Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: Levi, disciple, evangelist, tax collector, the 12, the twelve, apostle, sermon on the mount, jewish audience, beatitudes, lord's prayer, great commission, parables, olivet discourse, mount of olives, olivet, synoptic

Showing 426 to 450 of 1225 results

426. Will the Real Jesus Christ Arise?

John 20:1-18

Sermon

Carl Jech

... , whereas, in fact, even the apostles and writers of the Gospels did not immediately understand "that he must rise from the dead." Bishop Knutson was right in saying that we must not think of ourselves as qualitatively more knowledgeable than the New Testament evangelists. It is still true for us, as it was for them, that much of what we believe only dawns upon us slowly, by degrees. Our understanding - our comprehension - is incomplete. We believe, even though the full ramifications of our faith remain yet ...

427. Throw Your Heart at the Sky

John 21:1-14

Sermon

Carl Jech

... portrait of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We can also appreciate the goals for the above-mentioned seminar stated by its organizer, New Testament scholar Robert Funk. They were, he said, "to combat the 'pious platitudes' of television evangelists and the doomsday writings of modern apocalypticists ... and to report the assured results of historical-critical scholarship to a broader public." (By the way, one of the better recent books that explains contemporary biblical scholarship for the general public ...

428. Jesus Meets Buddha and Confucius

Luke 24:36-49

Sermon

Carl Jech

... heaven. It does make some sense that if Jesus is able to vanish into thin air at the conclusion of his ministry, he could also have used astral projection or some form of "soul travel" during the early years of his life not recorded by the evangelists, in order to make contact with other parts of the world - in order to meet Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed and others. But Luke begins the episode we have read today by setting Jesus firmly in the specific historical context of Moses, the laws, the hymns, and the ...

429. The Real Jesus is Channeling Grace

John 17:20-26

Sermon

Carl Jech

... -going - then we must wonder whether his real concern is to stand up for the Gospel. The Gospel of Jesus Christ does challenge us, but the Christian message does not try to be offensive just for the sake of being offensive. The fact is that while John the evangelist views "the world" both as hostile to Jesus and as the object of God's love, the overall focus is upon God's love for the world. The overall tone is positive. The theme of judgment against the world is clearly secondary. The message of Jesus is ...

430. Give Them Good News...

Romans 5:1-11

Sermon

Robert V. Dodd

... news about a good God who loves us so very much that he gave his only Son in order to lead us back to him. It's almost too good to believe! In fact, many people refuse to hear it. A friend of mine was once conducting a series of evangelistic services in a neighboring church when he received a phone call one night from one of the members advising him that they didn't want to hear all of that stuff about the love of God. What they wanted was hell-fire and damnation preaching. We resist the Good News ...

431. Epilogue: Some Early Witnesses to Christ

Luke 8:26-39

Sermon

Robert V. Dodd

... the man to go home and witness. Home is the hardest place in the world to witness. But not only did the man witness at home; he went to ten other towns as well. He had quite a dramatic conversion story to tell and he became an effective evangelist. And then there was the woman who, because of her disease, had been a social outcast (Luke 8:40 ff.). She had consulted with all the best doctors about her physical disorder, but without success. She had spent twelve years talking about how sorry "the church" was ...

432. Is It Well With Your Family? (Mother's Day)

2 Kings 4:8-26

Sermon

Brett Blair

... even furnished it with a bed and a table, a chair and a lamp. Now listen, this is extravagant. She was really trying to make him feel welcome. Now, I don’t know about you but if my wife was pushing me to build an extra room for some wandering evangelist so he could pop in unannounced I think I might have her head examined. This was no casual exercise in hospitality. This was going the second mile for a man, who obviously was a prophet of God, but for all intents and purposes was a stranger to them. So ...

433. A Change of Direction

Matthew 21:28-32

Sermon

... then they let us down. And I'm quite sure the Lord has the same problem with these people that we do. During a "revival meeting" in the hills, a local fellow went forward one night and "really got religion," or so he told the visiting evangelist. When the preacher then asked him what local church he wanted to join, he shifted his tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other, spat once, and drawled, "Well, I usually join up with the Methodists." Usually! The preacher, understandably, was somewhat taken ...

