Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 26 to 50 of 832 results

Drama

Michael L. Sherer

... he takes on the whole church! PROTAGONIST: Must have been exciting being around Luther, I’d think. ANTAGONIST: Nerve-wracking might have been more like it. Why couldn’t he have behaved like most scholars do when they want to argue: send out a dozen or so copies to his colleagues and let them send back thoughtful answers? PROTAGONIST: Well, actually, that’s what he did. Or what he thought he was doing. The front door of the church was the bulletin board in those days. And, after all, he wrote it out in ...

27. He Has Done All Things Well

Mark 7:31-37

Sermon

King Duncan

... , Linus, and Lucy are on their way to school. It's show and tell day. Lucy asks Linus if he has remembered to bring anything for show and tell. "Yes," Linus answers, "I have a couple of things here to show the class." He then unfolds some papers. "These are copies I've been making of some of the Dead Sea scrolls," he says. Holding them up for Charlie Brown and Lucy to inspect he continues."This is a duplicate of the scroll of Isaiah, chapters 3840. It was made from 17 pieces of sheep skin and was found in a ...

28. Victory on a Broken Knee

2 Timothy 4:6-8

Sermon

King Duncan

... publisher he sent his finished manuscript to flatly rejected it, as did the second and the third. Finally he used his savings and published it himself--but only 800 copies were sold the first year. He did not quit though. He continued to seek a publisher. Today there have been more than 40 million copies of Dr. Taylor’s work sold. Some of you own a copy. It’s known as The Living Bible. Few things in life of real worth come easily. No pain, no gain. St. Paul understood that. He gave his all and today ...

29. The Present

Revelation 22:1-6

Sermon

King Duncan

... MUST BE MADE. Danny Cox in his book Seize the Day tells about a series of advertisements that Boeing Aircraft Corporation came out with several years ago. The advertisements featured a beautiful blue sky with the caption, “Tomorrow you can be anywhere." Below the photograph the copy continued: “All of us have dreams of going off someday to a special someplace, to a lonely beach, to an historic city, back home." Another ad featured a couple walking along a white, sandy beach with the surf rolling in. The ...

30. A Sourdough Sprirituality

Matthew 13:31-35

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... because his starter was unique. As the story goes (which might be an urban myth) he used to lock the starter in a safe each night to protect it – because all you needed to do to copy the taste of his bread was to get some of his starter. The other ingredients you could figure out. What you couldn't do is copy the exact makeup of his starter. Just as Al on Orcas Island, and Sour Dough Jack in the Klondike, have treasured their starters, so did the simple households and small rural villages of first-century ...

31. Why Believe the Bible?

John 17:17

Sermon

James Merritt

... about Plato. They read about Homer and his story of the Iliad. No one questions any of those historical figures. Have you ever thought about how many copies or manuscripts we have of these historical figures and how close they are to one another. Have you ever thought about what the time span is between the copies that we do have and the original copies that must have been written? Let me just give you the manuscript evidence for the ancient writings related to these 3 historical figures I just gave you ...

32. Altar Your Witness

Matthew 5:13-16

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

... from asbestos poisoning. Brendan Fraser portrays Montgomery 'Monty' Kessler, who is a student at Harvard who is destined to graduate "with honors." When Monty's computer crashes, he's left with only a single paper copy of his thesis. Scared to death of losing his only copy, he immediately rushes to the library in order to make a copy of it, only to slip on the ice and drop it down a grate. Searching the basement of the building, he discovers that it has been found by Simon, a homeless squatter, living in ...

33. When You Have To Face Your Own Personal Goliath

1 Samuel 17:1-58

Sermon

James W. Moore

... their manner of speaking when they went into the pulpit. They would try to speak in some pious, holy-sounding tone… and they would sound so un-real, so fake, so counterfeit. It’s good counsel for preachers and indeed for everybody… Don’t be copy cats and Don’t Be Counterfeit… Be Yourself! My brother, Bob Moore, who is a minister in Tennessee, likes to tell a story about the great boxer of another generation named Billy Conn. He was the light heavy-weight champion of the world. In 1941, Billy ...

