Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1051 to 1075 of 4999 results

Philippians 2:1-11

Sermon

Raymond Gibson

... greeted Judas as he was betrayed with a kiss, asking, "Friend, wherefore art thou come?" (Matthew 26:50 KJV). It is the kind of love which Jesus had in his eyes when Peter denied Christ for the third time and the Scripture records that "the ... mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind." That is what happens when the church is the Church. That is the kind of church which St. Paul saw as being possible among the Christians in Philippi. Wouldn’t it be great to be members of a church ...

1052. Are You Under Arrest?

Heb 5:11-13; 10:39

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... of illusion, the prison of despair. "A Lady Named Olive" is a modern parable written by Pat Ryan, and it is really the story of a jailbreak. A lady named Olive owned two shopping bags full of words. One bag was plain brown, very old, and filled with the kind of words that could reach out and connect her with other people. Words like share and care, grow and touch and listen and love and yes. Olive’s other shopping bag was white with a big shoe printed on the sides of it. This bag carried words to keep ...

1053. THE WITCH OF ENDOR

Drama

Marcia Miller

... like calling up those spirits, don’t you? DARCY: It’s what I call relevant. MUIDEM: Relevant? How? DARCY: Asking for the future. I don’t like surprises. It’s nice to know how things are going to work out. RECOS: Even it if means death? DARCY: That part is kind of sad, isn’t it? He seems like such a nice man. MUIDEM: It he had been a nice man, maybe he wouldn’t be in this mess now. ENDORA: [Entering.] Girls, you did well. Calling up Samuel was quite a task for novices. I was proud of you. And ...

1054. Mary Magdalene, Stephanus, and Lucia

Drama

Jon Joyce

... , servants, and could do whatever I chose, but I was always sick from my nerves. And, with a word, this carpenter - we call him Master - the Master healed me and I’ve been well ever since. STEPHANUS: [Scornfully] Don’t listen to her, Lucia. She’s talking about some kind of magic. LUCIA: [Excited] Did he do that, really? MARY: Indeed, he did. STEPHANUS: Ain’t no way, woman. Don’t try to git us to listen to junk like that. MARY: But it’s true. Exactly as I have told you. I was living as if I were ...

1055. Men of Distinction

Acts 11:19-30

Sermon

Allan J. Weenink

... to as Men of Distinction, not because of what they were or did, but because of their choice of a certain kind of alcoholic beverage. Although the advertisements were most convincing because of their articulate and subtle persuasion, nevertheless, I would be so ... the world was perpetuated and is perpetuated by frail human beings. Yet, ordinary people, united in Christ, have produced a unique kind of wisdom and witness. It is not assuming the title that counts, but living up to the name, that truly makes ...

1056. God Is No Gentleman

Luke 1:67-80

Sermon

Allan J. Weenink

... Jesus, to give light to those who sit in darkness. God cared and still cares. He cares in and through Christ who is at once Son of God and Savior, too. This is not always what we seem to want ... a savior. Too often the world wants some kind of a gentleman image. It wants an adviser, an orator, a scholar, a philosopher, a scientist, a philanthropist, a big businessman, politician, or military messiah. But what the world really needs is the Savior. For sin is here and fear is here and sometimes the night is ...

1057. How To Be A Saint In A Storm

Acts 27:13-26

Sermon

Barbara Brokhoff

... CHEER!" Now here is a man who is either completely bereft of his senses, or else he has the most fantastic faith you’ve ever seen. This is good news born of great confidence in God, or else the raving of a blithering idiot. "Be of good cheer!" - in this kind of situation? If you are going to do anything then (or now in our world), and have a message like this, you’d better have something pretty good to back it up with. Upon what basis is Paul able to say these words? No need telling them the boat is ...

1058. Being Set Free

John 8:31-41

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... more alone. We now have Christ "with us." The Emmanuel of Christmas becomes our "real presence" here with us now. When you have that kind of presence with Christ, you are never alone! Fear can leave because Christ is here. Hebrews 13:6 puts it: "Let us be bold, ... slavery of sin." "Oh, that a man may arise in me, that the man I am may cease to be" (Anonymous). That’s the kind of prayer we disciples can have answered: freedom from self, sin, fear, and others. Jesus goes on to say in our Gospel, "... I tell ...

