Sermon and Worship Resources

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Luke 20:27-40

Sermon

King Duncan

... a Minnesota newspaper to tell of an unusual funeral she attended. A prominent woman in the community had died. Crowds of people filled the church for her memorial service. At one point in the service, the pastor planned to play a record of the classic song, "Wind Beneath My Wings." But the pastor's assistant accidentally placed the wrong record on the stereo. The song that came out instead was "Under the Boardwalk." (1) An elderly mother, planning her funeral, told her pastor that she wanted to be cremated ...

477. The Good Son

Matthew 21:28-32

Sermon

Frank Lyman

... be judged, and God will ask, "˜Where are your wounds? Was there nothing worth dying for?'" The story of Jesus and the priests is a sad story about resistance to judgment. It is very much like the story of King David and the prophet Nathan. David was the classic "good son." He was the shepherd boy who piped in the fields. He was the poet whose works are included in our Psalms. He was the boy hero who fought the bully Goliath with nothing but a slingshot. For this reason alone he is a hero to all schoolboys ...

478. "Why Don't We Just Tell Them Our Names?"

Psalm 23:1-6

Sermon

Siegfried S. Johnson

... -old Laura Beth Kulbacki on how to deal with terrorists who hate a country full of people they don't even know. Laura Beth said, "Why don't we just tell them our names?" (2) When I saw that line I thought of the 1991 classic film, "Silence of the Lambs." The FBI is profiling and tracking a dangerous serial killer who has abducted 21-year-old Catherine Martin. Her frantic and distressed mother, Senator Ruth Martin, broadcasts a televised plea for mercy in hopes of convincing the killer to release Catherine ...

479. Why Did I Do That?

Romans 7:7-25

Sermon

King Duncan

... me from this body of death?" (Vs. 23 & 24, NRSV) Paul doesn't want somebody to help him feel better about himself. He wants to be a new person--a person liberated from the Law of Sin. Some of you may be familiar with Jack London's classic story, WHITE FANG. White Fang is half dog--half wolf. After living in the wild, he is domesticated and learns to live among people. White Fang was very fond of chickens. On one occasion he raided a chicken roost and killed fifty hens. His master, Weeden Scott, scolded ...

480. A Tale Of Two Brothers

Matthew 21:28-32

Sermon

King Duncan

... report. People drive through stop signs as if they were not there. And traffic lights receive not much more respect. Meanwhile, in the home of the free and the brave, we passively do what is expected of us. The old television show Candid Camera had a classic episode in which two telephone booths were placed next to each other. One booth was labeled "Men" and the other "Women." As the camera recorded the scene, no one who used the booths violated the signs. Men used only the booth labeled for men, and women ...

481. A Picture Of A King

Psalm 72:1-20

Sermon

King Duncan

... of force; he proves it by his love for the powerless in his society. In his book Violence Unveiled, French scholar Gil Bailie writes that, for centuries, cultures sanctioned violence of the majority class against the minority class. Humans lived by the classic, Darwinian theory of "might makes right." But all that changed, he claims, the day that Jesus was crucified, the day that "God took the side of the victim." Author Philip Yancey, commenting on Bailie's book, writes, "The gospel may not make societies ...

482. The Voice Of The Lord

Psalm 29:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

... distinctive as our fingerprints. Be assured, nobody has a voice exactly like yours. There are voice print machines that are amazingly accurate in identifying individuals simply and solely from the sound of their voice. We are our voice. In Emily Bronte's classic book Jane Eyre [pronounced "air"], Mr. Rochester is a disabled, blind man who is left alone after his mentally deranged wife sets fire to and destroys their house. His child's former governess, Jane Eyre, hunts Mr. Rochester down. When Jane finally ...

483. Taking Time To Love

Matthew 22:34-40

Sermon

King Duncan

... ." Then they turned their cart around and drove away from what had once been the city of Hiroshima. (1) Linger with that story in your mind for just a moment. Now let's consider another. This time it is a scene in a play. It's from Thornton Wilder's classic play, OUR TOWN. I want to take you to the scene where Emily dies. After her death she goes to the graveyard. There she is told that she can return to her home to witness one day in her life. "Which day would you like?" she is asked. And she ...

