Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: thirstiness, dryness, parched, craving, strong desire, longing, yearning, avidity, hunger, voracity, keenness, eagerness, lust, appetite, passion, love, crave, want, covet, desire, hunger for/after, lust for/after, hanker for/after, have one's heart set on

Antonyms: aversion, distaste, apathy, dislike, hatred, antipathy, disgust, disregard, abhorrence, acrimony, wet, animosity, animus, antagonism, bad feeling, bitterness, be averse to, detestation

Showing 601 to 625 of 1164 results

601. Fasting In A Fast-food World

Joel 2:1-11

Sermon

Barbara Brokhoff

If I told you that I have a sure-fire, effortless plan whereby you can lose 25 pounds, with no exercise, and no money, would I have your attention? I thought so. You can't pick up a Woman's Day magazine, Good Housekeeping, McCalls, Red-book, Ladies' Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, or even the National Enquirer without finding at least one article on how to lose weight. It's a multi-million dollar business in America. And, if you are overweight, you probably need to lose some fat to be more ...

602. Life's Loose Threads and The Tie That Binds

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Sermon

Robert S. Crilley

In 1481 Leonardo da Vinci was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of a nearby monastery. He devoted an inordinate amount of time and energy to the depiction, compiling countless preparatory sketches and carefully attending to each intricate detail. The result was revolutionary: one of the most dramatic and innovative renderings of the Renaissance, before which succeeding generations of artists would later stand awestruck in absolute wonder. Mysteriously, though, just seven months into the ...

603. No Turning Back

John 6:60-71

Sermon

King Duncan

Former heavyweight boxer James (Quick) Tillis is a cowboy from Oklahoma. Tillis fought out of Chicago in the early 1980s. A deeply religious man, Tillis is remembered as the first boxer ever to make Mike Tyson go the distance in the heavyweight division. Tillis had his disappointments as a boxer, but evidently they didn’t rob him of his sense of humor. He still remembers his first day in the Windy City after his arrival from Tulsa. “I got off the bus,” he says, “with two cardboard suitcases under my arms ...

604. Corpus Christi

Mk 4:12-16, 22-26 · Heb 9:11-15 · Ex 24:3-8 · Ps 126

Sermon Aid

Russell F. Anderson

COMMENTARY Lesson 1: Exodus 24:3-8 After Moses and the elders commune with the Lord on the mountain, Moses builds an altar at the foot of the mountain with twelve pillars of stone, representing the twelve tribes. He assembles the people for a covenant ceremony. The people agreed to obey the Lord's commands as delivered by Moses. In witness to the covenant between God and the people, Moses ordered that many beasts be sacrificed. He took half the blood and dashed it against the altar, representing God's ...

605. The Ultimate Soul Food

John 6:24-35

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Jesus has two major metaphors for himself-Bread and Water: "Bread of Life" and "Living Water." For the Christian, the #1 soul food is bread and water. What makes bread come alive, what turns juice into wine, is YEAST. There is a Kudzu cartoon that shows the preacher reading from the pulpit the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day our daily....low-fat, low-cholesterol, salt-free bread ..." The last frame has him saying to himself, "I hate these modern translations." Despite such modern translations, despite new ...

606. Recollections of Reuben, Uncle of a Young Bethlehem Shepherd

Matthew 2:13-18

Drama

Robert A. Morgan

A Dramatic Monologue It's a great time for you to be asking questions now, after all the blood your soldiers spilled and all the pain and misery they brought to nearly every home in Bethlehem! Yes, I understand what you've said - you wouldn't have allowed such widespread killings if you had been King Herod, and not just a captain of his soldiers. You would have asked some questions first, and tried to narrow down the possibilities of which baby it might be that you had to kill. But, of course, if you had ...

607. Thanks, but...

Philippians 4:10-20

Sermon

Will Willimon

Frankly, I didn't even want to be at that night's meeting. I hate meetings, even church meetings, especially church meetings. But as the representative from the Commission on Ecumenical Basketball, I felt obligated to be at the monthly meeting of the Board. We met in the Seekers Sunday School classroom, sat in rows of grey, fold-out metal chairs. The meeting began with prayer. Minutes of the last meeting were read and approved. Then the Chairman said, "I call the monthly meeting of the Board of First ...

608. Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?

