Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 101 to 125 of 3160 results

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... along with their names, were written their titles, the “Most Reverend” so-and-so, the “Right Reverend” so-and-so, and the “Very Reverend” so-and so. Whimsically, I printed on my card the “Hardly Reverend”...which, of course, made me guilty of a reverse sort of pride, like the monk in the famous story who said about the various monastic orders: “The Jesuits are ahead of us in learning, the Franciscans are ahead of us in good works, but when it comes to humility, we’re tops!” All in all ...

102. The Autobiography of God

John 14:5-14

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... wiping out that human being’s identity. And what kind of a God do we see? A God very much different from most people’s popular conceptions of God. Not a remote, impersonal, cosmic Deity who dwells aloof and is untouched by this world, but a very worldly sort of God, a God who is unafraid to immerse Himself in the grease and grime of the very real world. The Russian novelist Turgenev once wrote of a vision which came to him as a youth, while he was worshipping in church. Suddenly a man stood behind him ...

103. The Saint without a Name

Luke 6:12-16

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... . But Nathanael was a man without guile. He was not perfect, but open and willing to learn. Some folks seem to be walking illustrations of the motto, “My mind is made up, don’t confuse me with the facts.” At first Nathanael seemed to be that sort of fellow. “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” he asked. There was probably a rivalry between the two Galilean towns. He was like the New England politician of 1860 who exclaimed, “Illinois! Can any good come out of that frontier state? Are we to ...

104. Little Jimmy

Mark 3:13-19

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... famous James, the son of ebedee, brother of John, who was one of the “Inner circle” of Jesus’ closest friends: Peter, James, and John. Thus he was “James, the less important.” Actually, he is the one apostle about whom we know the least. That is sort of fitting, isn’t it? He was the man whom history passed by. That is intriguing, but it makes it rather difficult to construct a sermon about him. The “inner three”—Peter James and John—we know a lot about. The “other James,” the “more ...

105. Jesus Came Preaching

Mark 1:14-15

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... his attention that the man’s name was “Simon the Leper.” To which the preacher replied, “I don’t see the need to throw away a good sermon just because of a difference in pronunciation!” Without intelligent guidance, we can go off on all sorts of strange tangents. That is why Christianity is a communal faith. We need one another to correct each other’s heresies, if for no other reason! Sometimes when a layperson tells a preacher after church, “I don’t agree with what you said this morning ...

106. Afraid of Sanity

Mark 5:1-20

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... often am. There is the person of high ethical and moral standards I want to be in my best moments, and then there is the other sort of person I all too often am in the routines of business life. I think we can all understand the person who said: “Each of us ... no thanks. I’d much rather you leave things as they are.” But this is not a hypothetical situation, is it? It is precisely the sort of situation we find ourselves in, in today’s world. We live in a world where some of us are going to have to learn ...

107. Not the Seasons for Figs

Mark 11:12-19

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the fellow who once said, “I’ve cut it off three times, and it’s still too short!” My point here is that this story in Mark 11, at first glance, seems to fit into the category of these ridiculous apocryphal stories which have Jesus doing all sorts of things which most of us find incredible, and which the early Church rejected as unfit for the New Testament. Why, then, did Mark include one such story in His, the first Gospel to have been written down? What shall we do with it, anyway? II. YOU’D ...

108. Holy Thursday

Mark 14:12-26

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... of truth to them. So with the four Gospels. They are not infallible, but they are reliable. So the early Church kept the Four Gospels, knowing full well that they did not agree in every detail, and they left it to those of us who came later to sort out the details. Thus the dating of the Last Supper is a problem for scholars. Was it a Passover meal, or was it not? Here I am indebted to a theory put forth by Dr. James Fleming, former director of the Jerusalem Center for Biblical Studies. He notes several ...

