Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 4501 to 4525 of 4977 results

4501. I Built a Shrine

Matthew 14:22-33

Illustration

King Duncan

When Jesus told those early disciples to fear not he was not telling them to seek safety and security. Rather he was telling them to move forward, but to always trust him. Years ago there was a little comic strip that spoke to this quite beautifully. The comic strip "B.C.," set in cavemen days, had its hero, B.C., sitting in his fur loincloth, opening a box. A letter in the box says, "Congratulations! You have just purchased the world's finest fire-starting kit!" The next picture shows him reading on, "The ...

4502. The Ad Vent Wheat

John 1:1-18

Drama

Frank Ramirez

... whole world about Jesus, so we’re telling our Ads through this Vent. Krystal: And this is our Ad Vent Wheat! We want to share God’s bread with the Baby Jesus and all the people who are hungry. Teacher One: Children, I’m not sure if you quite understand about Advent and the Advent Wreath. Teacher Two: Now wait a minute. Aren’t we supposed to tell people about Jesus? And aren’t we supposed to share the Bread of Life with everyone? Teacher One: You’re right. They may be onto something, don’t you ...

4503. Surprise!

Luke 1:26-38

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... was Saul of Tarsus. If you remember the story from your Sunday school days, Saul got bounced on his babushka on the Damascus Road and he became the greatest missionary the church has ever known. Surprise! Think through the centuries of church history to a time not quite 500 years after Christ, to the young man in the north of Africa who led such a wild, riotous life, that even after he decided to become a Christian he refused baptism because there was still some sinning he planned to do, and he wanted to go ...

4504. He Ascended Into Heaven

Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth"? (v. 8). Come back, Jesus. The show is over. Come back. Jesus. Jesus? But he was gone. One might figure that our friends would be depressed at Jesus' disappearance. After all, they had been on quite an emotional roller coaster. There were the good times traveling through the countryside for three years, the bad times of trial and torture that culminated at Calvary, the good times together once more following the resurrection, now, gone again. Who could blame them ...

4505. A Winsome Witness

Acts 8:26-40

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 23:1). Very graphic. Very explicit. Very harsh, and especially since such a situation would not normally be of an individual's own choosing. A male, but not quite a man. A sexual misfit. The issue in the Jewish mind was family — a eunuch could not have one, so, they were thought of as under some sort of divine curse, an obvious disqualification for participation in temple observances. I give credit to this fellow ...

4506. The Voice

1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20)

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... palate and says, "No, I didn't. Go back to sleep." So the boy turns, goes back through the curtain and lays down again. But now the call comes again: "Samuel!" You can imagine the perplexed look that comes over the child's face. He comes back to Eli, not quite so sleepily now. He was still awake from the first visit. "You called?" Eli was wide awake now himself. No doubt he wondered at Samuel's first visit. What was the voice the boy heard? Could he have just imagined it? Was it something he ate? Or was it ...

4507. Understanding Bible Prophecy

Deuteronomy 18:14-22

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... a context is a pretext. I'm going to repeat that. A text without a context is a pretext. Keep that in mind as you listen to Jack Van Impe or any other of these prophecy "experts." I do not mean to pick on Van Impe because, quite frankly, he is just carrying on a tradition that goes back centuries. Our text from Deuteronomy has Moses addressing the Israelite people as they wandered in the wilderness. They are worried about the future and they want some answers. Moses is warning the people about searching for ...

4508. The Healing Touch

Mark 1:29-39

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... healing. Most Christians continue to believe in healing (we pray for people's health regularly), and scripture makes clear that healing is part of our ministry. But to find fourteen modern incidents of legitimate cure such as we encounter in the gospels would be quite a chore. The ministry of healing has fallen away to almost nothing. What can we do to return the healing touch to its rightful place in the church? First, there must be a decision to even consider it. Most mainline Christians have little or ...

4509. God's Day Off

Mark 2:23-3:6

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... been fenced in with iron railings and it's locked at night. There are notices which say "Do not pick the flowers" and "Please keep off the grass." Some might say "Why the fence and the signs? Why not leave people free to do what they like?" But I'm quite sure the answer is this: If there were no notices there would soon be no flowers; and if there were no prohibitions, there would soon be no little park for anyone at all. Many people, of course, would respect that little haunt of peace where one may sit on ...

4510. Gifts For The Christ Child

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... me, a sinner." For all too few, it meant really what it was supposed to mean ... the commitment of all that we are and all that we have to the one who gave his life that we might live. That is what giving your heart really means. That would be quite a gift to give someone, at Christmas time or any time. It is our response to the gift that has already been offered to us ... the gift of eternal life that is ours through faith in what that little babe of Bethlehem grew up and did for us on Calvary ...

4511. Handling Freedom

Exodus 20:1-17

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... ." Commandment #2: no idols. You do not need them. The god who has liberated you is not about to abandon you when you are in need. You do not need to carve a hunk of wood to show off to your neighbors what a neat God you have because, quite frankly, some people will end up worshiping that and doing themselves and their neighbors more harm than good. No — no idols. Commandment #3: "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God" (v. 7). Or in the language of the King James Version, "Thou shalt not take ...

4512. Never, Never, Never, NEVER GIVE UP!

2 Corinthians 4:5-12

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... call to give up! Good old Paul. Sounds like the old farmer's ditty to the tune of "Turkey In The Straw": Oh, the mule's gone lame and the hens won't lay, Corn's way down, wheat don't pay. Hogs no better. Steer's too cheap, Cows quit milking and the meat won't keep. Oats all heated, spuds all froze, Wheat crop's busted, wind still blows, Looks some gloomy, I'll admit, but git up, Dobbin, we ain't down yet.[2] Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never, never give up! The message ...

