Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 426 to 450 of 4508 results

426. The Wayward Bus

Illustration

Brett Blair

In John Steinbeck's story "The Wayward Bus" a dilapidated old bus takes a cross country shortcut on its journey to Los Angeles, and gets stuck in the mud. While the drivers go for assistance, the passengers take refuge in a cave. It is acurious company of people and it is obvious that the author is attempting to get across the point that these people are lost spiritually as well as literally. As t...

427. Repent Your Way to a Merry Christmas - Sermon Starter

Illustration

Brett Blair

A number of years ago a couple traveled to the offices of an Adoption Society in England to receive a baby. They had been on the waiting list a long time. They had been interviewed and carefully scrutinized. Now at last their dreams were to be fulfilled. But their day of happiness was another's pain. Arriving at the offices of the Society they were led up a flight of stairs to a waiting room. Aft...

428. Take the Garbage Out

Illustration

Brett Blair

The poet Shel Silverstein wrote a rather humorous poem called: Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take The Garbage Out! Let me share it with you. Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would not take the garbage out! She'd scour the pots and scrape the pans, Candy the yams and spice the hams, And though her Daddy would scream and shout She simply would not take the garbage out. And so it piled up to the c...

429. Peace and Goodwill: Changing Our Attitudes

Illustration

King Duncan

It was 11 days before Christmas. Peace and good will were far from the thoughts of 200,000 Union and Confederate soldiers facing each other across the broad, blood-spattered arena of Fredericksburg, Virginia, on December 14, 1862. The past few days had been gruesome with more than 12,000 soldiers killed. Nineteen-year-old Sergeant Richard Kirkland, Company E of Kershaw's Second South Carolina Brig...

430. God’s Gift Comes in Quiet Moments

Illustration

King Duncan

On Christmas Day a small manger scene sat on a table just inside the doorway to a neatly kept home. People hurried past it all day, barely noticing the tiny figures gathered around the infant tucked into golden straw. In the morning children raced by it on their way to the Christmas tree. At noon, arriving guests pushed past it, one accidentally knocking over a shepherd as he took off his winter c...

431. Are You Swapping Heaven?

Illustration

King Duncan

Let me tell you a legend about a beautiful swan that alighted one day by the banks of the water in which a crane was wading about seeking snails. For a few moments the crane viewed the swan in stupid wonder and then inquired: "Where do you come from?" "I come from heaven!" replied the swan. "And where is heaven?" asked the crane. "Heaven!" said the swan, "Heaven! have you never heard of heaven...

432. Advent 2

Bulletin Aid

Staff

Theme: The Messiah is endowed with God's Spirit Call to Worship Pastor: Of all the descendants of King David, only Jesus fulfills Israel's messianic hope. People: Jesus is God's Son, endowed with God's Spirit to be our Savior. Pastor: Our Lord judges with righteousness; that we may acknowledge God's sovereignty in our lives. People: We accept with gladness the righteous judgment of Christ our Lor...

433. The Order Of The Universe

Children's Sermon

Robert B. Lantz

Object: Magnetic compasses Good morning, boys and girls. Boys and girls, I have an instrument in my hand which will always tell me the same truth no matter where I am on the earth. Can anybody guess what it is? (Response -- Someone should get it.) This is a magnetic compass. It will always point to magnetic north, even if I am away down in South America, or Australia, or New Zealand. I might be on...

434. A Wilderness Prophet · John The Baptist

Sermon

Gordon Pratt Baker

John the Baptist was born to bear witness that Jesus was the Christ. (John 1:6-8) Like Jeremiah before him, while he was yet in the womb the Almighty anointed him to prepare the way of salvation for Israel. (Jeremiah 1:4-5; Luke 1:13-17) And what a dramatic witness he made. For he came to his calling as if he were the last of the Old Testament prophets. (Luke 16:16) Certainly, he must have looked ...

435. A Call for a Change in Lifestyle

Sermon

At the mention of the name, John the Baptizer, I immediately think of two churches that are thousands of miles apart. One is only eighty-five miles from my home, the Benedictine abbey church of St. John the Baptist on the campus of St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota. The other church is thousands of miles away, just outside of Florence, Italy, at the confluence of two superhighways. Ea...

436. Candle Lighting · all five services

Bulletin Aid

J. B. Quisenberry

Litany Of Repentance Leader: "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light;'' People: "They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." Leader: We are that people. People: The light shines upon us. Leader: It shines into the darkness of our souls. People: It exposes our sins. Leader: When we admit our wrongdoing; People: When we repent; Leader: T...

437. Advent 2

Sermon Aid

Marion L. Soards, Thomas B. Dozeman, Kendall McCabe

OLD TESTAMENT TEXTS The future looms large during Advent. We are, after all, entering into a sacred time of hope when we look with expectation toward the consummation of our salvation. If, however, we become too preoccupied with our future, we may miss the salvific work of God in our present lives, which actually grounds our Advent faith. Our Old Testament texts for this Second Sunday of Advent c...

