Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 4476 to 4500 of 4946 results

4476. Jesus and Divorce

Mark 10:1-12

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Jesus and Divorce. Tough text. In generations past, this would have provided no problem for the preacher - Jesus says No Divorce, the church says Amen (along with most polite society); case closed. Easy sermon. But these days, things are different. Jesus still says No divorce, but only part of the church says Amen while other parts say we are not so sure (and polite society says mind your own business); case NOT closed at all. I recall a conversation at our dinner table one evening about ten years ago that ...

4477. No Holding Back

Mark 12:28-34

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Familiar words. "Heart...soul...mind...strength...your neighbor as yourself." We learned them as the GREAT COMMANDMENT. All others pale in their light. We agree, of course. "Love the Lord your God with all your HEART." Not the blood-pumping heart, the "heart" that, from ancient times has been considered the seat of our emotions. Two weeks ago I had the privilege of preaching for our neighbors at the Church of God of Prophecy - it was an exciting service of worship because those Pentecostals really do get ...

4478. Mary's Complaint

Luke 1:26-38, Luke 1:39-45, Luke 1:46-56

Sermon

David E. Leininger

I suppose you have had the chance to watch at least a little television during these busy days before Christmas. Have you noticed that the news programs are carrying more stories about unfortunate people these days...people who have lost their homes, people who are facing debilitating disease, people who seem to have had their whole world fall in on them? Have you noticed that? I understand why: somehow the plight of desperate folks seems all the MORE desperate in the midst of what should be a season of ...

4479. The Trouble with Stables

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Are you ready for Christmas? Foolish question. We still have 2½ weeks to go. I was visiting with Mary Knapp in the hospital yesterday and we got on the subject of Christmas - she said, "Why are you thinking about this now. You're a MAN. You've got LOTS of time." Good point. For what it's worth, if you ARE thinking about it, and you are wondering what you might get for that special someone who is difficult to buy for, I may be able to help. This week on the internet was news you can use.(1) Now available: ...

4480. Overcoming "Work-avoidance Syndrome"

2 Thessalonians 3:1-5

Sermon

King Duncan

Have you ever noticed how some people are lazy? Oops ” how many people have work-avoidance syndrome? I heard about two men who were talking about going to Australia. One of them said, "Did you hear? The news says there's a diamond mine in the Outback where diamonds lay all over the ground. All you have to do is bend down and pick them up." The other guy looked offended and said, "You have to BEND DOWN?" There was a PEANUTS cartoon several years ago. Linus is addressing Snoopy who is asleep on the roof of ...

4481. A Firm Grip On Your Balloon

Acts 2:1-13

Sermon

King Duncan

Bruce Larson tells about leading a renewal conference in a great Gothic cathedral-like Presbyterian church in Omaha, Nebraska years ago. As people came in they were given a balloon filled with helium. They were told to release it at some point in the service where they felt like expressing the joy in their hearts ” during the anthem, the hymns, the prayers or the sermon. Since they were Presbyterians, says Larson, they were not free to say "Hallelujah" or "Praise the Lord." Letting go of the balloon would ...

4482. A Soap Opera For Saints

2 Samuel 11:1-27

Sermon

King Duncan

Guin Ream Tuckett was asked to teach a junior high Sunday School class. All went well until she reached the lessons on sex. This is not a subject that is easy for adults working with this particular age group to broach. Although Guin worked out a well-balanced, Biblically-based lesson, her kids seemed pretty uninterested. That is, until one kid asked if there were sex stories in the Bible. Guin assured them that there were both good and bad examples of sex represented in the Good Book. Now she had their ...

4483. The Problem With Giving Up Chocolates

Mark 8:34-38

Sermon

King Duncan

The story is told about a gung-ho drill sergeant who always demanded the best from his soldiers. One day he stared in pained disbelief at a sloppy squad of new recruits wearing their uniforms for the first time. For a moment the sergeant was speechless with rage. Then he screamed in frustration, "Just step out here and look at yourselves!" Now, I don't know how he expected them to do that ” "step out and look at themselves" ” but his basic concept was on target. There is a time when all of us should step ...

