Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 4226 to 4250 of 4999 results

Deuteronomy 34:1-12, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-16, Matthew 22:34-40, Matthew 22:41-46, 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... (v. 4). We aim to please, but who? Are preachers to please the people by telling them what they want to hear, by flattering them, and by telling them how good they are? Some preachers try to please their congregations by never mentioning sin. Paul was not this kind of preacher. He aimed to please God in his preaching by telling the truth and by telling what the people needed to hear. His was a message of repentance and faith. 3. Share (v. 8). "Share" is a popular word in our time. In preaching Paul shared ...

4227. Proper 28

Judges 4:1-24, Matthew 25:14-30, Zephaniah 1:4-13, Zephaniah 1:14--2:3

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... lections deal with the return of Christ. Paul urges us to be ready for Christ's return by living as people of the day. In the parable of the talents (Gospel), we learn that when Christ returns, we are accountable for our lives during the interim. But what kind of people should we be and what should we be doing when the Parousia occurs? The passage from Proverbs seems to be more appropriate for Mother's Day, but the ideal woman portrayed here points to the way we should be living while we wait for the second ...

4228. The Offense of Grace

Matthew 5:43-48, Matthew 5:38-42

Sermon

Susan R. Andrews

... of a church in New Jersey, the pastoral nominating committee was split. Seven members of the committee were favorable to our candidacy, but four members were opposed. Though it is usually a bad idea to accept a call to a church when there is that kind of split, we were assured that the committee itself was so conflicted that no candidate could have fared better. One of the members who was opposed to us was Pearl, a strong-minded, fairly conservative elder who also happened to be clerk of session. She ...

4229. A Guide to Christmas

Matthew 21:23-32

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... as well. He was good entertainment with his fiery voice, his dramatic presentation. It was a nice day trip with the family to carry a picnic and go out and see this unusual sight. Yes, the people responded to John as if he were some kind of sideshow for entertainment. There was much travel and activity, many questions and opinions, but there was no major movement toward repentance. The results? The king came and there were no roads. God visited and there was no repentance. People had not prepared. They were ...

4230. True Reformation

John 8:31-36

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... have their point in the insistence upon Christ alone. He is the one through whom grace and truth have come, the one in whom we are to believe, the one to whom scripture bears witness. Reformation Day used to be celebrated in my own Lutheran tradition in a kind of triumphalistic way, as an "Isn't it great to be Lutheran?" festival. But it was never the intention of Luther - or for that matter of Calvin and other reformers - to start a new church. What they wanted to do was precisely to reform, or renew, the ...

4231. Faith's Curious Dynamic

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... often translated as "happy" or "fortunate." So now you've got: "Happy are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." Really? Those in grief will be happy? How about this one: "Fortunate are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account"? Really? Being slandered and persecuted is a mark of good fortune? Those statements seem to defy logic! What we come to understand is that Jesus is talking about the ultimate outcome of people who cling to God ...

4232. The Man in the Tree

Luke 19:1-10

Sermon

King Duncan

... Nazareth. A short man didn’t have a chance. But Zacchaeus was determined. And so, he climbed a tree and waited. I suspect Jesus was pleased with Zacchaeus’ zeal. A grown man up in a tree. Forget about pride. Forget about dignity. Zacchaeus wanted to see what kind of man Jesus really was. Zacchaeus was what we would call today a “seeker.” He wasn’t one of the religious crowd. In fact, they looked down on Zacchaeus. They despised him. He was a tax collector acting on behalf of Rome, a traitor to his ...

4233. Los Posadas

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... greeted and new friends are made amidst an atmosphere of joy, prayer and thanksgiving. Some churches have adopted and adapted this Las Posadas tradition in a striking way. They have made a traveling manger, with knitted figures of Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus and the donkey - a kind of traveling creche that's taken to a home on the first Sunday of Advent and then travels from one home to another, staying one night in any inn that will welcome them. But at each home where the traveling crib is housed, there's a ...

