Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 651 to 675 of 4999 results

Matthew 18:15-20

Sermon

... about anything they ask, it will be done for them ..." (Matthew 18:19) Does this mean that it takes two people to make the kind of prayer that will be answered? I don't know. I really doubt if it means this exactly. But I am quite sure it is ... sure of this: We are together with one another if we are together with Him. And our being together is our best help for living a Christian kind of life and our best aid in doing the work we are called to do in the world. To be together, each with each other, each with ...

652. Some Man

Luke 10:38-42

Sermon

... must have discovered, a lasting relationship with the Christ that raises one’s life to higher levels of love and service. Mary is the kind of person that all of us ought to be, persons who are able to sort out priorities in life and able to put first ... it in us as long as we live. Charlotte’s Web is a delightful and much loved story, isn’t it? But it is only a kind of fairy tale about an ordinary sort of pig and an extraordinary spider, who gives all she has, including her life, so that Wilbur might ...

653. The Man, the Message, and the Mission

Luke 12:49-53

Sermon

George Bass

... the cross does make sense, you see. It is not like all those other senseless deaths; it means deliverance and forgiveness and life for you and me. Why, then, do you suppose that Jesus talked about fire on earth and division in families? That’s a strange kind of mission, isn’t it? Most of us like to think of him as the Prince of Peace - as well as those other titles ascribed to him by Isaiah: "Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father ... Of the increase of his government and of peace ...

654. Dodging the Thrust

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

Sermon

Carveth Mitchell

... is aimed at us; and the thrust of its message is : Do you care? It’s no use trying to dodge it. It doesn’t matter who they are, where they are or how they got lost. We have one message, to be expressed in quiet words and in compassionate kindness "Jesus cares about you." Who on God’s green earth is going to tell them if we Christians don’t? Dear Lord, bring into our minds today the name of someone who does not know you as Jesus revealed you. Nudge us to do something about it. Keep us restless ...

655. Saving Sinners

Matthew 9:9-13

Sermon

... . Every day I look around at all I have here, and I thank the good Lord for giving me all these blessings. I promise him I'll always try harder the next day, and then I go to sleep like a baby." We can't deny that God wants a kind of inner contentment for us. But somehow, in the context, the man's remarks struck me as being too simple an explanation. They struck me very much as being the words of a "respectable Christian." The fellow might be insulted at any slight suggestion of a need for a spiritual ...

656. The Demanding Word

Matthew 13:1-23

Sermon

... the demanding Word acted out there. It claims everything from us, as it claimed everything, yes life itself, from Jesus. This call of the cross is not a call to some harmless religion. No "now I lay me down to sleep" variety of religion here. Much more than "doing a kind deed each day." This is a total uprooting of one's life so that everything in our lives serves God and his purposes. What is the demanding Word of God saying to you and me right now? It's saying that you can't look at the cross of Christ ...

657. How to Stay Humble in a Haughty World

Luke 14:1-14

Sermon

Brett Blair

... 's the guy we want to be seen with! That we want to invite to our dinners and social gatherings because deeply it is the kind of people we want to be. We don't want to be seen with the guys who are always being knocked down--the poor, crippled, ... which God will honor you. Thomas Carlyle, the British historian, put it succinctly, “Show me the man you honor and I will know what kind of man you are.” Why are we Christians asked to take the seats of least honor? Why are we Christians asked to give expecting ...

658. Epiphany 4

Lk 4:21-30 · 1 Cor 13:1-13 · Jer 1:4-10

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... up a big goose egg! Give your life to excellence in speaking or in knowledge, or in faith, or in personal sacrifice and without love you have nothing. Your life has been wasted. However, have love and the other items enrich and enforce life. A loveless life with every kind of ability is a useless, tragic life. 2. Not (vv. 4-6). When it comes to describing or defining something, often it is best to tell what a thing is not. It is a reverse way of getting to the truth. Paul uses this device when he explains ...

