Sermon and Worship Resources

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Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

... , that gift of self-love and self-esteem begins to come apart. Do we want to live in a world where a Great Uncle Max will bill us for his services? We ask for it if we receive God’s grace and merely pass on it - refusing to reflect and duplicate it in our lifestyle. B. We Can Pass It On There is another way. Instead of taking God’s great gift of unconditional release and merely passing on it - doing nothing to allow it to reshape our lives - we can receive the gift and pass it on. A gift worth ...

52. Opportunism? Or Opportunity?

Matthew 21:33-46

Sermon

... " in a muscle-bound, me-first society. Even if it means bringing up the rear, in a ridiculous little economy car on the way to the cemetery. The Lord gives us great opportunity. He calls us to spead wide the rumor of his presence in our midst, to duplicate his loving, healing style. To forgive, because he does. To open doors. To lift up and encourage. To affirm, embrace, and set the fallen on their feet again. To be grace-full and hope-full; to walk gently upon the earth, as good St. Francis did; to live ...

53. Welcome to the Training Table!

Matthew 22:1-14

Sermon

... they are an unseasoned bunch, there is a satisfying sort of freshness and openness about someone called up to the team who might not otherwise have had the opportunity. Such folk sometimes put forth energy the first-stringers find it hard to understand or duplicate. It’s in that context that we can best understand the second half of the parable in this week’s text. The "regulars," having turned down the invitation to the banquet (let us translate, for our purposes here - their invitation to the training ...

54. Count Me In!

Isaiah 56:1-8

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in! The world is forever drawing circles that shut people out. In a polite way we say, "By invitation only" or "Reserved." Books are copyrighted so that no one, except by permission, may duplicate any portion of them. Trade names, such as "Coca-Cola" and "Orkin," are registered to prevent others from copying them. In housing, we may exclude children from adult condominiums or blacks and Jews from selected neighborhoods. A civic club may exclude women from ...

55. Leah

Genesis 49:29--50:14

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... little personal charm. Lacking so much, this poor woman faces a loveless life. Her father probably desired to ensnare a husband lest he be responsible for a hopeless old maid. What would become of her at Laban’s death? This situation has been duplicated thousands of times: the embarrassing problem of the unwed daughter. Caught in the net of social custom and religious prohibition, she can do nothing. Leah is no match for the dominant, strong-willed trio of Laban, Jacob, and Rachel. Yes, "The fault ... is ...

56. Bezaleel

Exodus 35:30--36:7

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... with joyous abandon, he flung ten billion stars into a blue sky. With lavish hand, he painted the sunset, spilling colors across the heavens. With great care, he made the snowflake, and with equal skill formed the shell on the beach. As no two leaves are duplicates, so he made the faces of his children with loving individuality. We stand in wonder at the majesty and beauty of Gothic cathedrals. We marvel at the skill of workers who caught a bit of heaven and wove it into stone. As Will Durant says, "... the ...

57. Salvation as Personal Experience

Romans 9:30--10:21

Sermon Aid

T. A. Kantonen

... " (Romans 6:23). "Christ died for us that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him" (1 Thessalonians 5:10). The new life of the believer is so thoroughly determined by the basic salvation-occurrence that Paul can speak of it as a duplication of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. "We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin" (Romans 6:6). "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the ...

58. The Bite of The Lying Tongue

Exodus 20:1-21, James 3:1-12

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... of the citizens believe there is less honesty in government now than there was ten years ago. President Clinton, in a wide ranging interview, stated, "Nearly everyone will lie to you, given the right circumstances." Seldom are politicians as candid about their duplicity as was Earl Long, the carousing and hog-hunting governor of Louisiana during the 1950s. After one election, Long reneged on a campaign promise in a big way. When a delegation of betrayed supporters showed up in Baton Rouge to protest, the ...