1059. Paul Today

Acts 17:16-34

Sermon Aid

T. A. Kantonen

... is a "reduplication" of the Christ-life in the life of the believer, we could substitute our own name for the word agape in 1 Corinthians 13. Using the New English Bible we would then have this description of a Christian man: "John is patient, John is kind and envies no one. John is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude, never selfish, not quick to take offense. John keeps no score of wrongs; he does not gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing John cannot face, there is ...

1060. Minute Accounting

Matthew 12:22-37

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

... depends less upon finding the right person than upon being the right person. This is true in regard to careless speech, too. If such speech is an utterance of our true selves, the only way to make that speech what it ought to be is to be the right kind of person. This calls for a cleansing of the inner being, for an opening of ourselves to the inflowing of God’s Spirit. "How can you speak good," Jesus asked, "when you are evil?" (Matthew 12:34). As long as our hearts are impure, our careless words will ...

1061. What Are Christian Liberals? - 1951

John 16:5-16

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... it is of Communists. It is just as true of the left as it is of the right. The worst sin you can commit, from the standpoint of the Communists, is any sort of deviation from the line, and they will do all things to coerce you into that kind of thought control. This is abhorrent to the liberal. There must be tolerance. We come then to the fifth major characteristic, which is the test or the guide on which liberals rely. Not in any absolute sense, but as a major guide, there is reason. The supremacy of reason ...

1062. Christian Prioneers

Colossians 3:10

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... in America and men and women of the frontier were called pioneers. How many of you have read stories or seen television shows about those "old days?" Good. [Use your axe or old hand plow.] The pioneers used this old axe to clear the land because they wanted a new kind of life. There were fields and houses and streets back in the east, but they wanted to start a whole new life and they are really ready to work for it. It wasn’t easy, and they had to learn a lot. Each new man on the frontier learned some ...

1063. Chapter V

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Frank H. Seilhamer

... lip, and my mother took care of the tears, but I carried the mark from the spring for years. How lucky I was that the scar from that lesson was so insignificant. Some refusals to learn from others’ experience can destroy a person, or leave the kind of scars that can mar him for life. Parents, generally, try to use their knowledge and experience positively. They are called by God to do just that - to transmit their experience to their children and save them from the pitfalls that can cripple them. How wise ...

1064. MUSICIAN

Judges 5:11; Amos 6:5

Illustration

Stephen Stewart

... who are separated by language, customs, time, and space. Music grows out of human experience. It gives us an understanding of the people of other countries and of past generations. Man began to make music long before he started to write history. We know about early kinds of music partly from the drawings and musical instruments left by men who lived many centuries ago. As man ate because he was hungry, so he made music because of his need to tell other people how he felt about the world. He learned that his ...

1065. Episode III: Birth of the Church

Acts 2:1-13

Sermon

Brett Blair

... . I prayed for her salvation. I prayed that her life would be changed, and that God would be good to her. And when I finished, Harry leaned over, and with a trace of hostility in his voice he said, "Hey, you never told me you were a preacher. What kind of preacher are you anyway? What church do you belong to?" In one of those moments when just the right words came, I answered him quietly, "I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning." Harry thought a moment, and ...

1066. Broken and Beautiful

Luke 18:9-14, Psalm 51:1-19

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... of brokenness is tragic and heartbreaking. All of us are broken by sin to some degree. That is, we have inner flaws that only God can heal and correct. That kind of brokenness is sad, too. Ah, but there is another kind of brokenness that is absolutely beautiful. King David described it in Psalm 51: "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." There is a certain beer company whose trademark is a wagon pulled by a team of majestic ...

1067. The Forbidden Anger

Matthew 5:21-26

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... community, and even though I'm not a member of your church, I want you to know I am praying for you every day." Well, I just stood there flat-footed and said, "Thank you very much, so glad to meet you too," and walked back to my office. Her kindness had shamed my anger. I said to myself, "Our shrubbery is just going to have to look out for itself." Jesus' first truth about anger is this: Selfish anger is the parent of murder! God judges the angry heart as severely as the murderous deed. But you say, "That's ...

