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Showing 4176 to 4200 of 4936 results

4176. Emptying and Exalting (Part XI)

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

Dr. Harold Brack, the much beloved professor of Speech and Communications at Drew Theological Seminary, often shared with us that there are some Biblical texts which should be approached with great awe and reverence and preached only with fear and trembling, because no matter how much we share, it is only a glimpse or a snapshot of a much greater picture of truth. St. Jerome once said, "The Bible is like a stream in which elephants must swim and lambs may wade." This is especially true of this passage. As ...

4177. Titles, Credentials, or Resurrection Power

Philippians 3:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

The distinguished preacher, Phillip Brooks, once shared, "There are two things to be aware of in life: A timid surgeon and a timid preacher of the gospel. Neither of them will do you much good in life''s journey." As we open our scripture lesson for today, we see that the Apostle Paul is hardly a timid preacher and he certainly performs major surgery on the religious thinking that under-girded the setting of life of this passage. Paul begins in verse one with an exhortation to rejoice in our relationship ...

4178. Tripping the Tempter

James 1:1-18

Sermon

Eric Ritz

Today, we continue our study of the book of James. Last week we examined James 1:1-4 and verse 12, and discovered some ways we can "TACKLE TROUBLES TRIUMPHANTLY." Today, we''re going to look at another word beginning with the letter "T"--Temptation. Once again, James does not say, "If tempted," but in verse 13, "When tempted, no man should say, God is tempting me.''" Yes, not one of us escapes temptation, and behind this ugly "t" word lies the source of many of our personal problems and corporate ills. We ...

4179. The Bible: The Book No Other Can Match!

2 Timothy 3:16

Sermon

Eric Ritz

Dr. Joel C. Gregory, newly elected pastor of the well-known First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, shares this story: "Bill Bentley moved to the mountains of Southern Mexico near Guatemala in 1938. He went there to translate the Bible into the language of a remote tribe in those mountains, the Tzeltals. His fiancee, Marianna, was serving a neighboring tribe. They went back to Pennsylvania to be married, but six days before the wedding Bill died of a heart attack. "Marianna was crushed. God had called her ...

4180. Do You Know What Time It Is?

Luke 10:38-42

Sermon

Eric Ritz

It is January! Praise the Lord! Can''t you feel the excitement and energy as we tear off the last page of the 2006 calendar and began the year of 2007? Did I hear someone say, "Baloney? Big deal! So what! Did the preacher come back again from one of those New Life Missions or Spiritual Retreats? Didn''t anybody tell the preacher just because we changed the calendar, we didn''t change the circumstances that existed on December 31?" Greek mythology has the image of "Time" being likened to a person, with long ...

4181. What Is Your Response to the Resurrection?

Mark 16:1-20

Sermon

Eric Ritz

Were you as surprised or shocked as I was to read that Mark concludes his marvelous Gospel writing in chapter 16, verse 8 with the words, "and they said nothing to anyone--for they were afraid." We know from personal experience that fear is not always a negative response, but to end a portion of God''s word in this way almost seems out of place. However, it is not God''s response to the resurrection that Mark is being honest about; it is the human response. The resurrection was God''s response, but the ...

4182. Have You Gone Far Enough?

Mark 8:27-30

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

When I was in divinity school some student had written graffiti on the bathroom wall. And I've never forgotten the humor of it. It went something like this: "And Jesus spake unto Peter saying 'Who do men say that I am?' And Peter answered, 'Thou art, according to Paul Tillich, the very ground of our being. Thou art Emmanuel Kant's deontological categorical imperative. Thou art the man of the Eschaton, the ultimately determinative one!' And Jesus looked at Peter and saith, 'What?' " Seriously, in the text, ...

4183. Dying And Rising With Christ

John 15:1-17

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

I have a friend who is a Benedictine monk. The way we live out our lives is vastly different, but I feel a real kinship, a oneness of spirit with Brother Sam. One of the most memorable evenings, one to which I return often in my mind, is the time he and I spent together alone in our home in Nashville, sharing our Christian pilgrimages. The vivid highlight of that evening still alive in my mind was his sharing with me the occasion of his solemn vows, the service when he made his life commitment to the ...