4484. In Search Of A Reason For Being

Hebrews 4:1-13

Sermon

King Duncan

What is your one great goal in life? The one vision that fires you up and stirs you to transcend the daily grind? Well, for John Searing, an arts-supplies salesman from New Jersey, it was to yell, "He-e-e-ere's Johnny!" on the old "Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson. Searing had watched "The Tonight Show" since he was a child, and he had always thrilled to the sound of Ed McMahon bellowing the introduction. So, in 1980, John wrote to "The Tonight Show," asking if he could have the chance some night of ...

4485. Casting Out An Evil Spirit

Mark 1:21-28

Sermon

King Duncan

[While King Duncan is enjoying a well deserved retirement we are going back to his earliest sermons and renewing them. The newly modernized sermon is shown first and below, for reference sake, is the old sermon. We will continue this updating throughout the year bringing fresh takes on King's best sermons.] Original Title: Casting Out An Evil Spirit New Title: Good Religion The idea of casting out an evil spirit sounds too much like superstition to many of us. We prefer to relegate such things to the ...

4486. Do We Know What We've Got?

Matthew 18:15-20

Sermon

King Duncan

Our lesson from Matthew’s Gospel for today reminds me of a story of a pastor in a drought-stricken part of Alabama last summer who implored his people to pray for rain. In fact, he asked each member of the church to join in a prayer vigil that would continue day and night until God granted their request. Never had there been a greater sense of urgency in that church than was revealed over the next few days. At any hour, one might pass that small rural church and find the lights on and someone at the altar ...

4487. Celebrating Christ The King

Ezekiel 34:1-31

Sermon

King Duncan

The READER'S DIGEST tells of young Matthew, age 4, eating an apple in the back seat of the car. "Daddy," said Matthew, "why is my apple turning brown?" His father explained, "Because after you ate the skin off, the meat of the apple came in contact with the air which caused it to oxidize, thus changing its molecular structure and turning it into a different color." There was a long silence, and then Matthew asked softly, "Daddy, are you talking to me?" (1) It's a challenge to communicate to a small child. ...

4488. A Time For Silence

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon

King Duncan

A most unusual protest took place this past fall in a convent in New Jersey. Four nuns locked themselves in a tiny second floor infirmary and have taken a vow of "near silence." They are protesting new rules established by their new prioress, Mother Theresa Hewitt. It seems that Mother Theresa has introduced television, secular videos, recorded music, bright lights, and (horror of horrors) daily "sweets" into the convent. The sweets consist of a tin of candy which is passed around each day and each nun is ...

4489. How Can I Know The Truth?

John 16:5-16

Sermon

King Duncan

Sometimes fact IS funnier than fiction. According to an article in the New York TIMES, for more than 50 years authorities in the Soviet Union have been deliberately sabotaging their own maps of the Soviet countryside. Rivers, bridges, cities and coastlines have all been shown in wrong locations on maps or deliberately drawn incorrectly. Distance scales have been an absolute joke. Soviet theory, apparently, was that these errors made these maps useless to spies, invading armies, and the navigators of enemy ...

4490. How Can I Know It's Real?

Luke 19:1-10

Sermon

King Duncan

Regardless of what you may have heard or read, Frank and Jesse James, two of the most famous outlaws of all time, were cold-blooded murderers. Their father, though, was a Baptist pastor and the founder of William Jewel College in Liberty, Kentucky. Their mother was raised in a Catholic convent. Both parents espoused values very different from those that their sons held. Yet, Robert James, their father, deserted his wife and sons while they were still very small so that he could search for gold in ...

4491. All You Need Is A Miracle

John 6:1-15

Sermon

King Duncan

Writer Adele Hooker remembers a point when she and her family were going through some rough times. They had very little to eat, but one day her husband unexpectedly asked some friends over for dinner. Adele was dumbfounded: there was no food in the house! How could she possibly feed guests? So she went into her bedroom, knelt down and asked God what she could do. As she prayed she seemed to hear a voice telling her, "You have meat in the freezer." Right. Half a pound of hamburger. That wouldn't go very far ...

4492. The Secret Of Happy Marriages

Ephesians 4:17--5:21

Sermon

King Duncan

For the women in the congregation, I am not even going to attempt to justify St. Paul's words: "Wives, obey your husband..." except to say this: There are some parts of the Scripture that are applicable at all times in all places. There are others that were appropriate to a specific place and a specific time, but now have been superseded by the Holy Spirit. If that were not so, we would all still be eating kosher ” following the dietary laws of the Hebrew scriptures. Within the culture that St. Paul lived ...

