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 4551 to 4575 of 4943 results

4551. A Faith for the Uncharted Way

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

Leonard Mann

A few summers ago my family and I made a motor trip west from our home in Ohio to the Pacific coast, and returned. We crossed the prairies and the plains, the Mojave Desert and the great salt flats of Utah; we drove through the Badlands and the Grand Tetons, and crossed the Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains twice. We followed the trails of the pioneers, the Mojave, the Wyoming, and the Santa Fe. We traveled on good roads in a good automobile with a good road map. We had never been in any of that ...

4552. Name Above Every Name

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

Leonard Mann

The first thing about anyone is his name. A human person is born into the world, and almost immediately a word is chosen to denote him. Not a number, not a sign, not a shape - but a word. And that word becomes everyone’s way of saying who he is. For all of his lifetime that word is used to indicate him. By means of it, he says, "This is I." By means of it, others say, "That is he." In a very real sense the word equals the person, stands for him as his equivalent. This is so very true that I can say, "I am ...

4553. Faith and Obedience

Genesis 12:1-8

Sermon

Jon L. Joyce

These two virtues, faith and obedience, are very closely related. Each one is incomplete without the other. In Abraham’s life and work, he illustrates these virtues admirably. When God called him to leave his home where he had lived for 70 years and go out to another land, the land of Canaan, many miles away, "by faith he obeyed." (Genesis 11:9) And when God told Abraham to offer up his dearly beloved Son, Isaac, as a human sacrifice, that seemed terribly unreasonable, since it would cancel out God’s ...

4554. Thorns and Roses

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

Around the turn of the century a young man named Clarence took his girlfriend on a summer outing. They took a picnic lunch out to a picturesque island in the middle of a small lake. She wore a long dress with about a dozen petticoats. He was dressed in a suit with a high collar. Clarence rowed them out to the island, dragged the boat into shore, and spread their picnic supplies beneath a shade tree. So hypnotized was he by her beauty that he hardly noticed the hot sun and perspiration on his brow. Softly ...

4555. That Hallowed Name (The Third Commandment)

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

The coming Olympic Games to be held in Atlanta remind me of an Olympic gold medalist from Georgia. He is Paul Anderson of Tekoa, Georgia. Paul is the only American to ever win a gold medal in the heavyweight division of Olympic weight lifting. He is a dedicated Christian who for many years operated orphanages allover the Southeast. He traveled widely, putting on weight lifting demonstrations and witnessing for Jesus Christ. I recall some twenty years ago sitting on a wooden platform with ten other men and ...

4556. Because He Lives

1 Corinthians 15:12-34

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

My favorite day of the entire year is Easter. To declare the Good News of resurrection is the ultimate thrill for a preacher. It's even better than being a baseball fan in Yankee Stadium or a mountain climber on Mount Everest or a blues singer on Beale Street. No news is quite so good as "He lives!" 1995 will always be a special year for me because I have had three Easters. The first one I shared with you back in April when over 5000 of us celebrated resurrection in five great services (count them, one on ...

4557. A Shepherd To Lead Us

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Brett Blair

Leadership. We all want good leadership. Good shepherds to lead us in and out of green pasture. We vote hoping to elect it, we apply for jobs hoping to work for it, and we go to school hoping to be educated by it. But we do not always find it. The trust we place in our leaders can be broken. So what are we to do? John 10 holds the answer. Look at the picture Jesus gives us here in John 10: This wonderful vivid portrait of a shepherd caring for his sheep. The shepherd would lead his sheep out to distant ...

4558. The Hiding Angel

1 John 2:28--3:10

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

In art class some children were working with plasticine, a clay-like substance that can be used over and over because it does not harden. A little girl had made a very nice model of a creature with wings. She held it up and said to everyone, "Look at the angel." There were exclamations of delight from the class and teacher. Then the girl quickly molded the angel back into a ball and asked everyone, "Now what is this?" Someone said, "It looks like a ball to me." "No," she said, "It's a hiding angel." The ...

