Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1451 to 1475 of 2962 results

John 4:1-26

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... have suicide rates double those of 1970; they are three times as likely to be depressed as their grandparents' generation. Over 1.4 million will have psychological counseling before adulthood. The first electronic generation, busters are the "designated decision makers" about matters electronic for their families. Their electronic equipment – car-phones, car stereos, pagers, fax machines, e-mail – are essential trademarks of who they are, not luxury items they purchase when the money is available ...

1452. God for Dummies

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... -powered mildew growing behind it rips out all the subwall as well. Why didn't anything show signs of rot and decay on the TV show? Whereas "Joe & Sally" own a bathroom that consists of nothing but right angles and true squares, you moldering commode was designed by some inebriated shipwright who wouldn't have known a square corner if it had hit him in the face. Of course, the same thing holds true for those parental guides the so-called "women's" magazines and pediatricians offices are so found of foisting ...

1453. God's Original Seatbelt (Mother's Day)

John 13:31-38

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... . On May 10, 1908, a full Mother's Day service was conducted at Andrew Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia and in the afternoon at Wanamaker's Auditorium in Philadelphia. Not until 1912 did the Methodist Episcopal Church General Conference agree to designate the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a resolution confirming and setting aside the second Sunday in may as Mother's Day. Ann Jarvis used "mother love" to spread Jesus' love commandment from the "Boys ...

1454. Kudzu Frittata

James 3:13-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... sit glued to their televisions and computer monitors waiting to see the results of such a contest? Of course there are. For the natural progression of over-life is not towards more life, but towards death. The over-lived life hides an under-lived soul. God's design and dream for us is an abundant life – not an over-life. God never scrimps or plays stingy with the grace that is offered us on the path to this divinely-promised abundance. Who can look at Christ on the cross and accuse God of playing too ...

1455. Let's Dance

Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of depression, the night of doubt, the night of death. "The people that walked in darkness has seen a great light. On those who live in a land of deep shadow a light has shone." (Isaiah 9:2) Dance the shadows away. Our beings are designed to dance night into day, sadness into gladness, doubt into faith. Super-string physicists now define matter as dancing filaments of energy." Even the turning dance" of planet Earth spins the night into the sunrise of surprise and hope. "The whole creation is on tiptoe ...

1456. Your Cheatin' Heart

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

In every machine, gizmo, tool, and implement designed by human ingenuity, there always seems to be one malfunction, one fatal flaw, one fault that spells doom for the entire contraption. You know its bad when the auto mechanic solemnly pronounces over your unmoving carcass of a car "it's the transmission." You know you're in trouble when ...

1457. Are You a GOT TO or a GET TO Christian?

Genesis 15:1-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , or a stun gun? · How many of you live in a "gated" community with its own security team? · How many of you must walk through a metal detector before you can enter your school or your workplace? · How many of you have bars on your windows designed to keep people out not in? But doesn't it seem the more we have tried to fortify ourselves against successive onslaughts of violence, the more fearful and the more victimized we have become? And the violence grows. One rallying idea that has run counter to our ...

1458. The Golden Bull or the Old Rugged Cross?

Acts 16:16-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... it, we glorify it, we submit to its mysteries-in short, we goddify it?) couldn't care less about pure science and scientific discovery. It only wanted to know: Where's the profit? Not long-term profit. Short-term profit. In the 70s, it was designer jeans and VCRs. In the 80s it was vacation homes, microwave ovens, personal computers and BMWs. In the 90s it was cell phones, SUVs, palm pilots. What it is today? (ask your people how people image the American Dream) Paul and Silas were slapped around and ...

1459. Living in the Red

Galatians 6:11-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... unto all that truly turn to him. Come unto me all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.'" And how are we refreshed? By being in the red. I learned only recently that Charlotte Elliott's "Just as I Am" was actually designed as a communion hymn. (For more see Peter Newman Brooks, Hymns as Homilies [Wiltshire, England: Gracewing, 1997], 186.) How I missed this is beyond me. The opening theme states it clearly: " . . . that thy Blood was shed for me . . ." Published first in 1834 in a little ...

1460. A Case for Living Together

Revelation 7:9-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Kasparov lost to Big Blue. Today's Inducement Prizes include the "X" Prize, an award of $10 million for the first privately built craft to carry passengers in sub-orbital space flight. The 33-year-old millionaire John Carmack, Doom and Quake video game designer, is actively competing for the X Prize right now as we speak. The Methuselah Mouse Prize is offered by the Methuselah Foundation for therapies that produce the longest lived laboratory mouse. There's a $250,000 Feynman Prize which goes to person or ...

1461. Inward, Upward, Outward

Romans 9:30--10:21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... that the nature of power gained here on earth is for it to fail. Power outages were here long before electricity was ever discovered and harnessed. Ask Rome. Ask the French monarchy. Ask Hitler. Ask the USSR. Power outages are part of earth's design. Jesus refused to plug in to this downward spiral, this downcast view of glory and power. Because Jesus accepted only one authority, because Jesus served only one God, he was unplugged from the earth's limited sources and instead was connected upwards. Jesus ...

