Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 51 to 75 of 155 results

Mark 7:31-37

Sermon

Richard Patt

... s talk about this "return to glory." I First of all, the Bible story spells out for us the human breakdown surrounding us on every side. In verse 32 we read, "Some people brought [Jesus] a man who was deaf and could hardly speak." There was physical deficiency here. The man could not hear. His tongue didn’t work; he could not speak. People are meant to hear with their ears and speak with their tongue! This man could do neither. Somewhere, no doubt from birth, there had been a physical breakdown. So, from ...

52. Counting The Cost?

Mark 12:41-44

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... that the wounded men recoiled from them, begging to be left in their blankets; there was no bedroom furniture ... There were no basins, no towels, no soap, no brooms, no mops, no trays, no plates; ... The supply of fuel was constantly deficient. The cooking arrangements were preposterously inadequate, and the laundry was a farce. As for purely medical materials, the tale was no better. Stretchers, splints, bandages - all were lacking; and so were the most ordinary drugs.1 Nursing was born amid conditions ...

53. Getting It Together

Luke 6:37-42

Sermon

William G. Carter

... of dirt from somebody’s eye) is made the means of inflating our own ego.”2 That is, it looks like these people are trying to help others, when actually they are trying to feel better about themselves. They exalt themselves by pointing out something deficient about their neighbors. Then they try to help others in their weakness from a position of superiority. “Here,” they say with transparent deference, “let me help you get that speck out of your eye.” We know it when we see it. Ever notice? When ...

54. The Scattering of Lesser Figures

Acts 8:9-25

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... , wrestle most with the twin sins of our existence: wanting what we do not have and fearing that we will lose what we do have. Here, then, is the appropriate Scripture for us lesser figures. It speaks of the preaching of Philip that contained a huge deficiency. His preaching was not accompanied by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere in Acts all the other preachers seemed to have given the Holy Spirit to their converts as soon as they baptized them. What’s more, Philip, who carried the gospel beyond the ...

55. God Knows

Isaiah 5:1-7

Sermon

John W. Wurster

... all things is one of the bedrock values of Christian faith. God is all-knowing. “Omniscient” is the fancy word for it. God knows because God is God. There are things we don’t know because we are not God. We may be efficient, and we may be deficient, but we’re certainly not omniscient. Yet God is. I believe that and I trust that and I teach that, but I have to tell you that I’m thinking about that a little differently after reading this passage from Isaiah. Here seems to be an instance in which ...

56. Make It Right!

Matthew 5:21-26

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... probably not think you were making a statement about the other person's IQ; they would figure that you were simply angry. That one who overheard would not be likely to then go around saying that they had heard that so-and-so was mentally deficient. If they would say anything, they would probably say that you were angry. But if you called someone a thief or a liar or immoral and someone overheard, there is every likelihood that your charge would be repeated...not your anger, your charge...doing significant ...

57. The Christ of the Commonplace

Luke 24:13-35

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... with me." And the abbot led the man down many winding corridors and dark staircases until they came at last to the kitchen, and finally to the place where the dishes were washed. There, covered with grease and grime, was the meanest, lowliest, most mentally deficient of all the monks. The abbot pointed to him and said, "God." Fred Craddock, one of America's great teachers of preaching, tells the story of a breakfast experience.(2) He was stuck in Winnipeg, Canada and in the midst of an early October snow ...

58. Vive La Difference

Romans 12:1-8

Sermon

King Duncan

... of Christ are different from talents. Most of us know what our talents are. We may not know what our gifts are. For example, some of the finest preachers that the church has produced were not talented as orators. Some had to conquer speech deficiencies, extreme nervousness, and similar defeating situations. That did not keep them from being gifted preachersin every sense of the word. Some of you may not have a natural talent for teaching. Your talent might lie in you ability to empathize with young people ...

