Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1176 to 1200 of 3160 results

John 17:20-26

Sermon

Allan J. Weenink

... unity, he implies that expressive action will be the demonstration of how evident it is. St. James caught it in his succinct remarks when he wrote: "What use is it, my brothers, for a man to say he has faith, if his actions do not correspond to it? Could that sort of faith save anyone’s soul? If a fellow man or woman has no clothes to wear and nothing to eat, and one of you say, ‘Good luck to you, I hope you’ll keep warm and find enough to eat,’ and yet give them nothing to meet their physical ...

1177. Go Away, Devil!

Matthew 4:1-11

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... that Jesus was tempted? He was. A long time ago Jesus met the Devil out in the wilderness and the Devil tempted him. It was an awful experience for Jesus. He was tired and hungry from not eating anything and the Devil kept coming after Jesus and promising him all sorts of things if he would just forget about God and follow him. Jesus refused to be tricked by the Devil and did not give up. Over and over again the Devil would say to Jesus that he would give land and fame and food to him if Jesus would fall ...

1178. At the Door of the Church

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... , "My religious fire is going out. Church and worship just don’t mean the same to me anymore. I just don’t feel like getting up and getting there. And when I do get there, it’s so dull. What I need is a revival every now and then to sort of fire me up and get me over the slump." Yes, these people’s lamps are going out. They were not prepared. Often God visits his people. Those who are ready, feast with him. Others let the mind go elsewhere and never experience the joy at all. I can remember ...

1179. A Higher Form of Love: The Good Neighbor

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... lady prevailed upon my mother to deliver the baskets to the family that was selected. On the appointed Saturday morning, Mother and I went to the church to complete the assignment. We helped the members of the lady’s Sunday school class gather and sort the canned goods, perishables, and cakes for delivery to our "poor person." After loading several boxes of the provisions into the car, we drove to the outskirts of town to a forgotten old woman who lived in an unattractive wooden shack. This old black ...

1180. How To Be A Saint In A Storm

Acts 27:13-26

Sermon

Barbara Brokhoff

... , a grounding, a security. Every Christian needs to put his faith in something solid. What are the anchors for your life when the crisis comes? Do you have any absolutes that hold when the storms begin to blow every direction? Every Christian needs to sit down and sort out what he actually believes for sure relative to his faith. Let me illustrate. I don’t have too many absolutes, things for which I’d stake my life - and yours might not have to be the same as mine - but I could not attempt to live ...

1181. For Losers And Cowards

Judges 6:1-40

Sermon

Barbara Brokhoff

... to fight the battle. But God said, "That’s too many men, Gideon. You’ll think you won the battle all by yourself, so send the scared ones home." And 22,000 of them left, leaving only 10,000 to fight. God said, "That’s still too many; I’ll sort them out for you." So down by the river, God thinned the ranks till Gideon wound up with only a pitifully small army of 300 men to do battle with the vast armies of the Midianites. Not much human help, is there? If Gideon is depending on man-power alone ...

1182. Cross-Bearing

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... life belongs to the whole community; and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle for me. It is the sort of splendid torch which I got hold of for a Moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before turning it over to future generations."* (*A Treasury of Sermon Illustrations, by Charles L. Wallis, Abindgon Press.) Our lives become soft and flabby, when they could be ...

1183. When Christians Quarrel: Resolving Conflict in the Church

Matthew 18:15-20

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... him ..." Many times just putting our disgruntlement into words will help us put it into its proper perspective. It may even seem trivial and a lot less important when we do this. There are so many times when we just must not suffer our hurt in a sort of brooding silence. That’s the worst thing we can do. The first rule that Jesus gives us to resolve conflict is: tell it, speak it, get it out into the open. Irving Stone, in Love is Eternal, concludes his narrative account of Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln ...

