Sermon and Worship Resources

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Mark 9:39

Children's Sermon

... . Some of you like this one, and some of you like this one, and a couple of you even like this one. We each have our choice, and I think that this is good. We don't know what Jesus really looked like, but these are pictures by a certain artist because he believes Jesus looked one way or another. Did you know that all of the pictures were of Jesus? (Let them answer.) They are. Does it make any difference to you if he has blonde hair or black hair, or if his clothes look different in one picture than ...

402. Come, Learn Your Worth

2 Corinthians 5:11--6:2

Sermon

Various Authors

... and sags in the body? If our worth lies in being young, where is our worth when youth goes? Or suppose our worth seems to rest in some skill or achievement, even a very worthy one. A concert pianist or violinist may enjoy the feeling of artistic achievement, and with it, public acclaim. But if one day arthritis diminishes the dexterity of the performer’s fingers, is her worth gone, too? So often society (and we, in turn) judges our worth by measures which time can change. No wonder, then, that fear and ...

403. Responding to Christ's Birth

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

... reading these words is entirely like the Magi. Nor is he or she exactly like Herod. We are, at best, a mixture of devotion and denial. We are neither one nor the other, but an uneasy mixture of both. Many country music artists understand the dual nature that exists within humankind. While on stage, the country musician can sing about sex, lust, cheating, gambling, and unfaithfulness and, then, close the program by singing "Amazing Grace". The contradiction is shockingly apparent, but so typical of how ...

404. Sticks and Stones

1 Samuel 17:1-58

Sermon

... slew Goliath. Goliath was an early version of Mr. T., and his "A Team" was ready for action. He was the mightiest of Philistines. The Philistines probably came from the Aegean area of the Mediterranean. Archaeologists have discovered from the black and red artistic pottery of the Philistines that they had been influenced by the culture of Greece. We also know that they were beer guzzlers of enormous proportions - they even had filters in their drinking cups to prevent the barley grains used to brew their ...

405. Happiness

Matthew 5:1-12

Illustration

Staff

A London newspaper asked its readers this question: "Who are the happiest people in the world?" Here are four of the answers that summarize most of the answers given: A craftsman or artist whistling over a job well done. A little child building a sand castle. A mother, after a busy day, bathing her baby. A doctor who has successfully finished a difficult operation. No playboys. No millionaires. No international Tycoons. No Hollywood stars.

406. Free and Faithful

Matthew 4:1-11

Sermon

Robert Bachelder

... of a God who is almighty, but who does not coerce his creatures. Instead he permits them to choose their own way and to live with the consequences. When I was in England last, I saw a painting at Oxford which continues to haunt me. It was done by the artist Holman Hunt in the last century. It is a picture of Christ standing before a closed door, looking forsaken and disconsolate with a crown of thorns on his brow. The door before him is shut so hard and fast that the brush and vines have grown up across it ...

407. Who Keeps Getting in My Way?

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... alone the happiness he can offer, we must move out of the kingdom of self, lock, stock and barrel. I have read that there is an unusual statue of Christ in one of the churches in Copenhagen, Denmark. According to the story, just after the artist had finished molding it, something happened. Because of either improper temperature or material, the head of the statue bent forward. The decision was made to go ahead and place the statue without restoring the head to an upright position. The statue stands now in ...

408. How’s Your Appetite?

Matthew 5:6 · Luke 14:1-14

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... resolved to achieve. Failure just seems to whet his appetite for the next game. Jesus does not condemn our pleasure. He yearns for us to appropriate the same eagerness and interest and enthusiastic appetite, if you will, for his cause. The salesman will enlist artists, exploit friendship, use flattery, open his house, even let a customer talk about himself, if it will make a sale. We Christians, in contrast, are just plain lazy about our pursuit of the faith. The golfer will take lessons, hit a ball without ...

