Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1076 to 1100 of 4884 results

John 4:5-42

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... those we accept and those we do not, including ourselves. Maum Jean became the Christ to that little boy, pouring out her love to him in abundance. Lent is a time when we seek to be transformed and to be renewed. Jesus provides the perfect example and today's celebration is the ideal environment to enter fully into this process. Let us, therefore, be renewed by breaking down the barriers of hostility, hatred, prejudice, and exclusivity. Let us build bridges of friendship, love, peace, and justice. Let us do ...

1077. Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired?

Matthew 9:35-10:8

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... Only two Chemo's left! PRAISE GOD!!! It's almost over Soon I'll be back to my old self Going to work Selling cosmetics Cooking for family and friends Doing all the things I've put off doing ... Because of the "Big C." Yes, I'll be ALMOST PERFECT. Then I look in the mirror at the scars Two where my breasts were One where my catheter was One where my colostomy was One where a drainage tube was inserted One where my hysterectomy was, and last but not least... One that runs the length of my stomach ... that ...

1078. A Life Well Lived

2 Timothy 3:10--4:8

Sermon

King Duncan

... 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 done in Jesus Christ to make us His own. Paul had no ...

1079. Christmasize Your Life

Isaiah 11:1-16

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... dead at the level of the first generation, the initial tree that fell to the ground. In reality that dead tree is thriving. For it's busy giving life to a whole new generation for the forest. The decaying surface of the dead tree creates a perfect growing medium for a tiny seed, a struggling seedling, even a young sky-seeking sapling. The decaying tree becomes nursemaid, a nurse-tree, to the upcoming new tree generation. Alongside the main road on Orcas Island there is a big old stump, broken off about four ...

1080. Wondering Wonder

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... a special spirit to discern as wonderful the news that "you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger" (verse 12). To the world this isn't an extraordinary event. It's just another baby, born to poor parents, in less than perfect circumstances. What's your capacity for wonder? Can you stack it up against the shepherd's capacity for wonder? " It took the shepherd's faith in God's wonderfulness to connect this baby to the angelic promise that he was "a Savior, who is the Messiah, the ...

1081. What God Requires of Us

Micah 6:1-8

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... 's fault; if our weight is too great it's McDonald's fault. Time to sue. Except for a few depressed moments we can generally convince ourselves that we stand alone and above the foibles of others. We know we're not perfect. But we can sure spot those that are obviously less perfect than us. This way we find reassurance. In today's Old Testament text the prophet Micah was charged with confronting a similarly smug, self-satisfied Israel. Not only did God's covenant community not see how far it had fallen into ...

1082. That Is SO God!

Matthew 11:2-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... activity on our behalf were evident at the very outset of Jesus' life. Baby Jesus was a loser, all right. A no-account baby from a no-account town, with no-account parents, and a no-account ancestry. The perfect "SO God." No wonder John the Baptist had his doubts. Although he himself was a perfect example of a SO God idea – a scruffy guy bellowing to outcasts camped along river beds – John was expecting rather more from his Messiah. How about a little fire, a little godly glory, a little zap or two of ...

1083. The Monsters We Are All Afraid Of

Luke 20:27-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... monster with horns, goat's feet, and a pitchfork is not the way the real forces of evil appear on this side of the doorway. In Ezekiel we read that Satan appears to us as the most beautiful of all God's creations – the model of perfection, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty (28:12). The scariest monsters masquerade as angels of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). The monsters to be feared most are not those in flaming red, but in robes of white, suits of blue, and in beautiful choir robes. In the words of ...

1084. Undercooked Turkey and Unwrapped Presents

Hebrews 2:5-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... birth of the tiny baby Jesus marks the beginning of a whole new divine project. The divine entered our human midst with a baby's birth in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago. But the reason for the Incarnation was not to make God more complete, more perfect. The reason for the Incarnation was so that the divine could be completed within each and everyone of us. Christ came to live among us so that Christ could live within us. We are to continue Christ's ministry on earth by continually allowing the power ...

