Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 26 to 50 of 1138 results

Matthew 5:17-20, Matthew 5:13-16

Sermon Aid

William E. Keeney

... the proper balance in its body. Salt is so valuable that in some societies it has been used as a medium of exchange, a substitute for money. In the scripture, light is often used as a symbol for the existence of God. It is frequently used in a variety of ways throughout the Bible. In some cultures the sun was worshiped as a source of life and became a symbol for deity. Salt and light are universal symbols and so these two brief statements in the Sermon on the Mount have a powerful effect. While Jesus ...

27. Standing Firm

Isaiah 50:1-11

Sermon

E. Carver McGriff

... mixed motives, some of them not so worthy. In Isaiah's case, he seems sincerely to have been in the lonely position of advocating faith in and loyalty to what we would agree is the one true God, against a widespread ancient belief in idols and a variety of gods. The retrospect of history enables us to see that Isaiah was right. In our own situations, however, that perspective is not yet available. It's important to speak and act with courage, yes, but also with love. What light does the New Testament show ...

28. Marriage: Endearing And Enduring

Psalm 128:1-6

Sermon

Charles R. Leary

... just the way it is: you have to be able to trust each other to go into his or her own private practice room, or boxing ring, for that is where each of you will continually be enriched and enabled to bring back to the center ring, some freshness, some variety, and some real unearned charm. We don't want to see you cloning each other. If there is ever an inkling of a problem, consider it an SOS signal. Don't let an SOS threaten a vital relationship. The moment an SOS signal appears, begin a process of triage ...

29. Creative Preaching

Sermon

Michael Rogness

... chapter suggests using a different kind of sermon now and then. New Forms There is no one correct style of preaching. The gospel is constant, but styles and forms can change. Over the years no other group in history has used more variety in communication than Christian preachers. The Christian church has been in the forefront of new communication forms -- from the sermons and letters of Paul, the four gospels, the dauntless missionary monks of medieval Europe, the mystery dramas performing Bible stories all ...

30. Dispelling Ministry Illusions

Jeremiah 1:1-19

Sermon

Ron Lavin

... was gifted to go for God. In the same manner, God gives gifts to all his people. Paul puts it this way: Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be uninformed.... There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good... Now you are the body of Christ and individually ...

31. Throw Your Heart at the Sky

John 21:1-14

Sermon

Carl Jech

... association of Easter with the symbolism of the dawn reminds us that the gradual unfolding of resurrection faith is an equally valid component of the equation. The arising of the real Jesus Christ has indeed already happened. But it also continues to happen in a variety of ways. The meaning of the resurrection of Jesus is by no means diminished when we make honest efforts to interpret the New Testament correctly and when we resist the temptation to read into it only what we wish to see there. To ask "Will ...

32. More Real Than Food

John 6:25-59

Sermon

Carl Jech

... the cup is simply referred to as "the fruit of the vine." In the Gospel of John there is no reference to Holy Communion at the Last Supper, but there is instead the account of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet and a long discourse on a variety of topics, ending with the observation in John 16:25 that Jesus had been teaching everything in metaphors, in figures of speech. There is, however, clear imagery of drinking the blood of Jesus in Matthew and Marks’ accounts of the upper room: "Drink of it all ...

33. The Importance of Unity

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

Sermon

Hubert Beck

... in Christ. Is not this, after all, a long way of saying what in shorthand terms we always say when characterizing life in Christ: Live with love for one another. The word "love" is so abused in so many ways and is so used in such a wide variety of circumstances that sometimes it almost gets to be unmanageable and nonunderstandable. But in its lowest common denominator it is here spoken of as a way of holding great diversity together in a strong bond of unity devoted to the glory of God and the welfare of ...

34. Winners, Losers and the Gospel

Mt 16:25

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... day. We learn who we are by opening the front door of our house or apartment and going forth to work and play and cry and laugh with other people. We learn who we are by experiencing ourselves in a myriad of contexts - in a variety of places with a variety of people pursuing a variety of activities. A brick layer learns what it means to be a brick layer by laying bricks, not by sitting in his room wondering what it would be like to be a brick layer. A minister learns to be a minister by emptying his heart ...

