Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 951 to 975 of 4957 results

951. Living Between the Times

John 17:20-26

Sermon

R. Robert Cueni

... did not seem practical. In fact, collective human experience tends to confirm the views of that cousin at the family reunion picnic table. Because it is easiest, it must be best to associate only with people who look like us and think like us. We might even claim it is human nature to want to exclude those who differ so that we can associate with those who are most like us. One of my favorite movies is the 1952 classic, The African Queen. The film takes place in Central Africa during the First World War ...

952. A Mystery

John 16:12-15

Sermon

Robert C. Cochran

... to be, or he was a liar or a lunatic. Further, if Jesus is not the true Son of God, he cannot come again, and the good news of the gospel is null and void. There are no half measures with Jesus: you must believe his claims completely or not at all. As I said, there is no separation between the Son and Father: Jesus says that when you have seen him, you have seen the Father. Finally, we come to the Holy Spirit. The danger inherent in the Holy Spirit is that we often try to ...

953. Hosanna! Please Save Us!

Matthew 21:1-11, Matthew 26:14-16

Sermon

King Duncan

... , first of all, because of who he says he is. Notice that members of the crowd referred to Jesus as “the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” Throughout history, people have laughed at prophets, ignored prophets, persecuted prophets. But Jesus never claimed to be a prophet. He claimed much more than that. He claimed to be God in human form. “When you have seen me you have seen my Father” (John 14:9). Life would be so much simpler if we could just make Jesus into whomever we want him to be. He could be ...

954. Lord of the Sabbath

Luke 5:33-39, Luke 6:1-11, Luke 7:18-35

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... is also an eschatological foretaste of the kingdom to come, here as inaugurated by Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man. The Pharisees were upset with Jesus for two reasons: 1) what they saw as his breaking of the Sabbath law and 2) his claim to have the authority of God to forgive sins. Both acts were regarded as heresy and blasphemy and were punishable by death. However, the Pharisees’ interpretation of the Sabbath “laws” had become picayune and over-the-top. They created so many laws that not only ...

955. Syrophoenician Lives Matter!

Mark 7:24-30, Matthew 15:21-28

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... him. He is in Capernaum, teaching presumably by the sea, after which he enters his home to instruct his disciples (Mark tells us he went into “the house”). The topic is ‘what makes a person “defiled”’ –that is, “unclean” in the eyes of Jewish law. Jesus claims three things: 1) He asserts that Jewish law is not necessarily the same as God’s law 2) He claims that the Pharisees and Scribes from Jerusalem follow laws of their own making….not the laws of the heart that God desires and 2) He ...

956. The Apothecary

Isaiah 40:1-31, Isaiah 61:1-11

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... one hoped upon hope….waited….and prayed…that the answer they would hear from the messenger on that mountain….would be “EUANGELION!” Good news!!! Your King has conquered! Jesus is the eternal King. He has won the battle with sin and death, and has claimed us for God’s own! That’s good news!! Jesus is the Anointed One –the one commissioned by God to administer his grace, love, and mercy upon all of us. That’s good news!! Jesus is authorized and ordained with the strength and authority of ...

957. How Could We Possibly Forget?

Ephesians 1:15-23

Sermon

King Duncan

... had to die for his sins. Allan says, “I told God that if he could make me like my friend [Steven], then I was prepared to believe in him.” Both Allan and Steven joined the Salvation Army and worked in local missions in Australia. Allan who once claimed that “Grog and drugs were my god” dedicated the rest of his life to sharing the life-changing love of Jesus Christ with others. Looking back at his life, Allan comments, “No, Julia wasn’t an idiot . . . Nor was God. They both knew what they were ...

958. Words Are Not Enough

Matthew 21:23-32

Sermon

Roy Howard

... Jesus in the broken, battered, hungry, thirsty, and downtrodden and act with mercy, would be banished to outer darkness. Not a pretty picture especially for those who expect a gospel that is only about spiritual uplift or personal self-improvement. Not a pretty picture to have no claims that will change our lives if we live them well and form us into the people Jesus intended his disciples to be. I, for one, don’t find the parables of judgment to be easy going. They all scare me. I would rather avoid them ...

