Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 4726 to 4750 of 4972 results

4726. The Hard Sell

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Sermon

Donald Charles Lacy

... by an attitude of thinking of ourselves too highly. To be separate and distinct as holy people somehow gets translated into “I am better than you are.” The devil is much at work (and play) here! His twists and turns seem never to stop, as he persistently seeks to trick us into becoming more abomination than blessing. We are never truly big enough within ourselves to handle these fabrications and machinations. The Holy Spirit must be present. It is always wise to remember that wherever the greatest ...

4727. Exuberant and Full of Joy

Mark 10:1-12

Illustration

Donald B. Strobe

... clean air is all very nice, but it must be balanced against jobs. Adults know that helping others is neat, but it may well take away their motivation to find a job. Adults know that peace is swell, but we can't ever trust our enemies to ever stop preparing for war." Goodman concludes that this so-called realism of adults may be the true "junk food" of our time. "We instill ideals in our children, resent it when our children challenge us for not living up to them, and then feel reassured when our kids give ...

4728. Knowing but Not Really Understanding

Mark 10:17-31

Illustration

A shepherd was tending his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new Jeep Cherokee appeared out of a dust cloud, advanced toward him and stopped. The driver, a 20 something fellow wearing a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and a YSL tie, leaned out of the window and asked the shepherd, "If I can tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?" The shepherd looked ...

4729. Service beyond Wealth

Luke 17:11-19

Illustration

Donald Deffner

A well-dressed European woman was on safari in Africa. The group stopped briefly at a hospital for lepers. The heat was intense, the flies buzzing. She noticed a nurse bending down in the dirt, tending to the pus-filled sores of a leper. With disdain the woman remarked, "Why, I wouldn't do that for all the money in the world!" The nurse quietly replied, "Neither would I."

4730. Life Together

Mark 10:35-45

Illustration

William G. Carter

... agreed. As he ran out the door, car keys in hand, he grabbed a book to read along the way. It was a book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer called Life Together. Foster picked up his friend, and the errands did not go well. There were plenty of stops and starts, traffic was bad, and precious time kept ticking away. Finally they pulled into a parking lot, the friend got out, and Richard stayed behind with his book. He opened it to the bookmark, and read these words: "The second service that one should perform ...

4731. The Light of Christ

Isaiah 9:2-7

Sermon

Mary S. Lautensleger

... Job 19:25), and "Hallelujah." By this time Handel was rejuvenated. His creative juices had once again begun to flow. Magnificent melodies and harmonization flowed freely into his head and then onto his manuscript. He worked nonstop day after day, hardly even stopping to eat or sleep. He was overcome by the power of the scriptures, and afire with unquenchable energy. Handel finished his greatest oratorio, Messiah, in only 24 days, and then collapsed into his bed for a lengthy and well-deserved rest. Handel ...

4732. Ashes and Bugs

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

... words speak to all people. Joel reminds the people that there's a better offering than the one they brought to the temple. Fasting, lamentation, mourning — repentance. Especially the latter. The problems of the people are real. Insects bring economic ruin. Try to stop them. Sometimes you simply can't. The people see them like an army of the Lord bringing judgment for past sins. Farming is tough enough in the best of times, but when something like this happens, all of society might fall apart. Joel makes ...

4733. Gateway to Grace

Joshua 5:9-12

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

... you don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than your friend. What do bears have to do with Joshua? After all, this day's text seems to be about a river crossing, the building of a monument, and the cessation of heavenly welfare as the manna stops falling. But there is a connection. So I want to jump ahead to the next few verses, before coming back to our starting point. Open your Bibles to Joshua 5:13-16. Forty years of wandering are over for Joshua. Now God's promises are about to be fulfilled ...

4734. Priceless

Isaiah 52:13--53:12

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

... clearly only a few blocks away. It was a tremendous fire, lighting up the entire sky. They rushed up one street and down another until they came to the river, and realized the fire had to be on the other side of the river. They finally had to stop and let the fire burn. Only later did someone explain to them that the fire they observed was 93 million miles away, and it was the sun shining through the dust still settling from the volcano three months before. Nevertheless, the fire company was content it had ...