4559. Where Are You?

Genesis 3:1-24

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

The largest and most tragic industrial accident in history occurred in 1986 in Russia. It was the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. But it was not really an accident. Now that the Cold War has ended, more information is available about that tragedy. Two electrical engineers were on duty that night. Whether they were sober or not is unclear, but they were playing around with the machines. These engineers had to override manually six separate computer-driven alarm systems. One by one the computers said, "Stop! ...

4560. The Words We Speak

Ephesians 4:17--5:21

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

Chuck Swindoll in his book, "Flying Closer to the Flame," tells about a married couple who attended a seminar taught by a male demagogue. I refer to that type of man who uses scripture improperly to make husbands domestic autocrats and to turn wives into lowly doormats. Well, the husband just loved everything this man said! But his wife sat there fuming. When they left the meeting that night, the husband felt drunk with fresh power as he climbed into the car. While driving home he said rather pompously, " ...

4561. Controlling Our Cravings

Luke 12:13-21, Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

When I was 12 or 13 years old, I worked one summer as a general flunky at a service station. Often I assisted a young country boy who worked in the grease pit. As he worked he sang a song, probably a popular country music hit of that time. Don't worry. I'm not going to sing the song, but here are some of the words: "How many times have you heard someone say, If I had his money, I could do things my way. But little they know that it's so hard to find One rich man in ten with a satisfied mind. Money can't ...

4562. How to do Extraordinary Things

Mark 6:30-44

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

One of the lessons we learn from the world of sports is that victory is not always won by the biggest, the strongest, the fastest, or the most talented. Victory is won between the ears. Doing extraordinary things begins with extraordinary thinking. Did you notice the remarkable story a few months ago about Tony Brown, a high school student in Browning, Montana? Last year in a train accident, Tony lost both his legs just beneath the knees. Nevertheless, his coach and friends urged him to go out for the ...

4563. A Haven For Troubled Hearts

John 14:1-4

Sermon

Brett Blair

Eric Clapton, arguably the greatest living rock guitarist, wrote a heart wrenching song about the death of his four-year-old son (March 20, 1991). He fell from a 53rd-story window. Clapton took nine months off and when he returned his music had changed. The hardship had made his music softer, more powerful, and more reflective. You have perhaps heard the song he wrote about his son's death. It is a poignant song of hope: Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven? Would it be the same if I saw you in ...

4564. Night Fighters

Sermon

James Bjorge

Night can be beautiful when dreams of sugar plums dance through your head. When worries have wandered away and left you relaxed, the descending darkness comes like a billowy blanket of down. God has washed behind your years and you feel clean and content as you slip into the freshly washed sheets for a long winter’s nap. No doubt about it, night can be nice. But it is not always that cozy and comfortable. Night can be blacker than a hundred midnights in a southern swamp. Anxiety, fear and pain become like ...

4565. A Gospel that Fills the Glove

Sermon

James Bjorge

I was sitting in my office staring blankly into space. Then my leather gloves which had been thrown on my desk caught my glance. They were limp and lifeless. I reached over and picked one of them up and slipped my right hand into it. The gloved filled out. I flexed my hand - the glove moved. It was filled with life. My mind began to dance with the thought of God coming to earth to slip into the gloves of human lives. He came to fill them out so they would pulsate with life ... so they could be and do ...

4566. Samson, the Bully

Judges 16:1-22

Sermon

Don Yocom

"And he knew not the Lord had left him." The Old Testament story of Samson is a profile of a man who was a prankster, an arsonist and a bully, a strong man who did not know his strength, all rolled into one human being. He was emotionally immature and morally unsound. Yet his life indicates something to us worth noting. His name is legion today, if we count the multitudes who have never grown up spiritually, and who have little contact with God but may not even be aware of it. In addition to what we have ...