1068. Appropriate Laughter

Genesis 18:1-15

Children's Sermon

Tim Carpenter

... up something funny that will make me laugh. Once in a while I laugh so hard that I have to cut out the cartoon and tape it to my fridge or send it to a friend. I need to share the laughter. These comic strips promote a very good kind of laughter. But not all laughter is a laughing matter. Can any one think of laughter that is not good? Response. They will probably say laughing at other people. That’s right, we should not laugh at other people because it will hurt their feelings. What about when someone ...

1069. Restoring Our Sense of Priorities

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Donald Macleod

... seemingly negative because they are laden with "Thou shalt nots." Our age responds to free expression; any kind of repression is out. Our forebears lived in an age of discipline, whereas today almost everywhere authority ... most part pushed God out of their world. Berdyaev once remarked: "Man without God is no longer man." Humankind without God is reduced to "animal kind." Ask the Jews from the Polish ghetto or a survivor of Auschwitz! And more and nearer to home: modern literature reflects the thinking of a ...

1070. An Easter Dividend: The Courage To Be and To Do

Acts 4:1-22

Sermon

Donald Macleod

... over and above these abilities, the quality which never fails to excite our applause and admiration is courage. However, there are many kinds and levels of human courage, and it may be necessary for all of us to probe more deeply into its nature if ... of sheer physical courage than to face misunderstanding, criticism, unpopularity, coldness or loss of friendship. For these demands a higher, more difficult kind of courage is entailed, and this no one can afford to be without if he or she is to live life nobly ...

1071. Call Waiting

1 Samuel 3:1--4:1

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

... thanks to God for his birth. That’s how it happened that this young boy named Samuel came to live with and serve as a kind of apprentice under a priest named Eli. Samuel lived and slept right there in what was called the Tent of Meeting, which served as a ... YMCA club and often to talk to us about our concerns and the things that were going on in our lives at that age. Those kinds of images are especially important to us when we are young, but we never get past needing someone to lead us into some new way ...

1072. A Shepherd Who Became a Sovereign

2 Samuel 12:1-31

Sermon

R. Blaine Detrick

... . His own men encouraged him to do so. But he spared the life of Saul - not only once, but twice (1 Samuel 24; 26). He said, "I cannot kill the man who was anointed to be king over God’s people. I just can’t do it." David’s kindness and generosity to Mephibosheth, the crippled son of Jonathan, is also worthy of note. David searched him out, "for Jonathan’s sake." He restored the family property to him, and invited him to eat at the royal table (2 Samuel 9). All this, when the normal procedure was to ...

1073. Loved People, Love People

John 15:1-17

Sermon

Richard A. Jensen

... was the fact that I was a Jensen. I was to remember who I was. I was to be who I was. "Be who you are." That is another way of putting it. My father’s imperative called me to be who I was. The kind of language that my father used on me is precisely the kind of language that we have in the reading from John’s Gospel. This reading is really an extension and clarifiaction of John 15:5-8 where Jesus said: "I am the vine." We, as followers of Jesus, are admonished to abide in Jesus, to ...

1074. What Is God Like?

2 Samuel 18:1-18

Sermon

Edward Chinn

... , that word of forgiveness to David for his sin with Bathsheba. Anyhow, the author of that psalm surely expressed David’s feeling when he wrote: As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our sins from us. As a father is kind to his children, so the Lord is kind to those who honor him. He knows what we are made of; he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103:12-14, TEV) III Thirdly, look at David’s greater Son, Christ, and see what God as father is like. In first century Rome, an Emperor ...

1075. Movin’ Around Room

Isaiah 43:14-28

Sermon

Thomas D. Peterson

... around, experiment and learn the merits of a new thing by doing it. She must develop movin’ around room. Let’s imagine a different kind of person, one who is bored. She is so bored she watches football on television all the time. He is so bored he watches ... go? But Jesus stands before us and opens a new way for us to see. We know that to stay as we are is to court a kind of death of the spirit which will lead to death of the whole person. Accept the call of Christ: receive from him a new thing. Behold, ...

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