4184. Who Are You Waiting For?

Isaiah 40:1-31

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

This is the second Sunday of Advent. The season of anticipation. Waiting, waiting and hoping. The question is, who is this God for whom we wait? Who is this Emmanuel, this God with us, for whom we long? Return to the words of the prophet Isaiah, sang so beautifully by the choir. “Comfort, comfort my people says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for her sin. A voice cries, in the ...

4185. What Really Matters The Price Of The High Calling

Philippians 3:12-4:1

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

The price of a vital faith, and there is a price, the price of a vital faith is continuous struggle. The quest is perennial. We were created God to grow. We were recreated by Christ to grow spiritually. So Paul sets out in this word about pressing toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. The pattern is clear. So let me lay it out in the fashion of that old black preacher who said of his preaching, first, I tell them what I’m going to tell them. Then I tell them. And then I ...

4186. The House Of Our Dreams

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

There is an old Rabbinic story about a poor man who left the village of his birth, and set out to find the city of his dreams, where all was bright and perfect. After a day's walk he lay down to rest the night in a forest. Before going to sleep he removed his shoes and placed them carefully in the path, pointing them in the direction of his journey toward the magical city. While he slept, a practical joker came along and turned his shoes around so that they pointed in the direction of the village he had ...

4187. Draw Nigh To God

James 4:1-12

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

An older couple was driving down the road on Sunday afternoon. She was leaning against the door on her side -- some would say polishing the chrome -- and he was driving. They were eager to get where they were going, but were slowed down dramatically by a young couple, who were cuddling in the car before them -- the young woman was almost sitting in his lap, rubbing his face, and now and then kissing him on the cheek, and ever now and then -- though it was dangerous -- he would turn around and kiss her. ...

4188. To Live Is To Grow

1 Timothy 4:1-16

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

When our son Kevin was four years old, he said to his mother one day, "Mommy, I don't want to grow up. I want to always be your little boy." If that were a permanent desire, it would be unhealthy. After the Second World War, Gunther Grass wrote a novel which achieved best seller fame. He called it the Tin Drum and it was about a boy who decided at three years of age that he was never going to grow up. That really is not unusual. Countless people make this decision or act as though they have a decision ...

4189. Epiphany:The Joy of Fulfillment

Luke 4:14-30

Sermon

J. Ellsworth Kalas

I've read some books where it seemed the author had no purpose in writing. When that's the case, I'm glad if I can discover it early, so I don't invest too much time in a meaningless search. In some instances, however, I've been slow to recognize the problem, perhaps because I've been looking so earnestly for the author's point that I didn't realize he was without one. No such charge can be made against Luke, the Greek physician who gave us the Gospel which bears his name. He knew why he was writing, and ...

4190. Night Moves

Genesis 32:22-32

Sermon

Mark Trotter

The hymn we have just sung, "Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown," is based on the Old Testament lesson read for us this morning. It was written by Charles Wesley, the brother of John Wesley. Charles Wesley was a prolific writer of hymns. He wrote more than 6,000 hymns. He put the great affirmations of our Christian belief, and particularly those that John Wesley felt were important, and put them into hymns. Other Christian traditions recite their faith with a creed. The Methodists have always sung their faith ...

4191. Called to Freedom

Matthew 11:25-30

Sermon

Mark Trotter

The temptation in all times, the temptation in the Middle ages and the temptation of many in our time, is to make religion a matter of rules, and to believe that those who obey the rules are the ones who are good, and saved, and those who do not obey the rules are the ones who are damned. Which is bad enough as religion, but what made it worse is that God is made the enforcer of this system of rewards and punishment. What Luther did was break through all of that and establish for all time that Christianity ...

4192. Coming Home

Luke 15:1-3,11b-32

Sermon

Mark Trotter

I have preached the Prodigal Son parable many times, and when it came around this year in the lectionary I thought I would give it a rest. I turned to the Epistle lesson this morning, from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, which I have also preached many times, but not as many as the Prodigal Son. It goes like this: "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and calling us to a ministry of reconciliation, God making his appeal through us." When I ...

