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 4726 to 4750 of 4968 results

4726. Lion of Judah

Gen 49:1-28, Judges 13-15, Matt 4:12-17

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... of Jesus and allow Him to live His resurrection life within us, we own our identity as a child of God, engraved with a lion’s share of courage, strength, and ability. When Jesus was leaving his disciples in the flesh, He assured them, that all authority and power was given to Him, and that we as His disciples could do even better and greater things, as long as we abide in Him, and He in us. Paul reminds us again and again how important this relational “abiding” must be! While often we concentrate on ...

4727. Big Spender

1 Kings 10:14-29, 1 Kings 11:1-13, Luke 15:11-32

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... language, the word for “prosperity” is not wealth but peace, favor, health, completeness, wholeness, assurance. When God promises people a “promised land,” when Jesus promises his disciples a “promised kingdom,” he means something that goes beyond physical buildings, means, money, power, prestige, and position. This is why he continuously tells his disciples, to be first, they must be last, that it is not about the position or the power. God’s “prosperity” is a prosperity of the spirit ...

4728. All the Pretty Horses

Luke 12:13-21, Luke 12:1-12, 1 Kings 3:16-28

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... Will Judge Those Who Have Turned Away and Bless Those Who are Loyal (Malachi 3) God’s Warning to Jerusalem Sister of Sodom Who Does Not Care for its Poor (Ezekiel 16) The Warning of Material Corruption and the Bid to Save Many for God (James 5) Paul Calls Disciples to Live in the Spirit and Not of the Law (Galatians 5) The Bid to Focus on God and Not on Material Wealth (1 Timothy 6) Image Exegesis: Wealth, Sin, Loyalty, and Diamonds in the Rough The image of the silo is important in this story. A silo ...

4729. Caring for the Vineyard We Did Not Plant

Matthew 20:1-16, Joshua 24:1-27

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... Church more than we love Christ, we’ve become the very thing God wants to overhaul! And boy can we clutch! But once you reach that clutching phase, no matter how much you know you need to let go, you’ll never let it go, even to the death. “The Disciple-Ship is sinking” God calls out over the waves! “But it’s OUR ship, and we’re going down with it, so help us God,” we cry! You know, I once had a friend who was a furniture restorer. He used to shop around at auctions and yard sales to ...

4730. Dangerous

John 12:12-19, Zechariah 9:9-13, Zechariah 9:14-17

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages. He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of ...

4731. Deliverance

Isaiah 49:8-26, Isaiah 44:24--45:25, Exodus 15:22-27, Exodus 13:17--14:31

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... . “The Lord has not forgotten you!” is another key phrase that comes through in many of these narratives and in Isaiah. “But lift up your rod and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it.” (outstretched hand / guiding rod). God’s prophets (and Jesus’ disciples) are both infused with the power of God in order to carry out God’s mission within the world. But we must always be sure it is God’s mission we are following, God’s voice we are hearing, God’s power we are wielding, and not ...

4732. Ask Jacob!

Matthew 6:25-34, Genesis 25:19-34

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... The world around us is filled with distractions, storms, and confusing messages. We can’t possibly figure out where we are, let alone where we are going without relying on our inner compass. That compass is Jesus. Jesus is the compass for all those who would ride the disciple-ship through the sea of life. It was no different in early times, in biblical times, than it is today. Today, we read the story of Jacob and Esau. Esau is a laborer of the field, a farmer. But more than that, he is, as the scripture ...

4733. The Good Yoke

Matthew 11:25-30, 1 Kings 19:1-8, 1 Kings 19:9-18, 1 Kings 19:19-21

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... life. Jesus offers us the yoke of discipleship with Him and the cloak of righteousness that will usher us into the kingdom of heaven. In the Jewish rabbinic tradition, the rabbi’s “yoke” is the way of learning that transforms the student into a teacher, disciple into friend. It is the ultimate gift –the offer to walk side by side through life with your mentor and teacher, learning as you go. We are all learners. We are all followers. We all choose yokes. Which will you choose? The yoke that destroys ...