4567. Abraham and the Meaning of Consecration

Genesis 22:1-19

Sermon

Don Yocom

If God has done His part, and we believe that He has, what then must we do to be fully consecrated Christians? The answer to this question is in God’s Word, and an illustration of it is the experience of Abraham on Mount Moriah with his son, Isaac. In the realm of spiritual living, we progress from the beginning works of faith to a deeper experience of surrender to God. We present ourselves, but God sanctifies. He is willing to give of His Spirit whenever we meet the test. Time and time again in the lives ...

4568. Just Common People?

Romans 12:1-8

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

Some years ago in the Letters to the Editor in the Saturday Evening Post, I found one letter by an artist, who was describing the illustrations on the cover of the Post. The term that he used for them was pungent - "Insignificance, U.S.A." Well, most of us, I’m sure, have, in the past, found the Post covers, especially those paintings by Norman Rockwell, delightful. Yet, on the other hand, perhaps the artist had his point, because looking back, I discovered that the little, human interest scenes depicted ...

4569. Well, What Did You Expect?

Acts 12:1-19a

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

I heard it just this past week from a lady in our congregation, and she said it with absolute and unshakable conviction. Her husband has just recovered from an illness which, very often, can be incurable. So she put it this way: "My husband was cured by the power of prayer. There’s no other way of explaining it. Hundreds of people I know were praying for him, and their prayers were answered. No one will ever change my mind about that." All right. That is one point of view. Let’s look at another. This week ...

4570. Chapter I

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Frank H. Seilhamer

"I am the Lord your God ..." Exodus 20:2 A few years ago I had the opportunity to return to the homestead where I spent some of the happiest days of my youth. It is a farm situated in the midst of the wheatgrowing country of Pennsylvania, where my grandparents once lived. Shortly after I arrived, I walked out to a little knoll that overlooks the fields and sat down beneath the huge old walnut tree that has stood there for over a hundred years. From there I looked out over the fields. The wheat at the time ...

4571. Chapter V

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Frank H. Seilhamer

"Give weight to your father and your mother that you may live long in the land which the Lord your God is giving you." Exodus 20:12 One of the things about the Commandments is that even though there is only a handful of them they speak to nearly every area of life. Though in some instances they are only a few words or phrases long, they touch virtually every basic relationship that a man has with his fellows, as well as with God. The longer that perceptive and sensitive people study and live with them the ...

4572. Chapter VI

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Frank H. Seilhamer

When I discussed the third Commandment, "Remember the Sabbath," I said that it was perhaps the most ignored and least thought about "Word" in the lot. In sharp contrast to it this guide for living, along with the one that follows it, is among the most thought about, discussed, and argued over of our time. For killing is going on around us continually, or so it seems. Just look at the newspapers, the television screen, or listen to the radio any day, and there killing is front and center. Who isn’t aware of ...

4573. Chapter VIII

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Frank H. Seilhamer

"You will not steal" Exodus 20:15 A long time ago, when the broadcasting of baseball games was just beginning, a sports announcer was describing one of the contests over a local station. In the late innings a Detroit Tiger runner got on base, representing the game’s tying run. With two outs, and no order from the bench to do such a thing, the runner took off for second base, only to be thrown out, ending his team’s chances for victory. To defend the player and soothe the hometown fans, the announcer tried ...

4574. Chapter X

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Frank H. Seilhamer

"You will not want for yourself your neighbor’s house; you will not want for yourself your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s." Exodus 20:17 With this Commandment we come to the end of the "Words" that God spoke to his people at Sinai. The warning that he gave that we should not long to have for ourselves that which belongs to our neighbors serves to cap off, and bring to a conclusion, this handful of directions for living. We ...

4575. APOTHECARY

Exodus 30:22-33

Illustration

Stephen Stewart

Exodus 30:25 - "And thou shalt make it an oil for holy ointment, an ointment compound after the art of the apothecary; it shall be an holy anointing oil" (KJV). The art of the apothecary is a very ancient one, probably dating back to pre-history, when man first learned to use herbs and barks to heal himself. However, although the word names a compounder of drugs, oils, and perfumes, it was in this latter sense that it was most often used in biblical times. All large Oriental towns had their perfumers’ ...

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