Synonyms: replica, copy, representation, mock-up, dummy, imitation, double, duplicate, lookalike, reproduction, prototype, stereotype, archetype, type, version, style, ideal, paragon, perfect example, specimen, perfect specimen, fashion model, supermodel, mannequin, sitter, poser, subject, artist's model, photographic model, design, mark, configuration, variety, kind, sort, original, original design, exclusive, toy, miniature, facsimile, prototypical, prototypal, archetypal, illustrative, perfect, exemplary, classic, flawless, faultless, consummate, impeccable
Antonyms: deficient, imperfect
Showing 1326 to 1350 of 4999 results
1326. Sitting at the Big People Table
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, 1 Timothy 2:1-7
Sermon
Billy D. Strayhorn
... turned around wiping off his tongue and proclaimed: "That has to be the worst turkey I have ever tasted. Where did you buy this thing. It tastes like melted plastic." Well, of course Aunt Billie was upset, she was almost in tears. She tasted it and made the same kinds of faces Uncle Ace had. So, us teenage boys had to see what they were talking about. Let's face, teenage boys are like goats, they can and they will eat almost anything. We tasted it and sure enough, it was awful. The dog wouldn't even eat it ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... simply lay there beside Tommy. After a bit, a small child’s hand slipped into Rev. Carter’s hand. Rev. Carter said, “You know Tommy it’s kind of close quarters under here, let’s you and I crawl out where we can stand up.” As they slid out from under the bed he ... it both a privilege and a pleasure to wait on you again.” Campolo’s friend was more than surprised by the kind and respectful way in which this saleswoman treated a woman who obviously had not the means to buy anything in that upscale ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... Will Social Security run out of money? Some say it already has. That may seem like a trivial concern compared to the persecution that the early Christians faced, thrown into gladiator pits, burned at the stake, crucified. Social Security may not be in the same class with those kinds of torturous deaths, but that doesn’t change the fact that a great many seniors in our land depend upon it. What does the future hold? Will there be another major terrorist attack? It seems almost certain there will be of some ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... tells us, “So Joseph got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt . . .” That was Joseph. A man of integrity; a man of faith. Do you think it might make a difference if all the people who call Jesus Lord had that kind of integrity, that kind of complete trust in God’s will and God’s way? My guess is that it would change the world overnight. The first thing we need to do after Christmas is to keep trusting God. The second thing we need to do is to take care of those we ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... dams higher up in the mountain. The young soldier makes a full recovery in the peace and beauty of the regrowing valley, and continues to visit the Bouffier the shepherd. Over four decades, Bouffier continues to plant trees, and the valley is turned into a kind of Garden of Eden. Giono writes: “On the site of the ruins I had seen in 1913 now stand neat farms . . . The old streams, fed by the rains and snows that the forest conserves, are flowing again . . . Little by little, the villages have been rebuilt ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... her if she thought she was really being effective. In his estimation it seemed as though many people were just walking away mad, rather than walking away in the love of Christ. The woman told him that in Matthew 5 Christians are told they would face all kinds of persecution. Freyer says he wanted to shake her and scream, “BUT HE DOESN’T ASK US TO LOOK FOR IT!” Later he realized why he was so angry with her methods. She wasn’t engaging anyone. “It’s easy to stand on the sidelines, says Freyer ...
1332. Clearing Out the Pipes
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Sermon
John Smylie
... the backside of the house. From there I had a difficult time tracing the line but eventually found a drainage pit full of stones, which it was supposed to drain into. Unfortunately, there was a clog somewhere in the line. This became an image to me of the kind of work that we will want to do during the season of Lent. Perhaps years of accumulated potato peels and other roughage had made its way down that sink and finally the liquid had nowhere to go. It sat still, no longer responding to the best plunge one ...
