Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 4276 to 4300 of 4946 results

4276. What Would Jesus Really Do?

1 Peter 2:13-25

Sermon

King Duncan

One the fastest-selling items in religious bookstores over the past few years has been a little bracelet with the letters "W-W-J-D" engraved on it. Those letters stand for "What Would Jesus Do?" That question was the central focus of a small book written more than one hundred years ago titled IN HIS STEPS. IN HIS STEPS is the story of a somewhat complacent church congregation that is goaded by a tramp into taking seriously their mission in the world as followers of Jesus. When the tramp dies, the deeply ...

4277. Extreme Sports, Extreme Fashions, Extreme Faith

1 Samuel 3:1--4:1

Sermon

King Duncan

A high school drama class was performing at a local theater. Somehow an accident occurred and a hole was cracked in the stage floor. Carefully the performers avoided the damaged area until little Joey, juggling bowling pins, accidentally stepped through the hole up to his knee. He apologized to the audience for his clumsiness which caused a heckler to shout, "Don't worry, Joey . . . It's just a STAGE you're going through!" We all go through stages, don't we? One of the stages that Generation X seems to be ...

4278. A Healthy Body

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

Sermon

King Duncan

Back in 1985, William R. Greer performed an in-depth chemical analysis of the human body and its mineral properties. His conclusions were published in the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. Greer claimed that the average human body contained 5 pounds of calcium, 9 ounces of potassium, 1 and 1/2 pounds of phosphorus, 6 ounces of sodium, 6 ounces of sulfur, 1 ounce of magnesium, and trace amounts of iron, iodine, and copper. According to a professor at the Illinois Medical School, the total ...

4279. The Good Son

Matthew 21:28-32

Sermon

Frank Lyman

Kevin, that irascible scamp of the Home Alone movies, is one of Hollywood's beloved characters. As portrayed by Macaulay Culkin, he is mischievous, playful, innovative and just as cute as could be! But what really made Kevin such a fine character was how he taught us the value of family. We learned that even if we're not always that crazy about the folks we live with, when we're separated from them, it's terrible. In both of the HOME ALONE movies, when Kevin was reunited with his family and ran into the ...

4280. I Am Forsaken

Psalm 29:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

"Five Things Christians Should Never Say, #1" [We are beginning a series of messages on "Five Things Christians Should Never Say." You probably have your own list. Somebody saw the title of this series and thought I was going to talk about "cussing." That's not it, though that would make an interesting sermon. I was reading recently about the famous revival in Wales in 1904-1905. Churches were so crowded that hundreds of people could not get in. Meetings lasted from 10 a.m. until midnight, and were marked ...

4281. Clearing Back The Jungle

Genesis 9:1-17

Sermon

King Duncan

Do you remember Kipling's classic story titled "Letting the Jungle In"? It is the story of a group of people who went into the jungle, made a clearing, brought their livestock, planted their crops, and built their homes. For awhile it was a veritable paradise, until the rain years came and the jungle crept back. Wild animals killed their stock. The prolific vegetation of the jungle moved in faster than they could cope with it. The jungle took back their paradise. Of course, Kipling wasn't writing about the ...

4282. When The Economy Goes South

1 Kings 17:1-6

Sermon

King Duncan

Someone has defined the difference between prosperity, recession, and depression like this: During prosperity you are annoyed because the dog and cat won't eat the expensive canned food you buy for them. In a recession you are delighted that the dog and cat won't eat the expensive canned food. You hope they remain finicky until things get better. In a depression you begin to look thoughtfully at the dog and cat. For the past decade we have experienced a time of unequaled prosperity in our land--but recent ...

4283. How Do You Explain the Resurrection?

John 11:17-37

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

I find it fascinating that nowhere in the New Testament do the disciples try to explain the resurrection. They did not need to. The resurrection explained them! The entire New Testament itself plus all of the subsequent history of the Church over the past two thousand years is but a commentary on Jesus’ words, “I am the resurrection and the life!” (John 11:25) Let’s take a look at how these words first came to be spoken. In John 11 we have the touching story of the miraculous raising of Jesus’ friend ...