34. Rethink the Market

Illustration

... , there are no markets for products only markets for what products can do. In contemporary industry, the Xerox Corp. shows this principle in action. Xerox successfully pioneered the copy-machine industry by leasing copiers at a "per copy" price rather than selling machines outright. They correctly saw the market was for copies, not machines. Four Implications: We must constantly evaluate customer needs; We must design products to meet specific needs; We must redesign products as needs change; We must delete ...

35. Competitive Kids

Mark 10:35-45

Illustration

Erskine White

... friends on the way to school one morning. It is "show and tell day," and Lucy is asking Linus if he remembered to bring anything for the class to see. "Yes, I did," says Linus, as he unfolds some papers. "These are copies I drew of the Dead Sea Scrolls," holding them up for the others to see. "This is a copy of the scroll of Isaiah, chapters 38-40. It was made from 17 pieces of sheepskin and was found in a cave by a Bedouin shepherd boy." Pulling out another piece of paper, Linus says, "Here I've made a ...

36. Follow the Directions

Psalm 119:9, 18, 89

Sermon

James Merritt

... to be wise and effective rulers, was this prescription: “When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the ... 19, NIV) If anybody needs to hear from God it is the ruler of a people. God said to His kings, “I want you to keep a copy of My Word right by your throne. I want you to read it every single day.” How many of us who claim to believe the Bible “from ...

37. Athaliah and Joash

2 Chron 22:10–23:21

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

... of the covenant” actually refers to two different concepts in Hebrew, the vow of consecration and the witness or testimony. The Hebrew word for witness (?edut) probably refers to the Ten Commandments, perhaps in a double sense: “The law that the king was to copy and read daily according to Deut 17:18–20” (McKenzie, 1–2 Chronicles, p. 311). With the exclamation “Long live the king!” the reader realizes that the house of David has been saved from extinction. This is not only a new beginning of ...

38. False Teachers and Their Destruction

2 Peter 2:1-22

Understanding Series

Norman Hillyer

... . Balaam was a hireling prophet who commercialized his gift (Num. 22–24). So, too, these false prophets practice their profession for what they can get out of it. It is possible that they are related to the heretics of Rev. 2:14, since both groups are described as copying Balaam. Balaam figures prominently as a biblical warning: Deut. 23:4–5; Josh. 13:22; 24:9–10; Neh. 13:1–2; Mic. 6:5; Jude 11; Rev. 2:14. Son of Beor. Some MSS read “son of Bosor.” If Bosor is original, Peter may be alluding to ...

39. The Sin and Doom of Godless Men

Jude 1:1-16

Understanding Series

Norman Hillyer

... set forth, exposed to public gaze. The Greek verb is used of food laid out on the table ready for guests, or (by contrast) of a corpse laid out before mourners, prior to burial. Example is deigma, sample, pattern, though in this context, something certainly not to be copied. Eternal fire: Matt. 5:22; 13:42, 50; 18:8; 25:41; Rev. 20:14–15. “And Michael and Gabriel and Raphael and Phanuel [four of the seven archangels, according to 1 Enoch 20:1–7; Tobit 12:15] shall take hold of them on the great day ...

40. Oracles of Restoration

Ezekiel 34:1-31, Ezekiel 35:1-15, Ezekiel 36:1-38, Ezekiel 37:1-14, Ezekiel 37:15-28

Understanding Series

Steven Tuell

... Ezekiel 25–48, p. 333) we should read “make your nation childless” here in v. 15 as well. However, the LXX lacks the final phrase in v. 15, suggesting that its presence in the MT is an error. It is likely that a scribe has mistakenly copied this phrase from the also mistaken text of the preceding verse (Zimmerli, Ezekiel 2, p. 231; Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37, p. 722). It is best, then, to delete it. 36:23b–38 These verses were probably composed to make the connection between sanctifying the Lord’s ...

41. “Lord, I Love the House Where You Live”

Psalm 26:1-12

Teach the Text

C. Hassell Bullock

... autobiography. All of us are writing our autobiography. We may never put it down on paper, and it may never be published; however, we are writing it, and somebody is reading it. A few years ago, an elderly woman came through our offices at Wheaton College selling copies of her autobiography. So far as I know, she was not famous, nor had she written anything else that would make one want to read this volume. She was just a lady who wanted others to know about her life. This was her maiden composition. I have ...