4734. Hiding in Plain Sight

Matthew 2:13-18, Matthew 2:19-23, Exodus 2:1-10, Exodus 2:11-25

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... eyes to see or allowed their mind to accept. The question for us then must be: Will you open your heart and mind to the Truth in front of your eyes? Or will you still tell yourself that Jesus is not among you? Jesus often said to his disciples, “Soon, what is hidden will be revealed.” “Pay attention to the signs around you.” If there is any advice worth taking from our Lord and Savior it is this: pay attention to the signs around you. For Jesus is in your midst. God’s blessings are all around ...

4735. God Has Not Forgotten You

Jeremiah 29:1-23

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... be not a fossilized image of the past, but God’s petrie dish, ready to grow into something new and unexpected, to chart new waters, to sail new seas. Church of Today, don’t sit around waiting for your ship to come in. But start today building your boat. A disciple ship. A gospel ship. The old Ship of Zion. And get ready for the adventure of your life! God has not forgotten us! God has chosen us for such a time as this. Based on the Story Lectionary Major Text You Will Find Me When You Seek Me with Your ...

4736. You Are What You Wear

Luke 24:1-12, Luke 24:36-49

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... faith. Your clothing reveals how you live out your faith in the world “for real.” In our scripture for today, Jesus tells his newly formed apostles that they should “stay in the city until they have been clothed with power from on high.” The disciples had gone up the mountain with Jesus. They had been commissioned into apostles, and given instructions on what to do. But they could not do any of it without the right clothing. They were told to wait until they could first be prepared –clothed—for ...

4737. The Wild Within

Luke 4:1-13, Mark 1:9-13, Matthew 4:1-11

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... Our wild place is the place in which we best can “speak” with God and hear God “speaking” to us. It is that place of intense revelation in which we come face to face with the voice, the breath, the sound, the presence of God. Whether prophet, apostle, disciple, or minister of the gospel, God is calling to you in your wilderness place, a place of such intimacy and raw encounter that we often fear to enter into it. But if we are to receive God’s healing power, God’s sending power, God’s strength ...

4738. Trust Your Intuition

1 Corinthians 15:1-11, 1 Corinthians 15:12-34, 1 Corinthians 15:35-58

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... we know our partners, our children, our friends, ourselves. And intuition is the primary faculty we use to recognize and connect to God. Today is All Saints Day. Happy All Saints! If there is one commonality that stands out among those disciples in our past who have had enormously life-changing experiences with or of God, it is their sense that they have “connected” with the divine in real, experiential, relational, and personal ways. Religion may be practical. But faith –faith is intuitive knowledge ...

4739. The Unclean Palate

Acts 10:1-8, Acts 10:9-23a, Acts 10:23b-48

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... love in a world that categorizes far too often between ugly and beautiful, clean and unclean. For Jesus all labels were libels. Jesus made no categories in the lives of human beings. He only made categories of the heart. As he often said to his disciples, it isn’t what you put into your mouth and stomach that is the problem with our world; it is what comes from your heart and out of your mouth that matters. Go into the world in Christ’s mission, touching the untouchables, befriending the unfriendables ...

4740. By Invitation Only

Luke 14:1-14, Luke 14:15-24, Proverbs 25:1-28

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... neighbors, and your familiar pew mates, but to reach out and invite those who will most appreciate an invitation to the kind of “feast” of love that only God can provide. Today, I invite you to take up the Jesus challenge. Do differently. Live differently. Be a different kind of disciple, a grateful and loving and serving and sacrificing disciple. In doing this, you will find yourself without even realizing it at the Lord’s right hand. For you will be the Lord’s right hand.

4741. It's Hard to Be an Atheist with Neighbors Like That

Matthew 9:35-38

Sermon

King Duncan

... the professed atheist in Henderson County, Texas associate Christians with condemnation. But Jesus took a different approach. He had compassion for the crowd. That was what Jesus was about. And that’s what you and I are to be about too. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Who’s he talking about? Who are the workers sent out into the harvest field? At the time, it was his ...

