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Showing 4076 to 4100 of 4944 results

4076. Equipping the Whole People of God: Penultimate Questions

1 Peter 2:4-12

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Some of you have known me long enough to know that one of my favorite theologians is Charles Schultz, the artist who gave us the wonderful Peanuts cartoons. In one of my favorite cartoons, Lucy comes storming into the room and demands that Linus change TV channels and then threatens him with her fist if he doesn’t. “What makes you think you can walk right in here and take over?” asks Linus. “These five fingers,” says Lucy. “Individually they are nothing, but when I curl them together like this into a ...

4077. The Church: An Enclave of Resistance v1

Romans 12:1-8, Romans 12:9-21

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Last September, there was a groundbreaking service for a Catholic cathedral that is going to be constructed in Los Angeles. The Diocese of Los Angeles commissioned the famous Spanish architect Jose Rafael Moneo to design the building. Their hope is that the cathedral will be completed by the beginning of the millennium. It’s to be a pectacular witness to the glory of God. There were models of the cathedral at the groundbreaking service and on the basis of the models a Los Angeles Times reporter wrote a ...

4078. Resurrection

Acts 10:34-43

Sermon

King Duncan

A priest found a branch of a thorn tree twisted around so that it resembled a crown of thorns. Thinking it a symbol of the crucifixion, he placed it on the altar in his chapel on Good Friday. Early on Easter morning he remembered what he had done. Feeling it was not appropriate for Easter Sunday, he hurried into the church to clear it away before the congregation came. But when he went into the church, he found the thorn branches blossoming with beautiful roses. Welcome to this celebration of Easter Day. ...

4079. Bear Love

Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

Bill Mosley

Do you remember everything your mother told you? Here's a list which sounded familiar when I first heard it. It's called Things My MOTHER Taught Me My Mother taught me LOGIC ... "If you fall off that swing and break your neck, you can't go to the store with me." My Mother taught me MEDICINE ... "If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they're going to freeze that way." My Mother taught me TO THINK AHEAD ... "If you don't pass your spelling test, you'll never get a good job!" My Mother taught me ESP ... "Put ...

4080. Jesus, Our Rock Foundation

John 14:1-14

Sermon

Richard Gribble

When Charlie Atlas was a teenager his parents bought him a dresser mirror that he placed in his bedroom. Before this time, whenever Charlie needed to use a mirror he went to the bathroom, but there he was only able to see his head and possibly his shoulders. When he got dressed up he used his parents' full length mirror in their bedroom. Charlie was happy with his new mirror; he spent many hours in front of it. One day when he was standing in front of the mirror, Charlie decided to take off his shirt. He ...

4081. The FUD Club: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt

2 Thessalonians 2:13-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Theme: In a world of doomsayers, where Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt reign supreme, disciples of Jesus are doom-slayers. EXEGESIS of the Text: Part 1: 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5 The 2 Thessalonians Epistle text for this week skips about in chapter two, cherry-picking verses first from the opening lines of the letter (vv.1-5), then landing on the concluding remarks of this first section (vv.13-17). This edited reading of 2:1-17, however, does succeed in focusing on the author’s primary concern throughout this ...

4082. Four Cornerstones

Ephesians 2:11-22

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Both Elizabeth and I hail from paper-mill towns. A few years ago the blue collar-redneck-good-old-boy logging town Elizabeth grew up in (Springfield, Oregon) found itself very interested all of a sudden in building sushi bars and trendy, high-tech fitness centers. Why? Sony Corporation seriously considered the town as a new factory headquarters site. Like every other economically struggling small town, the prospect of a large employer coming to town with deep pockets and wide wants encouraged the community ...

4083. Proper 20

Exodus 16:1-36, Matthew 20:1-16, Philippians 1:12-30, Psalm 105:1-45

Sermon Aid

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

OLD TESTAMENT TEXTS Exodus 16:2-15 is the account of how Israel was miraculously fed manna by God in the wilderness. Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45 is a hymn that praises God who cares for Israel on the wilderness journey. Exodus 16:2-15 - "Grace Cannot Be Stored Up" Setting. We observe two background features when interpreting the miracle of manna in Exodus 16:2-15. First, it is important to see that the larger literary setting of this story is a journey. The motif of journeying with God links all of the wilderness ...