4735. The Easter Era

Acts 10:34-43

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

... Easter Day, Peter and the beloved disciple had to be able to run into the tomb, an unclean place, in order to understand at last that Jesus is risen. It is not something they can discover by standing at a safe distance. You may run and come to a stop like Peter, or sprint past like John, you may puzzle over it like one, or get it immediately like the other, but the witnesses who have seen the light include all of these. There is not one safe, comfortable, ordinary category into which we can squeeze all the ...

4736. God's Call for All

Acts 9:35-43

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

... mention of oils for anointing or other things that might indicate wealth. Her real wealth lay in the high regard in which she was held by others. And when Tabitha was healed she returned to her work, not because she had to, but because there was no way to stop her! Tabitha played an important part in her church. How do you think you will be viewed when it is your turn to be eulogized? How would you like to be remembered? How do we practice mutual aid among ourselves? Are we truly blest by the ties that bind ...

4737. What Church Looks Like

Acts 16:9-15

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

... Greek text makes it clear that these women did not gather together by accident. They gathered together in a structured manner to worship. The women had active church lives, but their church could never meet under the strictures of Judaism. There was nothing to stop them from becoming Christians, however. They did not need to be attached to a male to join. Lydia and her household, including servants, were baptized, and as the head of a house, she probably became the worship leader for the house church. This ...

4738. The Undoing of Babel

Acts 2:1-21

Sermon

Stan Purdum

... had memorized a few Spanish phrases that enabled us to ask where the bathrooms were, to say, "Thank you," and to convey that we didn't speak the language. We ambled along without too much problem. Then one day, spotting a beautiful and mostly deserted beach, we decided to stop and swim. After we were there a few minutes, we noticed a man and a boy some distance out in the water, and they seemed to be trying to push a raft of some sort toward the beach. They appeared to be having some difficulty, so I waded ...

4739. When Nothing More Can Be Done

Amos 8:1-12

Sermon

Stan Purdum

... her in the hospital a couple of days earlier, she had not yet received the final report from the doctor, but she'd hoped that he'd have some new therapy or medicine to relieve her of her deepening weakness. So on the first day she was back home, I stopped by her house to find out what she'd learned. I found her there alone. Her husband was out on an errand. After she invited me in, I asked what her doctor had said. When she answered me, there was the sound of astonishment in her voice. What she said ...

4740. Preaching God's Reformation

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Sermon

John Wayne Clarke

... of personal religion, moral judgment, and spiritual understanding never before attained by any other prophet. If Zephaniah and Nahum do not always inspire us with lofty idealism and rich spirituality, and if Habakkuk does not reach a solution of his problem but stops with a great, unproven assertion of faith, still the seventh century B.C.E. is redeemed by the exalted preaching of Jeremiah. To him, as to no other figure of the Hebrew Scripture, we owe the fundamental concepts of personal religion. He ...

4741. Thanks for Receiving Thanksgiving

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Sermon

John Wayne Clarke

... think about their good heath, or financial well being, or clothes on their backs, and a roof over their head as firstfruits. Indeed, it could be said that some folks actually think they are owed those things from God, simply because — well, because! When we stop and prayerfully recognize that everything we have in life, those things we have been delivered from, and those things we put into our bank account come from God, one of two results come forward. We either feel like we are actually the reason for ...

4742. Good News about Faith

Mark 10:46-52

Sermon

King Duncan

... making a fool out of himself, but Bartimaeus wouldn’t be quiet. He shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Then something quite remarkable happened. It’s not remarkable to us, but it was to Bartimaeus’ friends. Jesus stopped and said, “Call him,” referring to Bartimaeus. So those with Jesus called to Bartimaeus, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” What follows next is beautiful. Mark tells us that “throwing his cloak aside, [Bartimaeus] jumped to his feet and ...

