Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1051 to 1075 of 4508 results

1051. Loving Our Enemies, Christian or Crazy?

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

In Bill Adler's popular book of letters from kids, an 8 year old boy from Nashville, Tennessee makes this contribution: “Dear Pastor, I know God wants us to love everybody, but he surely never met my sister." Sincerely, Arnold. There is an old jingle I learned as a child that puts it another way: To live above with those we love, well that will be glory. To live below, with those we know, we...

1052. Love for Enemies

Understanding Series

Robert H. Mounce

Sermon on the Mount: Kingdom Ethics and the Law: Matthew’s Gospel has a didactic purpose. Special emphasis is given to the message of Jesus. One of the distinct features of Matthew’s Gospel is that the teaching of Jesus is collected into five sections. The Sermon on the Mount (chaps. 5–7) is the first of these blocks. The others are Instructions to the Twelve (chap. 10), Parables of the Kingdom (c...

1053. Learning to Love

Sermon

James L. Killen

Stephen R. Covey, whose book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989, p.132) was a best-seller for a long time, tells of an exercise he sometimes used with his students while he was teaching college. He required his students to think through what they would do if they had only the remainder of the semester to live. He said that exercise often produced some profo...

1054. A Burden or a Song

Sermon

James McCormick

Is your religion a load or a lift? That was a popular sermon topic during my growing up years. Preachers were fascinated with alliteration: load/lift, and they thought the idea was a catchy one, so I heard more sermons on the subject than I wanted to hear. Frankly, I never cared much for them. Do you have ideas, like that, that turn you off sometimes? I thought it was a pointless question. I thou...

1055. A String on God’s Finger

Bulletin Aid

Frank Ramirez

Call To Worship Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Collect Redeemer, our salvation comes not in our own imagined perfection, but in your molding, your shaping, your redemption which you offer to us. As you have saved us, challenge us through our worship today to perfect others by redeeming their lives as well. Amen. Prayer Of Confession The world wants so much. You, Lord ...

1056. With Malice toward None, With Charity for All

Sermon

James Merritt

In his second Inaugural address, March 4, 1865, just a little over a month before he would be assassinated, Abraham Lincoln uttered these immortal words: With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for ...

1057. God and Hurricanes

Sermon

David E. Leininger

A scary few days, eh? Just a week ago we were hearing about this incredibly powerful Hurricane Floyd in the Atlantic that might be heading in our direction - almost a Category 5 with sustained winds near the eye of 155 miles per hour. And it cut a wide swath too, hundreds of miles in diameter. Fool that I am, I normally do not worry much about hurricanes. I have come through a few. During my year...

1058. Loving Like God Loves

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

Paul Stanley is Vice-President of the Navigators, a worldwide para-church ministry to students and the military. In 1967 he was a company commander in Vietnam; it was there that he took a risk and learned the meaning of Jesus’ words: “On one occasion after the enemy had withdrawn, Stanley came upon several soldiers surrounding a wounded Viet Cong. Shot through the lower leg, he was hostile, frigh...

1059. Honk If Something Falls Off

Sermon

King Duncan

Dr. Peter Barnes tells about a radio preacher that he listened to while he was in college named the Rev. Apostle J.R. Chambers, Jr. Quite surprisingly for a radio preacher, Chambers had a decided speech impediment. Each week he recited the verse from the Bible on which his entire ministry was based. It was Matthew 5:48, “You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Because of his imped...

1060. Love of Enemies

Illustration

Joyce Hollyday

Sarah Corson, a founder of Servant in faith and Technology (SIFAT) in Alabama, was on a mission in the South American jungles to set up an agricultural project in a village where she and her husband had earlier started a church and built a fish hatchery. She was with seventeen young people, including two of her sons. One Thursday night, around midnight, thirty soldiers rushed toward the house wher...

1061. God and the Weather

Sermon

Robert Noblett

Imagine for a moment that you are a person who has a great deal of difficulty in sustaining a conversation once you have met a person. After initial introductions, you draw a blank. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit that if in 99% of these situations what you end up talking about is the weather. "Sure is hot today, isn’t it?" "Think it’s going to rain? Sure looks like it." "These weather forecaster...

1062. Practicing Righteousness

Sermon

Richard A. Jensen

Our minds remember the strangest things. Back when I was a freshman in college we all had to give speeches in English class. Henry gave a speech that I remember to this day. The thrust of his brief speech was to refute the old adage that, "Practice makes perfect." Henry’s point was that practice only makes perfect that which you practice. In other words you may practice something, say a piece of m...

1063. Why We Do What We Do

Sermon

Mike Ripski

A troubled 19-year old, estranged from family and having bounced around for years in foster homes and group homes, dumped by a girlfriend, and a day earlier having been fired from his job, goes into Omaha’s Westroads Mall with an assault rifle and guns down holiday shoppers and employees. Then kills himself. In a suicide note he writes that he will no longer be a burden to anyone. And that he wou...