4084. The Thrill of Victory

2 Corinthians 2:14-15

Sermon

James Merritt

The three astronauts, Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise, were having a wonderful time watching planet earth become a sun-drenched white dot against the canopy of outer space, while the bright white moon was larger than they had ever seen it. Then, without warning, it happened. Lovell heard a small, but distinct, bang. Swigert felt an almost imperceptible shudder; then the master alarm began sounding in their ear phones. The pulse rate of all three astronauts shot up from 70 to 130. What they did not ...

4085. The Power of Partnership

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

Sermon

James Merritt

In 1948 two brothers, by the names of Richard and Maurice McDonald, converted their barbeque drive-in with carhops, into the world's first McDonald's limited-menu self-service drive-in in San Bernardino, California. One restaurant serving one community. In 1954 a man by the name of Ray Kroc mortgaged his home and invested his entire life's savings to become the exclusive distributor of a five-spindled milkshake maker called the Multimixer. He heard about this McDonald's hamburger stand in California that ...

4086. Pulling Weeds

Matthew 13:24-30

Sermon

King Duncan

Last week we talked about planting seeds. This week we’re talking about pulling weeds. The two go together. Every gardener knows that planting seeds is the easy part of having a successful garden. It is much more time consuming to weed that same garden. And it’s hard work. As someone has said: “When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.” There is a corollary to that truth: “To ...

4087. It’s About God

John 3:14-21

Sermon

David T. Ball

I don’t know how many foreign films you’ve seen — subtitled in English, so that you hear the foreign language and read the dialogue at the same time. I’ve seen a few, and for the most part I’ve been impressed by how well the English subtitles seem to flow. They must have translators who are pretty good at expressing in English what is being said in another language. But sometimes the subtitles seem stilted, using a phrase in a way that’s not quite right. And sometimes the way things get expressed in ...

4088. Healing Aerobics

2 Kings 5:1-15ab

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

There's healing for you today. Getting sick is so easy. Consider the dreaded winter "flu season," when all you have to do is encounter one school-age child or shake hands with someone in order to suddenly be the new home base for some exotically named virus that has dismally familiar symptoms. Summertime colds are similarly transmitted, but are much sneakier - they prefer to wait until you are on your long-anticipated fun'n'sun vacation to remind you that sinusitis flourishes in tropical as well as in ...

4089. Easter Dreams

Luke 24:1-12

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

In a world of Good Friday nightmares, it is time for Easter Dreams. After the completion of Disney World, someone remarked, "Isn't it too bad that Walt Disney didn't live to see this!" Mike Vance, creative director of Disney Studios replied, "He did see it that's why it's here." (Ministry Advantage, July/August 1994, 3). Everything in life that we use or hold, eat or watch, wear, sit in or listen to in other words, everything that is a creation of human ingenuity started out as a dream. Before anything can ...

4090. Learning to Love Ourselves

Matthew 22:34-40

Sermon

James McCormick

She was a beautiful Scandinavian girl. She had come to the hotel room of Dr. and Mrs. Walter Trobisch for counseling, just one day after they had given a lecture at one of the universities of northern Europe. As they talked about her problems, one basic issue kept coming up – one that seemed to be at the root at all her problems. She could not love herself! In fact, she hated herself so much that she was only a step away from ending her own life. She had been raised in a very religious home. Her parents ...

4091. Mark 4:35-41

Mark 4:35-41

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

The sudden disappearance of the Air France flight on its way from Brazil to France was a grim reminder of how powerful are the forces of nature, and how powerless we remain before them. An enormous jetliner, outfitted with all the latest technological gizmos and gadgetry, was apparently swatted out of the sky by the fearsome wind and rain of a howling thunderstorm. The plane and most of those who perished in it remain lost, swallowed up by the depths of the sea. Little wonder that among humanity’s earliest ...

4092. John the Baptist, Sanctified Indifference, & the King of Pop

Mark 6:14-29

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Who wants your head on a platter? What truth is worth your head? What truth is worth your life? There are two types of people in the world we despise. The first are people who can never be trusted to tell the truth. The second are people who can only be trusted to tell the truth. We all know people who have trouble telling the truth. Is there anyone here who doesn’t know someone for whom a lie is just a more convenient interpretation of reality? The great psychoanalyst Carl Jung once noted that there were ...