438. Much Love. Hope Sent.

Sermon

King Duncan

I would like to ask you a question this morning: what brings you hope this Advent season? I pray that you have a reason to hope today. And I pray that you will find this place to be a community of hope that celebrates the presence and the love of God in every season of the year. But this is the Sunday each year when we light the Hope candle on the Advent wreath. And our Bible story for today is us...

439. Stop in the Name of Love

Sermon

King Duncan & Angela Akers

A few years ago, the mayor of Oak Lawn, a suburb in Chicago, got tired of people rolling through stop signs, or ignoring them completely, as they passed through his community. So he thought he’d get people to pay a little more attention. Underneath each stop sign in Oak Lawn, he placed a smaller sign that created a phrase. Soon, people passing through Oak Lawn saw traffic signs that read “. . . ST...

440. Fired Up and Fit for the Feast

Sermon

Lori Wagner

In this second week of Advent, we have a powerful scripture this morning, a kind of holy hellfire prophetic voice coming from one of the most interesting figures in the gospels –John, known as the Baptist. Though we know little about John directly from gospel stories such as this one, we can glean from mention of him, the circumstances of his life, and the many times Jesus’ disciples and apostles...

441. Children Get Ready!

Children's Sermon

Brett Blair

Exegetical Aim: Teach the Children how to get ready for Christmas: To "produce fruit in keeping with repentance." Props: Either one very nice child's gift wrapped in a box (e.g. a Teddy Bear), or enough small gifts (toys or candy) to give to each child. Also wrap these in a box. Lesson: I have a question for you this morning: Does anyone know who John the Baptist is? (response) That's right. He ...

442. Have a Very Messy Christmas!

Sermon

John Jamison

I’ll tell you, this had to be something to see. The Jordan River is not a big river like many that we might think of. At its widest, you could still easily thrown a stone across it, and in many other places, you could just step from one side to the other. The wide and deeper spots usually became places where people would gather to fill their water jugs, wash clothes, bathe the children… or just es...

443. In Those Days: The Voice Of The Time Keeper

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

A second is a second is a second, right? But if you’re at the big game it’s amazing what a difference it makes once there’s less than a minute left. Suddenly the scoreboard screams those seconds in fractions. Suddenly the clock moves maddeningly fast if you’re behind and agonizingly slow if you’re ahead. But that’s a product of our digital technology. Sundials, or solar clocks, in the time of Jesu...

444. Watching The Eyes

Sermon

John Jamison

The way it happened in my mind is that he walked into this little restaurant in downtown Jericho, took a deep breath and hollered, "Repent!" Folks stopped eating mid-bite. It got so quiet you could hear the motor running in that tall machine over in the corner that kept slices of pie turning around behind the glass all day. Every eye in the place was on him, and that was what he was waiting for. H...

445. Washed By Water: The Jordan

Sermon

Steve Swanson

When a priest in the medieval Christian church stood before the altar of God and raised the bread of holy communion above his head, he said in Latin, hoc est corpus, "This is the body." That was the supreme moment of mystery; that was the moment of miracle; that was the moment of change. At that moment the medieval Christian believed that ordinary bread became the body of Christ. Hoc est corpus, "...

446. Why Did Jesus Do That?

Sermon

Johnny Dean

If there’s one thing we Americans value above everything else, it’s freedom. We cherish, guard and exercise our freedom, and woe be unto those who threaten it in any way. We’re even willing to go to war to defend freedom, whether it’s ours or someone else’s. We are the world’s self-appointed watchdogs of freedom. But Jesus says there’s a higher value than freedom. The first words the writer of the...

447. His Baptism and Ours

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

The theme of the first Sunday after the Epiphany is the baptism of our Lord, the event by which the quiet carpenter of Nazareth became consecrated to be the Kingdom-building Son of God and began his Messianic career. The event becomes meaningful to us when we see what bearing this consecration has upon our own baptism, that sacramental act by which our lives became dedicated to him and his Kingdom...

448. Matthew 3:13-17

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

With immense care Matthew records the first dramatic action of Jesus' ministry - his baptism at the hands of John. An approaching change of venue is telegraphed by 3:11, where John the Baptist's words predict Jesus' impending appearance on the scene. While Matthew continues to use his unobtrusive third-person voice to describe these events, he vividly colors the story of Jesus' baptism by switchin...

449. Matthew 3:13-17

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

Who hasn’t finally succumbed to a child’s endless battery of “Why?” questions with a frustrated, “Because I said so!” Sometimes the only “reason” that is reasonable to a kid is a direct parental order. It is not readily apparent to a child why they must wear their seat belt, or why they must get a flu shot, or why they must rise out of bed and to go to school on dreary, dark, cold winter morning. ...

450. The Baptism of Jesus

Understanding Series

Robert H. Mounce

John the Baptist: At the close of chapter 2, Joseph, Mary, and the child Jesus returned from Egypt and took up residence in the Galilean town of Nazareth. The time would have been shortly after the death of Herod in 4 B.C. Chapter 3 begins with the prophetic ministry of John the Baptist some twenty-five to thirty years later. What had been going on in the life of Jesus during this time? Except for...

Showing 426 to 450 of 4508 results