59. Is There Life After Christmas?

Luke 2:21-40, Isaiah 12:1-6

Sermon

Erskine White

... occasion. The beautiful necklace drew admiring comments from many of the guests at the ball, but as luck would have it, Mathilde lost the necklace before the night was over. Panic-stricken, she and her husband borrowed 36,000 francs, bought an exact duplicate of the necklace and returned it to her friend without telling her what happened. For ten painful years, the couple slaved away in toil and hardship. They sold their house, dismissed their servants and worked two jobs in order to repay their enormous ...

60. Whatever Happened To Sanctification?

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Durwood L. Buchheim

... book on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount titled Into the Darkness, Gene Davenport shares these thoughts about this commandment: "Perhaps the most influential expression of language’s bondage to the Darkness in Western society today live in a society characterized by duplicity. One of the primary characteristics of the Powers of Darkness, lying has been elevated to the rank of heroic morality by the government and to the status of art in ordinary commerce."3 Claude Lewis, a columnist for the Philadelphia ...

61. Will Names Never Hurt Us?

Proverbs 10:1-32

Sermon

Edward Chinn

... to find a name for their worldwide affiliates. They brought in a computer. They went through all the brand names in the world as they sought a new name which would begin with an E and have only two syllables. They did not want to duplicate any existing name. They collected 15,000 telephone directories. For 3 1/2 years, the computer scanned the directories to eliminate possible names which already existed. Finally, the researchers came up with eight names which were not brand names from anywhere in the world ...

62. The Word To The Wise

Proverbs 2:1-22

Sermon

Alton F. Wedel

... gathered from the books of specialists may be the answer. Surgery or medication can often be the answer. The human brain is still the world’s most marvelous computer, subject certainly to error, but built by its Creator with a thinking mechanism that cannot be duplicated. God intended us to use it, feed it, and develop it. The Word to the Wise But the word to the wise is wisdom. The Word to the wise is Christ, whom God has made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. The world ...

63. Man, Where Are You?

Genesis 3:1-24

Sermon

Alton F. Wedel

... is disturbing to a world of people - not the story, really, but the happening reported, which in the language of the church is called "The Fall." And it isn’t the event as Eve and Adam perpetrated it, but the event as you and I have duplicated it, not their stupidity, but ours that bugs us. Adam’s fall and ours, his event and our events are concentrated here. The event? The imperishable has put on the perishable; the immortal has put on mortality; the holy has clothed himself in unholiness; life has ...

64. The Second Naiveté: Babies, Angels, Shepherds, And God

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... , inexperienced, and unacquainted with the ways of the world. And when you think of it, sometimes naive people can be a bit much. In face of the world's grinding wretchedness, they exhibit a kind of giddy simplicity. In a society interlaced with duplicity and intrigue, they surge into the playing field like a rabbit in front of greyhounds. Within a humanity besieged with evil and suffering, and within human flesh stalked by disease and death, these naive wonderlings hold forth an optimism that is at once ...

65. Light to Serve

Isaiah 6:1-13

Sermon

Harry N. Huxhold

... This was a dramatic experience for him. It is the kind of experience we would all like to have to assure us that God is in our lives. However, no angel, with its holy smoke and a passel of angels calling to one another, does appear to duplicate this extraordinary event. For Isaiah there is no escape from this arresting scene and the word that follows. When Isaiah’s objection and resistance are overcome, when he has been thoroughly cleansed for the job, he hears the voice of the Lord, “Whom shall I send ...

66. The Devil Made Me Do It

Matthew 4:1-11

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... MS was kept quiet - and the result was that no one knew of it when he was campaigning for the highest office in the land. Now his opponents are screaming FRAUD; his supporters are just screaming. Congress wants to censure him for his duplicity. Negotiations go back and forth between the White House and the Capitol. Could the President avoid such a harsh public condemnation? Should he simply accept it? His staff is adamant in opposing any compromise, but finally the President tells his Chief of Staff, Leo ...

67. Mary's Song

Luke 1:46-56

Sermon

King Duncan

... God's promise. Life is hard. God is good. There might be one more thing the blessed Virgin would share with us. LIFE AND LOVE ARE STRONGER THAN HATE AND DEATH. Mary's story is the oldest and most intimate story of all. It is a story that has been duplicated millions of times throughout history. It is the story of a mother's love for her child. Even when he was a grown man with a ministry she could barely comprehend, he was still first and foremost her son. Mary's love for Jesus, however, is but a pale ...