John 10:11-18

Sermon

Lori Wagner

“I am sending you out among wolves.” Matthew 10:16 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” Matthew 7:15 We all know and fear wolves. But some can be clever. How do you recognize a “wolf” when you see one? I think we can all probably answer that question. We need to pay attention to their behavior and not their facade. We don’t need a manual on wolf behavior to recognize when wolves are in our presence. Wolves have a certain identifiable ...

609. Epiphany 5

Psalm 138:1-8, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Judges 6:1-40, Isaiah 6:1-13, Luke 5:1-11

Sermon Aid

George Bass

THEOLOGICAL CLUE The thematic and theological framework of the Christian tends to be rather "thin" by the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany; the manifestation of Jesus to the world and the beginning of his ministry remain, however, to inform the church about Jesus in its worship and work. The readings tend to reinforce the weak signals that are being sent out by the kerygmatic content of the church year, mainly because they have been selected with the theological themes of Epiphany in mind. As also happens ...

610. Joseph's Pit

Genesis 37:1-11

Sermon

Jerry Eckert

August 29, 1982 Comment: I have no better excuse for including this story sermon than that I like it. It uses a third person, by means of his journal, to tell the story of Joseph meeting his brothers in Egypt years after they had sold him into slavery. Since the narrative has similarities to the previous story of Jacob, a creative pastor might want to use the radio drama format. Churches with closed circuit television might want to experiment with further dramatization, costumes, and sets. One of the great ...

611. Sermons

Sermon

John R. Bodo

Introductory Note "Thomas the Doubter" is obviously an Easter sermon. However, for Christians every Lord's Day is Easter, because ours is a Resurrection faith. Without the Resurrection, we have nothing distinctive -- for our own comfort and growth or for a world in pain. In "Thomas the Doubter" I hazard a hypothesis about Thomas' life prior to his meeting Jesus. The hypothesis seems fairly plausible. His nickname, Didymus, appears in the biblical record (John 11:16). "Thomas the Doubter" argues for the ...

612. The Mechanics Of Prayer

Matthew 6:5-15, Luke 11:1-13

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

Note: This isn't a sermon but it's a good primer if you are preaching on the subject. Our goal is to pray like Jesus. We want to improve the effectiveness of our prayers. That is our objective, but what are the means of reaching the goal? We have come to the time when we need to consider the nuts and bolts of Christlike prayer. What do we say? When do we say it? Where do we say it? How long should we pray? How often? These are some of the mechanics of prayer. They are important as means to the end. The ...

613. WWF: Smack Down In The Wilderness

Mark 1:9-15

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

A kindergarten teacher was suddenly taken ill and a replacement was hastily found. The substitute teacher was at a loss as to what to do with the children. She decided to tell them stories. And always, at the end of each story, she would say, "And the moral of that story is..." After dozens of stories, the children had sat through dozens of morals. The regular teacher recovered from her illness and returned to her class. One of her students greeted her with a smile and said, "Teacher, I'm sure glad you're ...

614. How To Be Truly Happy

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

King Duncan

Is there anybody in this world who is truly happy? There was a Peanuts cartoon years ago in which Lucy asked Charlie Brown if he has ever known anybody who was really happy. Before she could finish her sentence, however, Snoopy the precocious beagle came dancing on tip-toe into the frame, his nose high in the air. He danced and bounced his way across two frames of the cartoon strip. Finally, in the last frame, Lucy finished her sentence, “Have you ever known anybody who was really happy and was still in ...

615. God Forsaken

Mark 15:21-32

Sermon

Erskine White

And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (Mark 15:34) Many churches today read from the Revised Standard Version or the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, but it wasn't always that way. In fact, the first RSV translation was printed in 1952. There were great arguments within many congregations between those who wanted to accept the new Bible and those who wanted to keep the old King James ...

616. With A Name Like That . . .

Acts 4:1-22

Sermon

King Duncan

Let's think for a moment about names. Names are interesting. They reflect our heritage. They may also say something about our parents. Do you know how Attorney General Janet Reno got her last name? She was born with the Danish name of Rasmussen, but her father, after immigrating to this country, thought that name was too difficult for his little girl to pronounce in school. So he chose a shorter, simpler name she could both pronounce and spell. He chose the name by closing his eyes and pointing to a map of ...

