Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 1301 to 1325 of 1679 results

1301. Something That Will Last Forever

Matthew 6:19-24

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

One day a father was leaving his house on the way to the shopping center. His three-year-old daughter said, "Daddy, bring me something." He asked, "Honey, what do you want?" She thought for a moment and then said, "Bring me something that will last forever." Even at the tender age of three, she knew that many things are nice for a little while, but their appeal doesn't last. She wanted something with staying power. Don't we all? Jesus' words in our scripture for today are about investments, good ones and ...

1302. Getting Under Your Neighbor's Skin

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

I have a friend who used to be a city judge. One day he said to me, "I want you to come to my courtroom and watch our next dog case." "What in the world is a dog case?" I asked. He smiled and replied, "Periodically a person is charged with having a dog which because of its incessant barking is a public nuisance." "But what," I asked, "could be interesting about that kind of case?" "It's more than interesting," he said. "It's fascinating. I will have five or six neighbors present sworn testimony that the ...

1303. Needed: Fidelity Insurance

Ephesians 5:22-33

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

An office telephone rang one day and a receptionist answered. On the other end of the line a female voice asked, "Is this the Fidelity Insurance company?" "Yes it is," the receptionist replied. "May I help you?" The caller said, "I hope so. I want to talk with someone about having my husband's fidelity insured." The surprised receptionist tried to explain that this was not the kind of insurance that Fidelity handled. Not even Lloyds of London offers that kind of policy. But wouldn't it be wonderful if ...

1304. The Bite of The Lying Tongue

Exodus 20:1-21, James 3:1-12

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

George Washington, father of our country, is honored as an example of honesty, dating back to his boyhood when he cut down that cherry tree and did not deny it. A recent theory has been circulated that George may have been born in Texas rather than Virginia; that his father gave him a bowie knife instead of a hatchet; and that little George cut down a mesquite tree rather than a cherry tree. When his father asked him about it, George said, "Papa, I cannot tell a lie. I cut it down with my bowie knife." His ...

1305. The Master at Prayer

Luke 22:39-46

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

Recently I dropped by one of my favorite restaurants for breakfast. I noticed that my customary waitress was not her usual bubbly self. I asked if everything was okay. She said, "No," and then proceeded to tell me about her family and financial problems. I asked if it would be okay to offer a prayer. She agreed, so I did as she stood there beside me holding a coffee pot. About a month later I was back in the restaurant. She looked absolutely overjoyed. Before I could ask why, she said to me, "Hey, your ...

1306. MR. CAIN

Drama

Jerome W. Nilssen

CAIN and his wife, JAREL, in their early forties, have just returned from a gala banquet in CAIN’S honor; now they are preparing for bed. CAIN undresses slowly, still savoring his delight in being named "Rotarian of the Year." JAREL wears a sheer and obviously expensive negligee, but she hasn’t yet removed her jewelry. She is doing this now and she has quite a bit to remove, perhaps a bit too much. CAIN (Singing, off-key) "Happy days are here again, No more skies of gray again, Happy days are here again." ...

1307. Molehills and Mountains

Matthew 6:25-34, Mark 8:31--9:1

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

The story is told of George Bernard Shaw that he was once seated beside a Duchess at a dinner party. In the course of their conversation, he asked: "Tell me, Duchess, would you live with a man for a million pounds?" "Well," replied the Duchess, "I suppose I would" Then Shaw asked her: "Would you live with a man for five pounds?" The Duchess was insuited: "What do you think I am?" "We’ve already established that," said Shaw, "now we are just determining the price." Long before the coming of Christ, the ...

1308. Chapter II

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Frank H. Seilhamer

"I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; You will have no other gods before me. You will not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you will not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but ...

1309. Free to Be

Acts 4:23-31

Sermon

Michael J. Anton

INDEPENDENCE DAY For 197 years this country called America has attempted to provide the soil and the climate in which freedom and independence can grow. For almost two centuries the U. S. of A. has become a haven of refuge for immigrants seeking an escape from repression. Our country has been a mecca for persons interested in breathing the fresh air of freedom. This experiment in democracy, of course, has not yet completely succeeded. We still have the weeds of injustice. Repression and discrimination are ...

1310. The Land of Beginning Again

John 8:1-11

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

Have you ever had the experiencing of making a mess out of something, and longing for a chance to start over with a clean slate? Most of us have. Most of us yearn for the kind of place described by Louise Fletcher Tarkington: "I wish that there were some wonderful place In the Land of Beginning Again; Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door And never put on again." There is such a place. You are in it. The Church, especially when it celebrates Holy ...

1311. Victory

John 19:28-37

Sermon

Burton F. Blair

A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, "It is finished." John 19:29-30 By the third hour of the afternoon, Golgotha’s hill had become an eerie place. A thick darkness had fallen over the Hill of the Skull. The darkness had gathered over the hill around noon, but now, it was a little after three o’clock and the darkness was giving way to the returning of daylight. By now, it ...

1312. Rules For Living

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Robert Allen

A couple of years ago, I was asked to serve on a panel to discuss the problems facing teenagers in our society. The panel included a school counselor, a Juvenile Judge, a drug counselor, a couple of other experts on teenage problems, and, I guess, I was the representative of the religious community. There were a variety of people in the audience, including the parents of several teenagers. During the question and answer period, there was one woman who acknowledged that she was at the symposium because her ...

1313. We Know Jonah

Jonah 3:1-10

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

In the spring and summer of 1992, the world was shocked by reports of atrocities and pictures of concentration camps populated by emaciated captives in the strife-torn lands that had been Yugoslavia. No longer held together by a totalitarian regime, ancient feuds and animosities flared into violence and then full-scale war. Heinous acts were committed by Serbian government forces against people of other ethnic and religious groups, under the euphemistic term, ethnic cleansing. People were uprooted from ...