1064. Return to the Lord, Your God

Sermon

Lee Griess

Every once in a while a whimsical story makes the news. A couple of years ago, the Associated Press carried a story about a woman in Olney, England, named Dawn Gallyot who defied snow and a biting wind to beat seven other women to the finish line in the annual Shrove Tuesday pancake race. In her first race, the 38-year-old schoolteacher made the 415-yard dash from a pub in the market square to the...

1065. Beware Of Your Piety

Sermon

Harry N. Huxhold

Whatever happened to Lent? It has been some time now since church attendance was swollen during this season. Congregations also conducted weekday services that were well attended. Lenten reading was popular, and people talked a great deal about their Lenten fasting. "What did you give up for Lent?" was a common question. Very often that was done with little thought. In the Chicago area in t...

1066. The Assumption Of Discipline

Sermon

John N. Brittain

You don't need to be told that we live in a superficial society. We (at least men) surf the channels on the television, catching a glimpse of multiple shows without really watching any one in depth. Increasing numbers of us are doing the same with the internet, confusing access to multiple sources of information for comprehension of it. We are obsessed with physical appearance, creating a massive ...

1067. An Our Good Works And Generosity

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

Jesus was giving his famous Sermon on the Mount. In the middle of it he looked at the disciples from his sitting position (as was customary for Jewish rabbis of the first century when they were teaching). And Jesus said: "Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 6:1)." To whom was Jesus refer...

1068. Sermon on the Mount: Giving, Prayer, and Fasting

Teach the Text

Jeannine K. Brown

Big Idea: Jesus expects his disciples to practice a covenantal piety that centers on a longing for God’s kingdom to arrive and strives to please God, not humans. Understanding the Text Following on the heels of Matthew’s instructions about keeping the law, this passage indicates right ways of enacting religious practices of giving, prayer, and fasting. In each case, believers ought to act “in secr...

1069. Giving, Prayer, and Fasting

One Volume

Gary M. Burge

From Jesus’s interpretation of torah, Matthew turns to Jesus’s teaching on Jewish religious practices (expressed as “righteousness” [Greek dikaiosynē]; 6:1; cf. 5:20) of giving to the poor (6:2–4), prayer (6:5–15), and fasting (6:16–18). These three practices are joined in Tobit 12:8, along with “righteousness,” indicating their centrality in Jewish piety. The three sections are each structured by...

1070. Are You Sorry Enough to Wash Your Face?

Sermon

Robert Leslie Holmes

For Christians around the world, Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent. It was the practice among early Roman Christians for penitents to begin their period of public penance on the first day of Lent. They were sprinkled with ashes, dressed in sackcloth, and obliged to remain away from fellowship with other people until they reconciled with fellow Christians on Maundy Thursday, the day before Goo...

1071. Giving to the Needy

Understanding Series

Robert H. Mounce

6:1 The three most prominent religious obligations of Jewish piety were almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. The first eighteen verses of chapter 6 deal with these acts of religious devotion. In each case there is a wrong way and a right way. The followers of Jesus are to avoid all ostentatious display and to quietly fulfill the obligations in an unobtrusive manner. In carrying out religious duties th...

1072. Actors

Sermon

John Jamison

Whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets.... We can almost see the people in the crowd leaning forward as they try to hear these things Jesus was saying that afternoon on the hillside. He had been talking for a while now, and although he started out talking about things that were theological, he was now getting to things that...

1073. Hypocrites

Sermon

Brett Blair

It is difficult to find anyone who has a kind word to say about hypocrites. Nobody likes a hypocrite; no one wants to be around one; the last thing one would want to be called is a hypocrite. Hypocrites are, by definition, deceptive, two-faced and treacherous. If discovered, hypocritical politicians are defeated at the polls, hypocritical friends get dropped and hypocritical preachers lose the tru...

1074. Scenes From a Marriage

Sermon

Craig Erickson

How incongruous to talk about marriage on this solemn Day of Ashes. Marriage evokes images of life and joy and growth, perhaps even of youthful, starry-eyed wonder. But this is a day about dying. It’s a day of sober realism and human limitations. It’s a day that begins a season of denial, of fasting, and repentance. How incongruous to bring up marriage on this day. But then, every marriage has it...

1075. The Piety That Isn't

Sermon

Carl Jech

Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen ... (Matthew 6:1a) The well-known San Francisco newspaper columnist, Herb Caen, recently made a provocative observation when he wrote: "The miracle of Christmas is that it survives those who believe in it too loudly." The Christmas/Epiphany season is now over, and it might be good for us to ponder the significance of Mr. Caen's observ...

Showing 1051 to 1075 of 4508 results