35. In Praise of Petunias

Micah 6:1-8

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... edelweiss to lilies of the valley, but no bride would consider carrying a petunia. Everyone ignores the petunia, but the bloomin' thing goes right on blooming. The time has come to appreciate it. Flowers remind me of people, and a group of people has about as many varieties of "plants" as does a garden. Every group has "roses" which demand to be handled with care, to be caressed with kid gloves to avoid pain and hurt. And it is often a joy to see a few "roses" growing among the thorns. Every group has a ...

36. Trees

Jeremiah 16:1--17:18

Sermon

King Duncan

... the cross of Christ. Easterners see a palm tree and they think of Florida or the coastal areas of the Carolinas or Georgia. In the springtime tourists flock to Washington, D. C. to enjoy trees filled with cherry blossoms. The world is filled with an amazing variety of trees. In the deserts of Namibia there are trees still alive from the time of Christ, yet their central trunk has never grown more than three feet in height. Instead they produce two huge leaves up to twenty feet in length which never fall and ...

37. Smart As A Goat

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

... people without any effort? You may find this hard to believe, but according to our scripture passage for today, you are gifted just as this goat is gifted. Listen to these words: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in everyone." “In everyone." That includes you . . . and me. THE FIRST LESSON TO LEARN FROM THIS PASSAGE IS THAT THROUGH THE HOLY SPIRIT ...

38. Only Sex? (New)

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

Sermon

King Duncan

... be the closest and strongest one they are capable of forming.” (2) That means that the strongest bond will be for couples who have saved themselves for one another. No wonder so many young marriages come apart. In a society where premarital sexual experimentation with a variety of partners is the rule rather than the exception, the adhesive is no longer as powerful as it once was. Sex is a gift from God, to be used as God intended--within the marriage relationship. This is to say that our bodies belong to ...

39. Courage Me!

Ephesians 6:10-20

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... ." What Jack witnessed next remains in his all- time favorite candid shots of memory: 85 year old Hugh Colley and young Sylvester Chase clasped in a hearty embrace...and Jack saw first-hand the transformation that the love command of Jesus can make." We need a garden variety of courage -- a courage of moral conviction and a courage to change. III. Now a focus on perseverance. We need to hang in there when the odds are against us and there is no apparent reason for hope. I don't know the author -- maybe it's ...

40. Pentecost

John 20:19-23, Acts 2:1-21, 1 Corinthians 12:3-13, Psalm 104

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... various gifts. Therefore, all gifts of the Spirit are holy and precious, one is as good as another. Since the Spirit gives the gift, we have no reason to boast of our gifts. 3. Varieties (v. 4). The Holy Spirit provides a variety of gifts. Paul lists nine of them in this passage. The one Spirit gives unity to the variety. No two people are alike. Each has a different gift. This makes us interesting, attractive, and distinctive. However, there is a danger that we may be jealous or envious of a person who has ...

41. To Be a Christian

Acts 11:19-30

Sermon

James McCormick

... the church. But you can be a member of the church and not be a Christian. Being a Christian does not mean that you are a member of a certain denomination. There is only one Christian church and it is divided into many parts and goes by a variety of labels, but there is only one church. And shame on those who are a part of that one church, but claim exclusive validity for their little part of it. I suspect there won’t be many labels in heaven. There won’t be “born again Christians” or “charismatic ...

42. 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... Christ; and various activities or work that come from God the Creator God. Paul's specificity suggests a more complex concept than simply one God with many gifts. For Paul, the more precise, more profound point is that there is a variety of gifts because there is true variety within the unity of God. Among the many confused and wrong-headed notions about the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts that the Corinthians seem to hold is the belief that the gift of the Spirit is given to individuals for individual ...

