Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 26 to 50 of 4508 results

26. What Jesus Wants for Christmas (Part 2)

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

We should consider giving ourselves to God at Christmas. Just as God's very being was given at Christmas, we are to give the heart of who we are to the Christ child. Last week, we asked you to challenge your people to consider what Jesus wants for Christmas. We intimated that the Savior's wish list had two entries. The first was that Jesus might have his birthday back. The second entry on Je...

27. Matthew 1:18-25

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

Sometime near the end of the first century (about AD 90-95) a virtually anonymous literary artist whom we know as "Matthew" wrote his version of the gospel. The style and grace of his writing tells the story of Jesus' birth, life, crucifixion and resurrection with a unique kind of sophistication and artistry. Luke is a master storyteller, John a consummate theologian, Mark an emotional eyewitness,...

28. Matthew 1:18-25

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

The final Advent season gospel reading for this year tells the Matthean account of Jesus' conception and birth. Matthew's birth narrative is far less popular to read at Christmastime than Luke's literary masterpiece. Luke's text focuses on Mary, the obedient virgin, who willingly submits to God's plans and never questions all that is required of her. Matthew's description of Jesus' conception and ...

29. Matthew 1:18-25

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

(Note: For commentary on Matthew 2:13-23, which tells the story of the holy family's flight to Egypt, see Commentary, December 27, 1998.) The gospels provide two birth narratives, one from Luke which accents Mary, and another from Matthew where the focus is on Joseph. Luke's account is full of poetic tension, dramatic skill and rhetorical flourishes that resound to this day. Matthew's account is s...

30. Reconsider

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

Have you seen the cartoon featuring a gentleman and his cat? The man is holding his pet feline over a kitty litter box shouting firmly, “Never, never, never, ever think outside the box." What's good for cats may not be so good for people. The hope of the world lies with creative dreamers who are willing to think outside the box. At least that seems to be the case surrounding the birth of Jesus...

31. Matthew 1:18-25

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

The development of online resources for genealogical research has been nothing short of explosive. There is now a thriving forest of family trees for anyone trying to discover who they are and where they came from. At some point in everyone’s grade school journey a teacher assigns us the project of tracing our ancestors. As a nation of immigrants, our lines of lineage often crisscross and loop aro...

32. Jesus Adopted by Joseph

Teach the Text

Jeannine K. Brown

Big Idea: Matthew confirms that Jesus belongs to Joseph’s genealogy by adoption, showing Jesus to be the Davidic Messiah and the embodiment of God’s presence to save. Understanding the Text Matthew concludes the genealogy from Abraham to Joseph by connecting Jesus’ birth to Mary, not to Joseph (1:16). In 1:18–25 Matthew “solves” this conundrum by emphasizing that Joseph names Jesus (1:21, 25), the...

33. Look Again

Sermon

James L. Killen

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a d...

34. Joseph: The Righteous Carpenter

Sermon

Charley Reeb

I have learned that there is one thing you should never ask God for unless you have really thought through it. And that is patience. I asked God for patience several years ago and God has never forgotten it. I am getting really impatient about it! I am reminded of this whenever I am in traffic. Did you hear about the woman's car that stalled in traffic? She looked in vain under the hood to identi...

35. The Birth of Jesus Christ

Understanding Series

Robert H. Mounce

The Birth of Jesus: Genealogical records were important to the Jewish people of Jesus’ day. They were maintained by the Sanhedrin and used to ensure purity of descent. Josephus, the famous Jewish historian who served in the court of Rome, began his autobiography by listing his ancestral pedigree. Similarly, Matthew opens his Gospel by tracing the lineage of Jesus. It has often been noted that, fro...

36. The New Moses

Sermon

Dean Feldmeyer

Two Christmas Stories The Bible gives us two Christmas stories — one in Matthew and one in Luke. We tend to think of Christmas as one seamless narrative but that’s because we have all grown up in churches where, every Christmas Eve, we take the two stories and “harmonize” them into one. We take bits and pieces from each gospel and we leave out other parts and we flip back and forth between them ...

37. Jesus’s Birth

One Volume

Gary M. Burge

The narration of Jesus’s birth is closely tied to the preceding genealogy by the repeated Greek term genesis, translated as “genealogy” in 1:1 and “birth” in 1:18. Both accounts provide an important aspect of Jesus’s “origin,” another possible translation of genesis. These two passages provide the question and answer to Jesus’s connection to Joseph’s lineage, with Joseph as a focal character in 1:...

38. A Man of God

Sermon

King Duncan

It was the day after Christmas. Dad was trying to take a nap, but his young son kept finding ways to interrupt his siesta. Finally the father lost his patience and said sternly, “Go to my room, and go now!” Hearing this, the boy’s mother asked, “Why did you tell him to go to your room and not his?” The father replied: “Are you kidding? Did you see all those Christmas presents the kid received? I...

