Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 4751 to 4775 of 4938 results

4751. Understanding Bible Prophecy

Deuteronomy 18:14-22

Sermon

David E. Leininger

One of my parishioners once wrote me asking for some help in understanding the confusing imagery in the book of Daniel. He wrote, "Prophecies and the interpretation of prophecies. Could they be just a little more vague? Still, they are fascinating...." Indeed, they are, and for some, they have become immensely profitable as well. A cottage industry has grown up on Christian television presenting prophecy "experts" who are ready to interpret ambiguous passages both on the air, sustained by the financial ...

4752. Do You Love Me?

John 14:15-31

Sermon

Kristin Borsgard Wee

Nikos Kazantzakis gives us a disturbing and beautiful story in his book, The Last Temptation of Christ. There is an unforgettable scene between Jesus and John. They are sitting high above the Jordan in the hollow of a rock, where they have been arguing all night long about what to do with the world. John's face is hard and decisive. From time to time his arms go up and down as though he were chopping something apart. Jesus' face, in contrast, is hesitant and tame. His eyes are full of compassion. "Isn't ...

4753. Joy Is for Leaping

Song of Songs 2:8-13

Sermon

Donna Schaper

This ode to spring and to love is almost always used at Passover. It is part of the most ancient of Passover liturgy. The language dances, like the lover, over the mountains. Imagine a human leaping upon mountains. Imagine a human like a gazelle or a young stag. I saw two men just yesterday on Broadway. I was about to pass out from the heat — they were racing each other to the hot dog stand. I couldn't decide if I was happy or not and finally decided to choose happiness. What joy to see young men leaping ...

4754. What Does It Mean to Be Blessed?

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

King Duncan

“‘I’m so blessed.’ You hear it more and more these days,” notes Pastor Richard Allen. “Most noticeably . . . from famous people, and often in acceptance speeches. Clutching a golden statue they say, ‘I’m so blessed to be here today’ . . . My issue,” continues Allen, “with such usage is not that it is flippant, or even untrue. Actors and politicians can be deeply sincere about feeling blessed. My issue with such usage is that it is so easy. It requires little effort, in a moment of victory, to know oneself ...

4755. No Cleansing, No Refreshment

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Do you realize how much you pay to get “roughed up?” You heard me right. You even pay big bucks to get roughed up on a daily basis. To be sure, you don’t think about this activity as getting “roughed up.” You probably think of it as your morning shower or your evening bath. But consider what you do as you go about your daily cleansing rituals. Whether you use a washcloth, a loofah, or one of those “buff-puff” thingies, as you rub and scrub in the bathtub or shower you are roughing up and sloughing off dead ...

4756. Where Would You Go to Meet Jesus?

Luke 15:1-10

Sermon

I remember reading in a church development book some time ago of the experiences of a church planter who spent a whole lot of his time in bars. Don't get me wrong. He didn't even drink! What this church planter decided right off the bat was that he would not seek out ready-made Christians (although they were welcome) but that he would go after the lost. He would go after the people that most churches avoided. This man, despite the grumbling of the Pharisees and scribes, welcomed sinners and ate with them. ...

4757. The Call of God

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Sermon

David E. Leininger

If you were to ask a group of people to take pencil and paper and sketch a portrait of an Old Testament prophet, many of them would come up with remarkably similar visions: an old gentleman of fierce demeanor with a long, unkempt, grey beard, dressed in flowing robes of coarse material, and perhaps with a gnarled wooden staff in his hand. It would probably look like Charlton Heston playing Moses in The Ten Commandments. That would not be a bad picture. It would be fairly representative, but only "fairly" ...

4758. They Are Biting

Luke 5:1-11

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Two guys go on a fishing trip. They rent all the equipment: the reels, the rods, the wading suits, the rowboat, the car, and even a cabin in the woods. They spend a fortune. The first day they go fishing they don't catch a thing. The same thing happens on the second day and on the third day. It goes on like this until finally, on the last day of their vacation, one of the men finally catches a fish. As they drive home, they are both really depressed. One turns to the other and says, "Do you realize that ...