959. Love

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Sermon

Will Willimon

... don't know.... Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass; tongues,...cease;...knowledge,...will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. And now what is for me, perhaps the most challenging claim of the text: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I ...

960. Not Gullible; But Skeptical

John 20:19-31

Sermon

King Duncan

... . It says that when the disciples divided up the world to conquer it for Jesus, Thomas received India. There Thomas died for the faith that he once had doubted. Indeed, in South India today you will find a church called the Thomist Church of South India which claims that Thomas was its founder. Thomas dropped his doubts at the pierced feet of Jesus and became one of those by whose testimony we have the faith today. Thomas was a doubter. He had to see for himself. Jesus did not condemn him for that. However ...

961. Together In One Place

Acts 2:1-21

Sermon

Dean Feldmeyer

... house were filled with the Holy Spirit, that is, the Spirit of God. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wondered what that would be like, to be filled with God’s Holy Spirit. I’ve known people who claim to have had that experience and I’ve known people who claimed to be having that experience at the very moment I was with them. Often, I have discovered, that what they are referring to as the “anointing of the Spirit” looks and sounds like nothing so much as a manic episode. They talk ...

962. Long View — Long Haul

Luke 13:31-35

Sermon

Schuyler Rhodes

... do it. What is it like to stand on the solid ground of commitment? What is it like to have the gift of clarity about God’s claim on your life? It seems to me that such a thing would be both wonderful and terrifying. How many of us, like my friend who is finishing ... stepped away to listen for God’s voice. My friend also took a break so she could open her heart to God’s claim on her life. You see, sometimes preparing for the long haul means pacing oneself. Indeed that can be the case. It’s important, ...

963. Lose the Cape

Romans 13:11-14

Sermon

Charley Reeb

... else.” Have you ever seen the movie The Incredibles? It’s about a family of superheroes who tries to save the world from total destruction. In Bob Goff’s book Love Does, he writes about the superhero dad in the movie. The dad is an insurance claims adjustor, but he really wants to use his superhero powers, so he begins drawing pictures of the superhero suits he wants to wear. Of course, all the suits include capes. The dad has a friend named Edna who makes superhero suits, and she keeps telling him ...

964. Redeem the Time

Matthew 24:36-44 · Romans 13:11-14

Sermon

Will Willimon

... the Bomb. It's the people who built it, us. For no god is worth very much who can't create or destroy and, in the Bomb, we feel that we have created the ultimate means of godlike destruction. A statement by the United Methodist Bishops begins with the awesome claim that we hold in our hands the power to destroy all creation. It's up to us to decide whether or not to create or to destroy. It's up to us. We have at last succeeded in doing that which God previously threatened to do, namely, to destroy us ...

965. The Gracious Dream

Genesis 28:10-17

Sermon

Will Willimon

... shall be encountered, not by dreams of angels, but by the hammerlock grip of a God determined to use Jacob for His purposes rather than Jacob's. But that is next week. For today, let us note that the claim of the story is a bold claim, bold in our silent, secular place of supremely self-confident one-way traffic. The claim? There is business between heaven and earth. We are not abandoned--even the worst of us, even the most morally tainted of us--to our own devices. The old song doesn't tell it all. "We are ...

966. Revising The Agenda

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

William G. Carter

... people to even hear that word when they’ve had so much taken away. How can people in poverty believe it is a virtue to give up what little dignity they bear? How can the downtrodden ever hear this obligation of the gospel? Sometimes we need to claim the love and dignity of God and then see what happens. Like the woman who made an appointment to talk about troubles at home. At one point in our conversation she said, “When my opinion of myself improved, my marriage got worse.” For those who struggle to ...

967.