434. Mission to Unbelievers

Luke 16:19-31

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... or other-worldly matters. Being Christian makes us neither more nor less intelligent about such things. But it is our calling to attempt the mesh between faith and matters of justice and welfare in the world. The price of not doing so is certainly evangelistic: those crushed or confined by our present economic, political or cultural systems will turn a deaf ear to our Christ-presenting. A young Lutheran pastor has been turned out of his pulpit by his Bishop in an industrial city in the midwest. Apparently ...

435. Tomb for Sale

Luke 7:11-17

Sermon

George Bass

... hope. Wouldn’t you like to know the rest of the story? What happened after son and mother were reunited? What sort of life did they have after that encounter with Christ? They certainly had something to talk about, and one wonders if they became evangelists, telling the good news about Jesus the Christ to anyone who would listen. And I suppose some people laughed, as the philosophers laughed at Paul on Mars Hill when he told them about the resurrection of Jesus, but this wouldn’t have silenced them a ...

436. The Gospel of the Little Man

Luke 19:1-10

Sermon

... . He saw and felt a love reach out to him that he had never known or felt before. In the man of Nazareth, Zacchaeus found more than he had anticipated. No Merchandise Jesus did not try to sell himself. He never did. He used no evangelistic formula to work conversion. He offered no mini-course in theological dogmatics, conducted no special classes for inquirers, suggested no guidelines for new members in the family of Abraham. He gave this little man the greatest gift that he could give. He gave himself. And ...

437. Of Preachers and Preaching

Micah 1:8-16

Sermon

... , "shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins." Nothing short of this could be the consequence of the social chaos which was being generated. Not surprisingly, this sharp-edged message was not well received. Micah was not the most popular evangelist who ever came to town. Any courageous pastor of a modern prestige church on Main Street or in the suburbs could easily have predicted what the reaction would be. The record does not tell us all that transpired, but it does report that the ...

438. The Reins of Power

2 Samuel 5:1-5

Sermon

... flows through such a life as that of a Saint Francis of Assissi, an Albert Schweitzer, or a Martin Luther? What comparable power could transform a drunkard like Sam Jones or an uneducated shoe store clerk like Dwight L. Moody into great Christian evangelists; or turn a young, black, Baptist preacher, like Martin Luther King, Jr., in Montgomery, Alabama, into a victor over deeply entrenched racial bigotry in our land? In Moses, too, its uniqueness is seen where it changed a stammering coward into an iron ...

439. If Only We Would Confess ...

Ezekiel 18:1-32

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... personal life that I must be precise and definite when I pray, especially when I ask forgiveness for my sins. Most of us are like William Temple, the late Archbishop of Canterbury. As a student at Oxford University, he went to hear a famous American evangelist. The preacher talked about the forgiveness of God, quoting the Isaiah text, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." (1:18) Dr. Temple writes: Though I went to that meeting in a serious, inquiring spirit, I found myself quite ...

440. Wellspring for the Soul

John 4:1-26

Sermon

Dean Lueking

... past marriages. She cannot make connections at any point with what Jesus wanted her to understand and to receive from him. His words and her responses kept going back and forth at different levels altogether. Where can we begin to find ourselves in this text? Surely the evangelist does not mean to simply leave us as observers of a strange conversation a very long time ago. How can the word come forth to us from the words of this narrative in the fourth chapter of St. John? When Our Souls Run Dry All of us ...

441. Authority Through Servanthood

Matthew 20:20-28, Matthew 20:17-19

Sermon

Dean Lueking

... In the life of the church, authority is a great gift of the Spirit of Christ who alone is Lord among all who bear his name. The past year or two have been a nightmare of lies, accusations, covering up and general tantrums among the celebrity television evangelists whose names you know well enough from the day by day news. What happens to the authority of a public ministry when it has no moral substance? It is gone, and great numbers of people are betrayed. You have every right to look to your pastors for ...

442. The Emmaus Stranger

Luke 24:13-35

Sermon

Dean Lueking

... the best known and loved. All of us enjoy being in a circumstance when we know something of importance that others do not. Luke uses this literary device as he narrates the events with extraordinary effectiveness. "... Their eyes were kept from recognizing him ..." The evangelist is careful to make that point at the outset. It serves to caution us against too swift a judgment upon the pair who were astounded that this stranger knew nothing of all the things that had taken place in Jerusalem in the days ...

