Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 1376 to 1400 of 4977 results

1376. Finding Fault With God

Jeremiah 2:4--3:5

Sermon

Chrysanne Timm

... 1975. One of the routines with which I was less familiar was his routine on the value of religion. In it, Carlin comes down quite hard on God and the Christian church: Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who ... God or with God's permission. However, the idea that God would even think of commanding Abraham to slay his son is quite hard to explain to someone who has been a victim of abuse. How does one reconcile God's command that the Israelites kill ...

1377. Not Another Rerun!

Jeremiah 31:27-34

Sermon

R. Kevin Mohr

... words, "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jeremiah 31:33). The covenant at Sinai had been written on tablets of stone. The stipulations of that covenant were quite literally spelled out and were to be memorized and studied. However, what was meant to be a living relationship all too easily became a "head thing" with external criteria and a checklist of what to do or not do. The temptation for people is always to try ...

1378. When the Drought Gets Really Bad

Isaiah 55:1-9

Sermon

King Duncan

... two and my little cottage was full.” The neighbor said, “You know this is impossible. How can you have had 35 the first week and it was full, 51 the next week and it was full, and 62 yesterday and it was full again?” “Oh, it’s quite simple,” said this lady, “We simply got rid of every piece of furniture and put them in the garden. We emptied the house of everything that cluttered it up, and it was filled with people.” (7) Furniture wasn’t important, in this lady’s estimation, people were ...

1379. The Servant Leader

John 13:1-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... in progress, Jesus stood up, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. This, quite obviously, was the last thing the disciples were expecting. Christ knelt before Simon Peter. “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Christ replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” “No,” said Peter, “you shall ...

1380. On God's Side Or In God's Way?

Acts 11:1-18

Sermon

King Duncan

... us and we will see God’s victory. It reminds me of a story that a preacher tells. He was driving his car one time traveling north, trying to get to Fredericksburg, Virginia. Suddenly his lights went out while he was driving in North Carolina. His alternator had quit working. There he was, hundreds of miles from his destination on a dark night with no way to see where he was going. He prayed, “I don’t have an alternator, Lord, but I want to get back.” After that, he says, a Greyhound bus came by just ...

1381. Jailhouse Rock

Acts 16:16-40

Sermon

King Duncan

... spirit this was, but we do know that her owners had been making income off of this girl’s strange gift. Now, nobody cares if you go about doing Christian things, as long as it doesn’t interfere with commerce. Then they have a tendency to get quite testy. When the slave girl’s owners realized that they could no longer make money off of her, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. A mob gathered supporting the owners. At this sign of unrest, the not-so ...

1382. Two Sinners

Luke 7:36-50

Sermon

King Duncan

... have no consciousness of sin? What if pride has blinded you to your need for God’s forgiveness and grace? That was the situation of Simon the Pharisee. He was blind to his need for God. And because he did not feel a need for God even though he was quite religious, he would never know the joy of being bathed in God’s love. To see this, notice what happens next in our story. Jesus says to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.” Then, Luke tells us, the other guests in Simon’s house began to say among ...

1383. Jesus’ Four Surprising Road Rules for the Missional Highway

Luke 9:57-62, Luke 9:51-56

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... as Luke’s narrative had just revealed a radical distinction between Jesus and Elijah, he now offers another connection between the two. In 2 Kings 2:1-6 Elijah’s disciple Elisha is three times instructed by his master to stay behind, to quit following. Yet all three times Elisha refuses and continues to follow Elijah into ominous situations. Nothing deters Elisha’s commitment to follow. Here in Luke’s text Jesus is approached three separate times by would-be disciples, but the challenges incurred by ...

1384. Financial Planning

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

King Duncan

... against the danger of wealth. On the basis of disposable income, it ought to be easier to tithe when you make $80,000 a year, than when you make $20,000 a year. But somehow it doesn’t work that way, does it? Somewhere along the way our money quits serving us and we begin serving it. “Thou fool,” says Jesus. Learn from this rich man that there is no lasting security in wealth. Take to heart these four principles: Make sure that you are committed to more than just making a living. Have a plan for the ...

1385. Real Heros

Hebrews 11:1-40

Sermon

King Duncan

... they would finish the trip no matter what happened, and second, they expected bad things to happen and decided they would not be surprised or dismayed. So when the rains turned the trail into a quagmire, they didn’t quit because they weren’t surprised. When black clouds of mosquitoes descended, they didn’t quit because they weren’t surprised. “They knew that the key was simply putting one foot in front of the other. You take a step and hit the mud. You take another step and see a bear. You take ...

1386. Love to Life

Luke 13:10-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... in our body, all the muscles and nerves, all suffer together. In this week’s gospel text Jesus deals head-on with a debilitating back issue. The woman Jesus sees in the synagogue, the woman he calls forward without her ever seeking him out, is “bent over and quite unable to stand up straight.” Luke’s text doesn’t tell us anything else about this woman. We do not know if she was rich or poor, a paragon or a pariah, someone who was honored or ostracized. All we know is that she was perceived as one ...

1387. A One Sentence Legacy

Luke 14:25-35

Sermon

King Duncan

... leave that to our employer. Making a living has always required diligence. Jesus knew what it took to succeed in the world. We forget that for about half of his life he was a carpenter. There are some scholars who think he might have been quite successful at his work perhaps on the order of a contractor or an architect rather than simply a hired worker. Today’s story from Luke’s Gospel reflects Jesus’ business background. There were many who were starting to follow him. Did they know what they were ...

