Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1326 to 1350 of 3852 results

Sermon

James Angell

... will reveal a more ordinary, truthful, and often broken kind of world than this if they are to illuminate what life is all about and are to contribute to the believability of what is being said. Still, here are a few suggestions about homiletical windows. None is original, but I have come to believe in their value as guidelines, and make use of them over and over again. I won't identify their sources because in most instances I've long since forgotten them - or never knew in the first place. But here they ...

1327. Make Way For Poets Of The Heart

Sermon

James Angell

... got ready to leave about 7:30, I spoke for a few moments with Father Louis, asking if I might some day return and have time to talk to him. Thus began a cherished friendship. The subsequent visit, about a month later, resulted in this original verse: Meeting With Thomas Merton Two long rows of September trees, like mower teeth Clipped the lawn of sky. We sat Beneath them, on folding chairs (ugly invention), To pass through our eye-fingers the miracle Of knowing each other. I would have studied the roughness ...

1328. The Stewardship of Money in the Modern Church

2 Corinthians 9:11, 12

Sermon

Dr. John Thompson Peters

... in Christ. This is the implication of the Resurrection. In the ascended Lord we see the divine mediator in whom God is bringing together into a unity the world which has been split asunder by sin and bondage. This unity was unquestionably God's original intention. "Christ is the unifying center in whom are integrated all the fragmentary elements of divine meaning which appear in the creative movements of historical existence. He is the One in whom man is redeemed in the social context of his existence." [1 ...

1329. Don't Just Stand There! - Get Involved!

Luke 3:1-20, Matthew 6:19-24

Sermon

Dr. John Thompson Peters

... dependency back into bondage. A modern preacher has reminded us that: "Hot blood flows in the veins of man; strong fires burn within his soul. This is God's gift to him, part of the image of God in him, and it is a kind of sad tribute to the original grandeur of his soul that he would rather fill himself with something that damns him and destroys him than be filled with nothing. He is so possessed of fire within that he refuses to be mediocre. If he can't be greatly good, he will be greatly evil. If he ...

1330. Dollar Signs and Life Symbols

1 Timothy 6:3-10

Sermon

Rev. Donald R. Shank

... independence that go along with it. We begin to measure off this little corner of the world and say "this is mine"; I am god here. This I own and reserve the right to determine what I shall do with it. We are right back to man's original sin of pushing God aside and taking charge ourselves. To face this battle and realize the stakes is to take the first step in dethroning the dollar sign from our lives. Another step to take is participation in Christian stewardship. Recognizing that we are not the owners ...

1331. The Messiah For All

Ephesians 3:4-6

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... those babies are now young adults or students. Today in every part of the world, those young adults are soundly rejecting the tired, old, stupid cliches of the tired, old, stupid, worn-out statesmen and militarists of the world, who haven't had an original thought in two thousand years. They no longer accept the inevitability of war. They no longer believe the scare warnings of the militarists. Thousands of them refused to take part in our last, stupid, illegal, immoral war in Vietnam that we got into by ...

1332. Talk! Talk! Talk!

Jeremiah 1:1-19

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... such conventions certainly knows the appropriateness of the title, because that is exactly what they turn out to be - a period of undistinguishable, inarticulate, and unproductive buzzing. All of this is based on our naive and misguided confidence that ten people with no original or valuable or informed ideas on a subject can produce something that one person can't produce - the wistful hope that zero times ten will equal ten. I am reminded of the time one of our sons got his first tape recorder, and ...

1333. Never Read Any of His Books

John 20:1-18

Illustration

James W. Moore

... of downtown.” It costs two dollars to visit Mark Twain’s home and to walk around the site. Bill Bryson said he found the home to be a disappointment. He expressed his disillusionment like this: “It purported to be a faithful reproduction of the original interiors, but there were wires and water sprinklers clumsily evident in every room. I also very much doubt that young Samuel Clemens’ bedroom had Armstrong vinyl on the floor or that his sister’s bedroom had a plywood partition in it.” He said ...