4759. Year-Round Christmas

1 Kings 17:1-24

Sermon

David E. Leininger

"When elephants fight, the grass suffers." So goes an old African proverb.[1] The elephants in question here, Yahweh and Baal — gods competing for a nation's allegiance with the original weapons of mass destruction. Drought and disaster, the grass, this widow and her son, were caught in this cosmic struggle between fertility and famine. We meet one of faith's greatest heroes as this story begins. With Elijah there is no question whose side he is on; his name means Yahweh is my God. He gets no introduction ...

4760. Proper 12

Genesis 18:20-32, Psalm 85:1-13; 138:1-8, Hosea 1:2-10, Luke 11:1-13, Colossians 2:6-19

Bulletin Aid

Julia Ross Strope

Call To Worship Leader: It’s a good morning! Are you awake and breathing deeply? Are you thankful, angry, secure, defeated? Are you ready to sing? People: Ah, yes. We are thankful for life and we are seeking security and happiness. Leader: We have called to God many times and the Holy One has sustained us and restored us to hopefulness. People: With music and dance, with words and silence, we thank God for divine goodness among us! Prayer Of Thanksgiving Energy of the Universe — dawn reminded us that you ...

4761. An Uncomplicated Gospel

Galatians 1:1-10

Sermon

April Yamasaki

Dear John, I have decided that I can no longer see you. Our relationship has ended, and I wish you well in your future. Good-bye, Jane Whether you've ever written or received a "Dear John" or "Dear Jane" letter, the basic outline and intent is clear. It begins with a basic greeting — not "Dear Johnny" or "Sweetheart" or some other form of endearment, but simply "Dear John." There is a very brief and to-the-point body of the letter that makes it clear the relationship is over. Then the letter writer signs ...

4762. Luke 3:15-17; 21-22

Luke 3:1-20

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

When having to deliver bad news to someone have you ever invoked the disclaimer, “Don’t shoot the messenger?” Identifying the messenger with the message can be hazardous for the message bearer. But in today’s gospel text John the Baptist takes pains to disassociate himself, his status as messenger, from the message he is proclaiming. He does this, not in order to avoid the crowd’s displeasure, but in order to avoid the people’s elevation of himself to a higher status, to a greater authority, than he ...

4763. Credible Witnesses

2 Peter 1:12-21

Sermon

Timothy J. Smith

Each one of us can remember those special transforming moments in our lives. We remember and can recall with great detail a life-changing experience. We describe such a time as once in a lifetime experience. Some of us might remember meeting an important person, or a celebrity, and gladly retell the story to anyone who will listen. We may recall a time when our faith came alive, when we met Jesus through the love of a Sunday school teacher, a friend, or a pastor. Those are the experiences we carry with us ...

4764. God Cares

Ezekiel 34:1-31

Sermon

Argile Smith

Imagine yourself in a remote location, separated from familiar faces and places. The location could be a city teeming with people, but nobody there knows you or cares to know you. Or maybe it’s a lonesome wasteland in which you are separated from another human being by scores of miles. The distance — either geographical or relational — creates an unforgiving barrier between you and interaction with others. Not a pretty picture so far. Lonely. Isolated. Separated. Now imagine that you have been placed in ...

4765. He Ascended Into Heaven

Luke 24:44-53

Sermon

David O. Bales

After John Glenn was the first American astronaut to orbit the earth, he met with the Soviet astronaut Titov. The Russian asked him sarcastically if he had somehow met God in his spaceflight. Glenn responded that he believed in a God that you couldn’t see from the window of a space capsule. And so John Glenn spoke for modern Christians, because when you consider what Christians have believed about God for 2,000 years, the idea that you’d go up in the air and not see God is a modern idea indeed. In the ...

4766. When Fishermen Don't Fish

Matthew 4:18-22

Sermon

King Duncan

In his book In the Eye of the Storm, Max Lucado tells about something that happened to him while he was in high school. Every year, he and his family used to go fishing during spring break. But one year, his brother and his mom couldn’t go, so his dad let him invite a friend. Max and his Dad looked forward to this vacation with great anticipation. They pictured the sun shining down on them as they sat in the boat in the middle of the lake . . . the yank of the rod and the spin of the reel as they wrestled ...

4767. The Woman at the Well

John 4:1-26

Sermon

King Duncan

A couple of years ago, Jim Parsons on his blog, “adventures in revland,” told about a most unusual battle that was going on in Warsaw, Ohio between New Beginnings Ministries Church and the Foxhole Club, which is a club that provides adult entertainment featuring women gifted in a certain form of dance. It seems for years the church has protested the club. Church members had stood outside it with bullhorns, banners and cameras to take pictures of people’s license plates as they arrived at the club. The club ...

