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 1276 to 1300 of 4968 results

1276. Dusted

Mark 6:7-13, Matthew 10:1-42, Luke 9:1-9, Luke 10:1-24

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... God’s kingdom come. Jesus was clear. The apostles were clear. Paul was clear. You enter God’s kingdom by “The Way,” the way of Jesus. For Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the Life. But not just any life. Resurrection Life. Eternal Life. That’s the message the disciples were sent out into the world to give –Jesus has come. He is alive. Repent! The messiah and savior is here. He is the one to make a way through every waywardness to God’s way of the kingdom. Trust in him. Have faith in him. Your life ...

1277. Jacob's Sheep

Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... just following some rules, but it is living in a different way, in a different kind of community, in which love and harmony reigns. As Paul said, “Love one another. In this, people will know you are Christians.” Just as Jesus had said to His disciples, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” The secret to being the kind of church that makes a Black Swan or Jacob’s Sheep kind of impact in the world is for the church to “Feel different, Look different, Do different” --BE different than everyone ...

1278. And a Child Will Lead Them

Exodus 2:1-10, Matthew 18:1-9, Matthew 18:10-14

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... pedigree or our experience, but only with the openness and revealedness of our hearts. And for those whose hearts are pure and faith-filled as a child’s, they will receive the ultimate protection of God. Jesus threatens that if one would hurt a child or a disciple of any age with that kind of childlike faith, he or she should be drowned in water with a millstone wrapped around his or her neck! Now that’s a theology of children! Our children save us. Anyone who is a grandparent knows that’s true. What ...

1279. How Did That Hole Get There?

Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

... easier to spend a lifetime attending various Bible studies and going to church conferences, etc. than it is to get out into the real world and apply what you have learned in all those studies. Jesus didn’t give those who followed him that option. They were disciples only as long as he was with them in the flesh. He was leaving them. It was time for them to “man up” and become apostles, taking what he had taught them to the world outside. True, this was a “prep” session, one final reminder about ...

1280. The Scariest Job Interview

Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

... Holy Spirit to give you the power to follow through.” Last week, we talked about how Jesus’ final command to us gave our lives purpose. His final command to us was to love one another as he has loved us. By this, all people will know that we are his disciples, if we love one another. That is our life’s purpose. In our Bible passage today, Jesus gives us a plan. His plan for our lives is that we will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea and in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Now before ...

1281. The Wind Came

Acts 2:1-13

Sermon

King Duncan

... this is still Christ’s body. This is still his beloved bride. Pentecost is the church’s birthday. What a day of celebration it should be! Now there are some things about that first Pentecost that we need to see. In the first place, we notice that the disciples were all together in one place. The old joke asks, what car is mentioned in the Bible? The answer is, of course, a Honda. The King James Version of this verse reads like this: “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one ...

1282. Breath of God · COVID-19 and the Resurrection

John 20:10-18, John 20:1-9

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... So it didn't come all at once. That's where we find ourselves. Wary. Uncertain. Do I go out wrapped in garments or do I take the grave clothes off? Do I risk my presence among the people again? I can tell you that when Mary and the disciples realized what had happened; that Life had been restored, that God's promise had been fulfilled, that resurrection was here, they found the courage to open the doors and walk out into the light. And yet, life had changed. Never again would Jesus walk the earth as He did ...

1283. Apostles of Hope

John 20:19-23, John 20:24-31

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... salvation.” (1 Peter 1) We may not see God around us. We may not see the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side the way Thomas needed to see. We may not hear Jesus’ voice in real time. We may not see Him face to face in the way His disciples did when he walked this earth so long ago. But that doesn’t mean His power isn’t there. Like our invisible viral foe, Jesus’ power is there. Jesus appears to us in our locked homes and in our distress in the most astonishing, loving, healing, creative ways we can ...

1284. The Kiss of Life

John 20:19-23

Sermon

R. Kevin Mohr

... received. That “kiss” meant a new beginning, a new creation was breathed by God into existence, and that breath has been passed on down to us here today in this place. The power of this ultimate kiss of life is the power of forgiveness: after he breathed on his disciples in the upper room, Jesus said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. — John 20:22b-23 The gift of God’s Spirit to God’s people is ...

1285. Building a Winning Team

Matthew 16:13-20

Sermon

King Duncan

... build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. We like to think of Pentecost, the day that the Holy Spirit fell upon a group of Jesus’ followers and gave them the power to do ministry in Jesus’ name as the birthday of the Christian church. But the first ...

1286. Jesus’ Recipe for a Kingdom Style Feast

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... planted into a field. That small seed will someday become the largest tree, fit to hold, feed, and nest every kind of bird within its branches. The seed is the resonant Word of Jesus, the new understanding of the Kingdom of God. The field is the world. The disciple’s job? To “plant” this new teaching within people’s ears and hearts. What kind of seed will do the trick? The kind that resonates, that will grow and expand their vision. The lesson? A little can be a lot. The size of the effort does not ...

1287. Wash All of Me

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Sermon

Timothy W. Ayers

... be disobedient to Jesus’ wishes. Peter understood that point quickly and said Jesus could wash all of him. It was his statement that he was giving his all to Jesus. In Christ’s response there is a key to what has already transpired in the lives of the disciples. They were already clean - except for one. That would be Judas. Jesus said, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” He knew who was going to betray ...

1288. The Catch

Mark 1:14-20

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... hearts, he needs to address entire regions, vast areas mixed with both foreigners and those with Jewish heritage.Among the masses, he can find those who respond to him, those whose hearts remember who they are when he heals and tests them.When Jesus teaches his disciples how to “fish for people,” he is teaching them the art of the catch, the art of discernment, and the art of healing broken people. The Kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When ...

