Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 476 to 500 of 975 results

476. Credit Where Credit Is Due

Psalm 43:1-5, 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13

Bulletin Aid

Frank Ramirez

... of our resolutions and dreams. Where we have been successful as your people we pray that you will receive the credit. Where we have fallen short we pray that we will see in you the solution. We praise you for the renewal of hope that follows good harvest or disappointing yield, because you are constant in your mercy and love. Amen. Hymns "Come Let Us All Unite To Sing God Is Love" "How Great Thou Art" "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"

477. An Enclave of Resistance

Hebrews 1:1-14; 2:5-8

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... from, he quotes it wrong. He says, "We are created a little lower than the angels," but in the 8th psalm it says, "We are created a little lower than God." The author of Hebrews' imperfection brings great comfort to me, one who must live with imperfections. It yields great hope that you can communicate the message in spite of imperfections. And that is what he does in this passage. What it says to us is that we are created for great things. For a little while we are less than the angels, but someday, at ...

478. Beware of Crowds

Mark 1:29-39

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... now over, Jesus has come to cast them out. So why the secrecy? I mean, he had it made. It was all over, really, like the landing at Normandy. Once that was done, it was just a matter of time now in mopping up the enemy. The demons recognized him, yielded to him, were ready to tell everybody who he was. He's the Messiah. He's the only one who can defeat the demons in this world. And he won't let them speak. What kind of a Messiah is it who travels incognito? Then the third anecdote in this ...

479. For Those Who Can't Pray

Genesis 32:22-31

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... successful entrepreneur, who had outwitted everyone, got whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it, has now come up against God, and thus has come upon that one who cannot be tricked, or lied to, or cheated, or deceived, or bested, to whom we all must yield. So it is a struggle. Charles Wesley, in one of his greatest hymns, "Come O Thou Traveler Unknown," captured this scene. He interpreted it brilliantly. He saw Jacob wrestling with God, and finally Jacob crying out: Speak to my heart, in blessing speak, Be ...

480. Two Women

Luke 1:39-45

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... back. All people held in indentured servitude are to be released. Because the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof. It belongs to God. It doesn't belong to us. God's intention in the creation is that all his children would enjoy the riches that this earth yields. But the way the world is arranged, it is available just to a few. So the Jubilee says that every fifty years land is to be restored to its owners in the name of God. In the Bible the language used to describe that is "justice for the poor ...

481. Where's Your Spirit?

Acts 19:1-7

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... forgiveness, and to new life. That is why we don't practice rebaptism. Because baptism is not something that we do. Baptism is God's promise of forgiveness. It is a covenant of faithfulness, and God doesn't break his promise. We break ours. We forget good resolutions. We yield to temptations. We slip back into bad habits. We do dumb and hurtful things. So we need to repent. But we don't need to be baptized over again, because baptism is God's promise to us that he will forgive us. So we need to remember our ...

482. Will You Be in that Number?

John 11:32-44

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... tell you about a grave in Peru. I shared this story with you about ten years ago when a grave of a warrior priest was discovered near the pyramids of the ancient Moche Indians. The Moche Indians preceded the Incas in Peru. Their graves have yielded a treasure trove of artifacts, and a thriving black market for the residents in that isolated, northern part of Peru. The inhabitants up there regularly loot the graves and sell the artifacts to collectors. The government decided to crack down on the black market ...

483. A Discussion Among Angels

Matthew 24:36-44

Drama

Matthew Powell

... , the weeping of wretched women and children. Uriel: Power corrupts and might cannot save. The earth is full of ignorant strife, and for this evil there is no cure ... except by giving humans greater knowledge. It is because humans do not understand evil that they yield to its power. Wickedness is folly in action and injustice is the error of the blind. It is because men are ignorant that they destroy one another, and at last themselves. If there were more light in the world there would be no sorrow. If ...

484. Proper 15

Genesis 45:1-28, Isaiah 56:1-8, Romans 11:11-24, Romans 11:25-32, Matthew 15:1-20, Matthew 15:21-28

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... caused salvation to come to the Gentiles, a blessing in disguise. However, God has not disowned his people, for his all and gifts are irrevocable. Both Jews and Gentiles will receive mercy for their disobedience. Gospel: Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28 Jesus yields to the persistent pleas of a Canaanite mother. Jesus retired to a territory outside Israel and consequently he is approached by a pagan Gentile mother, a Canaanite, to heal her mentally-ill daughter. Is Jesus' ministry limited to the Jews? At first it ...