1085. You've Won the Heavenly Sweepstakes!

John 14:15-31

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... to eat anything that calls itself "processed." When I was a kid we used to refer to those staples of mom's lunch box meals as "plastic meat and rubber cheese" sandwiches. You know, mysterious paper-thin "processed" meat slices combined with those perfectly square, individually wrapped "processed" cheese slices. Remember them? It is doubtful that those sandwiches will ever de-compose in our landfills. Even worse was the threat of a processed turkey roll (note that they couldn't bring themselves to call it a ...

1086. The Uncloudy Cloud?

Hebrews 11:1-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Panama is the land of their dreams and set off to find it. On the way they meet and befriend other animals. All seem entranced by this magical place called Panama. After what seems like endless days of wandering, the friends come upon a house. It looks perfect and they conclude that this really must be Panama. They settle there, blissfully happy that they've found the land of their dreams. It's their old house, of course. We all live with at least a few big dreams. Some are those caviar dreams and champagne ...

1087. When Self-esteem is Snake Oil

Galatians 5:1-15

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... one key, that one idea, that one rightly placed fulcrum has continued to haunt us. We still want that one simple touchstone which will make all our dreams come true, which will banish life's baser elements, which will transform the world into that perfect place. Among some scientists the great quest is the cold fusion of nuclear energy. Such a feat would give us a virtually inexhaustible source of energy for our power-hungry planet. On an international level, the escalating battle between East and West has ...

1088. The Spiritually Incorrect Spirit

Romans 8:1-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Holy Spirit operates not arithmetically but algebraically: in the celestial calculus of the Spirit, your biggest contributions in life are not going to come out of your strengths, but your weaknesses. How do the Scriptures put it? God's strength is made perfect in our weakness. You will bless others through your strengths naturally. But your biggest blessings on others will be made through your weaknesses supernaturally. What's missing in the spiritual gifts movement is the voice of God and the power of the ...

1089. Making Holiness

Luke 1:67-80

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... are manifested in such enduring examples as marble statues or soaring sonatas. For the stand-up comic, success is only as long as the last burst of laughter. For gifted athletes, there is only that split-second of perfect timing that results in a great catch or an amazing shot. For my grandmother the perfect expression of her greatest talent lasted only as long as a crumb remained of her latest cake. Baking a cake for Gramma was an act of art, an expression of a lifetime of finely-honed skills. All of ...

1090. Making a Clean Sweep

Mark 13:1-31

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... determine our personal future every time we agree to draw straws. In fact the less we actually use brooms as cleaning implements (haven't we all moved on to Swiffers now?) the more we seem to use them metaphorically. Despite their simple structure and less-than-perfect cleaning performance, we all know what it means to make a clean sweep. Though it almost never happens, baseball pennant and world series teams dream of making a clean sweep. And who would argue that some of the most dangerous and necessarily ...

1091. Show and Listen

Acts 8:26-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... . His long quest for spiritual fulfillment, a quest that had brought him to Jerusalem to worship, was a quest that had driven him to purchase and study the Hebrew Scriptures himself. He was seeking information, insight, inspiration. He was, as the Spirit knew, the perfect candidate to respond to Philip's question, "Do you understand?" The Ethiopian's mind is hungry and his heart is ready. He knows he needs "someone to guide me." What he doesn't know is that God is already guiding him. It's the Ethiopian ...

1092. The Oneness of Twoness

Romans 14:1--15:13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... love of God the Father flashed down from heaven in a dazzling smile that would light the world forever. Embodied truth rose up from the earth, arms outstretched on the cross, and the two met. In Jesus Christ, Son of God, truth and love meet in perfect balance. Love without truth cannot satisfy the penalty for sin. Truth without love would not seek salvation for humanity. In Jesus Christ, and in him alone, truth and love meet in a blaze of glory and salvation.” Have truth and love kissed in your life? Is ...

1093. Conviction with Compassion

John 8:1-11

Sermon

James McCormick

... includes you as it includes me. Jesus never glossed over the sinful woman’s behavior. He never excused it. He never approved of it. But, he did say to the mob that they were not to punish her unless they could claim sinless perfection. Of course, no human being can claim such perfection. Each of us is in need of the love and forgiveness of God. Our relative moral superiority or inferiority begins to pale into insignificance when seen in the light of our common need for God’s mercy. So, we are never to ...