659. A Call for a Change in Lifestyle

Matthew 3:1-12

Sermon

... man was so startled that he did drop the gun, but the recruit had violated procedures and could have caused the man to pull the trigger and kill himself. Christ, we may be assured, has come to give us life and to give it abundantly, but it takes a kind of death to turn us around so we might live out our lives on earth in faith, love, and service to God and humanity. John’s self-identification with Isaiah’s "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight" sharpens the focus of how we might embrace ...

660. A Desperate Question

Matthew 11:1-19

Sermon

George Bass

... to have an answer to that perplexing problem and he had to have it soon; his fate depended on it, to some degree. Apparently, he was bothered by the reports that filtered down to him about the kind of ministry Jesus was engaged in. The training mission, on which Jesus had sent the twelve, seems to have precipitated a kind of personal crisis causing him to doubt that Jesus was the long-expected Messiah, and the matter had to be settled before it was too late. He must have wanted to die in peace; he had to ...

661. Food From Heaven

John 6:35

Children's Sermon

... s a very important word because it means that you believe in Jesus. Jesus called himself the "bread of life." He meant that if people believed in him as much as they believed in the food that they ate every day, they could live forever. Eating our kind of bread and drinking our kind of water means that we will live only until we grow old, and then we will die. Bread and water cannot keep us alive forever. But believing in Jesus will let us live with God even after we die. That is a very important difference ...

662. Pentecost 23

Exodus 22:16-31, Leviticus 19:1-37, Ruth 2:1-23, 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-16, Matthew 22:34-40, Matthew 22:41-46, Psalm 1:1-6

Sermon Aid

... part of the army - one great company - in the noble army of martyrs, beginning with Stephen, most of the Apostles, and a growing legion of people who loved the Lord enough that they were ready to lay down their lives in the name of the Son of God. That kind of love may be enough, in the case of the martyrs and confessors of the church, but it may not suffice for the rest of us who have never been threatened with torture or death for Jesus' sake. The second dimension of the law carries equal force for most ...

663. For Freedom!

Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

... ’s debt and set him free? What happens to that person? Either of two things can come of it. The individual can be completely overcome with gratitude, or he can take advantage of his undeserved good fortune and abuse his freedom. All of us know people of both kinds. A touch of both kinds lives inside us all. But God calls us to make a clear choice as to which we’ll have. The coming of the Kingdom and our own future and destiny depend upon it. A. We Can Pass on It Once the gift is given, we could opt to ...

664. Sinners Anonymous

Matthew 9:9-13

Sermon

Dennis Kastens

... class and equally dependent upon the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. One person is basically as bad as the next; it is only the Lord Jesus who makes the difference. The difference is not in us. It is high time that we in the church get used to this kind of thinking. "For there is no difference, all have sinned" say the Scriptures. "We thus judge that if one died for all, then were all dead." "For God has no favorites: Those who sinned outside the pale of the Law of Moses will perish outside its pale, and all ...

665. No Sooner Said Than Done!

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... upon humanity to return to God. By returning to God, we are saved. But what will get us to return? It is when we learn of the indescribable love demonstrated on the cross on which God gave himseif as a sacrifice that we realize God’s goodness and kindness to us. His love melts our hearts. His sacrifice removed the gulf between us and God. By faith in Christ, we are accounted as sinless and are acceptable to God. As a result, we have our lives flooded with freedom and life which will never end. And the ...

666. Two Bodies for Two Worlds

Isaiah 26:1-21

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... begged, "Send us to the swine, let us enter them." Jesus gave his permission, and the pigs, now possessed with the demons, hurled themselves to destruction in the sea. God gave us, too, a body for life on this planet. It is a body that is fit for this kind of environment. He intended the body to be temporary, for he intended life on earth to be only a pilgrimage, a testing ground for a better, later world. Our physical bodies, then, were meant to get old and weak. It is normal and natural for us to reach ...

667. Born to Play Second Fiddle

Luke 1:57-66

Sermon

George Bass

... in Domingo’s life - the Dominican order was born and named after the man who is now called St. Dominic. That’s the way God’s call works for most of us, but in the case of John the Baptist God selected him before his birth as a special kind of servant with a unique role in life; his life was to be dedicated to preparing the way for the coming of the Messiah, and that’s a good reason for celebrating John’s birthday on June 24. Christian Service Always Glorifies Christ We mark the occasion of John ...

