Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: Levi, disciple, evangelist, tax collector, the 12, the twelve, apostle, sermon on the mount, jewish audience, beatitudes, lord's prayer, great commission, parables, olivet discourse, mount of olives, olivet, synoptic

Showing 1151 to 1175 of 2815 results

1151. When Christ Shall Come

Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon

King Duncan

... tell him to go to [the devil]!" (2) Pardon my crudeness, but we need to face the reality of this text. Jesus says that caring for the needy is serious business! Surprise. This brings us to the second thing we need to see. THIS PARABLE IS ABOUT FAITH IN ACTION. There are some who will dismiss this parable by saying, "This sounds like salvation by works. I believe in salvation by faith so I don't need to worry." It is true we are saved by faith, but what is faith? Is it a mere intellectual assent or is it a ...

1152. Who Are You Trying To Impress?

Galatians 1:1-10

Sermon

King Duncan

... trying to please men I could not be Christ's servant." Here is a paradox. The harder you try to impress people, the sillier you become. If you seek to impress God, you will eventually make the kind of impression you desire on people. Consider with me one final parable. Just imagine that a man is given a present by one of his friends. The present is neatly wrapped in a small box with a pretty bow on top. Imagine that the man opens the box and discovers a huge diamond inside. He is flabbergasted at his friend ...

1153. Why Do We Call Him Good?

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

Dr. Ronald Love

... three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The answer was so obvious the inquirer responded immediately, "The one who had mercy on him." Then Jesus challenged everyone with these words, "Go and do likewise." Nowhere in the Parable of the Good Samaritan is the word "good" used. Have you ever noticed that? Through the years, however, the word "good" has become synonymous with this man who dared to be a neighbor to a stranger. For all eternity he will be known as the Good ...

1154. The Gift Of Inadequacy

Luke 18:9-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... tax collector who was beating his breast. His prayer was much simpler, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" You know the rest of the story. According to Jesus it was the tax collector and not the Pharisee who was made right before God. In examining this parable we discover, first of all, that WHEN WE BOAST OF OUR OWN ACCOMPLISHMENTS WE FORGET ABOUT GOD. That's true. In one of Lloyd John Olgivie's books, he speaks of the "gift of inadequacy." Think about those words for a few moments. The gift of inadequacy ...

1155. Do You Have A Forgiving Spirit?

Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... 's account that Peter had been traveling with our Lord Jesus Christ from towns to villages to cities. Peter had probably heard our Lord Jesus share great teaching stories and parables with the various groups of people as he taught about the necessity of forgiveness and the grace of God. Perhaps his mind had already been stirred by the fabulous parable of the Prodigal Son. Perhaps he had witnessed with his very own eyes the attempted stoning of the woman caught in adultery recorded in John 8:1-11. Peter by ...

1156. Trouble Brewing In The Kitchen

Luke 10:38-42

Sermon

Graham M. Bingham

... home the Lord Jesus Christ went many times. It was a special home to him. It was a place where he could rest and relax among friends. The gospel story today is a record of a visit Jesus paid to the home of Martha and Mary. The story follows the parable of the Good Samaritan; and together, these two events in the life of Jesus provide the Christian an example on how to live the life of faith. Jesus shows in the story that what we need in the Christian life is balance. A balance between work and worship. A ...

1157. God Is Not Fair (Grumbling in the Vineyard)

Matthew 20:1-16

Sermon

King Duncan

... , "The dumber the farmer, the bigger the spuds." (2) Friends, life may be many things, but fair is not one of them. Jesus told a parable about a landowner who went out about six in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a ... , they are simply trying to apply as best they can the rule of law to their lives. Do you see the problem? So Jesus tells this parable about people who have worked all day and they come to be paid and they're paid the same as those who have only worked one ...

