Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 1401 to 1425 of 2332 results

1401. Jesus Cures Our Spiritual Blindness

John 9:1-41

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... inaction, however, allow the darkness to continue and even advance. The light can only dispel the darkness when we make overt efforts to effect change or suggest other avenues of approach. Lent is a season when we are asked to undergo many trials, as did Jesus in the desert. We are tempted by the things of the world; we are asked to transform our lives; we are told to seek the living water of God's love found in Jesus. Today we are asked to shake off the darkness that shrouds us in blindness. We are asked ...

1402. A Talent for Life

Romans 8:1-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Scientists who study the tropical rainforests have succeeded in drawing attention to an entirely new ecosystem. It's an ecological niche quite separate from that of the high mountains, meadows and valleys, the plains or deserts, the estuaries or open waters. In fact, this ecosystem exists within the rainforest. Yet, because human beings walk on two legs, because we're ground-dwelling creatures, we miss it entirely. All one has to do to experience this unique ecosystem is to look up. In the dense, inter- ...

1403. Still in One Peace

Matthew 11:25-30

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... distinction between work and play, labor and rest, action and contemplation. For in Christ both are joyously the same. We all need to take the occasional vacation from our jobs. Even Jesus had a rhythm of contemplation and action. He periodically came apart to the mountains, the desert, or the water. We too need to "come apart so that we don't come apart" (as many have put it). The life of faith is finding the unique personal rhythm of sitting and stirring. It will be different for all of us. But a disciple ...

1404. Cross Purposes

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... healing touch. " " Jesus bridged the yawning gulf between social and economic classes of his day. " Crossing-over boundaries is risky. It often puts us at cross-purposes with those in authority. When crossing from the Mexican border into the heat-blasted desert of southern Arizona, the dangerous, bubbled-tar roadway has been dubbed the Devil's Highway. Boundary lines are where those on either side glare and glower at each other, throwing hostility and mistrust across the divide. Boundaries create a no-man ...

1405. How to Beat the Devil

Matthew 4:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... God for its mountainous provisions. It is Israel's wilderness experience that also informs Jesus' retort to the devil's second temptation. Keeping physically intact was a high priority for the Israelites wandering in the barren, open vastness of the desert. Big productions - getting out of Egypt, destroying the pursuing Egyptian army - wouldn't mean anything if the next generation couldn't be provided for and protected. So it was that Israel in the wilderness was continually uneasy, petitioning God again ...

1406. What Names Are You Naming?

Isaiah 49:1-7

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... nothing but a seemingly endless list of everlasting begats? Why is so much sacred space accorded these dreary roll calls of ancient ancestors? Except for testing our ability to pronounce some of the multi-syllable, tongue-twisting monikers sported by some long-dead desert-dwellers, what is the point of something that seems about as edifying as the telephone book. Why are they there? Why do we insist on reading these lists of names? For Judaism, the people, the nation, was never more or less than a million ...

1407. Soren's Heart

2 Timothy 3:10--4:8

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... . At this point in the apostle's life he's in prison. It looks as though he will surely die there soon. Furthermore, the text reports that at Paul's first legal hearing all those who had previously offered their support had now abandoned him - "all deserted me" (verse 16). Yet the witness of the apostle isn't the condemnation of those who left him. The witness of Paul isn't despair at his terminal condition. Rather, the witness of Paul is a confident proclamation: "the Lord stood by me and gave me strength ...

1408. Soul Deep Not Skin Deep

Luke 16:1-15

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... body is wasting away, the Spirit within him is growing in strength and power. John Paul II keeps going, because God's presence and power are growing within him. His life in Christ isn't skin-deep, but soul-deep. The Spirit will never desert him, never fail him, even when he draws his last breath. (With thanks to a conversation with South African church leader Dr. Nelus Niemandt for the development of this insight). Are you defining yourself by trademark external signifiers: the measurements your body bears ...

