Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 51 to 75 of 1182 results

Psalm 133:1-3

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... We prefer to think in terms of the individual rather than any group. Is that good? I do not think so. And for that matter, neither do many others. A book came out some years ago called Habits of the Heart(1) that now has become a classic. It was written by some sociologists who wanted to look at our American celebration of individualism to see where it was leading us. And frankly, what they found in their research was disquieting. Without going into detail, their conclusion was that all this concern for the ...

52. Temptation

Luke 4:1-13

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... in Lent, this unique period in the church year during which we are called to a rigorous self-examination, the church reads again the story of Christ's temptation in the wilderness. Our story from Luke this morning is the classic New Testament account of temptation (the Old Testament classic being the serpent and Eve in the Garden of Eden). As the lesson has it, Jesus is "led by the Spirit" into the wilderness where he encounters the devil. Immediately, modern readers have a problem. We try to picture the ...

53. The Wondrous Possibility Of Change

Galatians 1:11-24

Sermon

King Duncan

... was the same as the chief problem in 1986it is man himself. Is there no hope for humanity? Is there no hope for us as individuals? The late Samuel Heffenstein said, "Wherever I go, I go too, and spoil everything." And there is Jack Paar ™s classic line. "Looking back, my life seems like one long obstacle race, with me as it ™s chief obstacle." Many of us can identify with those assessments. Is it possible for us to change? The answer is, "of course." We can change. Millions of people have experienced ...

54. A Strategy For Status Seekers

Luke 14:1-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... you are totally absorbed in yourself, you do not grow. Pride causes us to do foolish things. Pride keeps us from growing. Pride also keeps us from reaching out to others. One of the saddest characters in American literature is Willy Woman, in Arthur Miller’s classic play, "Death of a Salesman". Poor Willy was always going to make that "big sale." He was going to bring home a fortune one of these days then people would give him the recognition that he truly deserved. But the big sale never came. Then he ...

55. How Much Faith Is Enough?

Luke 17:1-10

Sermon

King Duncan

... say that this was a time of deepening faith. Why? Because, God gave him faith equal to his needs. It was during a second imprisonment that Bunyan wrote one of the most influential books ever written the spiritual classic, Pilgrim's Progress. Could Bunyan have written this deep and meaningful classic without his prison experience? Who knows? But we do know that it is a clear spiritual principle that God increases our faith according to our needs. People who live only surface lives facing no great challenges ...

56. On Being Picked For The "Rework"

Jeremiah 18:1--19:15

Sermon

King Duncan

... made it over reworking it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make it." (Jeremiah 18:3,4 Amplified Bible) It was a classic episode of "I Love Lucy." Lucy had taken a job at a candy factory and she was being trained on the first day of her new job ... her mouth, her coat, her pockets, her dress so that no unfinished piece would make it through her station. It was a classic. I couldn't help but think of that hilarious scene as I read Life magazine's description of Steve Bailey, the Candy ...

57. Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels

Luke 16:1-15

Sermon

King Duncan

... day. Philosopher Immanuel Kant believed this universal desire of human beings to see justice accomplished pointed the way to God. He called it "a universal sense of oughtness." The Hero's Adventure is what it is sometimes called in storytelling. It is the classic formula of popular fiction. A virtuous person is called on to face overwhelming odds. He or she nearly loses possibly at the risk of his or her own life. Eventually, however, our hero is victorious. And vicariously we celebrate alongside the hero ...

58. Dealing with Our Doubts

Mark 9:14-32

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... disciples were impotent in the face of it. I have felt that way many times, standing by a hospital bed, wishing that there was more that I could do, wondering why God allows good people to suffer so. Twenty years ago there came out of Korea a classic little book titled “The Martyred” by Richard E. Kim (New York: George Braziller, 1964) In it the agnostic Captain Lee comes to know Mr. Shin, a Christian pastor, in the midst of the Korean War. (Or was it only a police action? I can never keep those things ...

