Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 1251 to 1275 of 1967 results

1251. How To Be Truly Wealthy

1 Timothy 6:3-10

Sermon

King Duncan

A young man asked an old rich man how he made his money. The old guy fingered his worsted wool vest and said, “Well, son, it was 1932. The depth of the Great Depression. I was down to my last nickel. I invested that nickel in an apple. I spent the entire day polishing the apple and, at the end of the day, I sold the apple for ten cents. “The next morning, I invested those ten cents in two apples. I spent the entire day polishing them and sold them at 5:00 p.m. for 20 cents. I continued this system for a ...

1252. An Unforgettable Day

Luke 2:41-52

Sermon

King Duncan

The September 2002 issue of More magazine carried an article titled, "The Day I'll Never Forget." It was an interview with prominent people about where they were and what they remember from the most momentous events in American history. Janice Aldrin recalled the giant, rocket-shaped cake her family and friends ate to celebrate the day when her dad, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, first set foot on the moon. Former Olympic track star Madeline Manning Mims remembered the terror she and her teammates felt at the 1972 ...

1253. That Believing Ye Might Have Life

John 20:24-31

Sermon

King Duncan

A young scientist named Stephen Hawking made a dramatic presentation to a group of elite physicists at Oxford University in England in 1974. When he finished, the session moderator blurted out, "Oh, this is rubbish." Physicists attempt to prove the size, shape, and workings of the universe with mathematics. Everyone has heard of Einstein's theory of relativity, which attempts to prove that light traveling through a field of gravitation is slightly distorted. Einstein knew that there was another force ...

1254. Saintly Citizenship - Earthly Responsibilities

Philippians 3:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

I have shared with some of you in this congregation and some of my closest friends in the ministry that the writings of Dr. R. Maurice Boyd and C. S. Lewis have been a tremendous source of insight and inspiration for me these past years in my spiritual journey. Those insights are especially helpful in reaching an understanding of what Paul was sharing in this passage of scripture we are looking at today from the Philippian Letter. Dr. Boyd writes in a printed sermon, "Permit Me Voyage:" "Walking through ...

1255. The Powerful Fragrance of Sharing and Caring

Philippians 4:10-20

Sermon

Eric Ritz

Baseball legend George Herman "Babe" Ruth was playing one of his last full major league games. The Boston Braves were playing the Reds in Cincinnati. The old veteran wasn't the player he once had been. The ball looked awkward in his aging hands. He wasn't throwing well. In one inning, his misplays made most of the runs scored by Cincinnati possible. As Babe Ruth walked off the field after making a third out, head bent in embarrassment, a crescendo of "boos" followed him to the dugout. A little boy in the ...

1256. Thanksgiving - The Biblical Version

1 Chronicles 16:7-43

Sermon

Eric Ritz

For most of us, Thanksgiving Day will be a short-lived experience. It will almost be an interruption in the fast paced preparation being made for the Great Christmas Rush of 1992. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the busiest travel day for trains, planes, and our nation''s roadways. Housewives will be busy preparing for a great feast. Football games will fill the airwaves and generate much excitement in local communities such as ours. In the midst of this busyness, preparation, travel, action, will ...

1257. The Dangers of Being Religious

Mark 7:1-23

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

Jeff Foxworthy has made a career of telling "redneck" jokes. For instance, "You might be a redneck if someone asks you for some identification and you show them your belt buckle." The South doesn't have a lock on rednecks. The North has them also. For instance, "You might be a northern redneck if you've ever burned a tire on the hood of your car in winter to help get it started." Here in the church I'd like to poke fun at some of the straight-laced, self-righteousness that passes for Christianity. So, ...

1258. Miracles In Contrast

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

A Burden and An Ache is the title of a beautiful, heart-stirring book written by Clarence McConkey. It’s a series of word portraits of persons in the inner city, living around the church McConkey served as pastor, persons whose lives are down-beaten and ravaged even as the buildings around them. People who are as torn apart as the shattered economic and social structures that have sustained them. One of those persons is Ruby. Let me introduce you to her in the first person as McConkey did: “Ruby is a child ...