4284. On Not Knowing What to Say

Mark 9:2-13

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

It is said that a good secretary is one who often “covers” for the boss, and makes the boss look good when the boss does something stupid. Hence, St. Mark, the secretary to St. Peter, tells us that Peter’s dumb remarks on the occasion of Jesus’ transfiguration were caused by fear. But Mark’s report of this incident reinforces Peter’s reputation for only opening his mouth to change feet. As Halford Luccock says in the Interpreter’s Bible: “This was not a particularly bright remark of Peter’s and Mark ...

4285. The Lord Has Need

Mark 11:1-11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

Our Scripture lesson sounds more appropriate for Palm Sunday than for the Sunday before Christmas, doesn’t it? But I am fascinated by the story, because it proclaims a truth: that the God of the Christian faith is a God who has need. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, His parents had to borrow a shepherd’s cave because there was no room at the inn. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem in triumph on that first Palm Sunday, He borrowed a donkey. Both of these ideas came together for me in a poem which I came across ...

4286. Living the Ten Commandments

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Eric Ritz

A rabbi and a pompous woman who were attending a luncheon were conversing. "One of my ancestors," boasted the woman, "signed the Declaration of Independence." "Is that so?" asked the rabbi. "One of mine wrote the Ten Commandments." It was on Mount Sinai that Moses received the Ten Commandments. He didn''t write them. He received them from God, and these commandments have become a reliable guide to behavior for millions of people on this earth. The great preacher, Dr. Phillips Brooks, tells the story of a ...

4287. No Salt in the City?

Mark 9:42-50

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

Last fall the phone rang in my study. It was a newspaper pollster doing a survey on church and society. His main question was, "What would your city be like without the church?" I was tempted to be funny in my reply. Like the cartoon that shows a pack of wolves howling at the moon. A wolf on the back row is looking worried and asks another fanged friend, "Do you think we're doing any good?" Sometimes I feel like that when the church seems to be ignored or irrelevant. Yet anytime one feels he is small and ...

4288. What If God Is Dependent Upon Our Praying?

2 Chronicles 7:1-10

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

It is from the Old Testament. It is that classic passage from II Chronicles, the 7th chapter. I’m going to read the first four verses and then the 8th through the 14th verses of that particular passage. “When Solomon had ended his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering of sacrifice, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. And the priest could not enter the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord’s house. When all the children of Israel saw the fire ...

4289. I Saw Satan Fall

Luke 10:1-24

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

As we pick up in our preaching journey through Luke, let me review for just a moment. Recently, we looked at the passage from Luke 9, verses 57-62. It was the story of Jesus’ encounter with three different men and their discussion about what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. Jesus spoke demanding words to all of them, concluding with that dramatic exhortation: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” But there is another side to the story. A man was complaining ...

4290. The Commitment Question: Will You Lay Down Your Life For Me?

John 13:31-38

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

There is a little church on the Appian Way not far from the city Rome that bears the interesting name "The Church of the Quo Vadis". Those Latin words, Qou Vadis mean whither goest thou?A beautiful legend which has it that a few years after the crucifixion of Jesus, Peter had been in Rome and was under the threat of persecution again. He was fleeing for his life -- leaving the city in fear, when he met Jesus. Jesus was headed into the city, so Peter asked Him the question "Lord, whither goes thou?" And the ...

4291. You Can't Tell A Book By Its Cover

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

I don't usually recommend the books I have written, and I'm certainly not going to begin now. But I need to tell you about this one. I'm sure none of you have ever seen it. It was edited by the staff of Upper Room and this special edition of it was given me when I left the Upper Room to come here as your pastor 10 years ago. It's a beautiful thing as you can tell, handsomely bound, with embossed silver printing of the title on the shelf-back and cover. All of it was a surprise to me. You can't imagine how ...