4193. Jesus Transforms the Darkness into Light

John 20:1-18

Sermon

Richard Gribble

Pastor David Johnson was all ready, he thought, for his Easter sermon. Having only graduated from the seminary three months prior to taking his present position at the Maple Street Community Church, he possessed all the latest and most interesting theology. He made the final touches to his sermon on Holy Saturday morning and outlined its content to his wife. He told her that his sermon was based on theology of Paul Tillich and spoke of the resurrection as a symbol that the estrangement from our authentic ...

4194. Enduring the Trials of Faith

John 20:19-31

Sermon

Richard Gribble

"In the seventh year of his reign, two days before his sixty-fifth birthday, in the presence of a full consistory of cardinals, Jean Marie Barette, Pope Gregory XVII, signed an instrument of abdication, took off the Fisherman's ring, handed his seal to the Cardinal Camerlengo and made a curt speech of farewell." So begins the power novel The Clowns of God, the second volume of a trilogy of tales about popes and faith written by Morris West, the Australian-born author. In the story, the pope has seen a ...

4195. Defeat Transformed into Victory

John 20:19-23

Sermon

Richard Gribble

4196. The Most Important Top Ten List

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

The cereal aisle in any big supermarket has got to be one of the most amazing expressions of ingenuity in American culture. For centuries the only way to eat grains was as a big, sloppy bowl of gluey glop (gruel, oatmeal, bulgur, cream-of-wheat, porridge). Then a little over a hundred years ago some nineteenth century health food nuts got the idea to toast up those grainy tidbits. Thus the cold cereal phenomenon was born. Now we look down a football-field-length supermarket aisle at floor to ceiling ...

4197. It Is Good News!

1 John 4:7-21

Sermon

James McCormick

Recently we observed the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers first flight in an airplane. 100 years ago, when news of the flight began to spread, a disbelieving cynic said, “I don’t believe it. Nobody’s ever going to fly. But if they do, it won’t be anybody from Dayton, Ohio!” We do tend to be skeptical about good news, don’t we, and particularly so when the alleged good news comes from an unlikely source. 100 years ago it was difficult enough to believe that people could fly. But surely, if such a ...

4198. Easter 7

Jn 17:1-11 · 1 Pet 4:12-14; 5:6-11 · Ps 68 · Acts 1:6-14

Sermon Aid

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

TEXTS FROM ACTS AND PSALMS The texts from Acts 1 and Psalm 68 have no overt parallel motif that would cast them into a prophecy-fulfillment scheme. Yet strikingly, both passages assume a common, profoundly biblical point of view of God's Reign. In Acts 1 the Ascension means that the Jesus of the past is the risen Lord of the present, who through the Ascension moves into a position to return as the Lord of the future. In turn, Psalm 68 celebrates the kingship of God by recalling the Lord's past saving ...

4199. Changed Lives - The Woman at the Well

John 4:1-26

Sermon

King Duncan

One day a jet airline left Washington, D.C., with the destination of Columbia, South Carolina. On board was a counselor traveling to Columbia for a mental health conference at the University of South Carolina. The counselor was an atheist. Somewhere during the flight the pilot discovered the landing gear was stuck. That meant trouble. He turned the plane and headed for Greensboro, North Carolina. There was a facility there where mechanics on the ground could give instructions to the pilot by radio and make ...

4200. The Play's Playbook for the Game of Life

1 Peter 4:12-19

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

It is known simply as “The Play.” “The Play” is the name of the greatest game of football ever played--anywhere, anytime. Can anyone here this morning tell me who played in “The Play?” Right: California vs. Stanford. Can anyone tell me the year of “The Play.?” Right: 1982. Can anyone tell me what was so special about “The Play?” Right: With 53 seconds left in the game, Stanford was down 17-19, stuck in their own backfield. It was fourth down, 17 yards to go. But miraculously the Stanford QB (anyone? . . . ...

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