43. 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... "we were all made to drink of one Spirit." In his central portion of chapter 12, Paul develops the body analogy, delicately balancing the genuine uniqueness of each part against the organic result these parts produce the miracle of a functioning, unified body. Variety is affirmed as a God-given gift (v.18), but variations in function and design are wholly attributed to God not to any inherent superiority of one body part over another. While Paul knows that part of the Corinthians' problems lay in assigning ...

44. Pentecost

Numbers 11:24-30, Psalm 104:1-35, John 7:37-39, Acts 2:1-21, 1 Corinthians 12:3-13

Bulletin Aid

B. David Hostetter

... , given One, gift of God, the Sender and the Sent, grant us continuing peace and the gift of discernment, that we may be as forgiving as you are and as true in expecting repentance in others as in ourselves. Amen PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING God of variety, we give thanks for your many and varied gifts to the church; for gifts of wise speech, putting deep knowledge into words; for gifts of faith and healing of mind and body; for the gifts of prophecy and discernment of truth and falsehood; for ecstatic speech ...

45. Mistaken Identity

Matthew 16:13-20

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

... . We are not that different from them. One of the college courses I often teach is called "Which Jesus?" In it I take my students through Jaroslav Pelikan's book, Jesus through the Centuries (Yale, 1999) and the writings of the New Testament, and reflect on the variety of ways in which people think about Jesus. Each time I teach this course, I ask my students to write a paper which requires that they talk with their parents about how Mom and Dad view Jesus. Invariably, I get some papers still wet with tears ...

46. No Partiality

Acts 10:34-43

Sermon

John N. Brittain

... stolen is to blame. But we do have to admit that some of these schemes should be pretty transparent. There are some things about the message of scripture that should be just as crystal clear as how bogus the schemes I mentioned are. And yet, for a variety of reasons, many Christians often get them amazingly wrong. It is no more helpful, than in the cases I just described, to beat up on ourselves or others, in a theological version of blaming the victim, but we need to clearly see what is happening. One of ...

47. A Seed for the Whole World

Mark 4:1-20, 26-34

Illustration

Staff

... who had a fancy for furnishing his friends with some choice early corn long before they had thought of having any ripe enough for the table,— but he would never let any of them have any to plant."[1] After Mr. Chambers passed away in about 1891, the variety was, ". . . kept pure and constantly selected by Mr. J. G. Pickett, also of Greenfield, Massachusetts."[1.2] Then in the spring of 1900 a friend of W. Atlee Burpee named E. L. Coy, a veteran seed grower from New York, happened to be visiting family in ...

48. The Beginning

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Understanding Series

John E. Hartley

... God saw that what had come into being was good. Second, God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees . . . that bear fruit with seed in it.” In this command God bestowed on the land generative power to produce a variety and an abundance of plant life. Possessing this generative power did not make nature a goddess, however. God’s command led to the regularity and predictability of nature as well as to the multiplication and adaptation of various kinds of plant life to the ...

49. The Flood

Genesis 6:1-8:22

Understanding Series

John E. Hartley

... order to avoid Enlil’s wrath, threatened against any of the gods who would forewarn any human of the coming deluge (11:170–73). No reason is given for Ea’s favoring Utnapishtim. After building a boat in seven days, Utnapishtim took on board a variety of skilled workers, seemingly with no regard for their character (11:84–85). Utnapishtim, however, duped the people of his city by telling them that he had to leave their city because Enlil had turned hostile to him, while Enlil was going to make them ...

50. Unity and Community (Part 1)

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Teach the Text

Preben Vang

... “gifts of healing” and “miraculous powers” (or “activities of powers”). That both “gifts” and “activities” are plural suggests that Paul does not think of these as permanent gifts belonging to certain people. These, rather, are gifts given to whoever is serving in any of a variety of ministry situations where that particular gift is needed to evidence the power of God’s kingdom (Matt. 11:4–5; contrast Acts 14:9–10; 19:11; 28:8 with Phil. 2:27; 2 Tim. 4:20; 1 Cor. 11:30; Gal. 4:13 ...

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