484. Don't Forget The Batteries

Acts 2:1-13

Sermon

King Duncan

... this together, as he sees it. When Billy Graham held his historic crusade in Montgomery, Alabama, in the sixties, he insisted on an integrated choir. The newspaper editorialized that Graham had come to Alabama and set the church back a hundred years. Graham's answer was classic: "If that's the case, I failed in my mission," said Graham, "I intended to set it back two thousand years." (4) Where the Spirit of God is present, there is unity. When the waters of God rise, the fences disappear. No longer is there ...

485. Clearing Back The Jungle

Genesis 9:1-17

Sermon

King Duncan

Do you remember Kipling's classic story titled "Letting the Jungle In"? It is the story of a group of people who went into the jungle, made a clearing, brought their livestock, planted their crops, and built their homes. For awhile it was a veritable paradise, until the rain years came and the jungle crept back. ...

486. The Stewardship of Time

Romans 13:11-14

Sermon

Edward Inabinet

... to help. How many county commissioners?...Two. One to screw it in and one to screw it up. And how many procrastinators?...One but he has to wait until the light is better. Professor Harold Hill, in the lively musical THE MUSIC MAN, has a classic challenge to procrastination. He invites River City''s piano teacher to come on a summer picnic with him. She secretly wants to, but hesitates, and then decides not to go for fear that it might be improper. She says, "Not today, but maybe tomorrow." Professor ...

487. The Question That Will Not Go Away

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Sermon

Edward Inabinet

... don''t come to the end of your life and realize you have wasted it for pearls rather than the presence of God. DEATH REMINDS US OF THE UNFINISHED AND TEMPORAL NATURE OF THIS LIFE. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick shares that one of the great pieces of classical music is the "Unfinished Symphony" by Franz Schubert, who died when he was 31 years old. That is a great illustration of human life and achievement. Seldom, if ever, does anyone die when all of their business is complete and all of their talents are used up ...

488. Believing Isn’t Easy

Hebrews 11:1-40

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... comes down the pike; we would be gullible and easy prey for every religious con artist around...and there are plenty of them around these days. Faith without doubt is gullibility. God does not call us to be gullible. Harry Emerson Fosdick once preached a classic sermon on “The Importance of Doubting Your Doubts.” Faith isn’t easy. It is a struggle. True faith comes when you have exhausted all of your doubts, and have gotten to the place where you have doubts about your doubts. Faith isn’t easy. It ...

489. What Happens When I Die?

John 14:1-4

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... death more realistically than any other religion or philosophy of life. But it also promises that beyond this life, there is Eternal Life with God. Some years ago the great Scottish theologian John Baillie wrote what has come to be regarded as a classic book on our subject of the morning titled And the Life Everlasting. It contains some 220 pages of closely reasoned theological and philosophical argument supporting the Christian’s faith in Eternal Life. But ultimately he rests his case upon his faith in ...

490. God’s Body Language

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... Incarnation. And the fact that God is love. But I digress.) This fellow was suspicious of all other ministers’ theologies, and especially suspicious of Methodists who are famous for their warm hearts and weak minds. I told him that I considered myself to be a classically orthodox Christian. He then decided to quiz me about my orthodoxy. His first question was, “Where is the body of Jesus now?” Being young and even more foolish than I am now, I very nearly said, “Don’t look at me; I haven’t got ...

491. What about Spiritual Healing?

John 4:43-54

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... further understanding of what intercessory prayer means. Remember that prayer does not change God’s mind; it releases God’s power. And that power can be released from a distance, because all of us are linked up with one another in God. In his classic book on the subject titled Psychology, Religion, and Healing (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1952), Leslie Weatherhead tried to correct an inadequate notion of prayer. He said, “When A prays for B, he does not, as it were, make a ball of prayer, throw it up ...