1259. Speak And It Will Be

Luke 7:1-10

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Somewhere along the way I saw a cartoon which showed a man kneeling beside his bed saying his prayers. "God," he says, "is there any way you can help me and make it look like I did it myself?" We chuckle at that. Maybe the reason we don't laugh out loud is that it strikes close home. We are always playing tug of war with ourselves, our identity and worthiness. Assessing who we are and what is important to us is an operational need of all of us. Our scripture lesson tells the story of how people understand ...

1260. I've Been To The Mountain

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

When I first came to Memphis, I visited downtown -- Mid-America Mall. I wanted to see the sculpture commemorating Martin Luther King -- the sculpture entitled "I've been to the Mountain." I must confess that I've never felt too good about that piece of art. It doesn't excite me. Maybe that's my dullness. Maybe my imaginative and visual senses are not cultivated enough. But Martin Luther King's speech is unforgettable. As was the rule for King, he took images from Scripture. "I've been to the Mountain", he ...

1261. Watering The Garden Of Our Life (communion Meditation)

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Across Northern Africa stretches the largest desert in the world, the Sahara, almost as large as the United States. From east to west, it measures thirty two hundred miles, farther than the distance from New York to San Francisco. Mile after mile of scorching, shifting, sand dunes make up the Sahara, where temperatures reach 130 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer -- so hot that breathing is nearly impossible. Yet at the eastern edge of this mammoth oven lies one of the richest, most fertile valleys know ...

1262. Get Rid of the Junk

Jeremiah 16:1--17:18

Sermon

King Duncan

Nome, Alaska, on the edge of the Bering Sea, is like many villages of the Arctic. The ground on which the community sits is frozen tundra. Burying the dead is a real challenge. Sanitation landfills are unheard of. Garbage trucks do not haul off the kind of refuse we leave curbside in the “lower 48.” Instead, a typical front yard displays broken washing machines, junked cars, old toilets, scrap wood, and piles of non-degradable refuse. Tourists who visit Nome in the summer are amazed at the debris and shake ...

1263. Claim the Promise

John 14:5-14

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

The pages of the Old and the New Testament are punctuated with promises – all sorts of promises: God’s offer of life and meaning to us. The New Testament is especially packed with promises – many of those promises from Jesus Himself. Listen to Him: “Because I live you will live also. I will never leave you nor forsake you. I am come that…. Come unto me all of you that labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest…You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you.” One of the most fantastic ...

1264. Always?

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Sermon

Rick Brand

Now there is a greeting that will knock you back a moment. "We always give thanks to God for all of you." Other translations put it: "We give thanks to God always for all of you." And maybe Paul was pouring it on a little thick, but it is a greeting that will put one on the defensive, because if we are honest, we cannot reply that we have always been praying for Paul. If we are honest, we cannot say that we are always faithful in our prayers at all. Paul tells the church at Thessalonica that he is always ...

1265. Say What?

1 John 3:5-6

Sermon

Rick Brand

Say what? Saint Paul never thought he got to the place where the power of sin was completely gone in his life. Saint Augustine never preached that once you received the power of Christ into your life all sin was gone. Martin Luther, from whom we get all these Reformation slogans, preached "always sinner; always justified." So what does this mean? "Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who ...

1266. The Light of the World

John 20:1-18

Sermon

Mark Trotter

In the 19th century, when it was established that life had begun in the oceans, some scientists reasoned that the earliest forms of life might still be there, hidden in the deep, dark recesses of the open sea, where human beings cannot descend. They were certain that in that world of darkness lay the first forms of life. They even had a name for that oceanic nursery. They called it the "Urschleim." They chose a German name to give it scientific respectability. In 1872, Sir Charles Thomson left England ...

1267. A Guide to Christmas

Matthew 21:23-32

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

If you talk about the blind and guides you are talking about seeing-eye dogs. If you discuss Alpine mountains and climbing, you must think of a Swiss guide. If you are ignorant and in college, your guide is a professor. So it is with foreign lands and tour guides, taxes and tax consultants. But what of Christmas? I think many of us feel that Christmas is so easy to find that we don't need a guide. Yet, let me remind you that there were few that found their way to the first nativity. In fact, most missed it ...

