Sermon and Worship Resources

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Luke 18:1-8

Sermon

King Duncan

... to get out of the cocoon, Wallace discovered, was nature’s way of helping the butterfly to develop. (3) Adversity is part of God’s plan for producing beautiful butterflies as well as for producing beautiful souls. Of course this is an impartial and imperfect explanation of delayed or unanswered prayers. Truly only God knows all the answers. “Now we see through a glass darkly,” wrote St. Paul, and truly we do. God’s ways are not our ways. Prayer does work. However, all mature saints know that God ...

77. On Being Picked For The "Rework"

Jeremiah 18:1--19:15

Sermon

King Duncan

... unwraps it at home. No, when we indulge in a Hershey's Kiss, Steve sees to it that it is exactly 15/16 of an inch diameter at the base, that it has the proper smooth appearance, that it is not leaning to the side, and above all the imperfections his trained and a steady eye checks the curl at the top can't be either standing up too straight or drooping too low. It must be perfect! Now, here's the question. What happens to the Kisses that fall short of these lofty chocolate requirements? Steve tells us ...

78. I'm O.k.; You're A Little Suspect

Luke 6:37-42

Sermon

King Duncan

... us from God. Anything. Romans 3: 23 says, “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God . . ." Anything that falls short of the glory and holiness of God is sin. And because we are all sinners, we make imperfect judges of one another. Have you ever seen one child tattling on another child? The tattler rarely gets rewarded for his or her efforts. Few parents want to encourage that behavior in their children. And just because one child knows about another child's bad deed ...

79. Jesus: The Life of the Party

John 2:1-11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... Shammai, they would have had to undergo seven ritual washings before eating. Jesus, however, came from a more "liberal" school, and His disciples washed but once, according to the Gospels. (Cf. Mark 7:5ff) Is John trying to tell us here that Jesus came to do away with the imperfections of the old Law and replace it with the new wine of the Gospel of Grace? I have a hunch that it is so. Then there is the matter of the size of the jars. Each held 20-30 gallons. That is, the whole amount would be between 120 ...

80. The Huddle Is Not the Game

John 20:19-23

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... to the Ephesians talked about, a Church free from any spot or blemish. The fancy word “eschatological” means that is the ultimate destiny of the Church, but the only Church that you and I know in this present world is the slightly tarnished, very imperfect one here on earth. As theologian Karl Barth once put it, “Take good note, that a parson who does not believe that in this congregation of his, including those men and women, old wives and children, Christ’s congregation exists, does not believe at ...

81. Slippery Rock

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... did not build His Church on Peter, the man, but upon Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ. And I stand by that. And yet, there is a sense in which the Church of Jesus Christ is built upon Peter, and men and women like him. Imperfect, fallible, sinful human beings, but dedicated and growing men and women. Not folks who never fall short nor make mistakes, but people who have courage to admit their mistakes, to confess their sins, to pick themselves up and start all over again. In other words, people ...

82. Breaking The Negative Cycle

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... , there is power in positive thinking, but not that much power. No life is completely honest that cannot engage in sincere self criticism. A nation or an institution or an individual or a church that is unaware of imperfections or unwilling to acknowledge those imperfections will simply be poisoned by them sooner or later. Self criticism is necessary. We should practice introspection, the discipline of looking at ourselves honestly and seeing clearly where we are and what we are about. Our purpose though ...

83. Fathers in Their Generation

Psalm 103:13

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... model for your children, then you're carrying a burden that's too heavy for anyone to carry alone. In attempting to do so, and this gets to the heart of the problem of being a parent, you will be tempted to be dishonest, and to hide your imperfections, a task that gets increasingly harder the older the children get. A better example is that of the Jewish father, who had the freedom to be himself because he didn't depend on himself alone to be the sole model for his children. He offered the fathers in their ...