4493. An Empty Stage Or An Empty Tomb?

Luke 24:1-12

Sermon

King Duncan

In his book, THERE I GO AGAIN, Steven Moseley tells about Anna Pavlova, a Russian ballet superstar of the early 1900s. Ms. Pavlova has been acclaimed as the greatest ballerina of all time. Her most memorable performance, however, took place after her death. Anna was to play the role she made famous, the Dying Swan, at the Apollo Theatre in London. Tragically, she succumbed to pneumonia and died two days before the event. Still, on the appointed night, a crowd of her fans packed the Apollo Theatre. The ...

4494. The Peace That Christ Gives

John 14:15-31

Sermon

King Duncan

A couple was traveling out West. They stopped at a sign that said, "Echo Point." "Try it," the wife suggested. "I think it's silly," her husband said. Finally he agreed to try it. He shouted at the top of his voice, "Baloney!" After a moment, he said, "See, nothing happened." "Try it again," his wife said. This time he shouted, "I'm the best looking man in the world!" Then the echo came back ” "Baloney!" Is there anyone here this morning who is absolutely satisfied with everything you are and everything ...

4495. When Heaven Rejoices

Luke 15:8-10, Luke 15:1-7

Sermon

Timothy J. Smith

An owner of a small, crossroads store was appointed the local postmaster. But six months after his appointment, not one piece of mail had left the village. When concerned postal officials from Washington investigated, the local postmaster explained, "Well, it's simple; the bag ain't full yet." Once there was a church board that decided it wanted its congregation to grow numerically. An evangelism committee was chosen. The first thing the committee did was read every book and article they could find on ...

4496. It's Hard To Be Number Two

John 1:29-34

Sermon

King Duncan

One day in high school during lunch hour Bob Laurent was standing around with a group of guys. Suddenly, the only girl in the whole school who could make the corneas of Bob's eyes steam up walked right up to him and said very silkily, almost musically, "Hi, Bob." Bob wasn't ready for this bold greeting. He recalls that the entire left side of his face started twitching. He stuttered out, "Uhh-h-h, Hi ya, Doris." A few moments later the bell rang and Doris moved toward Bob to say goodbye. In doing so she ...

4497. Power Praying

Acts 1:12-26

Sermon

King Duncan

A man stopped by a computer store where he'd recently purchased a personal computer. "I have a question about a computer I bought here the other day," he said to a salesman who greeted him enthusiastically. "What kind did you buy?" the salesman asked. "A Crimean Extravaganza 1900," said the customer. "Wow! That's a nice computer," exclaimed the salesman. "It has a 100 megahertz pentium processor, 16 megabytes of ram, a 256 kilobyte pipeline burst cache. It has PCI 64-bit video and a 1.2 gigabyte hard drive ...

4498. Two Promises For A New Year

Luke 2:8-20, Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

King Duncan

Tom Ervin, Professor of Music at the University of Arizona was attending a conference for music teachers in New York. While at the conference he purchased a talking metronome. A metronome is a device for counting the beats in a song. Before Tom and his son boarded their flight home, Tom hefted his carry-on bag onto the security-check conveyor belt. The security guard's eyes widened as he watched the monitor. He asked Tom what he had in the bag. Then the guard slowly pulled out of the bag this strange ...

4499. Making Relationships Work

Matthew 5:21-26

Sermon

King Duncan

There is an old legend about a New England town that was suffering through all manner of dissension and back-biting. The people were constantly involved in petty feuds pitting neighbor against neighbor. One day, the people came together and consulted a wise pastor as to how they could resolve their differences. The pastor agreed to think on the matter and send them a letter soon detailing his judgement. A few days later, the pastor sat down and wrote his letter to the people, full of advice on how to make ...

4500. Hurting People Hurt People

Luke 6:27-36

Sermon

King Duncan

"Hurting people hurt people," says John Maxwell, and it's true! A father and son walking together in the woods came upon an animal that had been caught in a hunter's trap. The animal was in obvious distress. The son rushed forward to free the animal, but his father stopped him. "Son," he said, "Be careful. A hurt animal will bite those close around--even someone who is trying to help him." What's true of animals is true of people. Hurting people hurt people. We've all seen parents under too much stress ...

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