1268. Poison Control

Romans 7:7-25

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

It's every parent's nightmare. You walk into the room only to see your toddler happily playing with open bottles of pills. The contents of several bottles spilled across the floor. This was the sight we took in one suspiciously quiet morning when our daughter was about eighteen months old. Somehow she had created a climbing wall for herself that had enabled her to reach a high-shelf basket containing a cornucopia of "cure-it-yourself" vitamin pills. Also nestled somewhere in the bottom of the basket was ...

1269. The Wussification of the Church

John 9:1-12

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

This is one of my favorite gospel stories. It tells of Jesus' power – power to bring light to blind eyes and empty lives. Too much of Christ's church has become a wuss. Like those of us who live in states where a normal winter is constant snow showers, for the past few winters we've been spoiled by warm weather and snowless skies. Now when a rare snowstorm does appear, look at how we handle the challenge. We're no different from those living in the Sunbelt – we huddle in our homes because of below-zero ...

1270. Palm/Passion Sunday

Mt 26:14-27:66 · Php 2:5-11 · Isa 50:4-9a · Ps 31

Sermon Aid

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

OLD TESTAMENT TEXTS The Old Testament texts are very appropriate for Passion Sunday. Isaiah 50:4-9a explores the call of the suffering servant, while Psalm 31:9-16 is a lament from the perspective of one who is suffering. As we will see, both of these texts share a similar three-part structure and probe the meaning of suffering from different perspectives. Isaiah 50:4-9a: "A Call to Discipleship" Setting. Isaiah 50:4-9a is the third of the suffering servant songs Isaiah 42:1-4[5-9]; 49:1-6; 50:4-9a; 52:13- ...

1271. The Marks Of A Spiritual Counterfeit

Jude 1:12-13

Sermon

James Merritt

Few people know that the Secret Service has not only far more to do than to protect the President. That is not even their primary job. Working under the Treasury Department, one of their major jobs is to try to catch counterfeiters. Therefore they have to learn how to recognize counterfeit money. The surprising thing is, the way they are trained to do this is not by studying counterfeit money, but by studying real currency. The better they get to know the real thing, the easier it is to spot the phony. ...

1272. This Feels Like Where I Came In

Mark 13:1-8

Sermon

While waiting for a first appointment in the reception room of a new physician, I noticed the framed certificate which bore his full name. Convinced that I had heard it before, I racked my brain until I remembered that a tall, gawky kid with a similar-sounding name had been in my high school class, some 45 years ago. But upon being ushered into his office, I knew….just knew….I was wrong. I mean, this balding, graying man with the double chin and a face the quality of old shoe leather was far too old to ...

1273. A Defiant Response to a Dangerous Theology: Does God Desire to Wipe Us Out?

Gn 6:1-8. 9:6-17

Sermon

Illinois. Michigan. New York. Massachusetts. The rest of New England and the northeastern seaboard. Buffeted by snow. Buried in snow. Blitzed with a blizzard of snow. It is clear that God is venting his wrath and visiting his payback upon the blue states. If, at the last minute, the storm were to miraculously bypass Ohio, there are some of you….or a few of you….well, maybe two or three of you….who might actually believe that. And when the next storm misses us….by riding north of us or dipping south of us…. ...

1274. The Paradoxical Power of Weakness

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

There are people who speak to us more powerfully out of their weakness than out of their strength. Brian Piccolo was a powerful, professional football player who entertained thousands with his feats of muscular strength and stamina. But cancer attacked, and out of weakness he spoke more powerfully than before. Whenever they show the movie, Brian's Song, we think of him and his faith and courage. Paul experienced a similar fall from glory. He had seen powerful visions of God, had entered into the third ...

1275. John the Stall Cleaner

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

“Prep Time.” Do those two words have as much meaning to anyone here as two other new words to the English language: “Thanksgiving pants.” [Those are pants with elastic or expandable waists.] I won’t ask how many of you are still wearing those “Thanksgiving pants” to church this morning. Anyone who is trying to organize and host a get together during this busy holiday season knows that what takes the most time is “prep time.” Even Rachael Ray, who cheats by having all her veggies pre-washed, her chicken ...

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