84. Have You Heard about Grace?

Romans 5:1-11

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... to a tribe with members in every church I have ever served. They belong to a "hunting and gathering" tribe. They are nomadic and ubiquitous. They pop up everywhere. They hunt and gather other people's mistakes. Who was it who said, "The great thing about being imperfect is that it brings such joy to other people."? I think it must be something like that that is the reason why I collect typographical errors. It helps me live with the fact that I make mistakes. That could also explain an awful lot of Paul's ...

85. The Rest of the Story

Matthew 2:19-23, Matthew 2:13-18

Sermon

Susan R. Andrews

... speak every language. They worship every name of God. They bleed out of every color body. For we human beings are imperfect creatures; no country or creed or political system is completely righteous; all corners of God's fragile world are broken and incomplete. ... And it is into this reality - this brokenness and imperfection and sin - that Jesus has been born. He comes not to escape the tribulation, but to enter it with us, and ...

86. A Life Well Lived

2 Timothy 3:10--4:8

Sermon

King Duncan

... . But we know that Christ died for us. We know that God is the Lord of our lives and that all God’s children are our brothers and sisters. And we know that at the end of our lives all imperfection will be removed from us and we will live forever in perfect harmony with God and with all God’s creatures. This we call heaven. This is what happens when we receive the crown of righteousness. It is not something we merit. It is the culmination of everything God has ...

87. Planting Seeds

Matthew 13:1-23

Sermon

King Duncan

... from Christianity by the fact that the performance of Christians he met fell far short of their profession of faith. (3) Sometimes the seed of the Gospel falls on hard soil, sometimes it falls among thorns. But sometimes it does not take root because of the imperfect character of the one doing the sowing. THE BEST WAY TO SHARE THE GOOD NEWS OF THE GOSPEL IS WITH LOVE. As every sales person knows, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” In Jesus’ parable of the sower, the ...

88. The Fountain of Truth

2 Peter 1:12-21

Sermon

James Merritt

... ‘but there is a human side to inspiration.' Of course there is; there must be the man to be inspired as well as the God to inspire him. Whoever doubted this? The inference which is supposed to be inevitable is—that imperfection is, therefore, to be found in the Bible since man is imperfect. But the inference is not true. God can come into the nearest union with manhood, and He can use men for his purposes, and yet their acts may not in the least degree stain his purposes with moral obliquity. Even so ...

89. Don't Believe the Lie about the Truth

John 8:32

Sermon

James Merritt

... deny the reality of God. Think about. If something is absolute, it is free from any kind of error, imperfection, or flaw. To say there are no absolutes, is to say there is no God, because God is the ultimate absolute. Because God in His character and in ... His being, has no error, no imperfection, no flaw, and no limit. He is the altogether absolute one and only. Therefore to reject any absolute is to reject the supreme absolute ...

90. A Man for All Seasons

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Sermon

Donald Charles Lacy

... governmental processes. To cast off concerns and issues as just being politics is to assume a negative aspect that is often not there. For example, every church and/or denomination has a polity. Simply stated, how else do we expect to function in this imperfect world? We can accuse others of playing politics, including Paul, but does that mean we are free and clear in our own less-than-ideal bailiwicks? This state of affairs has always been with us, regardless if we operated by episcopal, congregational, or ...

91. Merry Christmas or Happy Kitschmas?

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... . As we enter the season of Advent, how can we avoid turning “Christmas” into “Kitschmas”? Christmas is NOT a fairy tale. The core of the Christmas story is true birth - a tremendous spiritual gift offered in the midst of a messy, smelly, imperfect world. A spiritual gift offered in humility and service. Advent unfolds life in all its abundance and awfulness. Advent unfolds natality in all its mortality. As Paul noted we are not “lacking” in any spiritual gifts. Indeed we are lush with life. But ...

92. Did You Know...That You Can Be Perfect?

1 John 3:1-3

Sermon

James Merritt

... Him we might become the righteousness of God." (II Corinthians 5:21, NIV) A perfect God in one sense can only have perfect children. There is an old country song title that says, "You're the reason our kids are so ugly." The truth is imperfect parents do produce imperfect children. Our kids are not perfect children. Our kids are not perfect, because they are just like me. If they were like their mother they would be perfect. The point is, God knows our flaws and God knows our thoughts, but when He looks at ...