59. Responding Instead Of Reacting

Jeremiah 28:1-17

Sermon

Dr. B. Bruce Humphrey

... . He has interviewed famous people and traveled widely. One of his chapters is titled, "The Power of Purposeful Pausing." In it he discusses a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson. Here's the quote: "Extreme busyness, whether at school, work or market, is a symptom of deficient energy." In other words, staying busy is not the sign of a person with a high energy level. It is rather the sign of a lazy person. Why? Because the overly busy person has not put enough energy into the really hard work of thinking ...

60. How To Love

John 15:1-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... grandparents tend to compete for children's affections, so they buy toys. (4) As if toys could ever substitute for genuine love. Jesus commanded us to love one another as he loved us. Some people do not know how to love. They pass on the love-deficiency that they learned as children to their children. They express love in inappropriate ways. So Jesus commands us to love as he loves. What are some appropriate ways to express love--particularly in the family? Love comes in many forms. FOR ONE THING THERE IS ...

61. Preparing the Way

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

King Duncan

... The owner of the cabin, on the other hand, was at ease with crookedness, and even unaware of it. (5) What a parable of our world! We live in a world that is off-center. We are so used to it that we are not even aware of its deficiencies. However, measured against God’s will for our world, we can see glaring problems. So God has a dilemma. God created us for righteous living. God created us to live in the image of Christ, with Christ’s compassion, Christ’s forgiveness, Christ’s love. But that’s not ...

62. To Hell and Back

Luke 15:1-7

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the early part of our century during the heyday of Theological Liberalism. It must have been a neat trick: getting some General Conference to abolish hell. Oh, well. Our new United Methodist hymnal (which we will get to see in a few weeks), remedies the deficiency by putting the phrase back in, but in a slightly altered fashion. The new Ecumenical Version of the Apostles’ Creed has the phrase, speaking of Jesus: “He descended to the dead.” I. THAT WAS THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF THE PHRASE. At the time of ...

63. When "Well Done" Is Rare

Matthew 25:14-30

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... he retires, what will I have?" So the assistant used every opportunity to feather his own nest. He hired an immoral builder, he used inferior products, he hired inferior workmen and when the house was completed, it looked fine on the outside, but its deficiencies in workmanship and material would soon show as the test of time came. It was not a job "well done." When the wealthy builder came back, he said, "Do you like the house?" The assistant manager replied, "Yes, I do." The wealthy builder then asked ...

64. What Gets Into People?

Mark 1:21-28

Sermon

King Duncan

... It comes from God. There is so much progress being made not only in finding drugs that heal the body but also ones that heal the mind and the emotions. After all, our minds are housed in our bodies. Why shouldn’t certain chemical balances or chemical deficiencies affect the work of our mind and our emotions, just as they affect the other parts of our body? After you have prayed for God’s help in dealing with a serious mental or emotional difficulty, pick up a phone and call your medical professional. He ...

65. It's Happening!

Mark 4:30-34, Mark 4:26-29

Sermon

David G. Rogne

... him out of school. Winston Churchill was admitted to school in the lowest level classes and never moved out of the lowest group in all the years he attended Harrow. Albert Einstein seemed so slow and dull that his parents feared that he was mentally deficient. One observer has said, "Great minds and high talent, in most cases, cannot be hurried and, like healthy plants, grow slowly." It is so with God's Kingdom. We scatter the seed, but we are not ultimately responsible for its growth. We cannot make things ...

66. What Goes on When He Comes in?

Acts 19:1-22

Sermon

Fredrick R. Harm

... only get one chance to make a first impression." Unquestionably the disciples of John the Baptist, whom Paul met early in his visit to Ephesus, seemed to lack some evidence of God's Spirit in their lives. Their "first impression" was spiritually deficient! Christian scholars throughout the centuries have sought to determine what Paul sensed in these disciples that caused him to question the fullness of their faith. No consensus appears to have been reached. Perhaps we, who live so many years after the event ...

67. Such A Babe In Such A Place

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... being strong and having the answers. They will admire you for all that. But they will identify with you when you dare to be vulnerable, to share your weakness and failures, when you’re willing to let down your hair and aren’t ashamed to admit mistakes and deficiencies. It’s nice to be admired. But it’s better to be loved. And we love those who we identify with, and who can identify with us. And that which cements us together most endearingly is not the sharing of our strength, but the sharing of our ...

