Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 4401 to 4425 of 4972 results

4401. Advent 4. Won't You Let Him Into Your Christmas?

Luke 2:8-20

Sermon

James W. Moore

... death poured from that frail frame. She sang with abandon, her pale, thin face luminous and eyes glittering. In the middle of this, the struggle of her life, this woman was praising God. And, in her joyful expression, it was as if Jesus were saying to me. ‘I don’t leave when times are hard. Just as I love this woman, I love you.’ If I ran into this patient today, I would have no idea who she is, but for a moment she became God’s instrument for me. I have a Christmas memory of seeing God through a ...

4402. Good News for Bad Times

Isaiah 40:1-31

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... House and trusted that through laws and appropriations all of our national problems would be solved. Consequently, America has become a humiliated people and we are paying a horrible price for our sins. In the recent past, top government officials have had to leave office because of immoral conduct. We are beaten in a war which we were ashamed to admit was an immoral adventure. We thought we were absolutely self-sufficient, beholden to no other nation, and then found that our economy could be wrecked by ...

4403. Wrinkled Wrappings

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... are no good, you were a mistake and I never should have borne you. You will spend your years behind bars." Though man is sinful and unclean, we need to see gold in garbage and treasure in trash. In 1844 Tischendorf found in St. Catherine's monastery 129 leaves of an ancient manuscript of the Bible in a trash can ready to be burned. Americans throw away millions of tons of garbage a year, but now cities are finding they can turn garbage into profits. Out of every ton of garbage experts expect to get 1 barrel ...

4404. The Long Lonliness

Romans 13:8-14

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... through Moses or David or even Yasir Arafat or Itzhak Rabin. Could not God be working through Warren Christopher and Richard Holbrooke in negotiating the Bosnian peace accord, or through President Bill Clinton endorsing and encouraging peace in Northern Ireland? Does God leave us alone and afraid in a world we never made at the end of a long, evolutionary spiral? No, we are not abandoned into a cold, rational void of senseless and self- transcendent wondering. Not that, says the Bible in this Advent season ...

4405. The Inner Galaxy

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... a lonely night. The thin, weary waitress came to take their orders. Then an old, overloaded Volkswagen came. A young couple got out with their little baby, and took a booth in the back. The baby wouldn't stop crying, and the embarrassed young mother started to leave. The waitress said, "Here, let me see what I can do. You drink your coffee." She talked and cooed, showed the baby to the one-armed man who began whistling and making funny faces to make the baby stop crying. As Rita, the waitress, took the baby ...

4406. Giving Everything: The Widow's Might

Mark 12:41-44

Sermon

Brett Blair

... why. Scholars believe that Jesus is not simply commending the woman for her generosity but rather lamenting an injustice. Jesus’ praise of the widow is raw sarcasm directed at the clergy. If this poor widow who enters the Temple gives everything she has and leaves poor while the institution of the Temple flourishes and the clergy go home well paid then the whole system is a sham. She has become the victim of a religious institution which was intended to benefit her. The treasury of the temple should be ...

4407. Praying for a Whole New World

Luke 21:5-38

Sermon

William G. Carter

... year” as an excuse not to keep on reading the earth, not to look for the signs that mean you’ve got to get out and do the field work when the time is right.” Jesus said, “Keep watch over the fig tree and all the trees. Suddenly they sprout leaves and you know the summer is around the bend. In the same way, watch for signs that the kingdom of God is at hand.” It is possible to read some of these signs. Whether it’s our own disappointment over a no-good, rotten day, or our disturbance over events ...

4408. Home for the Holidays

Luke 2:41-52

Sermon

William G. Carter

... My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8:19-21). How do you think they felt when they heard his response? After Jesus grew up, he made radical demands on anybody who wished to follow him. He expected disciples to leave their homes and families for the sake of the kingdom of God (Luke 18:29-30). He warned they would be betrayed and put to death by parents and brothers (Luke 21:16). And he insisted his disciples had to give their first allegiance to him. In the most ...