59. Living with the Aches and Alleluias

Luke 21:5-38

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... have peace because Christ is your living hope. He is infinitely stronger than anything you are facing. With God''s strength flowing through you, you can live to fight another day. Recently, I had the privilege of seeing the classic Broadway play Damn Yankees. The theme song that pulsates from the great classic is the tune, "You gotta have heart--You gotta have heart." This is the power you need to get your gears churning and working. This is also the promise of Advent. In what appears to be so much darkness ...

60. People See Through Us

James 2:1-13

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... will be the Good Book." Actually he was wrong (the man, not Peter Gomes). "The Good Book" is not a completely good book. It contains a lot of trivia, moral meanness, and human nonsense. It is not the classical work of a lone genius. It is, indeed, a classical vision of the unachieved possibilities of humankind. One must look for its central liberating personality, its central themes as it unfolds in diverse cultures, times, and communities. On this, I believe, Gomes would heartedly agree. Had the reader ...

61. Death Leads to Life

Isaiah 52:13--53:12

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... example of a paradox. We recall that a paradox is a statement or idea that when first examined appears to be false, but on closer scrutiny is proven to be true. "Meno," a famous dialogue of the great philosopher Plato, presents a classic example of a paradox. In the dialogue Socrates, Plato's protagonist, engages his friend Meno in a conversation and asks, "Is it possible to know that which is not learned?" Meno immediately answers, "No, there is nothing that one knows that is not learned." Socrates, after ...

62. Put My Tears In Thy Bottle

Psalm 56:1-13

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... limits. A man of gratitude who never forgot to pay his vows, and to render gratitude. He could thus say with the Psalmist, "This I know, that God is for me." I've not yet discovered the translation that Dr. Beaty used when he quoted Psalm 56 in that classic sermon on gratitude. But I want to find it. Verse 13 he rendered in this fashion, "For Thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not Thou deliver my feet from falling that I may walk before God, living in the sunshine." That's the closing line of the ...

63. When Being Good Is Bad For You Or Breaking The Chains Of Co-dependency

1 John 4:7-21

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... -skillet out of the lower kitchen cabinet and mix cornbread and cook it for her children when we go home. She can't make pallets on the floor for her grandchildren. She can't do any of those things that have given her meaning. Co-Bell is a classic personification of a person of who without somebody to help feels like nothing. Do you know anybody like that? Just think about it -- people who feel like nothing because they have nobody to help. Only recently, it has come clear to me why my mother is so angry ...

64. A Longer Stride and a Larger Embrace

Galatians 2:11-21

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... Growth is God’s will—always. In my convocation addresses through the years, I have sought to define the nature and mission of theological education, particularly here at Asbury Theological Seminary. I continue that effort today. I’m calling for Asbury to recapture our classical essence as “seminarius,” which means seedbed and/or demonstration plot. Organic is a key image. “Change can diminish us; it can cut us off from our roots; it can panic us so that we abandon our past… But when we grow in ...

65. All This and Heaven Too

Luke 18:18-30

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... Underhill, Brother Lawrence, and an array of others. I began a deliberate practice of “keeping company with the saints,” seeking to immerse myself in the writings of these folks, which have endured through the centuries, expressing Christian faith and life and becoming classic resources for the Christian pilgrim. I am ready to confess with Leon Bloy that “there is only one sorrow, the sorrow of not being a saint."” I wrote a book—Keeping Company with the Saints, which was published last spring to ...

66. Standing In the Gap: The Work of Intercession

2 Chronicles 7:11-22

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... and promises are an obvious example—2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from Heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.” The classic example and promise in the New Testament is Jesus’ allegory of the vine and the branches. You remember in that He tells us who God is and who He is in relation to God—then He tells us who we are in relation to Him and He says, “If you ...

67. What Is Required of Us?

Matthew 5:17-20

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... fulfilled only in him, which means that while it is of great importance, he is of greater importance, and between the two we do not have to chose. In Jesus we hear the ultimate author of the Book telling us what it means. This is why in the classical liturgies of the church a reading from the Old Testament normally precedes one or more lessons from the New Testament, because the first is fulfilled in the second. And we claim that our judgment is not just arbitrary but rooted in the words of Jesus who came ...