Psalm 103:1-22

Understanding Series

Craig C. Broyles

... his anger for a time (vv. 8–9). Yahweh “heals all my diseases” (v. 3), yet humans’ days are like grass—they flourish and wither like a flower of the field (vv. 15–16). In cases such as these, we would be wrong to take such psalmic statements as absolute claims. It is understandable that psalmic praise, in order to be musically metrical and liturgically forceful, will not be laden with qualifications covering every possible ramification. Thus, when we consider both sides of each ...

968.

Psalm 128:1-6

Understanding Series

Craig C. Broyles

... are lofty (“blessings and prosperity will be yours”) and universal (for “all who fear the LORD”). But for many believers they may not ring true to life. How can the Bible make such claims, we wonder, when genuine believers endure cancer, desertion, and worse within their families? In this psalm, the claims are qualified immediately by the rest of the passage, which consists of a prayer or invocation that these ideals become reality: “May the LORD bless you” (v. 5), just as he “who fears the ...

969.

Psalm 143:1-12

Understanding Series

Craig C. Broyles

... of acts of sin (25:7, 18; 32:5; 38:3, 18; 41:4; 65:3; 79:9; 103:10), but only here and in 51:3–5, 130:3–4 is sin noted as part of the general human condition. In fact, such confessions seem to go contrary to claims of righteousness found elsewhere in the Psalter (see esp. 18:20, 24; 35:24; 112:3–9). How far we seem to have moved from the first psalm of the Psalter, which clearly divides humanity into two groups: “the righteous” and “the wicked” (1:5–6)! This verse also seems ...

970. Steadfast Change

Mark 13:1-8

Sermon

Thomas C. Willadsen

... change is inevitable and transformation is coming. I’ve felt it for a while. People fear change and even resist it, but the fact is that as long as we are alive, we are changing. That means that when we proclaim that Christ is alive, we are claiming that Christ is changing and even that Christ is the agent of change. And yet, scripture also says that Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, so which is it? It seems to me that Christ is unchanging because the grace God offers us through Christ ...

971. Christ, Our King

John 18:33-37

Sermon

Thomas C. Willadsen

... again told the authorities that he found no case against Jesus. He presented Jesus to them a third time and said, “Crucify him yourselves, I find no case against him.” John 19:6 (NRSV). But they pointed out that according to their law, anyone who claimed to be God’s son must be killed. At this, finally, Pilate was afraid. He tried even more urgently to not have Jesus crucified, but the crowd yelled even louder. They pitted Pilate’s fear of God against his ambition, saying, “If you release this ...

972. Christ, Our King

John 18:33-37

Sermon

Thomas C. Willadsen

973. Creation Reborn

John 20:1-18

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

... these tombs of our friends and family members, and bring in the new creation. We all ache for resurrection, don’t we?! In 1954, Marcelle Maurtette penned his powerful play Anastasia. It was based on the true story of a woman named Anna Anderson who claimed to be the long-lost daughter of the last emperor of Russia, Tsar Nicholas II, and his wife, Aleksandra. The Russian tsars believed their kingdom was imperishable. They knew they would rule forever. But at the turn of the last century, a groundswell of ...

974. You Are the Christ....Now What About Them?

Matthew 16:13-20

Sermon

Will Willimon

... joyful curiosity in learning more about what they have learned of the ways of God, hoping that one day they may in turn ask us to share what we have learned of God in Christ. With the awesome responsibility of knowing that they are quite right in judging the claims of Christ by watching how we live. From what I've seen, most people do not believe in Jesus, not because they think Jesus is a fraud, but rather because they see so little of Jesus in the lives of those of us who profess to be following Jesus ...

975. Upside Down And Backward

Luke 17:5-10

Sermon

Jill J. Duffield

... he is not only with the least of these, but, in fact, is the least of these, the hungry and imprisoned, the naked and shunned. The Jesus way is an odd way, a strange way not conformed to this world but transformed through the love of our God who claims and calls us, names and sends us. It tells us to go to the ends of the earth baptizing and teaching, preaching and healing, carrying nothing with us but instead relying on the hospitality of strangers. His way asks of us not that which we do not have, but ...

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