109. The Dark Didn't Catch Me!

John 6:25-59

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... clutter away and love me and serve me all your life as a minister?" Sitting in my seat I panicked. I wasn't ready for that sort of commitment! "Lord," I answered him, "I'll tell you why not. Because I am young and there's a lot I want to do. There' ... business last year netted hundreds of thousands in profits." "Last year we gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars," I said. "Just what sort of business are you in?" he finally inquired. "I am a full time minister of Almighty God and the Gospel of his Son, ...

110. Death Leads to Life

Isaiah 52:13--53:12

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... situations that she probably never fully understood. Yet, she was willing to endure the pain and walk the road with Jesus. We too must walk the Via Dolorosa and be willing to be the Suffering Servant who lays down his life for others. Life throws all sorts of possibilities, people, events, circumstances, joys, and sorrows our way. Like all of us, the trees on the mountaintop had plans for their future; they, again like all of us, at the outset, were unwilling to allow their hopes to proceed in any way other ...

111. The Indwelling Christ And Holy Communion

Luke 24:13-35

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... two months. To show you the kind of fellow he is, shortly after we began to correspond with each other, I sent him a copy of my book, Dancing at My Funeral, because that’s very autobiographical and I thought that would enable him to know who I am and sort of get him on board with me. On the back of that book is a picture of our family, Jeri and Kim and Kerry and Kevin. By return mail, Brother Simon wrote, “Kim, Kerry, and Kevin are the best arguments I know against abortion and birth control.” He said ...

112. A Healing Presence

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... master of every situation, he immediately surprised everybody by looking at the paralytic and saying, my sons your sins are forgiven you. Now that’s not what the fellows wanted to hear. Their friend couldn’t walk. They had brought him there for healing, not for any sort of religious lesson. Not to have his sins absolved. But there was a lot more going on there. Who can possibly forgive sins but God, was the murmur that began to arise in the crowd, and Jesus knew that it would, because the crowd did not ...

113. The House Of Our Dreams

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... parents running into old Simeon at the temple where they had gone to offer two turtle doves in thanks for their new baby, then going back home to Nazareth. Let's face it, Nazareth wasn't much of a place to go back to -- a dusty, out of the way sort of place. "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?", one of the disciples later asked when he first heard about Jesus. "The heavenly hosts are gone. Their songs filling the air are heard no more (do I hear someone say beneath his breath, you can't really get an ...

114. I Am Christ's

2 Corinthians 5:17

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... kind and human. He tries to be humble. People in Springfield say, "He's even beginning to walk like Abraham Lincoln." Isn't that the way it should be with Christians? "As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him." There are all sorts of legends and fairy tales about people who pretended to be someone they really weren't -- but one day they actually became that person they pretended to be. And there's truth in that. Someone may say that it's hypocrisy -- pretending to be someone you ...

115. Courage Me!

Ephesians 6:10-20

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... 2, had just finished the final exams of his last year of dentistry, died in the middle of the night with no record of illness. Tell me Satan did not try to get through to Missy, his fiancée, tempting her to curse God. The "evil day" comes in all sorts of ways and many succumb to the tempter. We have seen it happen with national religious leaders. Nothing makes Satan happier than the fall of one of God's well-known public witnesses. So life is a warfare, and we better stay aware of it. Evil forces do seek ...

116. Who Are Christians?

James 5:13-20

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... the love we thought was for forever. When, as a parent, our teenage children are trying their wings. When a spouse has died. When our job has folded and our bank account is dwindling. When someone has spoken a harsh word that wounded our hearts. There are all sorts of occasions when it's so comforting to have someone's hand to hold. The church ought to be that kind of place -- where people hold the hands of people in need. And more...where people who care reach out in love and concern to persons outside the ...

117. The Wholeness Question: Do You Want To Be Made Well?

John 5:1-15

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... from sin, there is power to heal us, to free us from the chains that bind us, to set us free. Any staff person of this church can witness to the number of people they see almost daily -- a continual stream of men and women who are bound by all sorts of chains. We try to witness to these people that none of them, no matter what their situation, none of them is beyond the reach of Jesus' healing concern, and His power to make them whole. It's to these people, to those who have been "flattened out" that Jesus ...