1289. Wrong by Association, Right by Jesus

Mark 8:31-38

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... our hearts of sin. He troubles our minds in doubt. He troubles the waters of contention. He troubles the weeds of hypocrisy. He troubles our sentence of death. He troubles everything we have been taught to believe in and challenges us to see it new. Being a disciple of Jesus requires us to put aside everything society expects from us, that our families may know about us, that our mind may challenge about what we know as real and true and asks us to follow our hearts. For when Jesus is Lord of your heart ...

1290. Not Gullible; But Skeptical

John 20:19-31

Sermon

King Duncan

... more clearly? And why didn’t He give us a guidebook that is not open to as many diverse interpretations as the Bible? Why doesn’t He just speak to us in a clear voice at the close of the service and reveal Himself so that, like those early disciples, we can leave here and tell our friends, “I have seen the Lord.” It seems clear to me that God intends for us to struggle with the great questions of life. It may be that such a struggle is essential to a strong, mature faith. Never to have doubted ...

1291. Bringing Life to a Party

Luke 24:36b-48

Sermon

King Duncan

... by his childhood beatings and his drug use and rough living. Since he found Jesus, José was no longer ashamed of his scars. As he said, “How could I help other wounded people if I did not make friends of my wounds?” (2) The risen Jesus showed the disciples his scars because he was going to send them out to do the work the Father had sent him to do—to save wounded people. And they couldn’t save wounded people unless they could see and touch and make friends with Jesus’ wounds. Only then could they ...

1292. Our Need and God's Provision

John 6:1-21

Sermon

King Duncan

... . As a loving Father, God awaits the opportunity to meet our needs, but we are not accustomed to receiving from His loving hand. Nor does it occur to us to pray. So we wander blindly from problem to problem. “Make the people sit down,” Jesus commanded his disciples. Then he took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed these loaves and these fish to all who were seated, as much as they wanted. So, also, do we receive God’s blessings when we sit and wait and when we receive what He has ...

1293. More Than Enough

John 6:1-21

Sermon

Dean Feldmeyer

... gospel writers. I mean, he must have had a purpose for changing the story from how it originally came to him in Mark’s gospel, so, as we go, let’s explore what that purpose might be. As in all of the gospel accounts, in John’s gospel the disciples and Jesus were overwhelmed by the crowds of people who were coming to them, mostly because they had seen or heard of sick people being healed and they either had friends and relatives who they wanted Jesus to heal, or they just wanted to see the show. And ...

1294. The Secret Man

Mark 8:27-38

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

... , for as it says in Mark 8:26, “Then he sent him away to his home, saying, ‘Do not even go into the village.’” Then we get to what matters, when The Secret Man was finally ready to let the cat out of the bag. Jesus asked the disciples what people were saying about him. How were they identifying him? At first they hemmed and hawed, perhaps worried that they would get the wrong answer — Jesus was John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the prophets come back from the dead. But Peter gave the correct ...

1295. God Think

Mark 8:27-38

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... loyal to the bone. Jesus knows this. That’s why he picked him. Peter is the one who step out front to defend the disciples on the Sea of Galilee when they think they see a ghost coming toward them on the water. Peter is the one who leaps ... know that you too are a follower and can only lead others well to the extent that Jesus is leading you. Being a follower or disciple of Jesus is not about “getting it all right.” It’s not about never having faults or avoiding mistakes. Peter makes them all the time ...

1296. Winner And Still Champion

Mark 9:30-37

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

... trying to behave and stay out of the way of the important grownups. Suddenly he found himself at the center of attention. This child, at the bottom of the food chain, was raised to the status of the Son of Man, who sits in glory on a cloud. The disciples were worried about their place in the kingdom and they were asking the wrong question. In order to stand with the Son of Man, the suffering servant who would bear the sins of all for the glory of God’s kingdom, it was necessary to lose status, not gain ...

1297. Public Sex

Mark 10:2-16

Sermon

Will Willimon

... and our outdated attitude about sex has a great deal to do with it." I love the young adult who stood up at the Presbyterian General Assembly and pled with her church to give her the means to resist what the world was doing to both sex and to disciples. She knew. Rather than affirming her, her church was pulling the rug out from under her in her struggle to be faithful. A few years ago I talked with a Duke student (a Presbyterian!) who had given a semester to go work with Habitat for Humanity in Americus ...

1298. Divine Divestment

Mark 10:17-27

Sermon

Will Willimon

... to look after them. After all, both the very young and the very old make no contribution to society; they are unproductive, dependent, small. The curious thing is that Jesus took those whom we put at the fringe of society and put them right in the middle of the disciples. Those whom we regard as distraction from the really important things, Jesus put in the middle of us in a last ditch effort to help us pay attention. It is as if Jesus wanted to say, ''You want to get into my Kingdom? The only way to get ...

1299. The Journey

Mark 8:27-36

Sermon

Will Willimon

... . Discipleship is following Jesus without exactly knowing who he is or precisely where he is going. I love another episode in Mark, when the disciples are not mending their nets but are in a boat on the sea. A storm blows in, the sea gets ugly, and it appears ... , who should they see out on the sea at that point but Jesus. There is Jesus, Mark says that Jesus was out walking past the disciples! He isn't coming out there to pull them out of the boat, he's just out for a stroll! Walking past them! Jesus is ...

1300. When the Way Means Staying Home

John 11:1-45

Sermon

April Yamasaki

... tried to get away for some much needed solitude after the death of John the Baptist. But not everyone who followed Jesus left their homes to follow him around the countryside. In fact, one man who had been healed by Jesus wanted to go with him as a disciple, but Jesus refused. Instead, Jesus told him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you” (Mark 5:19). Others too who had been healed by Jesus returned to their homes: the woman healed ...

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