Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 501 to 525 of 2332 results

501. 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

... them as well as Yahweh, the people persuaded Aaron to make a golden bull out of their jewelry for worship. It is a return to an Egyptian god, Amon-Re, represented by a bull. Yahweh was so angry at their desertion of him, that he threatened to destroy them. Upon Moses' intercession, their plight was avoided. Old Testament: Isaiah 25:1-9 On Mount Zion, God will make a feast for all peoples on the last day. Epistle: Philippians 4:4-13 Paul appeals to his people to be in harmony ...

502. Jesus Transforms the Darkness into Light

John 20:1-18

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... the other way around. It had only taken ten minutes to reach Tiny's home, but now after twenty minutes of driving he found himself on a deserted dirt road, totally lost. When the car sputtered he realized he was out of gas. David was overcome with anxiety. It was 10 p.m. on Holy ... for us to evaluate our lives of faith and make adjustments. Initially we were challenged to go to the desert with Jesus and be tempted with the three great sins of contemporary society - power, wealth, and prestige. Today's world ...

503. Reevaluating Our Mission for Christ

John 17:1-11

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... their fires and food for their tables. But the horrible winter had broken the peoples' spirit. They began to think that things were really much worse than they were and many began to lose hope. This belief was so strong that, family by family, they began to desert the village in search for a more hospitable environment. As spring came, the icy grip of winter began to loosen and at the same time the chief of the village returned, to find smoke rising only from his own chimney. "What have you done?" he asked ...

504. God Will Take Care of You

Matthew 14:13-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... for that grain to be properly processed, as well as some sort of cooking source to bake the bread. In today's gospel text the importance, in fact the imperative of bread is brought sharply into focus. The devoted crowds that follow Jesus out into the deserted place don't have zip-lock bags and coolers filled with sandwiches or tail-gate barbecue fixings. Those who followed Jesus on this excursion were poor, simple people; people who worked all day to get the wage needed to buy their daily bread. When John's ...

505. Jesus Calls for Treen Christians

Matthew 13:31-35

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... stands throughout biblical and cultural history. In fact, the very word "temple" is derived from the Indo-European roots for "sacred grove." The Bible is full of tree tales. There are broom trees, green olive trees, trees planted by water, palms trees in the desert, and trees in the garden. There are fig trees, good trees known by their fruit, the Great Cedars of Lebanon, and Zacchaeus' favorite sycamore. The Tree of Life bore our sins on a tree. With their height and depth and breadth trees provide our ...

506. The Ultimate Happy Meal

Matthew 14:13-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , or of bread and wine. Food because it represented our life – what we live by. We offered our lives to the Lord. We also lust after food as Esau did when he sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. The Israelites complained of their food in the desert and yearned after the flesh pots of Egypt even with the bondage and slavery it entailed, even though the Lord fed them bread from heaven and water from the Rock, food that had every delight and taste. Who can forget the widow's cruise of oil which was ...

507. The Uncloudy Cloud?

Hebrews 11:1-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... their failures and foibles as for their faith. This roll-call of witnesses is as much a rogue's gallery as it's a shrine for saints: Rahab was a prostitute; Samson fell into Delilah's trap, then died a suicide bomber's death; Samuel chose Saul, then deserted Saul, chose David, and yet knew that the very notion of a king was a doomed idea; David, Israel's great king, was an adulterer, a murderer, and father of a famously faithless son. Second, these faith heroes often didn't live to see their dream come true ...

508. Prayer

Matthew 11:1-19

Bulletin Aid

Stephen Brown

... deafly while the world needs an ear. We wander in circles while the world needs direction We wander speechless while the world needs a voice. We wander in the wilderness… O God. We are lost in the desert… O God. When you come… We will find a way out of the wilderness. When you come… We will see a path out of the desert. When you come… We will find a way. When you come… Our eyes will be opened to see your glory. Our ears will be opened to hear your words. Our legs will be strengthened to walk ...

509. A Case for Living Together

Revelation 7:9-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... around, and a similarly tiny machine capable of adding numbers. The Defense Department (DARPA) is offering $1 million for the first vehicle able to guide itself at high speed across the Nevada desert in a race. In the first race, held in March of 2004, not one robot vehicle came close to completing the 142 mile course in the Mojave Desert . . . although the Red Team out of Carnegie Mellon University did go seven miles. So they're going to keep offering the money until someone wins the race. So here's my ...

