought abou...

3931. The Scariest Sound in the World

Sermon

Johnny Dean

There’s been a lot of controversy in the past couple of weeks about the decision made by several local counties to move the celebration of Halloween from the traditional date, October 31, which fell this year on Sunday, to Saturday, October 30. The outrage evident in some of the letters published on the editorial page of the Roanoke Times would lead a person to think that some sort of sacrilege ha...

3932. Get Ready

Children's Sermon

Brett Blair

Exegetical Aim: Being a Christian takes preparation. Props: Things used to get ready in the morning: a wrapped bar of soap, toothbrush, an article of clothing, and an egg. Lesson: How many of you have to get ready every morning to go to school? (response) What do you do in the morning to get ready for school? (response) I have a bar of soap. What is soap used for? (response) What would happen in t...

3933. Life in The Meantime

Sermon

D. Wayne Burkette

The church has always lived between the times. We remember the time when Christ was born, died, and was raised, and we anticipate his return and the fulfillment of his Kingdom. In the meantime we live by faith in the truth of our memory and the certainty of our hope. Likewise, every individual life is a meantime existence. We remember and learn from our past, and we anticipate some future expectat...

3934. The Tragedy of the Unprepared Life

Sermon

Brett Blair

There's a true story that comes form the sinking of the Titanic. A frightened woman found her place in a lifeboat that was about to be lowered into the raging North Atlantic. She suddenly thought of something she needed, so she asked permission to return to her stateroom before they cast off. She was granted three minutes or they would leave without her. She ran across the deck that was already sl...

3935. Trapped in Paradise

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

The most basic motto of the Boy Scouts of America is as simple as it is daunting: "Be Prepared." Our fifteen year old is a Boy Scout and some of his most remarkable and memorable scouting excursions have demonstrated the wisdom of that motto. For example, on one scouting trip, the wilderness trail they had planned to take turned out to be significantly steeper and more difficult than advertised. T...

3936. Matthew 25:1-13

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

Today’s gospel parable is the third and final of Jesus’ lessons on keeping alert, being ready, for the return of the Son of Man. This parable of the ten maidens with its concluding warning to “watch” doesn’t quite seem to fit the details of Jesus’ illustration, but this third lesson does fit well into the flow of Matthew’s organizational pattern. The parable describes details that would be familia...

3937. Power Failures and Power Surges

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Is this a great parable, or what? All of Jesus’ parables are like depth-charges, but this one seems to give off a dazzling display of fireworks when it explodes. The power of Jesus’ parables is that even though they were all set in the first century world, they have perfect twenty-first century pitch, both in terms of resonance and relevance. Granted, today’s parable talks about strange wedding t...

3938. Just Showing Up Doesn't Get the Job Done

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Eight words that can change your life. Cowboy culture is still dominated by the larger-than-life image projected by the greatest cowboy-actor of them all, John Wayne. The rough-and-tumble, heart-of-gold, good-guy character John Wayne perfected on-screen never failed to embody the qualities of honor, loyalty, bravery and commitment. John Wayne's cowboys didn't just look good. They were good. ...

3939. Matthew 25:1-13

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

Today's gospel text is taken from the fifth and final of Matthew's teaching discourses. In chapters 23-25, the writer focuses on issues of eschatology, offering both admonitions and advice. There is some debate about the basic nature of the "parable of the 10 bridesmaids" we read today. Some have traditionally viewed it as an allegory, while others have read it as pure parable. Certainly Matthew's...

3940. Matthew 25:1-13

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

Some things never change. Like weddings and funerals (which some wag once said were the same except at weddings you smell your own flowers). Jesus’ wedding parable in this week’s gospel reading describes a situation where things don’t go quite according to plan. We don’t know a great deal about all the particulars involved in a first century Jewish wedding. But like twenty-first century weddi...

3941. What To Do While Waiting for the Judgment?

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Who hasn’t had the experience of being unready for a long-awaited guest? A thousand things have hindered our preparation. An unexpected phone call kept us late at the office. Traffic on the freeway was tied up by an accident. The super market was crowded and we ended up in the slowest check-out line. The oven won’t heat. The cat has walked down the middle of the table we set this morning, leaving ...

3942. Parables of Preparedness

One Volume

Gary M. Burge

This theme of preparedness for Jesus’s reappearing at the end of the age is the center point of the parable of the ten virgins and the bridegroom (Matt. 25:1–13). Though not much is known about first-century Jewish wedding customs, it may be that these young, unmarried women leave the groom’s home to welcome and accompany the couple back to the groom’s household (Davies and Allison, 3:395). When t...

3943. The Parable of the Ten Virgins

Understanding Series

Robert H. Mounce

Parables of Judgment: Chapter 24 closed with a parable warning what will happen to servants who are unfaithful while the master is away. The same general theme continues throughout chapter 25. Like the foolish young women of verses 1–13, they will be excluded from the marriage feast; like the worthless servant who buries his talent, they will be thrown outside into the darkness (vv. 14–30); and li...

3944. Lesson From Five Maidens

Sermon

King Duncan

Ten young ladies were on their way to a wedding. Five of the girls were wise and had prepared for the trip, making certain that they had enough oil to fuel their lamps. Five maidens were foolish. Their minds were preoccupied with other things. It was still light when they left home, but now darkness was coming. The bridegroom was delayed. Their lamps were running out of oil and they had none in re...

3945. Being Prepared

Sermon

King Duncan

Hurricane Bob was bearing down on the Atlantic coast. Safe in his home on that same coast, a man named J. R. thought he was well prepared. The power failed, but that didn’t faze him. As night fell, he simply fired up some oil lamps and placed his Coleman camping stove on top of the electric range in his kitchen to cook his dinner. So what if he had no electricity? He was able to enjoy a delicious ...

3946. Ready For The Game Warden

Sermon

King Duncan

In the little book, LAUGHTER IN APPALACHIA, Fred Park of Berea, Kentucky tells a story about a man named Quill. Quill lived way back in the woods where he hunted and fished all the time. Quill didn't pay any attention to the hunting seasons or laws or anything, and he knew the woods better than the game warden. The game warden had been trying to catch Quill for a long time. Today was the day. He ...

3947. Ready for the Big Date?

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 ...

3948. Real Absence

Sermon

Some among the faithful have been honest and candid enough to talk about it, even to write about it. James Nestingen said it in a sermon: "Despite pious claims to the contrary, I wonder sometimes if the experience of God’s absence isn't a lot more common to us than the sense of his presence."1 Frederick Buechner said it in some lectures and a book: "Just as sacramental theology speaks of a doc...

3949. Train Whistle In The Night

Sermon

It was a dark scene but a busy one. The natural light of day had long since given way to the artificial light of night, but activity seemed to be everywhere. Religious services had just ended throughout the city, and ushers were returning the rubberwheeled collection baskets to their appointed resting place at the end of a long aisle. Still more ushers were busy at another task - pulling paper tap...

3950. Proper 27

Bulletin Aid

Call to Worship Pastor: God offers the blessing and joy of his kingdom to all who will come to him. People: The invitation is given; but we must prepare ourselves to be ready for his kingdom if we are to be included. Pastor: We make ourselves ready through repentance, expecting the fulfillment of his kingdom. People: We do not know when that will be, but we desire to be ready at all times. Collec...

Showing 3926 to 3950 of 4508 results