443. The Promise and the Task

Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon

Dean Lueking

... , baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age." (Matthew 28:16-20) Meaning, Not Details The evangelist Matthew does not describe the event of the Ascension of Jesus. Rather, as the celebrated text we have just heard shows, he gives us its meaning. This is what the ascension of our Lord proclaims: the fullness of the divine authority to rule has been given to the ...

444. Easter 5

Jn 13:31-35 · Acts 13:44-52; 14:8-18; 21-27 · Rev 21:1-5

Sermon Aid

Russell F. Anderson

... Like the people of Lystra, we, too, get confused about God and humanity. The populace thought the miracle of healing the cripple proved that Paul and Barnabas were gods. Do we today confuse people with God? In miracles of healing do we credit the healing evangelist or God? In the miracles of medical science - organ transplants, bypass heart surgery, test-tube babies - do we credit humans or do we see God using people as instruments of healing? Outline: Let's get it straight - a. Our confusion 1. Men or gods ...

445. Pentecost

Jn 14:8-17, 25-27; 20:19-23 · Acts 2:1-21 · 1 Cor 3-7, 12-13 · Gen 11:1-9

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... Need: How does one become a Christian? Must we have an ecstatic emotional experience? Do we decide to accept Christ? Do we have a choice to be or not to be a Christian? Is accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior a human accomplishment? Often television evangelists and prolonged invitations given at revivals lead one to think that becoming a Christian is the result of one's decision. The truth is that the decision has already been made by God who through the Spirit calls the prospect to respond in repentance and ...

446. Proper 6

Lk 7:36--8:3 · Gal 2:11-21 · 1 Ki 19:1-8

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... churches. In a population that is forty percent unchurched, our churches should be forty percent larger. In recent years mainline denominations have not been keeping up with the population growth but losing more members than they are winning. This calls for an evangelistic outreach. The church today is taking the role of Simon the Pharisee who objected to a "sinner" coming to Jesus. Outline: Our church is too small. a. Sinners outside the church belong inside, vss. 36-39. -- Though they may not, like Simon ...

447. Proper 8

Lk 9:51-62 · Gal 5:1, 13-25 · 1 Ki 19:15-21

Sermon Aid

... not make money the goal of his life. If he has money, his love for Christ will cause him to share it. This raises a question about modern sects which get amazing amounts of money to buy hotels, banks, and estates. Popular radio-TV evangelists can have luxurious palaces for homes. b. There is urgency about it! 9:59 Being a disciple demands immediate response. Not even something as important as arranging and attending your father's funeral should keep you from responding. Let someone else attend the funeral ...

448. Proper 18

Lk 14:25-33 · Eze 33:1-11 · Phm 1-20 · Prov 9:8-12

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... his miracles and hear his teachings. When it comes to paying the price which he is about to pay, most of them will turn away. In this Gospel, Jesus frankly says that not everyone can be his disciple, only those who pay the price. In our evangelistic efforts and appeals, we make acceptance of Christ and joining the church as easy as possible, because we are most anxious to increase the membership. We are more interested in the quantity than the quality of our constituency. This sermon is needed to make both ...

449. Proper 23

Lk 17:11-19 · 2 Tim 2:8-15 · 2 Ki 5:14-17 · Mic 1:2, 2:1-10 · Ru 1:1-19a

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... :11-19. Need: Is there really a need to state the people's need for healing of body, mind, and soul? Where do we stand on faith healing? Do we cancel it out in favor of medical science? Do we identify faith healing with faith-healing evangelists who make stupendous claims of healing incurable diseases and lengthening bones? In today's gospel lesson Jesus tells the Samaritan, "Your faith has made you well." Can faith in Jesus do the same today? Outline: How faith can heal you - A. Faith believes that Christ ...

450. Proper 24

Lk 18:1-8 · 2 Tim 3:14--4:5 · Gen 32:22-30 · Ex 17:8-13 · Hab 1:1-3, 2:1-4

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... ability and calling. Paul in the text challenges each to fulfill his/her ministry? Outline: How can one fulfill his/her ministry? A. Stick to it! - "Always be steady." B. Tough it out! - "Endure suffering." C. Speak up! - "Do the work of an evangelist." WORSHIP RESOURCES Prayer of the Day: "Almighty and everlasting God, in Christ you have revealed your glory among the nations. Preserve the works of your mercy, that your church throughout the world may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your ...

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