510. Blue Highway Blessings

Ephesians 1:1-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... only if we choose the blue-highways blessings. Let's get off the superhighways this summer, and see how many of these blue-highway blessings can be ours . . . until we can say with the Psalmist, "My cup runs over." Two birds that fly over the California desert are the vulture and the hummingbird. All the vulture can see is rotting meat because that's all it looks for. It thrives on that which has died. But the hummingbird ignores the carcasses and the smelly flesh of dead animals. Instead, it looks for the ...

511. The World's Best Hearing Aid

Mark 9:2-13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , listen to him. The voice that informs a disciple's journey may not be recognizable or discernible to others. The world's ears are not attuned to the uncommon, unexpected sounds that accompany Jesus' instructions. One of Christianity's most interesting desert-dwellers was Richard Rolle whose desert was the West Riding during the 14th century. He heard a singing, not a speaking silence. He liked to sit on the doorstep and listen. He wrote: "It's the tune that makes the song, not the words. The listener in ...

512. The Servant Song

Isaiah 50:1-11

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... that comes with that ministry. “Not my will, but thine be done” (Mark 14:36 KJV). He is subjected to scorn and whipping and spitting, like the servant before him (Mark 15:15-20). And finally he is killed for his faithfulness to his God. But God does not desert his servants, not even in death, and so there will come Easter morn when all that Jesus Christ has said and done will be vindicated and proved true. His will be shown to be the way that leads to eternal life. His will be shown to be the true ...

513. Advent 3

Psalm 146:1-10, Isaiah 35:1-10, James 5:7-12, Matthew 11:1-19

Sermon Aid

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

... (vv. 6b-10). The reappearance of God includes a reaction of both nature (vv. 1-2) and God's remnant (vv. 3-6a). The new salvation that accompanies God's reappearance includes a remaking of the desert wasteland into a fertile oasis (vv. 6b-7), the construction of a holy highway for a new exodus through the desert (vv. 8-9), and the return of God's remnant to Zion (v. 10). Significance. When Isaiah 35:1-10 is read against the background of Isaiah 34, the radical reversal of salvation is underscored both ...

514. The Lost and Found Son

Luke 15:11-24

Sermon

James W. Moore

... ’t want to answer to his father and notice this when you run away from the father you are also deserting your brother! Look next at… II. THE ELDER BROTHER Again, the descriptive adjectives fly: Resentful, judgmental, envious, jealous, hostile, bitter ... to be a Son. He rejects his brother and in so doing rejects his Father. When he runs out on his brother in the same motion he deserts his Father. The best way to love God is to love His children. The way we hurt God most is when we are cruel or hurtful to ...

515. What in the World Are We Doing?

Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon

James W. Moore

... illustrations of this in history. (1) For example, remember the Monastic Movement. As early as the Fourth Century, monks (by the thousands) began running away from the world. They went - to caves in the hills, - to old tombs in deserted graveyards, - and to the waste places of the desert. They thought they had a better chance for salvation by doing two things: - first, leaving the sinful world, - and second, by weakening their bodies… so they would not have the strength to give in to the world’s ...

516. Don't Worry, The Light Is Still Burning

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , Neferkitty or Yo Yo Meow will be there, anxiously waiting for them, happy to greet them, when they come home. It is one thing to feel a bit down when there is nothing but an empty house to come home to. It is a whole other desert of desertion to feel that there is nothing but an empty, uncaring universe to exist in. This is the anxiety that causes anorexia. This sense of cosmic desolation causes people to give themselves over to scratch-and-claw living, frantically struggling to grasp and gather as much ...

517. How To Get Better When You're Bitter

Exodus 15:22-27

Sermon

James Merritt

... to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution." The brutal truth you need to learn is, you may be walking on water today, and wandering in the wilderness tomorrow. That may be exactly where God leads you. So just imagine three days in that hot arid Arabian Desert wandering without water. They had seen a lot of the sun, and they had seen a lot of the sand, but now they were ready for some surf. Finally, they come to another one of those countless sand dunes, and as they get to the top they finally ...