409. Journey To The Cross V: Jesus and Simon Peter

Mark 14:66-72

Sermon

James W. Moore

... one, which is immediately apparent to anybody who visits it,… is that every name is there… 58,000 names! They are not listed according to rank, with the officers listed first. Nor are the officers’ names in larger letters than the enlisted persons. The artist would not agree to that. She said that would be too bureaucratic, too dehumanizing. She insisted that the names be listed according to the date on which they fell… as if to say, this day will always be remembered because this person, on this ...

410. IN SEARCH OF HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS

Illustration

John H. Krahn

... . God will use his people to reach out to you if you don’t avoid them. Our second P in a good relationship with God is prayer. God is not the Tooth Fairy who has an unlimited source of extra money to solve all problems. God is not an escape artist to invoke when all else fails. A powerful prayer life must also be a consistent prayer life as we try to discover God’s will for our lives. Let me try to illustrate. If you’re in a little boat approaching a sandy beach and you throw out the anchor ...

411. Holy Handicap?

2 Cor 12:9

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... for us. First, consider God’s power that makes us creative through or because of our weakness. Last fall, Dr. James Ravin of Toledo, Ohio, addressed the American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting in Chicago, and it was his contention that artists’ eye problems in many cases apparently enhanced their works and contributed to the development of their styles. For example, Rembrandt was farsighted, Van Gogh had glaucoma and Monet had cataracts. Speaking of Renoir, the French impressionist, Dr. Ravin remarked ...

412. Can a Christian Go to Hell?

Matthew 7:15-23

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... to our faith. This makes us hypocrites, actors, make-believers. Some fall on their knees on Sundays and fall upon their neighbors the rest of the week. Our inconsistency can be like the man who wrote forty articles and two booklets on how to spot a bad check artist. Then he was found guilty of having written more than $100,000 worth of hot checks and is now serving a jail term for it. If we are inconsistent, we are fooling no one but ourselves. Surely, we are not fooling God by making believe that we are ...

413. Sinner to Saint

Matthew 9:9-13

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... in the Bible. We hear sermons about his life. But, all of this has been formal and objective. For many Christ has never become a personal reality as he was to Matthew in the tax office. It is like a certain bachelor professor who had a friend, an artist. One day he went into his studio and saw a magnificent portrait of a lovely lady. He could not help admiring the painting. The professor asked if he could take it and hang it in his apartment. His friend suggested that maybe he might want to go one better ...

414. The Cross Way of Life

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... the losers. It is as the Romans said, per aspera ad astra, - through difficulties to the stars. We grow under the challenge of the difficult. President Harry Truman used to have a sign on his desk, "Bring me only bad news. Good news weakens me." When a famous artist first heard Jenny Lind sing, he said that if she would suffer for a year, she would sing like an angel. Later she did suffer for more than a year and it was said then she sang like an angel beside a sea of glass afire. Through suffering, pain ...

415. Jesus ... Who?

Matthew 16:13-20

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... for the opportunity. At last the organist let him try to play. At once the fingers danced on the keyboard and glorious music was heard. When he was finished, the organist asked who he was. The stranger replied simply, "Felix Mendellsohn." After the great artist departed, the organist said to himself, "Just think, I amost did not let the master play." The Master, Jesus, wants to take over the console of your life and bring forth melody that will surprise you. Proud! When a common, ordinary man reaches the ...

416. This Grace In Which We Stand by Dr. Gene E. Bartlett

Romans 5:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... you? Then is it surprising that God who knows us so much better than we ever know ourselves should come to us in the way we all could understand? If it had been by an intellectual system, some of us would not find our way. If it required a specific artistic sensitivity, some would find their way, but some wouldn’t. If it came only by some mystic sense that could know the presence of God by direct contact, some of us never would have access. But everyone can say, I met a man! "The word was made flesh and ...

417. On Leaving Your Signature

Revelation 22:1-6

Sermon

Allan J. Weenink

... a free being. The paper has no choice. But an individual, free to accept or reject, may seek to be an extension of that signature he bears or may choose to become a rejection or repudiation of that mark - made in the image of God, signed by the artist - that was, from the beginning, placed upon him. It is obvious that every one of us goes through life bearing the stamp of others; at the same time, we leave the mark of our own influence. It is one of the miracles of personhood that we are both impressionable ...