617. Where's George?

Luke 15:1-7, Luke 15:8-10

Sermon

King Duncan

In the early 1930s, George Burns and Gracie Allen were enjoying moderate success with their new television show, but they weren't drawing in the audiences like they wanted to. They needed some way to get people interested in the show. The solution came, improbably enough, from one of Gracie's scatterbrained comedy routines. George knew that one way to get the comedic juices flowing was to ask Gracie about her brother, George. Gracie was a master at weaving dizzyingly tall tales about her brother, who was ...

618. The Great Divide

Luke 16:19-31

Sermon

James Merritt

One of the most fun trips I have ever taken in my life was years ago when my wife and three sons went out west to Colorado, and spent a week in a part of the country we had never been in before. We did everything from horseback riding to white water rafting, to just exploring the great outdoors. But one of the highlights for me, strangely enough, was driving up to a top of one of the Rocky Mountains and standing on what is called by some, "The Continental Divide," and others "The Great Divide." Geologists ...

619. How Can You Tell When People Are Religious?

Mark 2:18-22

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

For seven days King David fasted. Day and night he went without food as he prayed desperately for the life of his newborn child. The baby had been born as a result of his affair with Bathsheba, an adulterous affair that had led to the murder of Bathsheba’s husband. From the moment the baby was born, it was evident the child’s life was hanging by a slim thread. So David prayed for the life of the child. He prayed with great intensity. He fasted as part of his prayers, hoping that by his petitions and by his ...

620. Putting the Puzzle Together

John 6:60-71

Sermon

King Duncan

I normally don't tell blonde jokes. Some of my best friends are blondes. And there is a sexist element to such jokes, I will admit. But sometimes one comes a long that's really funny. A certain young lady calls her boyfriend and says, "Please come over here and help me . . . I have a jigsaw puzzle, and I can't figure out how to get it started." Her boyfriend asks, "What is it supposed to be when it's finished?" The young lady says, "According to the picture on the box, it's a tiger." Her boyfriend decides ...

621. Will 2012 Be the End of the World?

Revelation 7:9-17

Sermon

King Duncan

Are you prepared for the end of the world? December 21, 2012 is supposed to be the magic date. That’s less than two years away! This date is supposedly based on a prophecy contained in an ancient Mayan calendar at least that is what the sci-fi thriller film 2012 tried to tell us this past winter. Why we should take this prophecy seriously, I don’t know. However, according to The Complete Idiots’ Guide to 2012 (yes, there is a book by that title), there are more than 600,000 websites devoted to this very ...

622. The High Price of Short Cuts

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

In Tennessee Williams’ play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Big Daddy and his son, Brick, are in the basement sorting through stuff while the other children are upstairs arguing about the family inheritance. Big Daddy says to Brick, “You know what I’m going to do before I die? I’m going to open all these boxes.” Then, realizing he doesn’t have enough time left for that task Big Daddy says, “There’s one thing you can’t buy in a fire sale or any other market on earth. That’s your life. You can’t buy back your life ...

623. He Can Quench All Your Thirsts

Exodus 17:1-7

Sermon

One of the funniest and wisest commentaries on human nature is the cartoon strip Hagar the Horrible. In one cartoon Hagar's son, Hamlet, asks his blank-faced father if he could help put his model ship in a bottle. Hagar frowns and proceeds to lecture the boy on how he should be more industrious in seeking solutions to his problems, how he should read and reason and not wait for the answers to his problems to be handed to him. Hamlet mumbles, "Thanks, Dad." Then, in the next room, he tells his mother, "Dad ...

624. Welcome Home

Luke 15:11-32

Sermon

James Merritt

A picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes they should be because certain pictures can leave you speechless. I have often thought that if my house were burning down and I could only grab a few things as I ran out the door, I would bypass the jewelry, the clothes, and any furniture. I would take some pictures because pictures matter to me. And they matter to us all. We’ve now entered what might be called “The age of the snapshot.” 82% of Americans say they take pictures with their cell phones, up from a ...

625. The Cracking Point

Mark 12:1-12

Sermon

Harold Warlick

Everyone has a cracking point. There comes a certain point in our relationships with others or in our feelings about ourselves when everything snaps. You and I are emotionally and physiologically structured so that we can withstand only so much. There is only so much garbage, so much heat we can take. Then, like the valve on a pressure cooker, we simply blow off. Perhaps the six most dramatic words in the English language are these: "I just can't take it anymore." Every person has a cracking point. It ...

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