4093. Lean on Me

Luke 18:1-8

Sermon

John Wayne Clarke

One of the tangible benefits of reading the Bible is that we discover that God calls people to service in areas they may not have thought possible. People often discover that with God's help they are able to reach deep within themselves and find strength they did not know existed. Back in the '60s, Bill Withers sang, "Lean on me when you're not strong, and I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on." For most of us, it is not until we find ourselves unable to carry on that we discover that with God we can ...

4094. Whose Inheritance Is It?

Ephesians 1:11-23

Sermon

Donna Schaper

The Holy Spirit gives us our inheritance. It does not come from our parents or grandparents, our nation or our race. Our inheritance is a gift from God. We have it as a dominion and domination. Domination — when we get first things absolutely first — is not a bad thing! Once we know the source of our inheritance, no other gods can rule us. Saints are the people who know this. Saints know who gave them what they have — and they don't imagine that they are like the used car dealer who, having inherited the ...

4095. Show and Sell or Show and Tell?

Hebrews 9:11-28

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

When I was growing up, anything “modern” was good. Whatever the fab fad was, if it came wrapped in the “modern” packaging, we convinced ourselves that it was for the better. We even convinced ourselves this was true about “modern food.” Astronaut ice cream. [anyone remember that?] Tang [another astronaut drink] Cheez-Whiz. But my favorite “modern” food was Jiffy Pop. If you're too young to remember Jiffy Pop, it is just popcorn packed into a flat aluminum “frying pan” and sealed with a light, thin foil ...

4096. Because God Said So, That’s Why!

Luke 2:1-7

Drama

Lois Anne DeLong

Characters (in order of appearance) Narrator David (or Rachel) Esther Shepherd 1 Shepherd 2 Shepherd 3 Shepherd 4 Shepherd 5 Lead Angel Angel 2 Angel 3 Angel 4 Angel Choir King Caspar King Balthazar King Melchior Mary Joseph Props Lectern or podium Chair Bundle with jar inside Bundle with blanket inside Gifts for the Wise Men to give to Jesus Notes This production can be restructured to suit a cast that is predominantly male or female. The lead part of David can easily be transformed to Rachel. In the ...

4097. Count the Stars

Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18

Sermon

King Duncan

Three-year-old Ian Hough of Auburn, Washington, loves the story in the Bible of the time God spoke to the boy Samuel. One night after his mother read Ian this story she asked him if God had ever spoken to him. To her surprise, he answered, “Yes.” “What did God say to you?” his mother asked. Ian thought and then said in his deepest voice, “Ian! Go to bed!” (1) Does God speak to people? What do you think? David Holwick tells a story that appeared in the Los Angeles Times. It was about a man named Bob Haifley ...

4098. Overcoming Obstacles - Together

Luke 2:1-7, Psalm 107:1-9

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

There was a businessman who had five kids, his wife stayed home to care the kids. And it never failed, he'd come home from work and Mom, needing the care and advice of another adult, would begin to tell him all the things that went wrong during the day. And which of the kids needed further disciplining from Dad. One day the stress of work got to Dad, as Mom regaled him with the various trouble HIS children had gotten into and he lost it. "Honey, just once, just once couldn't you greet me at the door with ...

4099. The Ministry of Unbinding

John 11:38-44

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Listen! We cannot raise people from the dead as Jesus did, but we share in the deliverance of those he has raised! Death and what is done about that — is in Jesus’ hand. It is He who can say with power: “Come forth! Come forth from your tomb.” But deliverance — that’s in our hands. “Unbind him” Jesus said, “unbind him that he might live.” So, we talk today about the ministry of unbinding. I Rehearse the story, so that our focus will be clear and we will not be questioning something that we think has been ...

4100. Being Open to the Impossible

Mark 6:30-44

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

There is an old story about Albert Einstein. He was going around the country from university to university on the lecture circuit, giving lectures on his theory of relativity. He traveled by chauffer-driven limousine. One day, after they had been on the road for awhile, Einstein’s chauffeur said to him, “Dr. Einstein, I’ve heard you deliver that lecture on relativity so many times that I’ll bet that I could deliver it myself.” “Very well,” the good Doctor responded, “I’ll give you that opportunity tonight ...

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