68. A Radical Faith

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... God, and makes us restless until we are one with God. One of the great theologians of the early Church, Irenaeus, put it in its classic form. He said, "God became like us so that we could become like God." The Church preached that you become like God by doing that ... ." Luther descended into hell. He felt God had abandoned him. Then he prepared lectures in Galatians and in Romans, these two classic letters from Paul. The passage from Galatians was read for us today about how we are saved not by our merits, ...

69. God Never Gives Up

Luke 15:1-10

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... But in Christianity the proclamation is just the opposite. It says we don’t have to find our way to God, because God has found his way to us. What is unique, Montefiore said, is that God seeks us and God finds us. That is why the classical, prototypical Christian experience is, “I have been found.” “I once was lost, but now am found.” And nowhere is that proclaimed as clearly, and as beautifully, as in the 15th chapter of Luke. The Gospel of John will pick up Ezekiel’s theme of the good shepherd ...

70. The Messiah

Matthew 3:1-12

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... period of the English language. The 17th and 18th centuries, Shakespeare, the King James version of the Bible, and the Book of Common Prayer. Elegant, simple, beautiful prose. The libretto reflects that "classical" English. Handel's own native tradition would have been the German chorale, which tends to be more foreboding and sometimes even ponderous. But he combined the English of the text with Italian opera music. The result is a masterful vehicle for expressing the feelings that we have at Christmas ...

71. Confused as Pigeons

Matthew 16:13-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... erroneous, downright stupid. Buy "A." No, "A" stinks. Buy "B." No, "A" and "B" are dead-ends. Buy "C." Whom should we believe? How do we even come up with criteria that will enable us to feel we can figure out who's on first? The classic Abbot and Costello vaudeville routine "Who's On First?" may describe the feeling that almost all of us experience as we try to figure out mortgage rates, credit card applications, phone bills, diet plans, schools for the kids, retirement strategies, and how to train the dog ...

72. Taking Something Up for Lent

John 3:1-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... church for Lent? 3) Or here's another take on. Instead of watching those soaps or reading those novels, what if during Lent you were to take on the reading of a devotional book a week? It could be a spiritual classic like John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, or it could be a contemporary spiritual classic like Conrad Gemp's Jesus Asked or Greg Paul's God in the Alley: Seeing and Being Jesus in a Broken World. 4) Or here's another take on. What if you were to take on the spiritual discipline of daily meditation ...

73. Let Familiarity Breed Contentment

Hebrews 13:1-25

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... keep our mind fixed in one direction – focused on a single goal: we lose sight, we lose touch, we lose connection with all the glories of the world that surround us everyday. Anyone ever read The Phantom Tollbooth? It's a classic children's story, first published in 1961. But like all classic children's stories, it's as much for adults as for children. The Phantom Tollbooth is the tale of the young boy Milo's encounter on his odd journey an invisible city. It is filled with crowds of people rushing about ...

74. The Whole Shebang in Six Words

John 11:38-44

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... some of them to claim that the brain's temporal lobes are the place where you can find God. In other words, God is nothing more than an electrical charge in your skull a God circuit in the brain. Nobel Laureate Francis Crick gives classic expression to this form of scientific materialism: "You, your joys, and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules ...

75. Wrestling for a Blessing

Genesis 32:22-32

Sermon

James McCormick

... of his whole life. Jacob’s entire life had been a struggle. From the very beginning, he struggled with his twin brother, Esau. Jacob was his mother’s favorite. But he knew that Esau, his brother, was his father Isaac’s favorite. It was a classic sibling rivalry which resulted in tragic consequences. You remember the story: with the encouragement of his mother, Jacob conspired to steal Esau’s birthright and blessing. In fear of his life, he ran away from home. He went to a far away land and fell ...

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