Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 726 to 750 of 1795 results

Luke 14:25-35

Bulletin Aid

Carl Hoefler

... Prayer of Confession We are disciples of your Son, O God, but we cannot help feeling you are disappointed with our discipleship. Even though we accept the Christian name, we are too unconcerned with the changes we ought to make in our life style as your disciples. Forgive us for accepting the vows of Christian discipleship without considering the sincerity and dedication to make all other commitments in light of our decision to follow Christ our Lord, through whom we pray. Amen. Hymns "He Who Would Valiant ...

727. Life Transformed by Jesus

Luke 19:1-10

Bulletin Aid

Carl Hoefler

... the new life you are encouraging us to live. In our Savior's name we pray. Amen. Prayer of Confession Forgive us for the masks we wear, Father, when we try to live the Christian life. That is much easier than making a complete turnabout in our life styles. But it convinces no one that salvation has taken place. Give us the joy of transformed living by letting Christ change us from within, and by our living that change from without. Thus may we find ourselves among those whom your Son came to seek and to ...

728. The Prodigal Son

Luke 15:11-32

Sermon

Brett Blair

... of the Prodigal Son. Is there anything new that we can squeeze out of this familiar story? You remember the story as Jesus told it. There was a certain landowner who had two sons. As these boys grew up they began to show the difference in their styles. The older brother was hard working, industrious, dedicated to the daily task. The younger son was a little rebellious. He wanted to have his own way and speak his own piece. Why does life turn out this way? Two sons raised in the same family, presumably shown ...

729. Dollar Signs and Life Symbols

1 Timothy 6:3-10

Sermon

Rev. Donald R. Shank

... a symbolic image out of which our life moves, but rather, by default, we may have allowed an affluent, technological society to implant the dollar sign as the symbol, the estimator of the value of our lives. As Christians we need to carefully examine our life style and create a symbol that shall be expressive of what we intend for our lives as 20th century men and women of faith. And then in our theology and practice of stewardship we need to redeem the symbol of the dollar sign as an authentic Christian ...

730. The Good Samaritan

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

Brett Blair

... 's characters used, ridiculed, and made fun of everyone they met. The four of them were the Priest and the Levites of our modern world. We climb the ladder of success and FedEx gives you the world on time. This is our attitude. Stopping to help someone crimps our style and requires too much of our time. Looking back on it I can't help but wonder if the script for that final episode was taken right out of Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan. George says that he never heard of that one. Truth is, the law isn ...

731. On Having "The Right Stuff"

Luke 14:25-35

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... his own life, he cannot be my disciple," maybe he was thinking about this. The shocking form of his words serves to make the point, and the hidden message is that an intense aliveness awaits those who can hear and respond. III This Christian-life-style way of the cross is not only our invitation to vital living, it is also a jaunty faith in the absolute trustworthiness of life. This is because the Christian cannot talk about the cross and sacrifice without also speaking of resurrection and fulfillment. In ...

732. Museum or Mission?

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

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... Protestant denominations structured itself into the Consultation on Church Union, we all became noticeably hesitant as the process moved toward a decision point. Suddenly, we discovered all sorts of denominational heritage and history that seemed threatened, wondered how our particular styles of polity might fare in a united church, and generally lost nerve in the face of growing resistance toward mission over museum at the grass-roots level. In the same city where can be found the church, with whose story ...

733. Is The Gospel Only For Women?

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

... Gospel - than if people believed that God loved them so much as to give his son for them? Surely the Gospel is the way to true womanhood. Surely the Gospel is the way to true manhood. Surely the Gospel is the way to life because it’s the natural life style of the saints. And to that may we all say, "Amen!"

734. A Mission and a Message

Luke 10:1-24

Sermon

... missions today, and that our worship is becoming more dynamic and meaningful. And I thank God that there are people who are concerned enough about the mission of the church that they volunteer to serve, at least temporarily, in distant lands where the life-style is different and difficult and the work of Christ is complicated and confusing. I am grateful for those missionaries who have spent a lifetime far from home and families so that the world - the whole world - will ultimately hear the gospel and know ...

735. Real Security

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

... a true story about a New York businessman, played by Jack Lemmon, who goes to Chile to search for his son who disappeared in the military coup. He joins up with his son’s wife (Sissy Spacek), but they have little in common; their life styles are totally different. The son/husband, it turns out, isn’t missing; he’s dead - but they don’t learn that until they have - with the help of the United States Embassy staff - searched hospitals, morgues, and the sports stadium where thousands of prisoners were ...

736. The Man, the Message, and the Mission

Luke 12:49-53

Sermon

George Bass

... anything but happy since then; I don’t think that any of them has really been happy for over a decade now. They have drifted away from the church as well as from each other. They seem to have lost their sense of values, and they have taken up life-styles that they wouldn’t even have considered years ago. It is a sad tale that is being told over and over again. It is too familiar, isn’t it? And it is sad. But that wasn’t exactly what Jesus was talking about. He was describing his mission and spelling ...

737. An Encounter With Two Old Friends

Luke 18:9-14

Sermon

... , this Pharisee and publican? Would the story ring true in a society today when terms like "righteousness" or "sinner" have been dropped from our vocabulary, when group therapy provides a better outlet from our guilt trips than confession, when dieting is more in style than fasting, and when approval of ourselves and others is more coveted than God’s approval? Both the Pharisee and publican were in the temple as their personal expression of relationship with God, even as we are today. They came to worship ...

738. The Gospel of the Little Man

Luke 19:1-10

Sermon

... Zacchaeus yielding fruits appropriate to penitence while we have little more to say than "Pardon me, Lord, mea culpa." Or do we find our place among the city folk of Jericho as whisperers of the unrighteous prejudice that blossoms so profusely in the company of self-styled better people, defines the sinner on its own self-righteous terms, and excludes him? They murmured when they saw that Jesus went to be the guest of one who was a sinner, and they were stunned when Jesus said of him, "He also is a son ...