4234. Trapped in Paradise

Matthew 25:1-13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... journey. But can we get off the beaten paths and trust the Spirit. In a recent TIME magazine sidebar, there were "Eight Steps Toward a More Satisfying Life." Here are the Eight Steps (Time, 17 January 2005, A8-A9). 1. Count your blessings; 2. Practice acts of kindness; 3. Savor life's joys; 4. Thank a mentor; 5. Learn to forgive; 6. Invest time and energy in friends and family; 7. Take care of your body; 8. Develop strategies for coping with stress and hardship. This morning we add one more step, a 9th Step ...

4235. A High FLOSS Church

Romans 14:1--15:13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... must be able to answer the dentist's probing question, "Do you FLOSS?" with an emphatic YES! Flossing behavior, giving of yourself, doing something to help others just in order to make life better, just for the sheer joy of helping others, is the kind of behavior that must be identified with the church. In today's epistle text Paul argues that there's so much that unites believers, that ties the church community together, that to argue over our differences isn't only pointless but is theologically wrong ...

4236. God Will Take Care of You

Matthew 14:13-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... were poor, simple people; people who worked all day to get the wage needed to buy their daily bread. When John's gospel retells this event he provides the detail that when the food is gathered the few morsels found are barley loaves, the cheapest, coarsest kind of bread made - in other words, the bread of the poor. But this simple sustenance is what kept people going. In Jesus' day the daily bread was the difference between a full belly and clutching hunger. The disciples' concern for the crowd's need for ...

4237. The Purple Church

Acts 2:42-47

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... ends become tight ends by bringing the ends together. Can we find Jesus at the squatter camp in Somalia and South Africa, and at the same time find Jesus at the Ritz Carlton on the Riviera? Can we learn to think twice? If the early church is any kind of model for us, opposites don't clash; they conjugate. For some, God is an intimate, immanent God who is present all around us and within us. For others God is a distant, transcendent God who dwells in reaches far beyond our knowing or understanding. For Jesus ...

4238. Taking Something Up for Lent

John 3:1-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... the issue of ill-speaking. Do you think dead people are harmed by our speaking ill of them? It's living people who are truly harmed by ill-speaking. What if Christians were to take on the spiritual practice of only saying kind, nice things about people? What if Christians were to rebuke with gentleness and kindness the slice and dice spirit of others who can't seem to say a positive thing about anyone? It's more important we don't speak ill of the living than we don't speak ill of the dead. Often those ...

4239. What God Requires of Us

Micah 6:1-8

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... We're going to learn a little Hebrew this morning: (Make this as interactive as you can.) Mishpat: Do justice. Hesed: love kindness. Hasnea: walk humbly with your God. Only that! I'm not asking much, Israel. Only this! Only make every facet of your ... opened to us. But to stay in that covenant bond the requirements remain the same. We're still called by God to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. We're still called by God to live these three words while our whole beings: remind me of these ...

4240. A Sourdough Sprirituality

Matthew 13:31-35

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... this sermon will greatly enhance your presentation. Also, to the extent that you can, integrate their sourdough story into your sermon, replacing as much of the story below with their story as you can. Secondly, you'll need one or two bags (per service) of different kinds of bread. The easiest way of doing this I've found is to go to Panera Bread Company (or equivalent), and buy seven or eight loaves of bread – making sure each is a different color, size, and flavor. Or you can have someone in your church ...

4241. Don't Forget the Mustard

Luke 17:1-10

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... to the door-rack of our refrigerators. [Here is where you need some samples. If you can get everyone in your congregation a mustard packet, great. But try and have some various kinds of mustard bottles up front to show your people and to squirt out and lather on hot-dogs, etc.] We squirt the bright-yellow kind on our hot dogs and ham sandwiches without even considering that the condiment is probably the only healthy component of those meals. More sophisticated palates go for the browner, seedier mustards ...