418. The Cunning Craftsman, God

Luke 18:9-14

Sermon

Allan J. Weenink

... : "The cunning craftsman, God." As used, the word cunning does not mean some kind of craftiness which might be our modern interpretation. But taken in its pure sense it indicates skill, wisdom and ability. The phrase then really means that the Master artist God can take our blundering efforts and still make something useful out of them. He takes our mismanaged lives, our failed efforts, our missed marks, our shameful deeds, our alien attitudes, our sinful lives and out of his divine resourcefulness he saves ...

419. Ghosts - 1951

Ephesians 6:10-20

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... brotherhood. We enter, then, upon a hag-ridden world. Ghosts make our clothes. The words we speak are not signs of our thought, but the signs of dead men’s thought. We go to church not to pray but to repeat dead men’s prayers. Artists, musicians, writers fight their way through swarms of extinct ideas. Long gray arms reach out of the past and enfold the minister in the pulpit and waving weirdly, they hypnotize the occupants of the pews. Viewless but potent monsters brood over the senate, manipulate the ...

420. To Bethlehem and Beyond

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... of the Netherland Lowlands; he is stooped as a laborer in the cottonfields of the American South, but his skin is bronzed and dark as one who has braved the icy blasts of the Northland; his hands, although scarred, are the sensitive and delicate hands of an artist or a surgeon; his eyes are slanted slightly as a man from the distant East, but his voice is heavy with the accent of central Europe, yet somehow light with the music of the Pacific Islands. All eyes are upon him - and instantly every person knows ...

421. The Light that Shines Within

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... what light we see things. Physically, we can illustrate this in a wide variety of ways. My wife and I visited one of the famous caverns of America. There, deep beneath the earth’s surface, time and nature had carved spectacular formations of artistic design and beauty. As we stood watching these, the light upon them changed, moving through a series of colors and combinations. As the light changed, the formations appeared to change also. In one light they were witches’ castles, eerie and shadowed; but in ...

422. Significance in Life

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sermon

Jon L. Joyce

... to talk about old age, physically, really sets in about the age twenty-eight, because that’s when the body begins to disintegrate and deteriorate. But creative love, and real life surge of productivity, is not fully developed until we are about forty. For instance, artists do their best work at the age of fifty or over. Surgeons do their best work at fifty-four. Attorneys are best equipped at fifty-seven to be the most productive and of the greatest service. And yet, at this age, many men are considering ...

423. Failures Need Not Be Fatal!

Mark 14:66-72

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... ounce of anger or malice. In fact, that glance was saturated with caring. To what can we compare that look? To the eyes of a parent who is told that his teenaged, single daughter is pregnant...to the parent whose son is charged with drug possession? What artist could paint that look? Disappointed yet affirming...caring yet pained. If only Judas could have seen that look; perhaps he would not have gone out and hanged himself. No one would ever give up or despair after any failure if he could be fixed by the ...

424. The Waiting Game

Sermon

James Bjorge

Rembrandt said that a picture is finished when it expresses the artist’s intention. Until that time it is incomplete. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick once commented, "God is not the God of unfinished business." It is another way of expressing that what God starts, he completes. God doesn’t amuse himself by blowing soap bubbles and then in a mood of great ...

425. But Men Loved Darkness

John 3:1-21

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... had only tom-toms as musical instruments, it wasn’t ignorance for them to love tom-toms or the monotonous beat of that drum. But now, since Mozart and Beethoven and Brahms and Bach have come, to still love the noise of the tom-toms best of all is artistic sin. And we still love it, don’t we? We like to beat our drums just like the savages in the jungle. In the early days of civilization, it was quite natural that man, as an activity of courtship, should imitate the animals by engaging in mating dances ...

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