68. He Has Done All Things Well

Mark 7:31-37

Sermon

King Duncan

... ," Linus answers, "I have a couple of things here to show the class." He then unfolds some papers. "These are copies I've been making of some of the Dead Sea scrolls," he says. Holding them up for Charlie Brown and Lucy to inspect he continues."This is a duplicate of the scroll of Isaiah, chapters 3840. It was made from 17 pieces of sheep skin and was found in a cave by a Bedouin shepherd." Pulling out another piece of paper he says, "Here I have made a copy of the earliest known fragment ever found. It's ...

69. Empowered

Acts 2:1-13

Sermon

King Duncan

... tired children are given a word of praise or commendation, the ergograph shows an immediate upward surge of new energy. When the children are criticized and discouraged, the ergograph shows their physical energy take a sudden nosedive. (2) My guess is that those results could be duplicated in adults. When we are praised our energy levels go up. When we are criticized our energy levels go down. What, then, is one of the most helpful roles that we can play in one another's lives as Christ's body? It is to ...

70. Help Wanted, Dad. Ask For Calvin And Hobbes.

1 Kings 19:1-8

Sermon

Lowell D. Streiker

... 5) Dad is our teacher and our model. He recedes into the distance ” yet is always there. For a lifetime we idealize him, fight him, blame him, and resist him. But when we become fathers ourselves, we catch ourselves repeatedly using his very words and duplicating his very reactions. We keep telling ourselves that we are smarter than he was, that we will never make the same mistakes with our children that he did with us. Consciously and unconsciously, we keep asserting: "Look, Dad, I'm on my own now!" But ...

71. Through the Eyes of an Eagle (Introduction)

John 20:24-31

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... speeches that are a whole chapter long, and they are often involved and argumentative, as though our Lord was engaged in a heated theological debate. (He was.) Or He was trying to refute a mistaken idea. And, even more surprisingly, where John duplicates events found in the other Gospels, the facts appear to be different. For instance, John has a different account of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Whereas the other gospel writers say definitely that Jesus did not begin to preach until John the Baptist ...

72. God’s Strange Arithmetic

Mark 10:1-12

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... individuality. Too often one party or the other seems to be saying: “Alright - we two shall become one...and I AM the one!” Obviously, such a marriage is headed for trouble. Ideally, when “two become one” it means that each one is doubled, but not duplicated. You still retain your individual identity, but you add to yourself the identity of the other, and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and ...

73. The Lord's Prayer: Deliver us from Evil

Matthew 6:5-13

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... from it. Dr. Calvin Miller writes on page 114, "I met a man who kept two heads, And thus he really kept two minds. His heads fell into quarreling And bit each other very blind. He died a month thereafter Where teeth and bloody faces fought. So all duplicity brings death In quarreling, doubled thought." Simply put, you cannot serve God and Mammon. You cannot cooperate with evil in any possible way. You must focus on God to defeat evil. This is where the power is. A man saved his money for a long time to buy ...

74. Trusting the Truth

James 1:1-18

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... , Calvin Miller expressed it best: I met a man who kept two heads. And thus he really kept two minds. His heads fell into quarrelling. And bit each other very blind. He died a month thereafter. Where teeth and bloody faces fought. So all duplicity brings death. In quarrelling, doubled thought. (3) Dr. William Sloan Coffin often told the story of a clown who began his performance on a stage that was dark--except for one spotlight. The clown began to search for something that was evidently lost. Afterwards ...

75. Led by the Spirit of God

Romans 8:1-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... planes are well equipped with backup systems for virtually every system on the plane. If one fails, the other one will take over. All jets are multi-engine. Even three-engine planes can be flown on just one engine. And most planes now have duplicate landing gear and retraction systems. You really do have very little to fear when flying commercially. (3) But, try to tell that to some people . . . Almost 100 years ago, a French doctor named Emile Coué said something quite profound: "When the will comes in ...

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