4513. Peace In the Midst of the Storm

Mark 4:35-41

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... in the first place. For whatever consolation it might provide, you are not alone in your thoughts. Your companions there in the boat have also been sitting with eyes cast down. They have the same questions going through their minds and they too are not quite sure how to deal with them. For that matter, down through the centuries, Christians have struggled with precisely the same thing — we say we have faith, but when times of crisis come, we have this deep, dark fear that we have been left alone. Too ...

4514. Jesus Christ, Superstar

Mark 14:12-26

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... attention, and in particular, his healing touch. He was a superstar. These days, calling Jesus Christ a "Superstar" is not particularly startling, but in 1970, when the rock opera of that name came out, it was a jarring choice of words and caused quite a stir. Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber put together a two-act musical that largely followed the biblical accounts of the last weeks of Jesus' life, with certain artistic license, of course. Contemporary attitudes and sensibilities as well as modern slang ...

4515. A Disaster of Biblical Proportions

Job 42:1-17

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... , but the pressure went right on building, and by the next night - morning in the Far East - all hell broke loose. Simple geophysics - two great forces pushed against one another, one slipped a bit, the earth shuddered, the pressure was released. It is all quite simple. The sudden movement caused a wave. That is easily explainable. But as we in the west sang the songs about that lovely baby, Nathan Nettleton explained the tsunami. That wave was tearing babies out of people's arms, sucking beds out through ...

4516. What the Future Holds

Mark 13:1-8

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... ever been. His most notable contribution was the magnificent stonework of the temple platform that was greatly enlarged — beautiful. But Jesus said that it would not last; "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down" (v. 2). Quite something to imagine when you realize that the stones were about the size of a minivan. With the benefit of our perspective — 20/20 hindsight — we know he was right. As Jesus and his friends continued to walk and talk together, they made their ...

4517. Expressing The Inexpressible

Isaiah 6:1-8

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... church about our understanding of God. In particular, the issue was how to understand Jesus Christ in relation to God. Some wanted to say Jesus was God in human flesh; others wanted to say that, to be sure, Jesus was special, but not quite that special. The dispute was not confined to academic halls or ecclesiastical conclaves. Depending upon who happened to be in power at any one moment in any one place, there were excommunications and banishments. Various theologians had their own followings who were more ...

4518. Jesus at Home

Mark 2:1-12

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

... lowered him through the roof, the man himself, the authorities and their quibbling about the language of forgiveness, and so on. But just for this moment of reflection that we have together, let's have a look at that first verse, and not let it slip by us quite so quickly. Now, if we know the whole story of Jesus, we know that he is very often referred to by his contemporaries as "Jesus of Nazareth." We associate him with Bethlehem, too, of course, and we do so because of the birth stories in Matthew and ...

4519. The Perfect Blemish

John 2:13-22

Sermon

John Smylie

... them again, and taste their grass and wildflowers. We soon arrived in Jerusalem, and the sun shone golden on the great walls of the city. We ascended the hills and entered the city and found our way to the outer courts of the temple. I must say I was quite disappointed, for I had expected, being such a fine bull, that I would be brought to the most glorious pasture in all of Israel. But instead I found stone under my feet with very little grass growing between the cracks. My fodder was stale hay and I had ...

4520. We Wish to See Jesus

John 12:20-33

Sermon

John Smylie

... — to have surgery done upon one's heart, to have to face God on a one-to-one intimate level is an awesome proposition. It is much easier to view God's law as something on stone, something "out there," some ideal that we all strive for but never quite make, or even a demand which seems a bit unreasonable. It is much safer to live within a "religious system" than to enter into a relationship with the living God. For that is the sword which Jesus brought. He did not come to divide Jew and Christian, but to ...

4521. For the Life of Betsy D. I. Smylie

John 12:20-36

Sermon

John Smylie

4522. Fred and Barney

John 10:11-18

Sermon

John Smylie

... named Fred and Barney. We must have been influenced by the Flintstones. The children would go out and enjoy the sheep from time to time, but mostly Fred and Barney were on their own. We soon discovered that they possessed a rather unpleasant scent and were quite dirty. We were obviously not prepared to be shepherds and we certainly were not very good shepherds. A dramatic event happened a few months after we had the sheep. One afternoon when I was inside the house, I began to hear unusual bleatings from the ...

4523. Weed and Feed

Sermon

John Smylie

... it gives me pleasure to bring her pleasure and so I found myself taking the string trimmer and whacking away at the edges of the property, at the edges of her gardens, and around trees where the grass tends to grow a bit higher because the mower can't get quite as close as the trimmer. Sometime after giving all those areas a good buzz cut, my dear wife asked me if I had been aware that one of the plants around the tree that has the bird feeder attached to it was not a weed. No, I had no idea ...

4524. The Logical Conclusion

Luke 24:44-53

Sermon

John Smylie

... were a few apple trees back behind the wall near where the plots in the ground were designated for people's ashes to be placed. The columbarium attracted much wildlife that was always lovely to look upon. There was one particular autumn burial service when I found myself quite annoyed at the messiness of the apples scattered on the ground. Some of them had rotted and were slippery if stepped upon. I felt they were in the way. I felt at that time that the placing of the ashes in the ground ought to be done ...

4525. It’s Anybody’s Guess

Mark 4:30-34

Sermon

Kristin Borsgard Wee

... 't agree. He says firmly that the kingdom of God has already begun. Then to dispel the disciples' doubts and doldrums, he tells them a story. There was a farmer who reached into a seed bag and tried to pull out one Super Grade A Golden Mustard Seed. It was quite a trick to get just one because they were so tiny. You need your bifocals to see one seed. A small handful looks like a little finely ground pepper. It's amazing that such a tiny seed grows into such a large bush. A fat sparrow, who has to pick ...

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