485. Proper 23

Exodus 32:1-33:6, Isaiah 25:1-12, Philippians 4:2-9, Philippians 4:10-20, Matthew 22:1-14

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... 1. End It With A Bang Or A Banquet? (25:6-9). Need: Isaiah sees through the troubles of his time to God's ultimate triumph over the world. He also sees more than the well-being of his own nation. He sees that of all nations. Rather than yield to pessimism and despair, he comes to a position of confidence and hope. In the difficult days of our times, this text is needed to give us similar encouragement about the ultimate outcome. Outline: The world's grand finale. a. A bang of destruction - vv. 7, 8. 1. The ...

486. The Garden Is Doing Fine?

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... out working, playing, sleeping, holidaying - with zero time for the things of Christ. Again, there is no fruit. Good Soil! Ah! But not to despair, for Christ spoke of yet a fourth soil, fertile and deep. "And some seed fell into good soil, and grew, and yielded a hundredfold." These are persons, Jesus explained, who receive the Word and carefully allow it to take root in their lives so that fruit is born. And what is fruit? Galatians 5:22 calls it love. This is a reminder of the great commandment in Matthew ...

487. Things to Come!

Matthew 13:47-52, Matthew 13:44-46, Matthew 13:1-23

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... what!" It'd be like saying an azalea bush grew into a forest giant. The mustard shrub is the kardah plant. It is never bigger than six to ten feet, and it bears thousands of tiny seeds in its branches that when harvested and properly prepared, yield what we know as mustard, the spice. Alas! As Jesus mentioned in the text, birds love to snatch these seeds! (Sounds familiar from the first parable!) Why, I have seen mustard shrubs in Israel swarming with birds that devour every single seed of its spice! The ...

488. Faith's Curious Dynamic

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... and don't want the same thing. Life itself has plenty of curious dynamics like that, though we are more apt to identify them as mixed emotions, contradictions, or paradoxes. Any war brings more of them to the fore, but that war especially had yielded a bumper crop of conflicting feelings. For example, many of us who strongly supported our troops weren't convinced we should be fighting this war at all. But think of some other curious dynamics: * When your son first graduates from college, and applies for ...

489. Keep on Praying

Luke 18:1-8

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... again. And only the most persistent, the most hard-headed, the most annoying, the most stubborn, make it into the history books as persons of note. An A&E survey of the top ten most influential people or leaders of the past 1000 years yielded the following list: 10) Galileo 9) Copernicus 8) Albert Einstein 7) Karl Marx 6) Christopher Columbus 5) William Shakespeare 4) Charles Darwin 3) Martin Luther 2) Isaac Newton 1) Johann Gutenberg Without exception, each one of the remarkable persons named by the survey ...

490. Follow That Star (New Year's Day)

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... in Nazareth or Bethlehem. Try this experiment. Write down any 3 digit number. (The number can't mirror itself like 979 or 454) Reverse the number you just wrote down. Now subtract the lower/smaller number from the higher/larger number. [If the subtraction yielded a 2-digit number (99), add zero in front of it (099). Now, reverse the result and add it to the preceding answer/result. If you followed the instructions carefully, you all should have the same answer: 1089. Wherever you started, with whatever ...

491. Get a Peace of the Rock

Luke 10:1-24

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... I think it unpacks our text in ways that only truth can. In what has been called "the most disgraceful episode of the 1990s" or even "of the second half of the 20th century" (The Economist, 13 May 2000), the 1994 genocide in Rwanda yielded a daily killing rate five times that of the Nazi death camps 50 years earlier" (calculation cited by Mr. Shawcross [William Shawcross, Deliver Us From Evil (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000)]. The Rwandan population was primarily made up of two tribes. The Hutus, the toilers ...

492. My Precious, My Precious

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... and worthless spam. More examples In today's gospel text Jesus uses a simple, surprisingly direct parable to demonstrate the foolishness and folly of a self-serving nature. The already rich man suddenly has even more prosperity thrust his way when his lands yield a bonanza a surprise bumper crop. Faced with this largesse, the rich man must seriously and intentionally consider how he'll handle this surplus. At first his internal discussion seems to bring him to a logical, even sensible conclusion. It's what ...