1158. Why The British Coast Guard Doesn't Like Eric, But God Does

Luke 15:1-7

Sermon

King Duncan

... heard the story so many times, we take it for granted. But think about his audience for a moment. Jesus was telling this parable to the "sinners" and tax collectors. It is interesting that in at least one translation of the Bible the word "sinners" is put ... you are expecting others to earn their way as well. Relax, my friend, and let God love you. Jesus is trying to tell us in this parable that God's love doesn't depend on our goodness; it depends on God's character. Here is this truth expressed in I John 4: ...

1159. Another World

Exodus 24:1-18

Sermon

King Duncan

... the world. As soon as you say, "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son . . ." you have entered into another world--a world in which humanity is elevated in status, yet humbled by the understanding of what salvation cost God. There is a modern parable. In this parable Jesus goes walking one day along the streets of a big city. He roams rather aimlessly, letting his feet take him where they will--the way you or I might do when we're just out walking. On his walk, he sees many people and many things ...

1160. A Tale Of Two Brothers

Matthew 21:28-32

Sermon

King Duncan

... , Pop, I'll be happy to." But the day passed and the younger son never went into the vineyard. Jesus told that very human little parable and then he asked a question, "Which did the will of his father--the one who said he would not go, but did, or the ... his father?" And the answer is obvious. The first, of course--the one who said he would not go but did. This is an important parable for us because we are those who have said, "Yes, Father, I will go." There was a time when we received Christian baptism. And we ...

1161. Drowning In A Sea Of Stuff

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

King Duncan

... Jesus said, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" Then Jesus turned to the crowd. "Take care!" he said. "Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my ...

1162. Who Should I Invite To My Party?

Luke 14:1-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... a bath in a week." Now THIS is the Word of the Lord. I expect each of you to follow this step-by-step when your daughter gets married. I'm being absurd, of course. Not everything in Scripture is meant to be taken at face value. This is a parable. Jesus is making a point--but what point? Well, let's wrestle with this a few minutes. Here is one principle that is unavoidable: it's more important what God thinks of you than what your friends think of you. Let's face it: one of the most powerful motivators ...

1163. Bearing Fruit

John 15:1-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. He said to the vinedresser, `Lo, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down; why should it use up the ground?'" Jesus not only told that parable but He himself had an encounter with such a fig tree. What did He do with the fig tree that was not bearing fruit? He cursed it. Budding blossoms are nice, but bearing fruit is what's important in God's kingdom. Have you ever noticed how thrilling it is ...

1164. Tomorrow Doesn't Always Come

James 4:1-12

Sermon

Edward Inabinet

... going to go his way. Time was in his hip pocket. He was the master of everything and he said, "Soul, you have ample goods laid out for many years, take thine ease. Eat, drink and be merry." Just lay back and relax. You remember what Jesus said in that parable. He said, "That night God said to him, Thou fool, this night thy soul is required of thee and whose then shall be all these things which thou has gathered?''" Life can go with the snap of a finger. We''re not assured of tomorrow. A story familiar to ...

1165. Through the Eyes of an Eagle (Introduction)

John 20:24-31

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the institution of the Eucharist, nothing about the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane or the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, no healing of persons possessed by devils and evil spirits, and no parables. In the “synoptic” Gospels, Jesus either speaks these wonderful, scandalous little stories called parables, or gives us vivid, epigrammatic sentences that stick in the mind. In John, Jesus tends to give speeches that are a whole chapter long, and they are often involved and argumentative, as though our ...

1166. Lazarus Laughed

John 11:17-37

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... Lazarus! Remember how He was told, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” (John 11:3) The jury is still out on this question, but it does, you will admit, open some interesting possibilities! At any rate, this story does not sound like an allegory or a parable or a “made up” story. It is filled with all sorts of little details which give it the ring of veracity. Why, then, did not the “Synoptic Gospels” (that’s what we call the first three) mention it? Could it be that Lazarus was still alive when ...

1167. Only a Carpenter

Mark 6:1-6

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... who received the bad news was Albert Einstein. In 1894, the rhetoric teacher at Harrow in England wrote on a 16-year old’s grade card: “A conspicuous lack of success.” The name on the top of the card was that of young Winston Churchill. (Parables, Aug. 1986) There is such a thing as being too close to something to appreciate it. People come from all over the world to tour Yellowstone National Park, and yet there is a man living in Livingston, Montana, I understand, just 56 miles away, who never ...

