Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1351 to 1375 of 3099 results

Luke 1:26-38

Sermon

James W. Moore

... add to that... The birth in a stable... with no doctor, no midwife, no medicine and no anesthetic... nothing but faith and hope in God! She was just a teenaged girl... from a poor family who lived in an obscure village in a tiny nation which itself was under subjection to a despised foreign power. Then one day out of the blue, an angel came to her with a message from the Lord: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold you will conceive and bear a son and you shall call his ...

1352. Nicodemus

John 3:1-21

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... of the writings of antiquity which we consider as inspired Scripture. My Sadducee brothers, on the other hand, accept no writing as Scripture except that which our tradition says came from Moses - the TORAH - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The subject of resurrection is not discussed there, and since it is not, they have always believed any thoughts of life after death were pure speculation. For myself, as I say, the concept of resurrection is very appealing. Besides, why should we ...

1353. Unexpected Evangelists

John 4:1-26

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... and have to keep coming here to draw water." The conversation continues. The reference to her love life and current living arrangements. So this spunky lady does what we all do when Jesus wants to talk with us about our personal affairs - she changes the subject. Religion. There's a good one. She says, "I can see that you are a prophet...clergy. OUR church says worship God in this place, but YOUR church says Jerusalem. Let's argue about that instead of talking about me." Jesus answers with the gospel ...

1354. Work (Labor Day)

Genesis 1:1 - 2:25

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... down through the corridors of time: "Come unto me all you who labor and are carrying heavy burdens. And I will give you rest." Amen! 1. Clifton Fadiman, Gen. Ed., The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1985), p. 327 2. For an excellent treatment of this subject, see Leland Ryken, "Puritan Work Ethic: The Dignity of Life's Labors, Christianity Today, 10/19/79, pp. 14-19. Much of the above material is from this source. 3. Bruce Shelley, "Why Work?", Christianity

1355. Beating Babel

Acts 2:1-13, Genesis 11:1-9

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... you to the other folks. Ours is a friendly community. Sincerely yours," Mistaken impressions notwithstanding, research has been done which shows that some of what we hear and do not hear is quite deliberate. One experiment had two groups of subjects, smokers and non-smokers, listen to messages, some of which implied that smoking causes cancer and others which claimed the opposite. The messages were obscured by static, which could be eliminated if the listener pressed a button. Smokers more frequently ...

1356. The Ten Commandments #2: No Idols!

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Back to Basics. Commandment # 2 - No Idols. Listen to what Isaiah has to say on the subject: All who make idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit; their witnesses neither see nor know. And so they will be put to shame. Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? Look, all its devotees shall be put ...

1357. Wise Leadership

1 Kings 2:1-12, 3:1-15

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... are determined to kill us?' "Taken aback by her intensity, I headed for the line deflated by the huge emotional gap that exists in the Middle East. Throughout the ten days, our encounters with Arabs, Palestinians and Israelis were warm and enriching. On all subjects but one we found openness and warmth. But on the issue of Israeli-Palestinian relations the raw emotions consistently overwhelmed me. "So often the situation seems hopeless. But I know, and am here to tell you, that there are people of faith on ...

1358. When God Is Gone

Job 23:1--24:25

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... Hebrew poem to which there is a prose introduction to set the scene. Job is presented to us as the richest man in the Middle East, deeply religious, "blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil."(1) As the story opens, Job is the subject of a conversation between God and Satan (not the Satan of pop theology with horns, a pitchfork and a tail, but this one tantamount to a celestial prosecuting attorney). God says to Satan, "Where have you been," and Satan responds that he has been checking things ...

1359. The Apostles' Creed: "God...Almighty"

Mark 15:33-41, Mark 15:21-32

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... a world we say is in the control of God, the Father, Almighty, some of which make more sense than others. For what it is worth, folks have been struggling with the issue for thousands of years. The Bible has one whole book that deals with the subject - Job. It is one long poetic compendium of the questions people raise when confronted with catastrophe: Why? Why me? Why him? Why them? Job's story, of course, you remember. Here was a successful and prosperous man, a man whose life had always been right side ...

1360. The Language of the Heart

Psalm 100:1-5

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... grave opens, I stand nearby. I call the wanderer home, I rescue the soul from the depths, I open the lips of lovers, and through me the dead whisper to the living. One I serve as I serve all; and the king I make my slave as easily as I subject his slave. I speak through the birds of the air, the insects of the field, the crash of waters on rock-ribbed shores, the sighing of wind in the trees, and I am even heard by the soul that knows me in the clatter of wheels on city streets. I ...

1361. Grace and Golf

1 Corinthians 9:1-27

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... , but be careful who sees you and the impression your action might make on them. His conclusion: "if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall" (I Cor. 8:13). Now he moves into this subject of personal discipline. He notes that there are any number of things he does without to which he should normally have every right. For example, he says he has the right to be paid for his work in the church, but he does not exercise his right. Beyond that, he ...

1362. Now That School's Out...

Proverbs 8:1-36

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... the course of years, has received several of those expensive wall-hangings, I add my Amen. I am not here expressly to address graduates this morning nor even to reflect on the end of another school year, but if I were, I could not choose a subject for my remarks better than the one chosen by the church's lectionary reading for this day - wisdom: Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; Beside the gates in front ...

1363. When God Overdoes It

Lamentations 1:1-22

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... to his side. "I think," he says, smiling, "God overdid it."(1) If you have been following the news lately, it is easy to agree with Morrie. Sometimes it does indeed seem like God overdoes this suffering business. The little book of Lamentations certainly deals with the subject of suffering. So much of it is so dark it is no wonder that there is not much preaching from it. Who comes to church to hear such gloom and doom? Yet, like it or not, Lamentations asks us to understand what the convulsions of our time ...