118. If I Have Not Love

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... first sermon – people were doing what they normally do, graciously waiting in line to speak to the preacher. I saw a woman sort of hanging back. I guess that she wanted a bit more time than the usual greeting – and I gave it to her. ... it will. It is because I have cut the nerve…” She nods and is silent. But the young man smiled. “I like it,” he says. “It is sort of cute, like you.” All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in such an encounter. Unmindful ...

119. On the Road Again

Luke 24:13-35

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... go away; retelling the story to one another to ease the pain and share the heaviness. We know where Emmaus is don’t we? We have been there in one way or another at sometime in our live. Emmaus is whatever we do, or wherever we go to salvage and sort out our feelings, to summon the desire and courage and desire to keep going on, to try and forget. Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to reclaim our sanity when our world goes to pieces; when our ideals and dreams are violated and distorted. I’ve ...

120. Let Not Thy Will Roar, When Thy Power Can But Whisper

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... what she says. You look on the scene and see her there in that overstuffed sofa surrounded by large fish bowls filled with all sorts of swimming creatures. She said, “Well, that is the way it happens, Sylvia. I kissed this frog, he turned into a prince, we got married ... had not had time to prepare – and nothing frightens me more than to think I have to preach when I haven’t prepared. All sorts of bizarre things like had happened in the past but I finally got through all of that and I was about to go on ...

121. Staying Alive All Your Ministry Life: Will You Finish Well?

Exodus 32:1-33:6

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... about the monk who was to be her oblate director –that is, the one who guided her studies of the rule (a period that was supposed to last a year but rambled on for nearly three). She spoke with appreciation for this spiritual guide who waited patiently for her to sort out her muddle. Finally she said to him, “I can’t imagine why God would want me, of all people, as an offering. But if God is foolish enough to take me as I am, I guess I had better do it.” The monk smiled broadly and said, “You’re ...

122. Facing Fears, Kingdom Style

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... Said the sparrow to the robin, Well, think that it must be That they have no heavenly Father Such as cares for you and me."9 All this counsel about birds and flowers is built on a fundamental biblical conviction, and that is while critters of all sorts are our companions, and while the plants are another kingdom, that human beings have unique dignity and value above anything else God made. Jesus assumed a Yes answer to the question, Are you not of more value than they? So in the choice between a person and ...

123. How Does It Work?

1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Sermon

James L. Killen

... who really is there. It can also work itself out in our daily interactions with life. Once we have learned from the Bible what sorts of things God does, we can watch to see when any such things are happening in our lives. When we see those things being ... been adopted as children of God. Once we know that God loves us, we can experience God's love coming through to us in all sorts of real-life experiences, from the love that is shared in our families to the gift of a new sunrise. And knowing that we are loved ...

124. Life, Death, and Judgment

Romans 14:1-12

Sermon

Jeff Wedge

... confronted the judgment of a God who was angry at the way the people had failed to do what they were called to do. While many people understand only this much about that famous sermon, and hold it up as an example of the worst sort of preaching meant to terrify those who hear what is said, the sermon itself is actually quite pastoral. Once Edwards established the implications of the human behavior of his followers, and the rather gruesome rewards this behavior had earned at the coming judgment before God ...

125. Bragging Rights

Philippians 3:4b-14

Sermon

Jeff Wedge

... and fuzzy, cute and cuddly. Rather, there is talk about sharing the suffering of Jesus, the rejection by family and friends, the poverty, the arrest, beating, trial, and finally, ultimately, his crucifixion and his death. This is not the sort of thing people brag about. This is the sort of thing people hide and try desperately to ignore. This is like the woman who wanted to be admitted to an upper-crust organization that required a genealogical search and a clean family tree for at least four generations ...

Showing results