739. Emancipation Proclamation

John 8:31-41

Sermon

... in a whisper said, "Wir haben hier kein Freiheit." Yet in the worship hour we had heard an unadulterated Gospel in immaculate German, a description of the freedom that we know in Christ. What we term freedom in our personal lives is usually the pop-style "freedom to be me," freedom from the prudish customs of our ancestry. Or it might be the plastic freedom after age 16 when we have passed the driver’s test, freedom from the watchful eyes of parents. Break loose, express yourself, claim your rights, take ...

740. The Sermon on the Level

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

... that bring us together at the table of our Lord with an invisible but mighty host, a multitude no one can number, from all nations, kingdoms, people, tongues. No Concrete Evidence But on the level! The evidence suggests that we are far from sainthood. Our style suggests that we might not want to be included in the number when the saints go marching in. There is little that commends such visions to our taste. Between the values and priorities to which we are accustomed and the values and priorities of saints ...

741. Heaven Can’t Wait

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

... of each new dawn. It’s an exciting venture in discipleship, never knowing where the path will lead, but confident of him who leads. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. The lifestyle of the world knows little mercy. Justice is in style, a justice that is never perfect even in the best of our humanitarian intentions. The letter of the law is in force. We find glee and gloat when someone fails and falls and when their scandals burst across the headlines, especially if the fallen ...

742. Advancers Over Decliners

Luke 19:11-27

Sermon

... a cherished place within the hearts of most of us as other parables of Jesus do. This one can’t be sentimentalized as we have often sentimentalized the favorite and familiar. This one can’t be sweetened with a little sugar from the bowl of pop-style religion. It doesn’t throw us into the welcoming arms of God as though he were our heavenly babysitter. When we sweep aside the cobwebs of confusion that are spun by spiders in the mind around so much of Holy Scripture, this one speaks directly, bluntly ...

743. One Nation, Under Mercy

Sermon

... lips of those who feel abundance is their right. Well, Jesus did say that he came to bring life, and that we might have life abundantly, but he did not say it was our right to have abundance. He did intimate, in fact, that when abundance is our style, and when the landfills are choked with our throw-away, the abundant life is often dimmed. How hard it is for those who have abundance to enter the kingdom of heaven. Remember the camel squeezing through the needle’s eye? No, the word is mercy. So this lone ...

744. Of Preachers and Preaching

Micah 1:8-16

Sermon

... way of "testing the spirits" and assuring the church of capable leadership. Only individuals with a special sense of purpose and dedication are likely to be selected and qualified through it. That there are risks involved, however, in the procedure and the style of ministry to which it points must be recognized. A danger exists that the preacher will be seduced into becoming merely an organization person, forgetting, neglecting, or not having heard the cutting message of change and challenge which God wants ...

745. Arise, O Church of God, Arise!

Sermon

... . Christ most holy, served the lowly. Thus he taught us. He who sought us, Loved and bought us. This stanza may be easy to sing but tough to swallow. A serving church? The concept of being a servant is strange to most of us. We have adopted a life-style which has trained us to be served. No kidding, our general affluence today makes it pretty hard to take these words seriously. We despise the servant's role. That's why the poet here has to reprimand us, "Despise thou not the servant's role." To take this ...

746. Don't Try So Hard!

Mark 8:31--9:1

Sermon

... too hard. What wins someone over will rarely be constant nagging about going to church or starting to attend some religious class. Matters of faith, if worth anything, are going to be matters of deep inner conviction. A loving and open relationship at home, a style of Christian living that is not "thrust" upon another - that's the low-key approach that calls for a delicate balance between trying and simply being our Christian self. No force or proof will be enough to convince and move most human souls. And ...

747. The Yoke of Christ

Matthew 11:25-30

Sermon

... sign above the shop door read, "My yokes fit well." That's what Jesus is saying to you and me today, "My yokes fit well!" That is as much to say, Jesus is an expert on life. He is the expert on how to live. He has captured the life-style that fits us human beings to a T - the way we were meant to live, the way God always dreamed we should live on his earth. Look at the witness of Christ's life in the Bible! Christ knows how to love, to forgive, to heal. Christ knows how to ...

748. Cross Purposes

1 Corinthians 1:18--2:5

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... of the cross. If you take the "I" and cross it out, you have a St. Andrew's cross. The cross says that to live one must first die to self. The path of blood is the road to the cross. And the world just is not interested in that style of life. Plain Nonsense In addition, the world hates the cross as folly because the cross goes against all reason. To the world, the cross makes no sense; it is nonsense. Take the saying of Paul: "God was in Christ reconciling the world." God was in Jesus when he was ...

749. Born Naked With A Cross

Sermon

... is to bear a cross for others. To love when others hate, to give when others save, to hold steady when others go to pieces, to wait for God while others lose patience, to hold fast to the truth when others adopt worldly ideas - that is the life style of a true Christian. The Christian way is the way of the cross, the way of sacrifice, the entering into the sufferings and death of Christ. A young couple were looking forward to their first baby. When the father was called to the hospital nursery to look at ...

750. Killing A King

Luke 19:28-44

Sermon

... possible treatment. This is to say that a king deserves and gets the very best. A red carpet is laid out for the king to walk on, lest he dirty his feet. Only the best food is served. His clothes are made of the finest material with top class and style. A king wears genuine jewels, no artificial diamonds or costume jewelry, for a king deserves only the best. A king is given honor, respect, loyalty, obedience, and love. All of this goes with being a king. Wouldn't you like to be a king even for just one day ...

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