1184. God’s Generosity Resented

Matthew 20:1-16

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... what they had agreed upon when they started. He then said, "Don’t I have the right to do as I wish with my own money? Or are you jealous because I am generous?" (Matthew 20:15). The story sounds as if it were a dreamed up tale; however, this sort of thing was real in Palestine. There, the grape harvest comes on in September very quickly, and must be harvested before the rain comes. It’s a race against time to make it. Anybody who can work, does, even if he can work only an hour or two. The pay ...

1185. For Those in Church: Joy and Service

Matthew 23:1-39

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... of the faith. Here is where it is so difficult, and we must be so very careful. There is a fine line between witnessing with enthusiasm and being so caught up with our Christ, so on fire with the good news, that we must share it, and a sort of pious, self-righteous kind of religion which calls attention to ourselves rather than to the heavenly father we are excited about. Carlton Van Ornum tells this story. A large crowd of people gathered near an enclosure in the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston as a peacock ...

1186. Christ the King

Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... us to help and thus receive the praise and thanks. We have manipulated our own ego trip. That isn’t the way it is for those in Christ the King’s kingdom. We’re tender-hearted subjects who must respond to needs of people. That means all sorts of neonle who need us. There is something else here. Notice we aren’t asked to do the grand, dramatic thing, but rather the little everyday help. A cup of water, or something to eat, some clothing, visitation of the ill, going to see someone in prison - these ...

1187. Embalmed Alive

John 14:5-14

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... efficiently as husbands or as fathers. The result is seldom divorce, which is bad for careers of young men on the go. Instead, marriages in name only are preserved between weary, indifferent men and women beset by all sorts of emotional ills, including chronic loneliness, sexual frustration, alcoholism, and excessive dependence on their children. In some New York suburbs, counselors will tell of families composed of emotionally disturbed or delinquent children, bitterly frustrated wives, and husbands so ...

1188. Salvation as Hope

Romans 13:8-14, 1 Thessalonians 4:13--5:11, 1 Corinthians 15:35-58

Sermon Aid

T. A. Kantonen

... is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble - each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Corinthians ...

1189. Voluntary Blindness

Matthew 6:1-15

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

... to take note of it. A chief trouble with the idea that one can stack up merits is that it is not true. Mark Twain may have been unjustifiably pessimistic when he said, "Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is a sort of low grade nickle-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm."6 Henry David Thoreau, also, might have been unduly critical of himself when he said, "I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I ...

1190. What On Earth Is God Doing? - 1940

Psalm 76:1-12

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... sins have we committed. All of us have studied with meticulous care the various devices of "justifiable" selfishness, put them into protracted practice, and insisted they were indispensable to survival. We have glorified greed, excused exploitation, ignored all sorts of injustice to others, or indulged in it ourselves, sought to sanctify our systems of ruthless competition, and, in ways too sickeningly numerous to mention, we have completely fulfilled those conditions which in a universe geared to law ...

1191. The First Murder - 1940

Matthew 7:1-6

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... seek to understand how this crime came about. Cain was the elder brother and he was a tiller of the soil, a farmer. Abel was the younger and he was a keeper of sheep. They were called upon, as all men have been called to do, to offer some sort of token of their recognition of God’s ownership of all things. Both brought their best. Cain brought the finest fruit of the field and Abel brought a slaughtered lamb. Cain’s offering was not acceptable white Abel’s was. A lot of theological stupidity has been ...

1192. The Narrowness Of The Christian Way - 1950 (date estimated)

Matthew 7:13-14

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... incapable of doing so. But I learned a lesson: broad way - narrow life; narrow way - broad life! But someone may say, "Do you mean to imply that going down any narrow way will lead to a broad life?" I certainly do not. There are all sorts of narrow, restrictive ways down which certain pious persons pass - and they quite obviously come out even narrower than when they went in. Restriction merely for the sake of restraint has scant creative value. Discipline as an end in itself becomes deadly; it must lead ...