68. It's All God's Doing

Ezekiel 17:1-24

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... divided by a symbolic iron curtain and a real Berlin Wall -- and to the utter surprise of the whole world the Wall is battered down and the Curtain begins to rise -- and we think we are independent and in control.*Doctors pronounce at least a 50% deficiency of sight in a little boy and there is not treatment for his malady, no overcoming the limitation; and two years later that little boy, with no medical treatment has 20 - 40 vision. And we think we are independent and in control. Gratitude -- informed and ...

69. In the Wrong Place At the Right Time

Mark 15:21-32

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... are compelled to bear burdens not theirs and not of their own choosing. I remember when our first grandson, Nathan, was born. Early on, he was diagnosed with an underdeveloped optic nerve – and the prognosis was that Nathan would have significant sight deficiency – and there was nothing that could be done about it. There is a miraculous outcome to that story – Nathan is seeing well – but that is not the point. When we were going through that awful experience – receiving that news – that Nathan ...

70. Still Sinners, Still Forgiven

Romans 5:1-8

Sermon

William G. Carter

... keep hanging on to things. Our memories of sins are longer than God's memory. Either we keep holding those things over somebody else's head, as if we exert power over them, or we are afraid to believe that God loves us so much that God put away our deficiencies and sins when Jesus died on the cross. I suppose all of us fall into bad habits now and then. For a while, I got into the habit of apologizing for everything. Everything. Somebody would say, "It's raining today," and I'd say, "I'm sorry." I'd be ...

71. Life, Death, and Judgment

Romans 14:1-12

Sermon

Jeff Wedge

... ways this controversy sounds very modern. There are many people today who are vegetarians of various degrees, and some of them look at the rest of the world, or at least the non-vegetarian portions of it, as somehow inferior to themselves, or somehow morally deficient for eating meat, with some vegetable eaters somehow despising those who still eat meat. It might be a bit surprising to find a very similar argument dividing the church at the time of Paul. Or, then again, perhaps it shouldn't be much of a ...

72. What Is Success?

Matthew 7:24-29

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... the future of the world rested on our shoulders and he charged us with finding our destiny and fulfilling it. He went on to say we alone must cure disease, hunger and poverty throughout the world, and above all, we must find success. "I glanced over at Jack, the class deficient who couldn't even find his parents after they parked the car, and I got an uneasy feeling. Not only that, but for those of us who planned to sleep in for a week, the speech was very depressing, as it seemed to call for a lot of work ...

73. Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired?

Matthew 9:35-10:8

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... or some secret sin in someone's life. But this is not always the case. Jesus said that some sickness is for the glory of God. We live in a broken world. We can be born with deformities like blindness, hormonal imbalances, and mental deficiencies. Furthermore, this broken world can break us. This is seen in childhood diseases, accidents, and natural disasters. Saint Paul had his own famous "thorn" in his flesh. He suffered with it throughout his adult life. Of course, Jesus endured crucifixion. Both of them ...

74. Live and Learn

Matthew 15:21-28

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Main Stream Media's (MSM) judgment, any adjustment of one's stand, or one's understanding, over the course of twenty or thirty years is deemed a sign of weakness and used as evidence of a morally and/or intellectually deficient mind. Learning, continually interacting with and challenging the experiences and informational input that surrounds us, is a life-long process. Gerontologists are now recommending that as we age we intentionally set up new, unexpected circumstances or encounters for ourselves every ...

75. Gone with the Wind

Matthew 14:22-36

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... that despite what Jesus later identifies as Peter's little faith, he was the only disciple who HAD launched himself over the side of the boat and set out across the roiling waters. The moment Jesus offered the invitation to "Come, " Peter came. Even Peter's deficient, wind-blown faith was enough to enable him to walk upon the water - a miraculous ability millions of readers have found hard to take literally. Yet I'll bet every one of us this morning can think of some remarkable water-walkers we have known ...

Showing results