1364. A Religion that Shows

Haggai 1:1-15

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... right now. All we really need to do is be faithful with the tithe. It is up to us, just as it was up to the people of Haggai's day. Mark Twain once attended a party where he was bored by a paunchy tycoon who was pontificating on the subject of wealth. "Money isn't everything, gentlemen," he said. "It can't buy happiness, nor can it buy a happy home, nor can it lift the spirits of the saddened, nor alleviate the sufferings of the afflicted, nor buy the love of a good woman." Commented Twain, "You refer, of ...

1365. Make It Right!

Matthew 5:21-26

Sermon

David E. Leininger

There is a church in Columbia, SC near the seminary I attended which has one of those bulletin boards out front to list service times, special events, sermon subjects, and so on. For several years there was one other thing on that bulletin board, one of those little "sentence sermons" that we see so often. It said, "The same Bible that says BELIEVE also says BEHAVE." I do not know if there were any significance to the fact that ...

1366. An Excuse to Be Better

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... for us today? Yes, it is still the church season in which we prepare for Easter Sunday. It is a special time of prayer and reflection, of confession and self-denial. As a newspaper columnist had it sometime back (who happens to have a good grasp on the subject by virtue of his own Catholicism), Lent is "An Excuse to Be Better."(2) He wrote, “A steady stream...paraded down the aisle and paused for a priest to smudge the sign of the cross on our foreheads and warn, "Remember, you are dust and to dust you ...

1367. Winning over Worry

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... - gas prices, the stock market, taxes, jobs, marriages, parents worry about children, children worry about parents. You name it, somebody is worrying about it. As of yesterday, four of the top five best selling non-fiction hardback books on Amazon.com were dealing with subjects we worry about - health, change, relationships, and money. Jesus says we ought not to worry. Listen to him again: "...do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is ...

1368. Hang in There!

Matthew 15:21-28

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... all these tears to perish."(7) How right he was. How right she was. How right was the mother of our lesson. "And her daughter was healed instantly." The place was a suburb of Detroit. The speaker, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel. The subject: "After Auschwitz, Can We Still Believe!" Jews and Gentiles alike filled the great synagogue to listen to the recollections of one who survived the furnaces of Dachau. Thin and fragile, Wiesel stood at the podium for nearly an hour telling one story after another ...

1369. The Ultimate Question

Matthew 16:13-20

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... license. Obviously, any cinematic rendition of the gospel record will be a mixture of fact and fiction, and most producers will stress that. Sadly, that will make no difference to those who choose to object. To them it is not fiction so much as blasphemy. After all, the subject of the story is not some minor historical figure, but the founder of our faith, the one whom a third of the world worships as Lord. This is the one to whom Peter said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Some years ago ...

1370. The Pleasure of Your Company

Matthew 26:17-30

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... the place, designated the time, and set the meal in order. "My appointed time is near. I am going to celebrate the Passover with my disciples at your house." And at the supper, Jesus is not a guest, but the host. "And [Jesus] gave to the disciples..." The subject of the verbs is the message of the event: "he took...he gave thanks...he broke...he gave..." Jesus is not the served, but the server. It is Jesus who, prior to the meal, had put on the garb of a servant and washed the disciples' feet. Jesus ...

1371. What Do You Believe About Eternal Life

John 14:5-14

Eulogy

James W. Moore

... dimension of life with God. Now, I could quote Jesus here… or the Apostle Paul, but, for the moment let me go another route and ask you to listen carefully to the words of a great scientist. Dr. Werner Von Braun once spoke on the subject, “Why I Believe in Immortality” and he said this: "In our modern world, many people seem to feel that science has somehow made the ‘religious idea’ (of immortality) untimely or old fashioned. But I think science has a real surprise for the skeptics. Science, for ...

1372. The Apostles' Creed: I Believe

Mark 9:14-32

Sermon

David E. Leininger

That fellow [the father in the lesson] has always been one of my heros. I can identify with him as much as anyone in all of scripture. He is a man who loves his son - I know how that feels. His boy is sick - an epileptic, subject to violent seizures. I know how it feels to have a sick child. Dad has heard the neighborhood scuttlebutt about a certain Nazarene rabbi who had been touring the countryside with a reputation for being able to heal all sorts of diseases. He is not quite sure what to make ...

1373. The Discipline of Discipleship

Mark 10:17-31

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... to the other. Discipline, discipleship, disciple...all come from the same Latin root which has to do with LEARNING. In fact, the Greek word which we translate in the English New Testament as "disciple" is mathetes, a LEARNER. What brings this subject to mind is our continuing national fascination with the just-completed Olympic games and grows out of that wonderful biblical imagery used so regularly by the apostle Paul comparing the Christian life to athletics. Running, wrestling, boxing...with a crown of ...

1374. The Apostles' Creed: "Suffered, Dead, and Buried..."

Mark 15:1-15

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... to dig into this a bit. If it eases your mind, digging into this is nothing new. For centuries theologians have wondered about this question of why Christ died and how that death has anything to do with our salvation. The three-dollar theological word for the subject is ATONEMENT. Let me run through some of the theories so you might see the way scholars have wrestled with the issue. Be aware that this is classroom stuff (take notes if you want) rather than sermon stuff, but I will try to whip through it ...

1375. The Trouble with Stables

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Are you ready for Christmas? Foolish question. We still have 2½ weeks to go. I was visiting with Mary Knapp in the hospital yesterday and we got on the subject of Christmas - she said, "Why are you thinking about this now. You're a MAN. You've got LOTS of time." Good point. For what it's worth, if you ARE thinking about it, and you are wondering what you might get for that special someone who is difficult to ...

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