1193. The Evangelism Of Emphasis - 1946

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... , popularity, but by humility, loyalty, and unselfish service. Talk about evangelizing the world. If we dared adopt, here and now in the U.S.A., such an emphasis on true greatness, could we not transform the present, suicidal, armament race into some sort of a redemptive rivalry in mutual helpfulness? If that is taking in too much territory, suppose we experiment in our home, business, or community, and see how it works. The fifth, and perhaps the most dangerous, daring, and redemptive emphasis of all ...

1194. EPISODE 5: THE FIFTH WEEK IN LENT

Drama

Robert Clausen

... not stopped, Governor, you will be drawn into it whether you like it or not. [A shouting is heard in the distance.] GOVERNOR: What is that noise outside? Captain! CAPTAIN: [Entering] Yes, Governor? GOVERNOR: What is that uproar in the streets? CAPTAIN: It’s some sort of unscheduled parade, sir. The man Jesus has come to town with some of his people, and there are thousands lined up to cheer him. It caught us off guard, sir. Shall we clear the streets? GOVERNOR: No, that might provoke more trouble. Perhaps ...

1195. EPISODE 7: MAUNDY THURSDAY

Drama

Robert Clausen

... ? JESUS: They meant it well. GOVERNOR: They called you "king." JESUS: I know, but they don’t understand me. GOVERNOR: You don’t plan to use them...? JESUS: If I did, wouldn’t there already be fighting in the streets? GOVERNOR: But you are a "king" of sorts? JESUS: I came into the world to explain my kingdom. GOVERNOR: All right. What is it? JESUS: It’s the rule of God in the hearts of men. GOVERNOR: Nothing more? JESUS: That’s the truth I’ve come to speak. GOVERNOR: Can one ever know the truth ...

1196. EPISODE 8: GOOD FRIDAY

Drama

Robert Clausen

... . The man may be innocent ... WIFE: Then he can’t be guilty ... GOVERNOR: But his very innocence is a disturbance. WIFE: How can that be? GOVERNOR: Somehow, he’s upsetting the balance of society ... turning values upside down ... shaking up the people into all sorts of dangerous moods ... WIFE: I don’t believe it. GOVERNOR: I didn’t at first, but now ... WIFE: What are you thinking? GOVERNOR: If things explode ... WIFE: Your job! That’s it, isn’t it? GOVERNOR: I’ve got to protect myself. WIFE ...

1197. The Art of Living Until

Matthew 24:36-51

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... on my robe and slippers, make my way to the front door, pick up the morning newspaper, bring it into the house, and turn to the obituary section to see if my name is there, and if it isn’t, I go back to bed!" Well, that sort of "life style" doesn’t really qualify as living. Surely it doesn’t qualify as living until - anything. There isn’t much affirmative expectancy in it; it’s without point or purpose, a daily survival, with an attitude of indifference even toward that. Some years ago Archibald ...

1198. Your Image of Tomorrow

Matthew 3:1-12

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... whirlwind." Speaking of the dimensions of our being, Jesus says, "You are more." But generally our larger interest is in having more; we are more concerned with having than being. We tend to have a greater interest in a kind of breadth than we have in any sort of depth. Our inclination is to take a quick glance at everything and a penetrating look at nothing. It may be an epitome of our time that when we are confronted with a problem, we assemble huge masses of statistics, feed them into a computer, and ask ...

1199. A Faith for the Uncharted Way

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... walks with me, and he talks with me, And he tells me I am his own; And the joy we share, as we tarry there, None other has ever known. I did not then understand the meaning of those words. I supposed the song was a romantic ballad of some sort. Who "he" was I didn’t know; but in my child’s mind I sensed, he was someone very special. It took me several years to learn that my mother, out of her sufferings and trials, was singing of the presence of her Lord. Yes, indeed, my friend, we have ...

1200. The Light that Shines Within

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... into what they could become. And don’t you see: Matthew and Mary and those fishermen all have one thing in common - after they met Jesus they began to live in new dimensions of their being. In his letter to the Ephesians the Apostle Paul writes concerning the sort of context in which our life is cast and the kind of potential life has. His exulting words: "I pray God ... according to the riches of his glory, that he will grant you to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ ...

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