4742. Daddy's Love

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

King Duncan

... family and we give God thanks for them. In today’s lesson from Matthew’s Gospel, verses 29-31, Jesus says something quite remarkable about his Daddy. After all, that is what he called his Heavenly Father—Abba, Daddy. Christ is sending his twelve disciples out into the world where he knows they will experience not only opposition but persecution as well. He gives them these instructions: “So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not ...

4743. Dance of Love

John 14:5-14, John 14:1-4

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... been ripped away from their sides, and their small community had felt shattered. No longer would he be with them. They had just been in the midst of grief, in the midst of adjusting to a new kind of normal, when Jesus returned. Jesus’ post resurrection appearances to his disciples required them to think of him in a new way, to readjust to him in ways they were not accustomed. Not only that, he told them, as we see in our scriptures for today, that he was not back to stay, but only here for a brief visit ...

4744. Desperate Times Call For...

Matthew 15:21-28

Sermon

King Duncan

... of the Jewish people. (2) And it’s true that, at first, Jesus seems to spurn her cries for help. Matthew tells us that after she made this desperate request of him, “Jesus did not answer a word.” That surely was not encouraging to this woman. His disciples were no help. They came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” At this Jesus answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” I am surprised this woman was not crushed at Jesus’ response. However ...

4745. Prisoners of Hope

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Sermon

R. Kevin Mohr

... . We don’t have to carry it on our own. Heather, our river rafting guide, was wrong and her mother was right: we need the body of Christ. We need one another. We’re in this thing together. Jesus sends his disciples out, not on their own, but together, two by two. We are to bear one another’s burdens. Where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name, there — and only there — does he promise his freeing and comforting presence. So Jesus wants the yoke — not the cruel joke of an ...

4746. Dealing with T-A-R-E-ists

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Sermon

R. Kevin Mohr

... s not what Jesus says to us in this parable. In fact, the parable turns our conventional wisdom on its head when Jesus has the landowner say in effect, “Don’t just do something, stand there!” Jesus is teaching us the important lesson that we are called as his disciples not just to be against things, but instead to be for the good that God will cause to prosper and grow as we wait with the trusting patience of mercy. It is all about patience: not roll over and play dead patience, not head in the sand ...

4747. The Suffering Servant

Matthew 14:13-21

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... , while honoring the dead in grief, defies these customs, even while defying death itself. Jesus knows that it is not the custom that defines mourning, but the way one uses grief to honor the dead. We see this already in Matthew 8:22 when one of his disciples feels compelled to sit shiva for his father. Jesus instructs him to “leave the dead bury the dead,” and instead to remain on their mission to fulfill God’s plan and save the world of the living. Now in our scripture for today, in Matthew 14, we ...

4748. Measured Salvation

Matthew 20:1-16

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... in our churches and our faith. Think about it. How many of you have been loyal, long-term church members for over 30 or 40 years? I know some of you have. Not perhaps all in this church. But you’ve been raised in the faith and have discipled for many years. You’ve given your means and energy to the church, you’ve held positions on committees and volunteered at events. You’ve read the scriptures over and over for years and have attended classes and Bible studies. You’ve learned how the church is ...

4749. Doorkeepers for Disruption

Mark 13:24-37

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... of our young, the sadness of our churches is winning the battle in this world, then you are missing the signs of God’s disruptive Spirit. You are missing the readiness and the alertness that Jesus tells us is so vital to our role as disciples of Jesus in this world. Be alert, Jesus says. Stay awake, he tells us. Be ready for your mundane and ordinary life to be disrupted by sacred and sacramental things, by extraordinary things. Be ready for your predictable life to be disrupted by unpredictable things ...

4750. Profiles In Joy

John 20:1-18 · Mark 16:1-8

Sermon

Timothy W. Ayers

... an uncontrollable joy. She wanted to grab him, hold him, weep at his feet but at that point Jesus had not gone on to his Father so he cautioned not to hold him. Mary Magdalene was filled with joy. Jesus later appeared to Peter and the other disciples minus Thomas. You can imagine the fear and remorse in Peter’s heart before Christ’s appearance. He had denied him three times. He had sworn he did not know Jesus. He had let Jesus down. When called upon to give testimony that Jesus was the Messiah, Peter ...

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