42. God’s Wrath against Mankind

Romans 1:18-32

One Volume

Gary M. Burge

... he knew of the Creator, he was reduced to hiding, to shame, to lame excuses, and to an existence outside the glorious presence of God. (4) Human beings exchanged the glory of God for the copy of an “image” (1:23a). Instead of acknowledging God in worship and actions, they preferred the copy of a copy, an image twice removed, a distortion even of the proper form of the creatures that pagan idols depict. While Paul thinks here primarily of the pagans who worship idol images, his language also echoes the ...

43. The High Priest of a New Covenant

Hebrews 8:1-13

One Volume

Gary M. Burge

... it involves the offering of sacrifice (Heb. 5:1)—that of himself, not that of the law (7:27; 9:14). The recipients of the letter are attracted to the rites of the temple, but this earthly round of ritual and its setting are but a copy of the real, heavenly sacrifice, which Christ offered once and for all and on the basis of which he now intercedes for his people. The detailed instruction God gave to Moses concerning the construction of the tabernacle (Exodus 25–40) demonstrates that the tabernacle and ...

44. An Uppity Woman

Matthew 15:21-28

Sermon

Kristin Borsgard Wee

... an uncomfortable bed in the state of Sonora in Mexico got up to turn over the mattress. Underneath he found a copy of the Catholic Worker. A miner once found a copy five miles underground in an old mine under the Atlantic Ocean off Nova Scotia. A seminarian in Rome sent out ... his shoes to have new soles put on them. They came back to him wrapped in a copy of the Catholic Worker. Dorothy Day was a determined woman who owned nothing herself, choosing to live with the poverty of the ...

45. Fish Tales

Luke 24:36b-48

Sermon

John Jamison

... advantage that many writers do not have. Someone had already taken a shot at writing the story he had to write, trying to sell the same idea he had to sell. He actually had Mark’s copy of the story there on the desk with him, and he copied pieces from it to help with his own version of the story. At that time, copying from another writer was not seen as a bad thing but was a way to use the earlier writer’s thoughts to help make your own point. Mark had written his version for a very different audience ...

46. What's Your Superpower?

Luke 24:36-49, Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... ’s churches are not used to waiting. They are not accustomed to relying on supernatural power in order to do the things they want to do. Today’s churches too often rely merely on what they perceive as their own human strengths, or worse try to copy the ministries of others, in order to do God’s mission in the world. And more than not, God’s mission is not at all what happens. For when churches rely on their own “superpowers,” they end up merely doing ineffective ministry, fraught with all-too ...

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

Pablo Picasso

48. Get Ready

Mark 13:24-37

Sermon

King Duncan & Angela Akers

... Nobel Prize-winning scientist said, “I don’t know.” “But even so,” writes Fred Craddock, “you never expect Jesus to say, ‘I don’t know.’” Then Craddock says, “It’s disappointing. In fact, when the scribes sat and copied the scriptures you know, hand by hand, word by word, faithfully copying it exactly as it was—and they got to Matthew 24:36, when they came to the expression, “Jesus said, ‘1 don’t know,’ “they couldn’t write it, so they left it out. And we still have ...

49. Anybody Listening?

Mark 6:1-6

Sermon

William G. Carter

... July 8, 1741, Jonathan Edwards preached a notorious sermon about the wrath of God. The title says it all: "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Word spread about the sermon. Printed copies were widely distributed. When some people read it, they were glad they skipped worship that day. Isaac Watts, the hymn writer, was one of them. After he read a copy of the sermon, Watts scribbled a note in the margin. "A most terrible sermon, which should have had a word of Gospel at the end of it."(2) Watts had a point ...

50. How To Treat Your Enemies

2 Samuel 18:1-18

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... find revenge so sweet! An author named James Clark, while visiting a coastal bookstore, found six copies of a 900-page boring historical novel on a bargain book table. The book was written by some other author who also happened to be named James Clark. So, he bought ... all six copies and mailed them to six of his enemies with the note enclosed, "I hope you enjoy this and won't mind the slight ...

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