1409. The Ultimate Thanksgiving Feast

Luke 17:11-19

Sermon

King Duncan

... endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you,” he said to the crowds that sought after him. They asked him, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread ...

1410. Thanks Be to God

Deuteronomy 26:1-15

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... action and nursed them back to health. This story, our lesson from Deuteronomy, and the national holiday we celebrate suggest that we must always demonstrate gratitude in our lives, to one another and most especially to God. The Hebrews sojourned in the desert for forty years due to their disobedience and lack of faithfulness, but God never forgot or abandoned them. In order for the people to demonstrate in some way that they, despite their past inconsistency, wanted to follow Yahweh, the Lord instructs the ...

1411. Eleven Plus One

Acts 2:1-13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... loyalty. When he needed them the most (Peter, James, and John), and asked them to stay awake and keep watch for him, they fell asleep (Mark 14:32-34). One of them betrayed him. One of them denied him. All of them deserted him. (Matthew 26:56) But after Pentecost the negative of disciple-divisiveness is transformed into the positive of disciple-diversity. At Pentecost diversity is celebrated and welcomed into a new all-inclusive communal moment. Instead of wisely seeking out those with similar cultures ...

1412. Get a Peace of the Rock

Luke 10:1-24

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... genocide. But here's one incident that brings it home even more pointedly. Seven Seventh-Day Adventist Tutsi Pastors gathered their flock and sought refuge at a hospital and church in Mugonero. When the police who they paid to protect them suddenly deserted, they saw the handwriting on the wall and wrote to their supervisor, Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana. The pastor's son replied in person: "Saturday, the sixteenth, at exactly nine o'clock in the morning, you will be attacked." And just to make sure they ...

1413. Saved by the Bell

Luke 23:26-43

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... were social centers in the 18th century – places where you'd take your date for a picnic, or walk your cow – there was no problem in finding people to dig you up in the daytime when a bell went off. The problem was at night, when cemeteries were deserted and supposedly haunted. What church trustees ended up doing was hiring people to sit up all night and listen for the bells to ring. This is the source of another expression that has made it into our language. Anyone guess what it is? The people hired to ...

1414. Set Life Free

Matthew 13:1-23

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... that as the Second Adam, he's also a gardener – a sower casting seeds of his word across the face of the land. Even as God turned a barren planet into a Garden of Eden, Jesus starting his cultivation efforts on the hardest clay, the driest desert, the starkest wilderness, and created a new Garden of Eden – a landscape of salvation and redemption for all creation. In today's parable of the sower, Jesus describes the realities that face all who carry on cultivation efforts of their own. We can sow. But ...

1415. The CatWalk Church and the CrossLove Church

John 15:1-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Anyone? That's right. Cheese hats. Say "Peabody Hotel" and what do you think of? Anyone? That's right. Ducks. At the classy Peabody Hotel in Memphis, TN, hundreds come to lunch every day for one specific reason. It's not that the chef is glamorous or that the deserts are gigantic or that the menu is gastronomic. That all may be true. But that's not why they come. No, the diners come for the ducks. Not to eat duck. But to watch ducks. The Peabody Hotel is famous for its schooled entourage of fowl who arrive ...

1416. WaterFire Disciples

Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... because you don't want to be destroyed by it. (Myles Horton, The Long Haul: An Autobiography (New York: Doubleday, 1990, 80.) This is what we often forget about the story of the burning bush in Exodus 3:2. A bush on fire is no big deal in the desert. Lots of bushes spontaneously combust all the time. The big deal here is that the bush was on fire but wasn't consumed. We're called to burn without burning up to burn without being consumed by the fire. An inflammable faith isn't a biblical faith. Jeremiah didn ...

1417. Christianity's First Sermon

Luke 23:26-43

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... and to guilt. Oh the deleterious effects of truth, you have hurt others but oh how good I felt. You gave me power and control and now you have abandoned me. I thought we were in love but you have disappeared. I thought you were my God but you have deserted me. I am but a fool. How I trusted you. Now in what am I to put my trust? I am in despair, woe is me, what I thought was real was just a mirage, what I thought was true was just a myth, an evanescent vapor of, what I ...