Sermon
Kristin Borsgard Wee
... mine?" Even Mr. McFeely, the postal carrier, went around from house to house making a neighborhood out of what would have been a bunch of separate houses divided by hedges and picket fences. The family values we saw in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood were courtesy and kindness and curiosity. In one episode, Mr. Rogers took us to a sneaker factory where there was an assembly line of workers. He watched one woman working, and he wondered out loud if she ever thought about the people who would wear the shoes she made ...
1334. Soul Bread!
John 6:24-35
Sermon
Robert Leslie Holmes
... and we could make our own bread," he writes. "And sometimes we would even make bread out of the potatoes. So, while we may have lacked many things we always had sufficient potatoes and bread." Earlier in John chapter 6, we read about food rationing of another kind. Then it was an absence of food for a hungry multitude. Jesus solved that problem with five barley loaves and two little fish. A boy's lunch, in the hands of Jesus, became enough food for all who were gathered. There were even twelve baskets left ...
Sermon
Thomas Lentz
... the head throbbing drum beat rap sounds that shake my bedroom windows at two o'clock in the morning from car stereos. One mother recently discovered that the song her daughter was listening to, "Darling Nikki," described a perverted sex act and called Nikki a sex fiend. The wrong kind of music can lower our children's threshold of resistance, inciting evil or immoral activities. On the other hand, there is music that lifts the soul, that inspires us to think more clearly, that elevates our mood. That's the ...
1336. Heavenly Wisdom
James 3:13—4:8
Sermon
Thomas Lentz
... , and searching for meaning. When we happen to hear those few who express gratitude to God we are impressed and faintly surprised. Yet, the beauty of that testimony is nothing more than what you and I are capable of expounding. When we witness one of them committing a kind deed, we are touched. But you and I, when working in the service of our Lord, can respond in this way daily. Margaret Sangster, a social worker, told about a young boy in an urban ghetto who had been struck by a car and had not received ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... of another. The Pharisees were wearing masks. They were pretending a piety they did not possess. Who among us has not done the same thing? Here’s the important thing we need to see: regardless of the mask we wear, we cannot fool God. Regardless of what kind of mask we choose to put on, God knows us as we really are. God see our hearts. God knows our real priorities. According to Dr. Kenneth Gangel, each year in Basel, Switzerland the good Protestant townspeople have a festival in which they all don masks ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... know we shouldn’t do because we want to fit it, we want to be cool. But it doesn’t stop with our teen years. As we get older, we may give an anemic witness to our faith because we don’t want our friends to think we’re some kind of religious nut. Someone cracks a racist joke. We put on a social smile. We may even give a pleasant chuckle, even though it makes us uncomfortable. We don’t want to offend our friends by expressing indignation. We’re afraid of what others think. For some people this is ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... you’ve stood there by a tomb and wept. Perhaps you wept so hard that you could not even sense the risen Master standing next to you seeking to comfort you. And now you are here, seeking as we all do, to hear your name called, to experience the kind of transformation Mary Magdalene experienced, to have the fog of doubt and fear lifted from your mind and heart and to know that the Good News really is true. Christ lives and because he lives, you and I can receive the gift of eternal life. It is natural for ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... He truly became a new person on the road to Damascus when he was confronted by the risen Christ. Christ had performed a great work in his life and so, later in life, St. Paul was able to return hatred with love, anger with gentleness, and slander with words of kindness. Not many people reach that level of spiritual maturity. There are some people we encounter whose hearts are filled with anger. We see it on the road road rage it’s call. We see it in our offices people who tend to fly off the handle at the ...
Sermon
Scott Bryte
... 's milk? Well, just to be on the safe side, they wouldn't boil any goat meat in any milk, or mix any meat of any kind with any dairy product at all, not even cheese. They studied God's law and talked about God's law and kept all the rules. This ... keeping 613 com­mandments and more. We can't handle ten. The truth is that we aren't always very loving. We aren't always very kind. We can be thoughtless and arrogant, uncaring and cruel. If we were to count only on our own righteousness to save us, we would be in ...