4409. What a Star Can't Tell You

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

William G. Carter

... lot of things, many of them helpful and important. But there are still gaps in our knowledge. You can learn a lot about the God who made everything, but you can’t be sure what kind of God it is. There are sparkling waterfalls, bright autumn leaves, and radiant sunsets. But there are also black holes, mutating cancer cells, and raging storms that destroy without purpose. Look at the star in the sky and it’s obvious that something is happening. But you aren’t exactly certain what it is. Many people have ...

4410. The Kind of People Whom God Chooses

Luke 5:1-11

Sermon

William G. Carter

... One who calls us is the One who knows that he only has imperfect people to call. For our part, we simply have to decide if we are going to get out of the boat once we land on shore. As Joseph Fitzmyer points out, when Simon says, “Go and leave me,” Simon acknowledges that Jesus is rooted in “a realm or sphere to which he himself does not belong.”2 The One who calls us in the midst of our inadequacy is the One who ultimately judges us adequate. None of us are ever good enough, but God is good ...

4411. Hated, Excluded, Reviled, Defamed — And Leaping For Joy

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

William G. Carter

... third world countries, and I hear Jesus say, “Woe to the rich,” I realize he’s pointing the finger at me. If these blessings and woes present a strategy, it is God’s strategy, not ours. That is why all of this is so tough to swallow. God refuses to leave the world in the same way we found it. God makes decisions and choices. God establishes a set of values. When you hear it, you have to decide, “Is God on my side, or is God on somebody else’s side?” That’s troubling. Taken as they are, the ...

4412. Anything Better Than the Golden Rule?

Luke 6:27-36

Sermon

William G. Carter

... is no assurance your enemies will be kind to you. What is missing in the Golden Rule is a means to handle those occasions when the community breaks down, when people cease to take one another seriously, or when people call up the newspaper and leave anonymous complaints without any common responsibility. A good deed for others gives no assurance that others will be good to you. That is the limit of the Golden Rule. Remember what that woman said to me after that sermon? She said, “There’s nothing better ...

4413. Role Reversal: Baby and Priest

Hebrews 10:1-18

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... ; God embraces the character of the man Jesus. God grows up and lives for those who grow up and live. Our defiled world reaches out for the spirit of the adult. A marvelous image is thrust before our eyes. The corporate memory of those first Christian generations leaves us a vivid image of what it means to live as a Christian in any age. The corridors of time are crowded with men and women laboring under the weight of the laws of the world and their own experiences. Each awaits an appearance before the High ...

4414. The Next Step

Colossians 3:1-17

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... does not take the next step and replace it with something that is much more effective. To decide to stop paying rent is a momentous decision only if one is willing to take the next step and purchase a house. To remove a diseased limb is to leave one less than whole without a willingness to take the next step and undergo rehabilitation. To decide not to be single pales before the next step of committing oneself to being married. It’s always that next step that causes us to pause. We become like the crab ...

4415. A Secret Is Finally Revealed

Ephesians 1:1-14

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... children God’s entire estate. Most of us probably do not understand the seriousness of those adoption papers. We inherit everything God owns under God’s last will and testament. We are the illegitimate children of the world who receive everything our creator leaves in the will. The first Christians were acutely aware of the joy of being adopted. Under Roman law, adoption was a serious step. Copper money and scales were used. The biological father would put the child to be adopted on the scales and ...

4416. Old Favorite

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... . He married a girl, who had herself been an illegitimate child, and brought her back to America. She developed the same contempt for him that everyone else had displayed. She demanded more than he could provide and became his most vicious opponent. Finally, she forced him to leave. He tried to make it on his own, but he was terribly lonely. He went home and begged her to take him back. He crawled. He came back on her terms: she could take his meager salary and spend it any way she wished. She belittled his ...

4417. A Note to Fearful Hearts

1 Corinthians 15:12-34

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... to make us feel better? Perhaps a fourth grade student said it best when she wrote to her teacher: “Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry, and … someone yells, ‘Shut up!’ ” If the resurrection is not real, then all our hopes in Christ do, indeed, leave us as people to be pitied more than all people. Instead of a final victory, we will resemble little children who incessantly cry out for a parent in the middle of the dark night with a fearful heart only to hear the sharp retort thundering its ...

