Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 4451 to 4475 of 5000 results

Acts 2:14-41

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... she didn't have a chance to throw darts at her target, Brother Len began removing the target from the wall. Underneath the target was a picture of Jesus. A complete hush fell over the room as each student viewed the mangled picture of Jesus; holes and jagged marks covered his face and his eyes were pierced out. Brother Len said only these words, "In as much as you have done it unto the least of these my brothers and sisters, you have done it unto me." The students remained in their seats, even after the ...

4452. What's Your Status Symbol?

Acts 10:23b-48

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... kosher set them apart, made them special. Peter, standing in the midst of Cornelius and this unclean Gentile household, had just had a powerful vision in which a heavenly voice declared to him that all creatures were "clean." Now he defines one of the marks of Christ's witnesses to the world is that they ate and drank with him. Eating and drinking together is a definitive sign of Christian fellowship and a physical testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The apostolic church's final judgment on this ...

4453. When Self-esteem is Snake Oil

Galatians 5:1-15

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , Paul reminds the Galatians, all those in Christ are genuinely free. But this is a freedom for as well as a freedom from. As disciples of Christ we're freed from the daily demand to toe the line drawn by 613 separate commandments. These laws no longer measure the mark of our earthly journey. We are free from the guilt that we can never truly measure up. But we're also freed for a lifetime of loving service to and for others. The freedom Christ purchased for us with his life isn't meant to be turned inward ...

4454. A Case for Living Together

Revelation 7:9-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... and faith was known as convivencia a "living together," as it was called. Although there was certainly no true economic or political equality among these groups, nevertheless cooperation, respect, and cross learning thrived, bringing to Spain a high-water mark in art, trade, exploration, and the experience of a multi-faith community. Through living together, these disparate peoples, cultures, and faiths were able to stand under and so understand each other without resorting to violence, without resorting to ...

4455. Greeting and Meeting Jesus

Philippians 3:12-4:1

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... public ministry, the moments left for him to share with his friends and followers grew more dear. Mary's stupefying, spontaneous, prescient act, anointing Jesus' feet with the aromatic oil, brought sweetness both to the household it perfumed and to the moment it marked. The sense of smell is the most memory-evoking of all human sense. As the pungency of the perfume permeated the atmosphere, that aroma also became forever linked in the minds and memories of Jesus and his dinner companions. It smelled like a ...

4456. Dare to Be Different, Not Just Better

Matthew 3:1-12

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... important came sharply into focus as things burned away. The individuals, families, neighborhoods, and cities that went through those fires will never look at their homes, their communities, their environment, in the same way. Their rebuilt houses and restructured lives will always bear the sear-marks of those fires. Many of us say we want change, we want a new start, when all we really want is more, better, improved. We don't want to be different, we just want to be our same old selves but notched up to ...

4457. Wherever You Are, You Are Always at Home

Luke 2:41-52

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... " thing. Every now and again I have a brain fritz (as opposed to an ice induced brain freeze) and find myself writing 1996 or 1987 or some other decade-deleting date. Its as if occasionally my mind simply cannot fathom the incredibly swift passage of time that marks the span of our lifetimes. But there's something even more difficult than having to wrap our minds around yet another New Year. It is coming to terms with how the passage of time affects those we love. Every parent here can testify how much of a ...

4458. Making Holiness

Luke 1:67-80

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... and then describes the beginning of the fulfillment of those promises. The messianic salvation so long awaited by God's people was at last about to come into their midst. Yet Zechariah's hymn reminds his listeners that the anticipated messianic age would be marked by more than God's redemptive actions, more than the messiah's saving presence. In response to God's divine deliverance of the people from their enemies, those who accepted the salvation of the messiah were expected to "serve him without fear in ...

4459. The Longest Distance in the Universe

Mark 10:35-45

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... always alert mind, skillfully discerning the best and quickest way to glory. And contrary to many make-'em-feel-bad-to-feel-good evangelistic techniques, neither does discipleship require a broken, bleeding, guilty heart. Heart-felt faith in and of itself is not the mark of genuine discipleship. Jesus' words to all his disciples at the end of today's text reminds his followers that it's service , the work of our hands, that reveals the true disciple, the committed follower of Christ. Pilate's heart was full ...