4292. The Problem with Signs

John 6:25-59

Sermon

King Duncan

An old farmer always called his hogs to the feeding trough by hitting it with a piece of wood. Tap-tap-tap. That's all it took and they would come running. It was a great system, until, for some odd reason, he noticed them losing weight. He couldn't understand it. Then one day, he discovered the culprit. A woodpecker was pecking on a tree nearby. Every time the woodpecker pecked, tap-tap-tap, the hogs came running. I guess all that extra running kept them trim. The people of Israel were no different from ...

4293. My Prayer For You: Barefoot Days of the Soul

Galatians 5:1-15

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Not long ago Harry and Penny Johnson came to see us. Many of you know them – they are charter members of this congregation. Harry is working on a profile of the three senior ministers that have preceded Bill Bouknight here at Christ Church. It is a part of a project for the library and the history of the church. He asked me to recall some of my early boyhood experiences. I shared one of my favorites: springtime and when my mother would give us permission to go barefooted. During those growing-up years, we ...

4294. The “Sad-You-See” Syndrome

Mark 12:18-27

Sermon

Michael Milton

Today we witness an ancient military war tactic at work—attack in waves, leaving no time for the enemy to recover from the first shot. First came the chief priests, scribes, and elders with their religious question to trap Jesus Christ.[1] They were defeated by Jesus, and they knew it. But it wasn’t over. The scheming conspirators then sent the unlikely alliance of the Pharisees and the Herodians to throw a political net over the Savior, but they failed. Now, in an unrelenting attack, comes a rather ...

4295. By Faith

Hebrews 11:1-40

Sermon

King Duncan

Once upon a time, there lived a humble man who accepted everything that happened in life as an act of God. If something good happened, God did it. If something bad happened, that also was an act of God. Unfortunately, he was about the unluckiest man alive. Makes you wonder about his theology, doesn’t it? But never once did he complain. He got married and his wife ran away with his best friend. His daughter fell in with the wrong crowd and became addicted to drugs. His son was in a bad accident. He lost a ...

4296. The Way to Happy Endings

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67

Sermon

James L. Killen

Genesis 24 is like a short novel that is set into the end of the story of Abraham. It is a lot like the kind of stories that many of you like to read -- and it has a happy ending. In the story, Abraham sends his oldest and most trusted servant back to the country from which Abraham and Sarah had come many years before. His mission is to find a wife for their son, Isaac. He wants the servant to find for Isaac "a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad." The servant went, taking gifts, and praying ...

4297. Dealing with Criticism

1 Corinthians 4:1-5

Sermon

James L. Killen

No one likes criticism. We all like to be liked. But the moment any person ventures out to offer any leadership, or to express any opinion that is not shared by everyone else, or even just to live in any unique or creative way, she or he is likely to be enveloped in a cloud of criticism. Most of us find that a very unhappy experience. After it has happened to us a few times, we are sorely tempted not ever to do or say anything again that would invite criticism. But that would not be the right thing to do. ...

4298. A Holy-wood Ending

1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11

Sermon

Richard W. Ferris

A couple from Minneapolis decided to go to Florida for a long weekend to thaw out during one particularly icy winter. Because both had jobs, they had difficulty coordinating their travel schedules. It was decided that the husband would fly to Florida on a Thursday, and his wife would follow him the next day. Upon arriving, as planned the husband checked into a hotel. He settled into his room and decided to open his laptop computer and send his wife e-mail back in Minneapolis. However, he accidentally left ...

4299. Effective Suffering

Romans 8:26-39

Sermon

Jeff Wedge

Many people have heard a part of this lesson before. Most particularly, the last two verses, the part about "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." These verses are often a part of funeral services. In the context of a funeral service, these verses are a source of comfort for those in attendance, a consolation for ...

4300. If I Were a Rich Man

Mark 10:17-27

Sermon

Mark Trotter

The gospel lesson for this morning is from the Gospel of Mark, the story of the rich, young ruler who came to Jesus, asking, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" This is usually interpreted as a text about money. But it is not really a story about money. It is a story about salvation, and a devastating critique of the popular notion of how you get it. Money is a tool, an instrument, the means to an end. You can do all kinds of things with money. It is often said, "Money is the root of all evil." That ...

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