1314. God of the Weekday

John 4:1-26

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

You say that we are a sophisticated, civilized, and intellectually mature people, that certainly in the climb of human progress, we have risen above such primitive things as, for instance, superstition? Well, let us think again, dear friends. Whether we like it or not, the old superstitions persist, the old fetishes still cling to us, the old fantasies still control us. A case in point: I remember a public hearing on open housing in our city, and I was discussing the matter with the owner of large real ...

1315. Everyone Has a Somebody

John 15:1-17

Sermon

Charles L. Koester

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." How many times have we heard in our lifetime our Lord’s Eleventh Commandment repeated? How many sermons have I preached on love, and have you heard? Yet, in spite of words and commandment, everyone has a somebody whom they cannot love. Somebody is not always the same person, at the same time, in the same place. True as well for the comedian who jested, "There are people in this world who do not love one another, and I hate people like ...

1316. Commanded By Example

John 13:31-38

Sermon

O. Garfield Beckstrand, II

In a book titled, Life Looks Up, Charles Templeton said the history of this world has been changed by events which took place in two small upper rooms. These rooms are separated not only by thousands of miles, but by nearly thousands of years. Yet the events which took place within those walls have changed the course of human history more than any other events mankind has ever known. The first "upper room" is a drab flat over a dingy laundry in a poor district in London. Through the dirty, curtainless ...

1317. Confrontation in the Temple

John 2:12-25

Sermon

George Bass

Jesus laid claim to a special relationship with God the Father. He demonstrated an all-consuming love for the Temple (where formal business with God was done in worship and study) when, according to Saint Luke, he was twelve years old. Neither Matthew, Mark, nor John includes that account in their gospels. But Luke evidently considered the incident to be a true story that was important enough to be included in the gospel that bears his name; he was interested, as his Acts of the Apostles affirms, in ...

1318. What Would We Do Without Friends?

Mark 2:1-12

Sermon

Brett Blair

After Jesus had completed his tour of the synagogues he returned to Capernaum to rest for a few days. The news got out quickly that he had arrived and soon the house was filled to overflowing with people and people even spilled out into the streets. Into this crowd came four men carrying on a stretcher a friend of theirs who was paralyzed. So jammed was the narrow street that they could not get through. But they were as resourceful as they were determined. Thus, we read, that they climbed on top of the ...

1319. Job - A Probe Into the Shadow World of Despair

Job 6:1-7:21

Sermon

In Robert Frost’s The Masque of Reason God tells the "Easy Answers Committee" that it is mistaken. This sermon does the same. Its probing, illuminating force conforms to the terrain of human experience. It conforms to the terrain of God’s experience in Emmanuel - God with us. Rich textual reference, literary allusions, carefully chosen language, experience common to all keep the listeners listening, the readers reading. An atheist is expected to ask the "Why?" of things. It’s part of the practicing atheist ...

1320. No Huggies

Mark 10:13-16

Sermon

This preacher recognizes how crucial are the beginning moments of a sermon. If listening does not happen at this moment of high anticipation, there will often be little opportunity for hoping that listeners will still be listening when the "goodies" are passed out. The preacher makes us look at the text beyond the first superficial reading. Scholarship does what it is supposed to do for preaching: illuminate. Humor is present. "Why should the snake have all the good lines?" someone quipped. The humor grows ...

1321. Service

Mark 10:35-45

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

"For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (v. 45) James and John came to Jesus asking for preferment! It is a situation as old as the institutional church. I know, for I am heart and soul in the institutional church; I love it. I believe in the church. I readily accept the statement, "The Church is of God, and will be preserved to the end of time ..." At the same time, I see - as do you - the imperfections in the church, and these imperfections ...

1322. Thomas

John 20:24-31

Sermon

Brett Blair

If I were to mention the names of certain disciples to you and ask you to write down the first word that comes into your mind, it is unlikely you would come up with the same words. If I were to mention the name of Judas many of you would write down the word betray but not all of you. If I were to mention Simon Peter, some of you would write down the word faith, but not all of you. If I were to mention the names of James and John, some of you would write down the phrase Sons of Thunder, but not all of you. ...

1323. The Fulfilled Promise

Acts 2:14-41

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

These words, spoken by the Apostle Peter on the first Christian Pentecost, reveal the lasting significance of the pivotal event which had just taken place, the coming of the Holy Spirit and the beginning of the world mission of the church. As Christians throughout the world unite to celebrate Pentecost, the birthday of the church, these simple words still carry a message of vital importance concerning the nature, the purpose, the outreach, and the impelling power of the community of the Spirit which came ...

1324. A Little Child Shall Lead Them

Isaiah 11:1-16

Sermon

Gregory J. Johanson

MORTON T. KELSEY is an Episcopalian priest, now a professor emeritus of the University of Notre Dame. He is nationally recognized and sought after as a theologian, psychologist, educator, priest, and man of prayer. The last designation in particular reflects the intense interest Kelsey has sparked by reintroducing and reintegrating the spiritual-meditative-mystical tradition of the church into modern life in general and professional pastoral practice in particular. Isaiah 11 contains the classic passage of ...

1325. Beginning to Weep

John 11:32-44

Bulletin Aid

Dallas A. Brauninger

Call to Worship When Jesus saw the grief of Mary after the death of her brother Lazarus, he began to weep. The shortest verse in the Bible, "Jesus wept," brings us close to Jesus. We sense that God understands and accepts our tears when we begin to weep. Collect Help us, O God, to endure the regrets, the blame and self-blame, the anger, and all the other emotions of loss when we have sorrow. Guide us through the craziness that overtakes our lives. Through the presence of Christ. Amen. Prayer of Confession ...

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