4460. What's Left Is Right

Mark 9:33-37

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... business. He's no longer a servant. He is now redeemed as an entrepreneur. People still choose class over community. As Daisy says in The Great Gatsby, "Rich girls don't marry poor boys." Didn't then. Don't now. Jesus' words here in Mark, especially his passion prediction, show how ill-conceived the disciples' dreams actually were. Their anticipation of greatness is exposed as foolish and flawed. Their quarrel over who would be the greatest and get heaven's glory seat is dismissed by the looming reality of ...

4461. Blue Highway Blessings

Ephesians 1:1-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... (NY: Warner Books, 1987) chimes in on behalf of the frown with his suggestion that every life is like a snowflake: "unique in the shape of its miseries, and in the rarity and mildness of its pleasures" (398). But a Christian life, a REAL LIFE that's marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit, sees the beauty, the un-repeatability of each snowflake as like the unique, un-repeatability of each day of our journey. As we pass through our days we can never tell which snowflake will stick and will build into ...

4462. Tiny Pencils

John 15:1-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of survival or escape. Kindness can consist of--as one of the Sonderkommandos has said--telling them where to stand so as to die more quickly. Within fifteen minutes, every single person in this closed, claustrophobic room is dead. The claw marks fingers have made remain on the walls. Bodies are mangled, clumped, broken, crushed. By the time the door to the shower room is opened, the corpses are unrecognizable--bones, flesh, gaping eyes and mouths, grotesquely twisted limbs. The Sonderkommandos remove their ...

4463. The Oneness of Twoness

Romans 14:1--15:13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... together, you aren’t hearing the “good news” of the gospel. The Christian always rings twice. Or let’s look at those who are recorded as being in attendance at Jesus’ lofty yet lowly birthplace. Here is the Jewish messiah whose birth was not marked by Jewish rabbis and authorities but by a multi-cultural mix, a “motley crew” if there ever were one. We think first of those dirty, barnyard beasts that shared their stalls with the interlopers---Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. But then there were the ...

4464. Jesus' Forty Days, and Ours

Matthew 4:1-11

Sermon

James McCormick

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all begin their stories of the adult Jesus at the Jordan River, where he is baptized by his cousin John. In baptism, Jesus identifies with us, and with all people everywhere. And, there, at the baptism, God said, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well ...

4465. Weak Sauce

1 Corinthians 9:1-27

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... be weak sauce that others may find in Christ their refuge and their strength. Edward Shillito wrote from the trenches and foxholes of WWI this poem: If we have never sought, we seek Thee now; thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars; We must have sight of thorn-marks on Thy brow, We must have Thee, O Jesus of the scars. The other gods were strong, but Thou wast weak; They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone ...

4466. Are You Getting Hymns Out of Your Lions?

1 Corinthians 7:1-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Thee mourn And drove Thee from my breast. The dearest idol I have known, Whate'er that idol be Help me to tear it from Thy throne, And worship only Thee. So shall my walk be close with God, Calm and serene my frame; So purer light shall mark the road That leads me to the Lamb. You find both Newton's and Cowper's hymns in one of the most famous hymnbook collaborations ever written, the collection that included "Amazing Grace" called Olney Hymns (1779). How they came to write this collection is one of the ...

4467. In Life Nothing Works but the Impossible

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... anyone, and it is the answer to all Joseph’s problems. Yet it was also all in his head. It came to him in a dream. There was no could of smoke or pillar of fire, no parted waters, no burning bush, no observable sign or signal marking this impossible message anywhere. It would have been easy for Joseph to turn and run away from this impossible message of salvation—-to drown the message in his own fears and doubts, leaving him sadly adrift from God’s intentions. Instead Joseph trusted in the impossible ...