4768. Traveling Tables

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

On average, you and I gained six pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. That is just the “average.” Some of us gained a lot more. No wonder the past few weeks every other commercial on TV or banner-ad online is about some kind of weight loss program. We are a nation collectively cringing about our six weeks of binging and feasting. I bring you good tidings of great joy: don’t feel guilty about it. Here’s an “indulgence” for your indulging. Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s we have more face to face ...

4769. Prescription on a Pole

John 3:1-21

Sermon

David J. Kalas

We have so many aisles of medications in our country today that home remedies may be a vanishing art. So many over-the-counter products boast that they can cure what ails us, not to mention the almost infinite number of prescription medicines that our doctors may commend to us for our good. An older generation, however, remembers the homemade treatments and concoctions that were handed down from Grandma. It was hard to trace the science behind such traditional home remedies, but they had the credibility ...

4770. Have You Had Your Caffeine Today?

Acts 2:1-13

Sermon

King Duncan

Pastor Scott Hippler tells about a day when he was about 7 years old. His grandmother had taken him and his cousin to the grocery store. On the way, his grandmother stopped at another store for a few minutes. Young Scott and his cousin stayed in the car. Scott Hippler blames his grandmother for what happened next. She was gone longer that she had said she would be. Back then, he remembers, they put prizes in laundry detergent boxes as an incentive for people to buy those detergents. His grandmother always ...

4771. Doing Good to All

Galatians 6:1-10

Understanding Series

L. Ann Jervis

6:1 Addressing his readers as brothers, Paul turns to a fuller description of how a community living by the Spirit should behave. He first says that if someone is caught in a sin those who are spiritual should restore him gently. In contrast to 5:21, where Paul warned that those who do sinful acts would not inherit the kingdom of God, here Paul addresses the practical situation of a believer doing wrong. This circumstance does not call for the believer to be excommunicated or handed over to Satan (cf. 1 ...

4772. Thanksgiving and Prayer

Ephesians 1:15-23

Understanding Series

Arthur G. Patzia

Prayer for Divine Enlightenment From the context of 1:15–2:10 it appears that these verses form the next major section of Ephesians. The apostle has just finished recalling the spiritual blessings that God, through Christ, has bestowed upon all believers. From this universal truth, he turns to something more specific: His thoughts move from doxology to prayer; he reminds his readers that he thanks God for them (vv. 15, 16) and that he prays specifically that they will have the necessary wisdom to ...

4773. The High Priest of a New Covenant

Hebrews 8:1-13

Understanding Series

Donald A. Hagner

The True High Priest and His Ministry In this passage the author sums up his argument thus far but also brings it to a new stage. He continues to expound the definitive character of Christ’s work, now drawing the contrast in a new and fascinating manner by using the language of shadow and reality. 8:1 The point of the argument centers on the actual reality and sufficiency of our high priest. He has been able definitively to accomplish what the levitical priesthood pointed toward in anticipation. He now has ...

4774. The Song of Deborah

Judges 5:1-31

Understanding Series

Cheryl A. Brown

Deborah' Song: The Song of Deborah is a rare treasure in the OT, an ancient epic poem embedded in a narrative. While it shares this nearly unique character with a handful of other such texts (Exod. 15:1–18; Deut. 32:1–43; Isa. 38:10–20; Jonah 2:2–9), there is wide agreement that it is the oldest literary witness to early Israelite life and faith. Some scholars believe that it, or part of it, is contemporaneous with the events themselves, while others suggest that it was composed within a generation of the ...

4775. David Numbers the Fighting Men

1 Chronicles 21:1-22:1

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

A Place for the Temple: We have seen thus far that the ark of the covenant was brought to Jerusalem (1 Chron. 13–16); that Yahweh denied David’s request to build a “house” for him but made him an eternal promise that he, Yahweh, would build a “house” for David (1 Chron. 17); and that Yahweh subjugated the neighboring nations to David’s rule through a series of wars (1 Chron. 18–20). Through all these narratives two important theological themes emerge: (1) the initiative to establish All-Israel as well as ...

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