518. Why Were the Wise Men Wise?

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

James Merritt

... just to get to that manger. a. A Difficult Journey We are told in v.1 that these wise men came "from the East." They came from the ancient land of Persia, better known as Babylon. That was a three hundred mile journey through a hot barren Syrian desert. Keep in mind, they probably came by camel; not by airplane, not by train, not by car. There were no restaurants, hotels, or rest stops. They had to face hostile tribes, they had to cross the swirling Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They had to fight the hot ...

519. Hazardous to Your Wealth: Myths about Money

Malachi 3:7-12

Sermon

James Merritt

... , it all belongs to God and it all is to be used for Him. I heard about two men who crashed landed on a desert island when their plane went down. They both got out of the plane unscratched, and immediately one man went into hysterics. He started pacing ... up the hysterical man rushed over to him, pointed his finger in his face and said, "How can you be so calm. We're on a desert island a hundred miles from nowhere, with no way to contact anybody?" The man said, "I'm not one bit worried." He said, "You see, ...

520. The Perfect Storm

Mark 4:35-41

Sermon

James Merritt

... . It has to face unbearable heat, tremendous winds, sometimes extreme cold, and it can only survive by sending its roots down 30 feet or more into the earth seeking water. But because it sinks its roots into the soil so it can stand against all of the challenges of the desert, one of the hardest trees to uproot is the mesquite tree. I have said many times you are either in the middle of a storm, you've just come out of a storm, or you're about to get into a storm. The next time that storm hits unexpectedly ...

521. Me, Myself and God

Psalm 23:1-6

Sermon

James Merritt

... that nobody cares anything about you? You may have heard the old story about Tonto and the Lone Ranger who were riding out in the desert, and they came over a hill and all of a sudden they were surrounded by 2,000 Indians. The Lone Ranger looked at Tonto and ... cup is overflowing it means the person holding the cup has everything that they need. In the Middle East as you know it is mostly desert. There was a custom that had to do with filling a cup. If you came to somebody’s house, even if you were a total ...

522. Do You See the Light?

Romans 1:16-20

Sermon

James Merritt

... saved. I’ll give you two examples. In Acts chapter 8 we are told of the Ethiopian eunuch sitting out in the middle of a desert in his chariot reading the Word of God. But he didn’t understand what he was reading but he wanted to understand it. He ... a man named Philip. He plucked a man out a tremendous revival where multitudes were being saved. Plucked him down in the middle of the desert. Sat him next to this man on the chariot and used him to bring that person to Jesus Christ. Just two chapters over we ...

523. The Twenty-Ninth Chapter of Acts

2 Timothy 4:1-22

Sermon

John E. Harnish

... of the church. It is Paul's last word, the final summary of his life and work: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." Because, quite honestly, some have not. Paul says Demas, in love with the world, deserted him. Crescens departed the mission and went to Galatia. Titus has gone off to Dalmatia. Alexander, the coppersmith, did him great harm. When he went before the courts, no one stood by him. He warns Timothy that the time is coming when people will not endure ...

524. Dots on a Screen

Hebrews 9:24-28

Sermon

Lee Ann Dunlap

... visit can one fully grasp its beauty and grandeur. That fact is usually audible as folks gasp in wonder at their first view. Compared to that firsthand vision, everything else is just dots on a screen. Our biblical ancestors traveling the desert obviously had no concept of television, yet in some sense the ancient tabernacle (and the later Jerusalem temple) and the accompanying rituals functioned as a kind of television screen that offered worshipers a glimpse into an unseen heavenly reality. Some Greek ...

525. When What’s Holding You Up Lets You Down

2 Samuel 18:33-19:8

Sermon

Shirley Gupton Lynn

... can accept our suffering as ours and not insist upon understanding it. II. David accepted his suffering. Then he examined his options. His advisers wisely told David that if he continued to be incapacitated with grief for Absalom, his army would feel so rejected they would desert him. After all, they had put down the rebellion and now the business of government had to go on. Joab said, "now go at once and give your servants some encouragement; if you refuse, I swear by the Lord that not a man will stay with ...

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