1094. Jesus' Forty Days, and Ours

Matthew 4:1-11

Sermon

James McCormick

... “C” word, there popped into my mind some verses of scripture that I had not thought about for over fifty years. I know my mother had placed them there because they were from the King James translation. Here are the words: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.” (Isaiah 26:3) Instantly I thought of those words, after not hearing them for over fifty years. They had simply been filed away there for the time when I would need them. In the weeks following, whenever I thought ...

1095. A New Vision

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

King Duncan

... rooted strictly in the secular world. The world he envisioned, however, is not that much different from the biblical vision of the kingdom of God, except, of course, Lennon omitted God. How he thought such a perfect world could be produced without God is a mystery. Sinful humanity cannot produce of its own volition a perfect world. A different kind of vision is found in the contemporary song, “I Can Only Imagine” by MercyMe. It is a vision of what it would mean to be in God’s presence. “I can only ...

1096. A Word of Hope for a Hard World

Matthew 2:13-18

Sermon

King Duncan

... Jerusalem and executed on that day as well. He knew that there would not be any mourners for him, so he arranged numerous executions in Jerusalem at the time of his death so there would be mourners all around. That’s the kind of man Herod was. So it is perfectly plausible that after he discovered that the wise men were not returning to give him directions to the newborn king’s birthplace, Herod would give orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under. That is ...

1097. Advent 4

Psalm 80:1-19, Isaiah 7:1-25, Romans 1:1-17, Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon Aid

Marion L. Soards, Thomas B. Dozeman, Kendall McCabe

... or angels' thought: Suffice for us that God, we know, Our God, is manifest below. He deigns in flesh to appear, Widest extremes to join; To bring our vileness near, And make us all divine: And we the life of God shall know, For God is manifest below. Made perfect first in love, And sanctified by grace, We shall from earth remove, And see his glorious face: His love shall then be fully showed, And we shall all be lost in God. Even if not used in worship, the preacher could do worse than meditate on this hymn ...

1098. Ash Wednesday

Mt 6:1-6, 16-21 · 2 Cor 5:20b--6:10 · Ps 51:1-17 · Jl 2:1-2, 12-17

Sermon Aid

Marion L. Soards, Thomas B. Dozeman, Kendall McCabe

... are a strong directive to give God first-place in our lives, so that God's concerns become ours. First, line of thought elaborates and helps us understand the difficult words of Jesus that immediately precede the Ash Wednesday text, "Be perfect therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). Second, the words of assurance, issued as a refrain in the teachings on alms, prayer, and fasting, speak of our God who sees and who is in secret. The image of God is highly eschatological, for it relates ...

1099. Christmas Eve\Christmas Day

Luke 2:1-7, Isaiah 9:1-7, Psalm 96:1-13, Titus 2:1-15, Luke 2:8-20

Sermon Aid

Marion L. Soards, Thomas B. Dozeman, Kendall McCabe

... of Salvation" Setting. The letter to Titus is designed to give advice to a Christian leader who is facing a less than perfect pastoral situation. The letter gives counsel about the personal qualities a pastor is to possess (1:5-9), and then it provides ... 's obvious condition) in the normal lodging facilities; though the world had Caesar's peace, it was still far from perfect. Despite the modest accommodations, Jesus' parents demonstrate great care by wrapping their child neatly in the approved manner of the ...

1100. Christmas 1

Mt 2:13-23 · Heb 2:10-18 · Isa 63:7-9 · Ps 148

Sermon Aid

Marion L. Soards, Thomas B. Dozeman, Kendall McCabe

... mean? Nothing more and nothing less than that all of God's dealings with Israel are summarized, consummated, embodied, and realized in Jesus Christ. In Jesus all of God's work and all of God's words are made perfect. Israel's past becomes truly real, as Jesus relives and perfects Israel's story. Matthew makes a profound christological claim with these words, and we the readers should not press him for exact parallels. In a striking manner vv. 19-23 reiterate the same points. Again, God intervenes to direct ...

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