492. That Would Be Some Miracle!

John 6:1-15

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... here which seems so out of character with what He did and said elsewhere. A second view of what happened that day along the seashore comes with the recommendation of no less a personage than Albert Schweitzer. At the beginning of this century in his classic book, “The Quest For The Historical Jesus,” Schweitzer suggested that what we have here is a “sacrament” rather than a full meal. When we come to the Holy Communion, we only get a small morsel of bread and tiny sip of wine (or grape juice ...

493. Jesus Came Preaching

Mark 1:14-15

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... us the way things are, it offers a doxology to God, and creates the church and sends it into the world. Whew! That is some responsibility to place on the shoulders of preaching! But they are able to bear it. And have done so. Herman Melville in his classic Moby Dick gave what is perhaps the highest estimate of preaching ever written.He said: “The pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world.... Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out,....and ...

494. On Claiming One’s Inheritance

Mark 10:17-31

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... accept us; if we did not, then we were consigned to eternal punishment. Against all of this reward-and-punishment theology Martin Luther said “no!” Luther said that “Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works.” (Vergilius Ferm, ed., CLASSICS OF PROTESTANTISM, New York: Philosophical Library, 1959, pp. 54-55) He took his text from Jesus in Luke 6:43-44: “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its fruit.” Luther ...

495. The Unfinished Story

Mark 16:1-20

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... of any deadly thing” is possibly a reference to an experience of Barsabbas as related by Papias, an early Church historian, and cited by Eusebius of Caesarea, or it may be a reference to an event in the apocryphal “Acts of John.” The classical word for “any deadly thing” appears only here in Biblical Greek. “Plainly, what we have in the longer ending of Mark is a striking summary of primitive Church tradition gathered from a variety of sources.” (Ibid., p.207) I know, this gives problems ...

496. The Road to Somewhere (I am the way, truth, and life)

John 14:5-14

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... , "His name is not so much written but plowed into the history of the world. We know more about Jesus than of the leaders of any other world religion like Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, or Laotze." We have countless examples of people like Lew Wallace who wrote the classic book Ben Hur and in the 20th century Josh McDowell--people who set out to prove that the claims of Jesus Christ were false and were converted to Christ while doing the research to prove he was a fake. Nobody else has that effect in all of ...

497. The Tenth Commandment: How Zacchaeus Got His Groove Back

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... life from that point on as evidence of the new creation that was in him. However, let me tell you that the sin of covetousness does not belong exclusively to the rich, but to everyone--which is why it is in the Ten Commandments. Fyodor Dostoevsky in his classic novel, The Brothers Karamazov, writes the famous Parable of the Onion: Once upon a time, there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into ...

498. The Triumph of the Cross

Galatians 6:11-18, Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

In T. S. Eliot''s classic writing, MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL, there is a revealing scene when Archbishop Thomas Beckett goes back to the cathedral knowing that King Henry II has pronounced him to die. Knowing that he will be murdered, Beckett goes back to the cathedral. Out of respect for the Archbishop some of the ...

499. The Importance of the Second Violin

Philippians 2:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... costly. Young Timothy was that kind of servant. He was willing to play second violin behind the talents of the Apostle Paul. He was committed not to convenience but to the purpose of the Cross. There is a powerful illustration of this in that great Christian classic, PILGRIM''S PROGRESS. There is a character named Pliable who wishes to accompany Christian to find the Promised Land. He was excited when he heard the talk and promises of the eternal Kingdom of God and the Crown of Glory. He even gets a little ...

500. Titles, Credentials, or Resurrection Power

Philippians 3:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... the human spirit and soul but results in our sharing the experience of grace and joy in an atmosphere of a party. We now celebrate a living, loving relationship with God, not rigid rules and forced restrictions. I close our thinking today with a "classic" Tony Campolo story. Dr. Campolo also believes that our Christian faith results in joy, not guilt. Tony Campolo tells about his friend, Guy Doud, who was the sponsor for a senior class gathering in Brainard, Minnesota. "It was just before the senior prom ...

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