4242. For All the Saints

Luke 19:1-10

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... a witness? I believe this church could keep the Antiques Road Show staff busy for an entire afternoon assessing all our various collections. (Why don't you engage your people in a karaoke moment where they talk about their collections). Collecting is a kind of updated form of religious relics. We still buy into the idea that someone's energy can be transferred to an object. But while the medieval churches housed the actual body parts of saints, today's celebrity body parts take a (slightly) more respectable ...

4243. Four Cornerstones

Ephesians 2:11-22

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... soar toward heaven without a foundation this deep and this strong." With this new vision of a foundation it's easy to see why Jesus compared himself to a cornerstone (not, as it is sometimes erroneously translated, as a capstone). With Jesus as cornerstone any kind of structure can rise up from the foundation. But if a cornerstone gets its identity from its strength, it gets its name from its proximity to the other foundational stones. If Jesus is to be our "cornerstone," then we should think of his role as ...

4244. God for Dummies

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... life is richer, deeper, fuller. To love God with every facet of your being doesn't just make live your life. It enables you to experience God-love. The difference isn't one of quantity or degree. The difference is one of kind. it's an entirely different species of love and kind of life-one that doesn't consider any limitations or exceptions. Jesus gave us the Good Samaritan parable to show that Shema-love doesn't go far enough. Only the God-love of Samaritan love goes far enough. The Good Samaritan parable ...

4245. Jedi Christians

Matthew 14:22-36

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... along thereby reducing the air friction on it and thus increasing your own gas mileage. Following in the wake of the truck took some of the effort to move forward off of your own car. For many Christians, following in Jesus' steps has become its own kind of spiritual coasting, riding in the wake of Jesus' own first-century actions and reactions in order to relieve some of the responsibility for making our own twenty-first century responses. We're not called to follow in his wake. The risen Christ who lives ...

4246. More!!!

Isaiah 11:1-16

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Whose kids were these, anyway? From whence came their apparently insatiable hunger for more stuff? (Their mother's side of the family? Their father's side?) But as we've thought about it and talked about it this past week, their behavior took on a different kind of interpretation. First of all, although the kids knew perfectly well they weren't getting anything that day and that they certainly weren't going to get everything in the store, they weren't afraid to ask, with delight and enthusiasm. We have long ...

4247. Pay It Forward!

Luke 19:28-44

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... in the name of the Lord. Are you cringing in your seat yet? Is yours a low-profile, don't-rock-the-boat, show-up-on-Sunday kind of faith? Or are you a "fan" for the Lord. We have no trouble at all dealing with the crazies, the over-the-top, the out- ... to "change the world." This kid conceived a "pay it forward" scheme by which each person was to do something good, helpful, or kind for three other people. In turn, each of those three people was to do three good deeds for three other people. The results are ...

4248. Set Life Free

Matthew 13:1-23

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... a harvest, a yield beyond the original amount of seed first sown. On a spring day, a weekend gardener showed an out-of-town visitor the packets of seed he had received through the mail. The rainbow colored packages promised huge, juicy, tasty vegetables of every kind. "This will be my best garden ever," boasted the backyard farmer. Late that summer the same out-of-town friend dropped by for another visit. "How's your garden doing?" he asked. "I'm sorry to say it hasn't done very well," the gardener replied ...

4249. The Real Dish Network

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... system and beaming in anywhere from 100-600 channels of entertainment and information. Our overwhelming desire for this kind of electronic-overload is played for laughs in the commercials aired by DISH Network and Direct TV. In ... crazy satellite TV systems work. When we set up a dish to get that panoply of tacky TV stations, it's not a mechanism that sends out some kind of wide open band to see if anything is out there. The dish is something we set up to receive the signals that we know are coming at ...

4250. My Precious, My Precious

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... from below if you have time. Or build an entire sermon around this distinction between a pristine and patina-ed church.) What are some signs of your not being a self-service church? What are some evidences that you're a patina-ed church? 1) What kind of trash are you collecting in your church yard and in your ministry? Is it only church trash (bulletins, tracts, etc.)? Or is it world trash like cigarette butts, beer bottles, fast-food containers, etc? Does your church lawn and yard exist for itself? Or does ...

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