1168. Radical Surgery

Mark 9:42-50

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... with a passage of Scripture difficult to interpret, he had a rule: “Compare Scripture with Scripture.” So this week when I got bogged down wondering what on earth I was going to say about this difficult passage, it occurred to me that our Lord gave us a perfect parable to help us understand it: the story of a treasure hid in a field. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up, then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field ...

1169. Salty Saints

Mark 9:42-50

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... , fire, and sword” for the privilege of gathering together in worship every Lord’s day. Wild horses (and wilder emperors) couldn’t keep them away! Such an idea is so foreign to most of us as to be almost laughable. In his book on the Parables of Jesus, Presbyterian David Redding writes: “Consider the Connecticut Yankee and his bicycle factory. It will take more than strikes and taxes to put him out of business. Foul weather and flat tires won’t keep him from work. A houseful of company can’t ...

1170. Sine Qua Non

Mark 12:28-34

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... that he or she knows God, but God is there, nevertheless, because God is love. In Luke, immediately following Jesus’ words is the Parable of the Good Samaritan. That is the best example of what Jesus is talking about. Intelligent love of one’s neighbor in a ... not finish the race on his own. Whereupon the other stopped and picked up his buddy and carried him across the finish line. It’s a parable for us, isn’t it? None of us can make it on our own. But we have a Friend who wants to carry us into the ...

1171. Honestly, Are You Worried about Tomorrow?

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... well. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. CHRISTIANS ARE SATURATED WITH A PEACE THAT OUTLASTS THEIR ANXIETY AND DIFFICULTIES. That is why we will endure until the end of time. Today we started our sermon with a parable of a man who was given advice by another to quit and discontinue his work in life because the mountains were seemingly too large to conquer. We continued this sermon with the story of a blind woman who became an inspiration to a distinguished ...

1172. Life: From the Inside Out

Mark 8:31--9:1

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... composers, and painted by the great artists. Sam Miller was getting at this fifty years ago when, in a little volume titled The Life of the Soul, he wrote this about the grand stories of faith: The stories of Eden, the Tower of Babel, the parables and the life of Christ all have truths that evade the literal nets of the historically wise. They are the ageless formulary in concrete terms of unending human experience. In all of them the eternal and historical meet and fulfill each other in such perfection ...

1173. The Dark Didn't Catch Me!

John 6:25-59

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... Christmas plays, and more sermons than I can remember. By the time I was ten or eleven years old I knew the parables, the Christmas stories, the Easter story, John 3:16, and all four stanzas of my favorite hymn, "Holy, Holy, Holy!" And I ... had everything I thought was important in life, and, what's more, he was a committed Christian. So I went to listen. Bill preached on the parable of the sower from Matthew 13. He talked about how some seed fell into good soil and began to grow, but the cares of the world ...

1174. Look Inside and Discover Life

Numbers 21:4-9

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... house in order we must first humble ourselves before self, neighbor, and God through the process and special gift of reconciliation, one of the basic tenets of the Lenten journey. Reconciliation is a special journey that must begin with oneself. We recall in the famous parable of The Prodigal Son that the young man was not able to gain the forgiveness of his father until he had first taken the inward journey, arrived at the conclusion that his actions were wrong, come to a change of heart and mind, and then ...

1175. A Guiding Presence

Romans 8:1-17

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... skillet over the flame. A wind came up and the flame began to move along rather rapidly through the grass, but he kept his skillet over it, and it worked. But by the time he had cooked his eggs, his coffee was three miles away. That’s a parable of life. That’s a parable of life, the winds of the world blow and would take the fire of our life in all sorts of directions. Likewise, the wind of the spirit blows, and as Jesus said, we know not from where it comes or whither it goes. But we hear it ...

Showing results