1334. The Importance of Believing

Matthew 16:13-20

Sermon

... the target of truth, but to believe rightly puts us in touch with the whole spectrum of the vast reality in which we live. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ." This is an oft-repeated refrain of our New Testament. In the Greek original, the word for "believe" is usually coupled with the Greek preposition eis, which, with the accusative case, implies "action into." Thus, to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ means literally to believe INTO him. Believing is not passive, it is active. Believing DOES something ...

1335. Barefoot in the Palace

Luke 13:22-30

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... , like no other time in history. It’s a time when the "outs" are not content with their station. They are rising to claim their share of the palace. They want to walk through its rooms and corridors, enjoying its fellowship and beauty, like the original occupants. If we ask about this sudden rising of the barefoot ones to claim their place in the palace, we can think of several reasons. Two of them are obvious. The first is the Christian gospel that declares a fundamental equality among all persons. Paul ...

1336. The Beginning of the End

Luke 9:57-62

Sermon

... after I dedicated a book (The Gift, the Glitter, and the Glory) to my father-in-law, my wife received a letter from her hometown. The letterhead read: "Hawley School Bell Project." It was an appeal to raise money to move the old school bell that had originally been in the town’s first school from its present location in a school about to be razed to a site near the public library. Under the letterhead and before the appeal came two names: "Mr. Roger Blough and Mr. Albert Haggarty, honorary co-chairpersons ...

1337. Some Man

Luke 10:38-42

Sermon

... to sort out priorities in life and able to put first what should really count. And Martha? She’s so much like so many of us really are, especially in our relationship to God and others. The so-called "work ethic" of modern America could have originated with her, couldn’t it? But wasn’t she the type of hostess in whose home we would like to be entertained? At least, she was "some hostess" - and there had to be commendation in Jesus’ words, "you are anxious and troubled about many things ..." They ...

1338. The Sign in the Subway

Luke 11:1-13

Sermon

Carveth Mitchell

... meet them unless we ask with sincerity that shows itself in persistence. Prayer is not a casual conversation, a quickie devotion, a flippant wish. It is a continuing dialogue between a person and God. Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed. The original form of the words "ask, seek" used in this Gospel means "keep on asking, seeking." (Note that the householder was not asking for himself; he was asking for the welfare of his guests.) This is not to say that one-time prayers are not ...

1339. Counsel for Discouraged Disciples

Habakkuk 1:1-4

Sermon

... . The parable in today’s Gospel lesson is only one among many examples. A few basic emphases in his counseling are easily identified, and they are just as important for us today as they were to the band of twelve to whom they were originally addressed. Some of these emphases should have our special attention: First, the emphasis on having and maintaining faith. Believe in God and believe in me, he said. Without a settled conviction at the core of one’s being, he knew that persistent faithfulness would ...

1340. Bringing Back the Shine

Romans 6:6

Children's Sermon

... paint isn’t there anymore like it once was, the metal is starting to shine and if I wanted to repaint it I think it would be as good as new and maybe even better. That is kind of like the way we are, God says. When he made us originally he made us perfect, bright and shiny. But as we grow up we sin here and there and while we don’t think it will hurt us much at the time we soon begin to look pretty bad to ourselves, to say nothing of how we look to God. But ...

1341. If Only We Would Be Disciplined ...

2 Kings 13:10-25

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... for two days. My first application of paint remover took part of the black away, revealing a hideous green color. After three more heavy doses of remover, plus a lot of scraping, I hit a thick, thick coat of white paint, which must have been the original covering, for the white had seeped through every grain of that wood. When I finally got all the paint off the top, I cleaned it with furniture refinisher and discovered a beautiful piece of wood. That was enough to convince me that the project would be ...

1342. The Holy Trinity

Deuteronomy 4:32-40

Sermon

An idea keeps echoing through the Book of Deuteronomy: "Remember!" "Beware, lest you forget." The writer of Deuteronomy knew it isn't always easy to "remember," but also recognized its importance, so he kept emphasizing it. He knew how vital it is to recall our origins, to be aware of where we came from, to remember how we got where we are, and to keep, consciously, before us the recognition of vital things that allowed us to get here. J. Wallace Hamilton tells of a sensitive Jew who wrote a book called, " ...