39. You Shall Call His Name Jesus

Sermon

King Duncan

You may remember that story of the man hearing a choir sing "O Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world," and he thought to himself, "If only he COULD take away the sins of the world. What a tremendous and joyful thing that would be “no more wars, no more broken homes, no more abused children, no more hatred, envy, bitterness and strife. If only he COULD take away the sins of the world." ...

40. A Christmas To Remember

Sermon

King Duncan

"My most vivid childhood memory of Christmas," writes columnist Dave Barry, "that does not involve opening presents, putting batteries in presents, playing with presents, and destroying presents before sundown, is the annual Nativity Pageant at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Armonk, New York." Mrs. Elson was the director, and she would tell the children what role they would play, based on their...

41. Altered Expectations

Sermon

We’ve talked a little these past weeks about family Christmas traditions, how different families have different rituals or things they just do every year because that’s what they’ve always done. Well, churches have Christmas traditions, too, don’t they? One of Snow Creek’s Christmas traditions, for example, is the annual Christmas program. The church I grew up in had a Christmas program every yea...

42. Love Transcending Law and Custom

Sermon

Joseph was in a bind! Mary, his betrothed, had become pregnant. Both law and custom were on his side. Joseph could have broken his vow to become her husband, thereby putting Mary to shame. Or, he could have divorced her quietly, thereby putting her in an untenable position. He could have charged her with infidelity, thus repudiating her and reducing her to a life of shame. While Joseph was trying...

43. Name Him Jesus

Bulletin Aid

Frank Ramirez

Call To Worship (Unison) Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel. (Isaiah 7:14) Collect Heavenly Father, you told Joseph to name him Jesus, the one who saves, the one who delivers your people. Save us, deliver us, as we also name your Son Jesus, the Lord of our lives! Amen. Prayer Of Confession Lord, w...

44. Prayer

Bulletin Aid

Stephen Brown

Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’ which means, ‘God is with us.’ You are coming to be with us. We have talked about your coming. We have dreamed about your coming. We have told stories and prophesied about your coming. We whisper your name in our prayers sing anthems in our congregations listen to the sacred stories about you. We wondered if you ...

45. Prayer

Bulletin Aid

Christmas is for children! The lights The trees The candy The joys Christmas is for children! The verses they learn The songs they sing The light in their eyes! But Christ is for adults! You have to have some experience Some maturity In life And in faith, To begin to understand God's action; Being born Living Dying As a human being Being raised in glory. It's too heavy for kids! Too involved T...

46. Fourth Sunday in Advent

Bulletin Aid

Call to Worship Pastor: Long ago God promised a Messiah whose mission would be to make God's presence a reality. People: God revealed to Joseph in a dream that Mary's son was to be that Messiah. Pastor: Jesus' birth is divine, because God intervened in history to send his Son. People: God continues to give himself through his Son; that all who recognize his divine origin may find him to be their E...

47. Advent 4

Bulletin Aid

James Wilson

First Reading: Isaiah 7:10-16 Theme: The promised Messiah Call To Worship Leader: Come, let us worship, all who have known the mercy of the Lord. People: For even while we were all yet sinners God sent us a Savior. Leader: God heard our petitions for mercy and Jesus was born to save us all. People: Born of a virgin in Bethlehem as spoken by the prophets of old. Leader: Jesus, the Christ, born th...

48. The Advent-ure of Joy

Bulletin Aid

Dallas A. Brauninger

Call To Worship Leader: When we hear the holiday tone of others through ears dulled by sadness, People: We come needing support. Leader: When we linger with suffering in times of loss, People: We come wanting relief. All: Come, Christ, we wait for your joy. Collect When we feel small in body or spirit, let us remember that the circumstances of Jesus’ birth contrast with the strength of his being....

49. Fourth Sunday in Advent

Bulletin Aid

Theme: God's disruptive agenda Exegetical note Matthew's purpose in this well-known passage is theological rather than genealogical, not to prove Jesus' divinity, however, but only his fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14. To what extent the tradition about this miraculous conception was influenced, or even generated by the Greek Septuagint's rendering of the Hebrew almah as parthenos is unclear. But the r...

50. The Momentous Witness of the Wise Men

Bulletin Aid

Dennis Koch

Gospel Note Read as a kerygmatic statement rather than an historical account, this story of (unnumbered) Eastern wise men (astrologers, not kings) and their coming to witness the child (not baby) Jesus in a house (not a stable) as a result of having followed "his star's rising" (not a star in the East) is Matthew's declaration of the cosmic and universal significance of the appearance of Jesus. An...

Showing 26 to 50 of 4508 results