1388. Going Home

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Sermon

Argile Smith

... as a shepherd in the wilderness, and serving as the leader of God’s people from slavery to liberty. The last forty years of his life had been most eventful. From the day his curiosity drew him to a burning bush until the last day alive, he had been on quite a remarkable journey. He heard God call him to a task that he knew he could never complete by himself. God showed him along the way that God could be trusted. He would give Moses what he couldn’t give himself to finish the work to which he had been ...

1389. Be Shrewd

Luke 16:1-15

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... acceptable social status) to ensure that when he was booted out of his current master’s home, he would have to be “welcomed” or “received” by those he had done the favor of lowering their debts. The amounts owed by these debtors were quite large, suggesting that these debtors themselves had substantial means, and that these individuals would be able as well as obligated to take in the soon to be dispossessed servant, once he was sent packing. Stunningly, in Jesus’ parable, when the master finds ...

1390. Luke 16:1-13

Luke 16:1-15

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

1391. The Bridge at Sychar

John 4:1-26

Sermon

David O. Bales

A great deal of the Bible is quite understandable by itself. To grasp much of the Bible we don’t need tons of background, familiarity with ancient languages, or ... sins. He’s more willing to forgive our sins than we are to confess them. He’ll start the conversation with us. He’ll even summon us to come to him when we don’t quite know what’s going on. No matter how tired he is, he says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28 ...

1392. The Path of Joy

Psalm 118:1-29

Sermon

King Duncan

... the Bible. And it begins with these words: 1 Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. 2 Let Israel say: “His love endures forever.” We have often been guilty of oversimplifying the relationship between the Old Testament and the New. We say quite glibly, the Old Testament God is a God of wrath, the New Testament God is a God of Love. And, in some instances, that appears to be true. But there are many acclamations in the Hebrew Bible that God is a God of love. “His love endures ...

1393. Claimed, Framed, Changed

Acts 2:14-41

Sermon

Tony Everett

... center of divine love. When God raised Jesus from the grave we were filled with overwhelming joy. Now what? It would be so easy to go right back to the same-old-same-old reality. It would be easy to slip back into our almost-but-not-quite faithful enough lifestyle. However, today the crowd’s question becomes our question. Today, God’s response becomes our answer. Pay careful attention here. Our text is not a handy dandy three step game plan for the crowds to follow in order to stop emotional pain. The ...

1394. What If You Truly Were Born Again?

John 3:1-21

Sermon

King Duncan

... of the Jewish ruling council was consulting with an itinerant teacher from Nazareth. “Rabbi,” he says to Jesus, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” That’s quite a startling statement for a member of the ruling council to make “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God . . .” Wonder if he is sincere? Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are ...

1395. The Woman at the Well

John 4:1-26

Sermon

King Duncan

... girls protesting. They prayed together, tears flowed, and lives were changed on both sides of the protest lines. (1) I was moved by this story because a friend of mine tells a similar story about a new friend of his, a young woman who we will call Susan. Not quite two years ago Susan was living the best she could on the streets of New Orleans. She was addicted to cocaine and her life was in a downward spiral. But somehow Christ touched her life and today she is living a new life in Christ. Recently she came ...

1396. Will this Be on the Test?

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Tony Everett

... thrive in the process. Ideally, we have learned that passing one test prepares us to pass the next. However, sadly enough, we often repeat the same preparation mistakes. We wind up barely hanging on, scarcely surviving in an “almost but-not-quite” life. The season of Lent is a season of preparation for participation in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For many Christians this preparation includes a six week discipline of giving up things such as sugary sweets and salty snacks, watching ...

1397. A Global Celebration

John 20:1-9

Sermon

King Duncan

... 2) In the same way, Christ has made the journey from this world to the next and he has returned to tell us that the journey is safe. A loving Father is waiting on the other side with the gift of eternal life. You can raise many quite reasonable arguments against the idea of resurrection. But one thing cannot be argued the dramatic change that took place in the life of the disciples after that first Easter. Nearly all of them were eventually martyred, some of them suffered grievously, but they simply did not ...

1398. For Troubled Hearts

John 14:1-4

Sermon

King Duncan

... go there to sleep; he’d go there to spend his hours doing what he would call perking. He’d just lie in bed and perk . . . brewing new worries, like a coffee pot brewing coffee. And then one day he figured out what was troubling him, and it was quite a revelation. His problem was that deep down he felt that he had a better job than he really deserved. In his heart he believed he was not qualified for the job he had. And he started worrying about losing it. Someone has called this “the imposter syndrome ...

1399. Pastor, Don't Talk About That!

Romans 6:1-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... engaged in a study of this very teaching concerning dying to sin. One of the women is speaking. “Well,” she says, “I haven’t actually died to sin, but I did feel kind of faint once.” (3) That’s where many people are today. We’re not quite dead to sin; we’re merely a little faint. And many of us are hurting. For example, I read recently that twenty million people in this country are dealing with some sort of addiction. That’s an astounding figure, twenty million. I know it’s not a popular ...

1400. On the Ropes: Round 1 - Doubting God

Habakkuk 1:1-4

Sermon

James Merritt

... built around a man who did just that. It is a book we are going to be studying over the next three weeks that I am quite sure most of you have probably read at least once in the last week. It is called “Habakkuk.” How many of you would say that ... ? They’ve completely dropped out of church. At the time when they should be in church more than any time in their life they quit. They check out. Other people will back out. They will just walk away from God altogether. They will say, “I knew this God thing ...

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