1343. Proper 7

Genesis 28:10-22

Sermon

... nevertheless. The power of stories is legendary, but their value, their use, their vitality is often overlooked by modern people. Primitive people, however, know the value of such folk tales. Almost every primitive society has a collection of fascinating stories about the origin of the world, the first people on earth, how animals were created, the Flood. These stories, in a very real sense, somehow contain the very soul of that group as a people. Those cultures advance spiritually through the use of their ...

1344. A Good Picture of Bad People

Luke 16:1-15

Sermon

... some scholars have felt obligated to offer remedies or excuses. For example, some scholars suggest that all of the verses which belong in the passage are not included, while others indicate that some of the verses which are included were not a part of the original text and were added by editors. At least one scholar suggests that the whole parable may have been told as comic relief. Personally, I find no reason to apologize for this parable which features the "sons of this world." Perhaps we have the story ...

1345. Religion - One Way to Get in God’s Way

Zechariah 7:1-14

Sermon

... to love God in that way? It means to love the neighbor. That’s a hard statement. We easily respond to the first, recoil from the second. Yet the words of the text are action words. They don’t call for a committee, or discussion, or the tracing of the origin and the problems of evil. They call for action: render; do; see that it is done. To love is to treat people the way we want to be treated, the way God would treat them because both they and we are God’s representatives to each other and for each ...

1346. Whoever Would Be King

2 Samuel 5:1-5

Sermon

... s being for people is, for many, as repulsive as his crucifixion. In fact, one can say that care for people, for all people, was that which brought on his crucifixion. To care for all people is to revolutionize the way we live. The original crucifixion recognized that. We still do. Not only society, but the church, too, often resists and even justifies "including people out." This king has a radical solidarity with us. Not based on arms, or intimidation, or bribery, or even conviviality, his solidarity with ...

1347. Beasts, Saints and Chaos

Daniel 7:1-14

Sermon

... with you." He will be with us here and now in our time. For it is here that his name is to be hallowed; it is here that his kingdom is to come; it is here that his will is to be done on earth, the same earth where he originated that prayer. Christ gives us himself through the common, ordinary bread and wine, through the common, ordinary means of eating and drinking. We eat and drink together to experience his presence not only in the meal but in each other. If he makes his presence felt in the gift of ...

1348. The Resurrection of Our Lord

John 20:1-9

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

... had seen, but they are there in exactly the same place and position as they had been when they enfolded the body of Jesus. They were unaltered, untouched, undisturbed. Even the napkin, which had been wound around the head, was lying just where it had been originally, a little removed from the other clothing. This is what Peter saw. And this is what John also saw as he followed Peter into the tomb. Yet, did they in fact "see" the same thing? Three different Greek words for "seeing" are used in this passage ...

1349. Christ's Passion Portraits

Isaiah 50:1-11

Sermon

Paul Hegele

... and broods of vipers and growled, "You are like tombs covered with white-wash - nice looking on the outside but inside full of dead bones and filth." Remember how the Bible often said Jesus sighed? That's a mistranslation of the word sigh. The original Greek word does not indicate grief; it signifies indignation. Jesus was angry - angry at corruption and angry at people's selfish refusal to recognize the coming Kingdom of God. It's his eagerness to usher in that Kingdom of God - not some placid emotional ...

1350. I Kid You Not

2 Kings 4:8-37

Sermon

... s live and real and true."1 And what does this have to do with Second Kings? The phrase, "I kid you not," that Jack Paar made famous, is one that fits this episode between the Old Testament prophet Elisha and the wealthy woman of Shunem who furnished an original "Bed and Breakfast" for her holy guest. This encounter is one of several events recorded in the fourth chapter of Second Kings. It is there with the amazing jar of oil that did not run out, and the sun-stricken boy who was brought back to life. It ...

Showing results