668. The Impartiality of God

Acts 10:23b-48

Sermon

Hubert Beck

... control over what happens to us, and we are passive recipients of both the good and the ill that is done to us and within us and around us. For that reason it may be well to speak of the need for a Savior to save us from ourselves. That kind of talk is compatible with the story we have before us in the Second Lesson for the day. It is, unfortunately, only a very small portion of a story that takes up the entire chapter from which these five verses are taken and is deemed important enough to rehearse yet ...

669. A SUNDAY OF THE PASSION [PALM SUNDAY] SERMON-DRAMA

Drama

Tom Eberle

... without first requiring a certain standard of behavior from them. Toga: Have you pointed this flaw out to him? Judas: The more I pushed it, the more insistent he was about his position; so it was dropped. We are trying to improve crowd security to limit this kind of undesirable contact in the future. I would also like to say that I feel this problem is partly a result of his upbringing. He came from a poor village family. Fortunately he had the intelligence to pull himself up from that; but I am afraid that ...

670. Invitation to a New Life-Style

Matthew 11:25-30

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... emptied himself, took the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. How do you get this kind of a mind? It comes as a byproduct of putting God first in your life. If you have a God-centered life, you will ... of grace. We think of life in terms of rules, regulations, obligations, and responsibilities. We talk in terms of "must" and "ought." Indeed, this kind of living is tough and rough. But this is not the Christian style of life. Jesus’ way of life is easy because it ...

671. It Is Really Something New by Dr. Frank Bateman Stanger

2 Corinthians 5:11--6:2, Acts 17:16-34

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... , the way that life is intended to go. He is the Truth, that which alone satisfies the mind made in the image of God. He is the Life, the very essence of existence. I think often of what E. Stanley Jones wrote: "There is only one kind of predestination I believe in; you and I are predestined to be Christian." The "new doctrine" builds upon the old truth - the deepest nature of people manifests its affinity for both spirituality and immortality. The second major insight into the meaning of the "new doctrine ...

672. Miracle On Main Street by Dr. George A. Buttrick

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... Eve were guilty. But where did that snake come from, insinuating, squirming slimily along the ground, with his, "Why don’t you try the forbidden tree? The apples look luscious. It’s your garden, isn’t it?" Why is the world such that we have to struggle to be kind and good, whereas to sin we have only to let go? One of my Harvard students said, "I’m ready to believe that God forgives me, but how can he forgive himself?" Thus the doubt of God even while the fact of creation points to him. II. But we ...

673. Braggers

John 8:48-59

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... about themselves or about something that belongs to them, we stop listening or turn them off so that we do not have to listen. No one likes to hear someone brag or boast about himself. On the other hand, I am very interested in hearing about a tire or a kind of soap if the person talking about it doesn’t own it, or is not trying to sell it. For instance, suppose that I told you that I used a certain ...

674. It’s Not So Bad To Be A Beggar

Acts 3:1-10

Sermon

Barbara Brokhoff

... for you to ask for more - that you aren’t asking enough of him? Did you ever learn the simple little verse which says (it is about a question once posed to a small child): "If you had been living when Christ was on earth, and had met the Saviour kind, What would you have asked him to do for you - just supposing that you were stone-blind?" The child considered, and then replied, "I expect that without a doubt, I’d have asked for a seeing-eye dog and a collar and chain, to lead me daily about." And how ...

675. When Yes Means No and No Means Yes

Matthew 21:28-32

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... look around me, I find persons who call themselves Christian who, it seems to me, deny the principles this man taught. I wonder sometimes, if I am not more Christian than they are, even if I am a Jew." How often we are flushed out as being this kind of phony Christian when we practice stewardship (or rather, fail to practice it.) We say that Christ is the most important thing in our lives. We say that the work of the kingdom is important. We pledge our allegiance to the Savior. But, when it comes right down ...

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