4418. When Life Gets Hard, Christian, Rebel!

Lamentations 1:1-22

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... lament about the vanity of life, that all we do has no ultimate significance because it ends up in a grave which is eventually forgotten by all of your heirs (1:1-11). I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me — and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning ...

4419. A Vision of Freedom

Isaiah 65:17-25

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... you are subject to some external power, you are not free.1 It does not matter if it is a good master or one who beats you. Either way you are still a slave. That was the Jewish condition. Likewise, psychologists have observed that slavery leaves its mark on those enslaved. The experience of oppression keeps on oppressing, even after the external constraints are no longer in place. This was the situation that the Jews addressed by our text encountered. They were free. But in another sense they were really ...

4420. God Notices

Amos 8:1-14

Sermon

John W. Wurster

... honesty, have nothing to hide. They want God to notice. Adults, however, in our tangled mix of motivations and attitudes, would prefer to believe that God doesn’t really care about what we do, otherwise we might actually have to change our lives. So we’d rather leave the idea of a God who notices to children and to crazed preachers, like Amos. We know better, don’t we? We know that God doesn’t really notice. We know the Bible doesn’t always mean what it says. We know that Jesus was just teasing ...

4421. What If What They Say Is True?

Jeremiah 1:1-19

Sermon

John W. Wurster

... . But God’s point in speaking this word is that Jeremiah will not be left on his own. “I’ll show you where to go,” God says. “I’ll tell you what to say and I will be with you” (1:7-8). God does not call people and then leave them. God does not call you and then abandon you. God’s faithfulness empowers and equips us to respond to God’s call. So lack of ability is no excuse. And age isn’t either. Just as Jeremiah is not too young to do God’s work, neither is a ...

4422. At The Potter's House

Jeremiah 18:1--19:15

Sermon

John W. Wurster

... cried. “No, that is not it. No.” As he yelled, he threw that lump of clay against the wall. I was frightened by this outburst. I had never seen the potter upset. Never. I was somewhat embarrassed to still be there watching this happen. So I turned away quickly to leave. After several steps, I turned back for one more glance at the potter’s house. I saw the potter on his knees. He had picked up the lump of clay from the floor. It was again in his hands. I saw the tears in his eyes, and I saw his ...

4423. Changing Seasons, Constant Love

Jeremiah 8:4--9:26

Sermon

John W. Wurster

... it is so, too. Or you suspect it is so. Or you hope it is so. Friends, the tear-stained face of Jesus is a reminder that our suffering is God’s suffering. Our pain is God’s pain. God became flesh in Jesus because God has promised not to leave us alone. The cross is the sign of God’s commitment to this world, God’s commitment to us, God’s commitment to you. In the cross, God’s love intersects our sorrow. In the cross, our lives are inextricably linked with God’s life. You can see that for ...

4424. Secondhand Religion

1 Kings 17:7-24

Sermon

Robert Leslie Holmes

... you. What it does mean is that you have not trusted Jesus Christ for yourself in a personal relationship. The problem with secondhand religion is that it fails when you need it most. Secondhand religion may seem okay when things are going well, but it will leave you feeling inadequate and all alone against the odds of the world when you most need help. Do not settle for a spiritual life that is a secondhand reflection of what another person believes. Take hold of Christ now for yourself. Commit your life to ...

4425. The Promise of a Son

Genesis 15:1-18

Sermon

Carlyle Fielding Stewart

... and opportunity for future generations. A son would understand the meaning of sacrifice, fortitude, vision, and courage. Abram wanted a son so he could place his mantle upon him. Here was a man whose faith had been tested. He set out as a man of 75 years to leave his country and his people to herald a new land and to become the father of a new people. He traveled into Canaan and received the promise of God that this land would one day be his land, and Abram, stepping out on faith, trusted and believed in ...

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