1418. Is God Showing through You?

2 Peter 1:12-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... in the light of God's glory. There were a lot of dark, foreboding places, a lot of dismal open spaces, a lot of darkened corners to pass through. Before the light shone on Jesus, he had to · Endure forty days and nights in a desert of desolation, · Cross and re-cross the murky waters of the Jordan, · Wander through a wilderness to find his crazy cousin, his prophetic announcer, his baptizer, · Perch on a high place faced with great temptations and get safely down and away from his tempter, · Return ...

1419. The Ultimate Identity Thief

Galatians 3:15-25

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... the pagan hodgepodge of the world. The perspective from the other side of the coin was just as insulting. How could a cultured, educated, politically powerful free-born Roman or Greek citizen possibly be equated with a strange scruffy, religiously-stunted band of desert-dwellers whose own country had been over-run long ago? Or how about no slave or free? Even the most pathetically poor free man knew he existed in a whole different realm of possibility than was available to the most educated, elevated slave ...

1420. Inward, Upward, Outward

Romans 9:30--10:21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... was also stuck out in the wilderness. So the devil might just as well have told Jesus to manufacture himself a good, fast camel out of those stones saving his feet a long walk back to civilization. While he was at it, Jesus could have transformed the desert into an oasis, whipped up a Saddam Hussein-style residence and settled in for a decadent vacation. Do you get it? The devil's temptation is not about bread. The devil's temptation is to live a "me-first" life a life devoted to gathering as much stuff ...

1421. The Naked Christian

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... for "the people of the covenant"). [Note: the NRSV unfortunately omits Luke's distinctive "the" and reads simply "people".] This common Jewish ancestry, however, still leaves room for great diversity. There are those from the coast lands and those from the desert interior. There are those from the powerful religious epicenter and those from the forgotten boondocks. There are, assuming Jesus was directing his speech to those personally gathered around him, those who are poor and those who are rich. There are ...

1422. The Four Marks of Failure

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... must chop the rope that is causing the entire ship to sink, with every hack nailing the coffin of his comrade valiantly treading water. The face of Aubrey/Crowe as he hacks away at the rope, saves the ship and all aboard but deserts his friend, speaks volumes about the loneliness of leadership. 4. When you're living a carefree life. I'm admitting, with great embarrassment, that despite my best intentions to avoid particularly worthless media (whether it be TV, radio, internet, or just old-fashioned gossip ...

1423. Salted with Fire

Mark 9:42-50

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... British Columbia were wiped out by the wind-whipped flames of forest fires that became city fires. In Oregon the state was severed in half. The main pass over the Cascade Mountains, dividing the green moist western half of the state from the eastern, dry, high-desert side of the state, was completely closed for two weeks. But even as the drought, high temperatures and winds kept fires raging in the west, the fires in the East went out completely. If you don't think you're dependent on fire, think again. Our ...

1424. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

John 16:17-33

Sermon

James McCormick

... pardon; I never promised you a rose garden.” I encountered those words again a few years ago when they appeared as the unofficial slogan of the emerging nation of Israel. When Jews migrated to Israel and were asked to settle in “kibbutzim” in parched desert frontiers, they were reminded of the arduous task ahead by the signs posted all around the settlements. The signs read: “We never promised you a rose garden.” More recently I have seen the words again as the title of a book and a movie made ...

1425. A New Vision

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

King Duncan

... a mountain. It didn’t run out of fuel or have one of its parts malfunction. Rather, it committed suicide. It shut its engines down, erased classified material from its computer, set its flaps in a death spiral and smashed at 400 mph into the desert. Here’s what happened. More than 100 miles away, a team of Air Force personnel were testing a second Global Hawk aircraft. At some time in this test, this team told this second plane to terminate its flight. Unfortunately, the first plane “overheard” this ...

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