4468. You Shall Name Him Jesus

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

King Duncan

... work through people like you and me. “ . . . you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins . . . and they will call him ‘Immanuel’--which means, ‘God with us.’” 1. Preaching, Jan‑Feb, 1995, p. 26. Mark Trotter, http://www.fumcsd.org/sermons/sr122798.html. 2. Rita McGuffey, Reader’s Digest, “Life In These United States.” 3. Romeo and Juliet, 1594. 4. The Week, August 26, 2005. 5. Broadman Comments. 6. “Ads to auction baby’s name pulled,” The ...

4469. 1 Corinthians 7:29-31

1 Corinthians 7:1-40

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... already been decided; its ultimate end already established. Christians, those who have new lives in Christ, thus live in this world, yet live with the assurance that they aren't of this world. Christians are people at home in a foreign land. The familiar "present for me" of the world marked by marriage, up and down emotions, political and economic concerns don't affect the essence of those whose true identity is with Christ. The world in which Christians must live must not be their reason for living.

4470. Acts 19:1-7

Acts 19:1-22

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... is a baptismal story, echoing this week's gospel text recounting Jesus' own baptism. Read at the beginning of the New Year, both texts themselves tell of new beginnings. Baptism is the first act in Jesus' public ministry, while the baptism of the twelve in Ephesus marks the start of a newly revitalized faith in that community. Today's Acts text is the first in a series of three stories of Paul's definitive work in Ephesus (19:1-20), work that demonstrated Paul's authority to teach, preach, and heal as well ...

4471. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... one of the constants in Christian life. In opposition to the fatalistic attitudes of the other philosophies so popular in the first century (Stoicism, pantheism, Gnosticism), Paul identifies a continual state of joyfulness as one of the particular marks of the Christian faithful. 2) Next the apostle directs the Thessalonians to pray without ceasing identifying yet another definitive Christian attitude. All religious advocates identified prayer as a means of addressing the deity. But Paul emphasizes that for ...

4472. Christmas Is Love

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

King Duncan

... children. As we return to our homes this evening may the love of Christmas go with us. 1. Douglas Scalise, The Beacon, Brewster Baptist Church, December, 1997. 2. Rodney J. Buchanan, http://www.mulberryumc.org/Sermons/Dec24_00.htm. 3. Mark Adams, http://www.redlandbaptist.org/sermons/sermon20041212.htm. 4. Rev. Richard E. Stetler, http://www.stmatthews‑bowie.org/Worship/Sermons/2002/sermon_10_20_02.asp. 5. Victor Spencer’s (vspencer@cybertrade.co.za) “Preach Christmas--A Grimm’s Fairy Tale.” Cited ...

4473. A Word of Hope for a Hard World

Matthew 2:13-18

Sermon

King Duncan

... Life You’ve Always Wanted (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), pp. 77-82). 2. Scott Hoezee, http://www.calvincrc.org/sermons/2005/matt2Innocents.html. 3. Rev. David E. Cobb, http://www.cccrichardson.org/sermons/b_epiphany.htm. 4. Mark Dunn, http://www.pilgrimuca.org.au/Sermon%2025%20Dec%202002.htm. 5. Dina Donohue, “When Christmas Came Again,” The Guideposts Christmas Treasury, Guideposts, Carmel, New York, 1972, pp. 42‑44. Cited by Pastor David Layman, http://www.firstpresbyterianrichmondindiana ...

4474. The Origins of Passover

Exodus 12:1-30

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... of the meat was left, it was to be burned in the morning. But this first Passover was not a leisurely feast. It was to be eaten hastily, with the Israelites prepared for flight, for on the next day, the Lord would “pass over” the houses marked with blood to execute his wrath on the enslaving Egyptians and to set Israel free from her bondage. Thus from the time of Moses on, Israel has celebrated the Passover in commemoration of the Lord’s act of redeeming her out of slavery in Egypt. While originally ...

4475. A New Beginning

Matthew 3:13-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... what she’s hiding?” Would any of them try to keep you out of the water because they thought you were so sinless that you didn’t need to repent? Jesus obviously didn’t need to make a new beginning; many of us do. However, the rite of baptism did mark a new phase in Jesus’ life; he used it to prepare for his ministry. No longer would he be building furniture in the carpenter’s shop; now he would be building a future for all humanity. No matter who we are or where we are on our faith journey, this ...

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