1342. Greed
2 Kings 5:1-14
Sermon
David E. Leininger
... sale price of their property so they could keep some of the money for themselves; the rich young ruler who wanted to follow Jesus but could not bring himself to get rid of his possessions first. First Timothy says, "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" (6:10). There is nothing inherently wrong with money, nor is there anything wrong with having some. Some of the greatest men of the Bible were also some of the richest: Abraham, David, Solomon. To be sure, they had their faults, but the love of ...
Sermon
Steven E. Albertin
... they can go off in their corner and listen alone. I am concerned that in this rush to speak to the world of the iPod, its language of electronically amplified and personalized music and its core entertainment values, we will abandon being the church. The church is a kind of community that ought to never totally "fit in" to the world because to do so would abandon who we are as the people of God. The church in the New Testament is called the ekklesia, that is the "called-out ones." The church is not just a ...
Sermon
Charles L. Aaron
... we feel deep in our souls as we are about what we think in our heads. What we think in our heads is not totally unrelated to what we believe in our hearts. If we believe in an implacably angry God with our heads, we may feel the wrong kind of fear of God in our hearts. We will not have the fear of God that is healthy respect, but the fear that sees God as unapproachable. Nevertheless, two Christians can have different belief systems and still have deep faith in their hearts. Here, Colossians urges us to be ...
Sermon
Charles L. Aaron
... the other image that the passage uses. One part of the passage tells us to kill the old self. The other part of the passage tells us to strip off the old self, like taking off old, worn out clothes (v. 9). We put on the new clothes of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Colossians goes on to tell us to show love and to let peace reign in our hearts (vv. 14-15). The reason to strip off the old clothes of lust and anger is to make room for things like compassion. That is the new self God ...
1346. RSVP
Isaiah 55:1-9
Sermon
David J. Kalas
... . We should be astonished that God extends invitations at all. After all, does a sovereign need to invite? Isn't it his prerogative simply to command, to summon, to give orders? The mere fact that God extends invitations to us at all bears witness to the kind of relationship he endeavors to have with us. It would be overstating the case, to be sure, to suggest that it is a relationship between equals. It is, however, a relationship in which we are elevated be­yond our merit; and one in which he voluntarily ...
1347. When God Calls
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Sermon
Chrysanne Timm
... of energetic dog handling doesn't work in hospitals or libraries or senior residences. Yesterday, Judy received a call from a friend with Portuguese Water Dogs who had injured her back and needed someone to take her and her dog's place at a very new kind of ministry. For about a month, several dogs and their owners have been visiting with a group of autistic children and showing them how dogs can run an agility course. Judy was hesitant at first, but she knew that she was needed and agreed to go. Although ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... -being of the people over whom he ruled and the servants in his own household. He was a man of character. Such character seems rare in our present world, but it does exist. For some of us Nelson Mandela of South Africa has come to represent this kind of character. Pastor John Ortberg tells us that when Mandela was imprisoned on Robbins Island for his opposition to South Africa’s system of apartheid, he was issued a pair of shorts not long trousers but shorts. His captors kept him in shorts so that they ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... , yes, but the faith that Jesus was describing is so much more than that. J. G. Stipe once said that, “Faith is like a toothbrush. Every man should have one and use it regularly, but he shouldn’t try to use someone else’s.” Well, that’s kind of a yucky analogy, but there is truth there as well. But really what is faith? Is it an attitude? Is it the same thing as positive thinking? Attitude is important. Our attitudes can change our perception of reality and they can help us deal with reality in ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... , nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). It sounds to me like every child of God is our brother and sister. A sheriff and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Keys, lived over the county jail. One day Mrs. Keys, a kind woman, came down to call her husband. As she turned back to go upstairs, she heard someone crying. Listening carefully, she found the sound coming from a tiny figure huddled in a dark corner of a cell. As her eyes became used to the darkness, she made out the ...
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