93. A New Hope

Jeremiah 18:1-10

Sermon

James Merritt

... secret? You don't know your heart. I don't know my heart. Nobody knows their own heart. Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is more deceitful than all else...who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9, NASB) Only God knows your heart and you can have sin and imperfection in your life and you don't even realize it. King David said something very interesting in the 19th Psalm. He said in verse 12, "How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart? Cleanse me from these hidden faults." (Psalm 19:12, NLT) That is what ...

94. Repentance Is Relationship!

Luke 13:1-9

Sermon

Gary L. Carver

... wrote a short story titled, The Birthmark. It is a story about a man who married a very beautiful woman who had a birthmark on her left cheek. She had always thought of it as a beauty spot, but her husband saw the birthmark to be a sign of imperfection, a flaw. It began wearing on him so much that all he could see was that birthmark. He could not see her beauty, her graciousness, or her great personality. He could only focus on what he perceived to be a flaw. He hounded her until she finally submitted to ...

95. The Real Real Estate

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... is grace. That is the grace that has been offered to us through Jesus Christ. We are not told to cover up our flaws, hide our transgressions, pretend we are perfect. Christ’s gift to us was the gift of forgiveness for all our sins, all our imperfections, all our huge horrors, all our accrued atrocities. It is the gift of grace Christ offers to us that makes it possible for us to offer graced relationships, loving with heart and soul, and strength, to all those we share our lives with. Want to be wealthy ...

96. Life’s Purpose Is Often Hidden!

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... good. Only God is good. On the other hand, don't be so darn judgmental about those weeds — about those difficult people, about those hard-to-live with family members, about the problems with the job and your congregation, about the imperfections of your own life and the material possessions you have. I don't care how many fights you have had with those people, how many problems the job or the church have caused you, there is still some healthy grain-bearing plant hidden in there. Open your eyes to ...

97. Made Perfect In Weakness

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

... make the rare diamond even more beautiful than it had been before the mishap. The king was impressed by his confidence and so entrusted his precious stone to man's is care. The man kept his word. With superb artistry he engraved a lovely rosebud around the imperfection and he used the scratch to make the stem. (3) A writer expressed this idea about weakness: "Let your weakness be what it will; one of the strangest paradoxes and, at the same time, one of the most encouraging facts in human life is that your ...

98. A Community of Practice, Not a Community of Perfection

Romans 7:7-25

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... connection to music is why you DO pay for that instrument over the summer vacation. When it sounds good, it looks easy. But it took a lot of practice to get to that point of sounding good. Why is it we will put up with the imperfections and disruptions of “practice” when it comes to learning to play a musical instrument . . . but we find it so much harder to put up with the discord and dissonance that comes when we are all engaged in “practicing” the greatest instrument we have each been given ...

99. Nocturnal Christians?

1 John 1:1—2:2

Sermon

Nancy Kraft

... warts and their scars and their wrinkles. It's all there. But in candlelight, it's more like looking at one of those glamour shots that the photographer has touched up. It's easy to hide imperfections in the dark. Maybe that's why it's so attractive to us. If we hide in the darkness, we don't have to see our imperfections. We can even pretend like they don't exist. We can delude ourselves into believing that we're nearly perfect if we stay in the darkness long enough — like people who are raised in a ...

100. Yielding to Spiritual Maturity

Matthew 7:15-23, James 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17

Sermon

Thomas Lentz

... like them, to climb the ladder of wealth and financial security. But in the end, after we have climbed to the top of the ladder, we may find it was against the wrong wall. Our spiritual maturity begins with the realization that we are all imperfect. Hollywood teaches us to admire and reward beautiful faces and physiques. Scripture instructs us to beware of the pride and conceit that accompanies riches or adoration of the body. Faith opens our eyes to see beauty in our differences. Much of prejudice is based ...

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