4743. I Heard My Brother Crying

Mark 10:46-52

Illustration

James W. Moore

... ?" I love Terri's answer. She said, "I wasn't thinking about anything. I just heard my little brother crying." Let me ask you something? How long has it been? How long has it been since you heard your brother or sister crying? How long has it been since you stopped and did something about it?

4744. In the Waiting Room

Luke 21:5-38

Sermon

King Duncan

... , came to her rescue. In her book she tells the time-honored story of a little girl who was lost. This girl ran up and down the streets of the big town where her family lived, but she couldn’t find a single landmark. She was frightened. Finally a policeman stopped to help her. He put her in the passenger seat of his car, and they drove around until she finally saw her church. She pointed it out to the policeman, and then she told him firmly, “You can let me out now. This is my church, and I can always ...

4745. A Voice in the Wilderness

Luke 3:1-20

Sermon

King Duncan

... people. People needed to prepare their hearts and their lives to receive the Messiah through repentance, for his was not a kingdom of the flesh, but of the spirit. Patricia Greenlee tells a story about her son who is a West Virginia state trooper. Once he stopped a woman for going 15 miles an hour over the speed limit. After he handed her a ticket, she asked him, “Don’t you give out warnings?” “Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “They’re all up and down the road. They say, ‘Speed Limit 55.’” (4 ...

4746. Small Towns

Luke 2:1-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... the story of the television reporter who was interviewing people on the streets of Tokyo at Christmas time. Much as in America, Christmas shopping is a big commercial enterprise in Japan, even though Christians are a tiny minority in that land. The interviewer stopped one young Japanese woman on the sidewalk and asked her, “What is the meaning of Christmas?” Laughing, the young woman responded, “I don’t know. Is that the day Jesus died?” Well, maybe it is. We have to maintain a constant vigil to ...

4747. Simeon and Anna: The Quiet of the Country

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

In the movie, “A Patch of Blue”, the blind girl asks her grandfather, “Old Paw, what’s green like?” The irritated man answers: “Green is green, stupid. Now stop asking questions.” There follows a poignant scene in which the young girl claws the grass with her hands and gently rubs a leaf against her cheek, trying to experience the reality of “greenness”. That is a parable of the human situation. We want to experience reality. We try to dissect ...

4748. Good News for Widows

Mark 12:41-44

Sermon

King Duncan

... that is what she did,” says Taylor, “scrubbing the dark clothes on a washboard and boiling the whites in a big black pot in her backyard before hanging them all out on the line to dry. Her day started when the sun came up and stopped when it went down.” But then, when she was eighty‑seven, Osceola McCarty did something that caught the imagination of the people of Hattiesburg. She gave $150,000 her life savings to the University of Southern Mississippi for black scholarships. “Now reporters and ...

4749. Give, Give, Give

Mark 12:41-44

Illustration

... fully human. Let me ask you this. If there was a dog walking down the street, healthy coat, obviously in good shape, and he had a bone in his mouth, and that dog passed a flee bitten mutt that was near starvation, do you think that the healthy dog would stop and drop his bone in front of the sick dog? Oh, no. He would clinch his bone that much tighter in his teeth as he passed by. That is the nature of animals. Only man knows how to be a giver. God is a giver. He gave us life itself ...

4750. The Greatest News Of All

Luke 2:1-7

Drama

Lois Anne DeLong

... holding a “door” [cardboard attached to a stick so it can be flipped open and closed] enters from right. Reporter goes up to door and knocks. Maid opens door partway.) Maid: I’m sorry, sir. We have no rooms. (Maid starts to shut the door. Reporter stops it with his hand.) Ace: Why would I want to stay in this crazy house, with shepherds talking nonsense? No, I’m looking for this baby everyone’s talking about. Maid: Baby? I don’t know anything about a baby. Let me ask someone. (calls off left ...

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