493. The Spiritually Incorrect Spirit

Romans 8:1-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... ? Are you giving your weaknesses to God as well as your strengths? Are you windblown? Are you headed in directions you don't wish to go? The saints have always confounded the world, not by their logic or their successes, but by their life a life wielded by God and yielded to the Spirit.

494. Trust that Leads to Transformation

John 2:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... make. The greatest advancements in science medicine, political policies, economic growth all have in common an element of the unknown. Information brought leaders to a precipice a decisive movement in time and place. But it has always been some unseen force some yielding to that which lies beyond the provable and knowable that has enabled history's greatest leaders to take that last step forward into new, uncharted territory. Everyone told Columbus he would sail off the edge of the world . . . but on trust ...

495. Tiny Pencils

John 15:1-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... s life for one's friends" (John 15:12-13)? Why is it we can be more creative at being evil than at being good? If you look at the history of the church, you can find plenty of examples to prove that adage: the perversion of the best yields the worst. Yet the ghastly cruelties carried out by Inquisitors are now five hundred years in our past. Thank God, the church is no longer in the business of forcing identical expressions of faith down the throat of everyone in the world regardless of the cost. But before ...

496. Make Room for Mystery

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sermon

James McCormick

... stars, angelic choirs, virgin births, and a baby in a manger splitting history in two. The temptation for us moderns is to dismiss it all as some kind of fairy tale because we have no rational category in which to place it all. But, if we yield to that temptation, and try to make Christmas something which is totally rational and understandable…if we remove the mystery, and reduce the incarnation to the size of our minds, we will have lost something essential. II. And here’s why: there is more to life ...

497. Want to Be Happy?

Matthew 3:13-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... the “next big thing” or the next big toy will bring us the joy we’ve been looking for, it never will. Here is Gilbert’s summary: When we have an experience . .. on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the experience yields less pleasure each time. Psychologists call this habituation. Economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage. Think about this: when was the first time you felt happy? As a baby, it was when your mother fed you, when your ...

498. Under New Leadership

John 1:29-34

Sermon

King Duncan

... are compares with the kind of man or woman God created us to be. To be truly successful we are to serve as Christ served. Love as Christ loved. Forgive as Christ forgave. We can live as Christ lived only when we have the same spirit Christ had. Let us yield ourselves to him this day. 1. (New York: Ivy Books, 1991), pp. 155-160. 2. http://www.chapel.duke.edu/worship/Sunday/viewsermon.aspx?id=1. 3. (New York, NY: Warner Faith, 2005), pp. 69-70. 4. The Rev. Dr. Gary Charles, Day 1, 2005. http://www.day1.net ...

499. Advent 2

Matthew 3:1-12, Romans 14:1--15:13, Isaiah 11:1-16, Psalm 72:1-20

Sermon Aid

Marion L. Soards, Thomas B. Dozeman, Kendall McCabe

... his advice, although perhaps continuing Structure. The passage falls into two distinct parts: vv. 4-6 concludes the discussion of the difference of opinion about Christian life-style. There is a linear logic in vv. 4-6: (1) instruction in the scriptures yields (2) hope in which (3) God unifies the believers (4) who mutually glorify God. This thought pattern makes a sensible sermon outline. Verses 7-13 admonish diverse believers (Jewish and Gentile, or, to cast the matter in functional rather than ethnic ...

500. Christmas Eve\Christmas Day

Luke 2:1-7, Isaiah 9:1-7, Psalm 96:1-13, Titus 2:1-15, Luke 2:8-20

Sermon Aid

Marion L. Soards, Thomas B. Dozeman, Kendall McCabe

... ; it is also freedom for. As we grow away from unholy manners of living, we grow toward moderation, righteousness, and devotion. These dimensions of our existence as Christians are the results of God's gracious work in our lives. Thus, in the present, grace yields salvation and that means the negation of some characteristics of our being and creation of others. Christian living has a present, but it also has a future. Titus 2:13 reminds us that we live awaiting our hope: "the manifestation of the glory of ...

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