1462. Are You Living the Three Advents?

Romans 13:11-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... . I love Paul’s image of “wrapping” ourselves in this “armor” or “garment” of light. Have you ever noticed how, when a degree is conferred on someone who is entering a “profession,” there is some sort of special garment that accompanies the new designation? The garment signifies that the person wearing it is armored to fight evil in the world. A medical doctor is garbed with a full-length white coat. It is while wearing this garment that the doctor wages war against disease and injury. The ...

1463. Which Will It Be - the Silvered Cross or the Slivered Cross?

Matthew 17:1-13, Mark 9:2-13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... mobs, Roman complicity, the disciples' cowardice the truth is that this film does succeed in making the cross once again a symbol of the human capacity for cruelty, blood-thirstiness, abandonment, and evil. And for that reminder alone we should all thank Mel Gibson. The designer Roger Dubuis offers for sale a "Follow Me" watch in the form of a cross. It starts at $12,500. Let us stop domesticating the cross. The cross is not a geometric figure that can conveniently hold a lot of diamonds or rubies to make ...

1464. The Whole Shebang in Six Words

John 11:38-44

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of Science" (the title of his 2002 book). Wolfram, a Ph.D. at 20 from Caltech, proposes that instead of looking for more and more complex theories to creation, we should be looking for simpler ones (primitives, he calls them). Complex results do not require complex designs. A simple 8 bit code could produce variety and randomness on a huge scale using what he calls cellular automatons. All of creation, Wolfram argues, could be based on only 4 or 5 lines of programming code. How's this for a simple line of ...

1465. There Will Be No Adults in Heaven

Mark 10:13-16

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... have now been reintroduced, not because kids are clamoring for them, but their parents are Commercials like the Pepsi one with parents surprising their kids at a rock concert mosh pit Booklist now features a Crossovers: Children's Books for Adults Adults buying cars designed for kids, wearing baby-doll fashions, playing kickball and Twister In NYC, the new rage is Food Fit for a Kid with Peanut Butter and Jelly Co. restaurants opening up, and Grilled Cheese Sandwich Store opening up, etc. Eat like a kid is ...

1466. What's Left Is Right

Mark 9:33-37

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... want to get out some party games here and help people relive their horror. You could get some volunteers to do a quick party-game in front of everyone.] Whether played at a child's birthday or an after-hours office shindig, party games are designed to make us look ridiculous and act silly. The rationale seems to be as follows: now that we've been silly together, the ice is broken, people can get comfortable, and we can begin enjoying one another without pretensions and protocols. Party games are supposed ...

1467. The Smell of Fear

Mark 4:35-41

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... . So Aanko Technologies sells high-end anthrax detectors we can mount next to our home smoke alarms, carbon monoxide sensors, and radon detectors. So we build Apocalypse Houses, the newest generation of bomb shelters and who advertisements boast that "your house is designed to still be standing after your neighbors' homes are in rubble." So we purchase an Aerial Egress HOPE (High Office Parachute Escape) to stuff in to our desk drawer. So we stock up on Nuke Pills, (potassium iodide pills) to boost our ...

1468. All God's Children Can Dance

Psalm 30:1-12

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... theological misnomer (after all there are plenty of dancing Baptists), that allows you to escape any and all invitations to get up and dance. Just because some of us don't like to participate in the particular form of pubic humiliation our culture designates as dancing doesn't mean that we can exclude ourselves from the kind of dancing God has intentionally choreographed for creation. There's a soul movement and a spiritual rhythm that pulses throughout the universe, inviting us to participate in a dance ...

1469. Patience

James 5:7-12

Sermon

King Duncan

... , I’m busy, go watch television.’ The most often spoken words in the American household today are the words: go watch television. If not now, when? Later. But later never comes for many and the parent fails to communicate at the very earliest of ages. We give her designer clothes and computer toys, but we do not give her what she wants the most, which is our time. “Now, she is fifteen and has a glassy look in her eyes. ‘Honey, do we need to sit down and talk?’ Too late. Love has passed by.” (5 ...

1470. By God’s Spirit

Zechariah 4:1-14

Sermon

James McCormick

... very well until God is at the center of it, loving, guiding, energizing, empowering. Listen now, I’m about to say something important. (I always try to give you advance warning!) If I have learned anything in my years of life it is that the whole world is designed to function in a God-centered way. God is to be at the center. And everything else in life is to be ordered around that, deriving its meaning and direction and energy from that vital center. And the fact is, nothing in life is going to work out ...

1471. Follow Me!

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

James McCormick

... centeredness. That was the central theme of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus talked repeatedly about the Kingdom of God. What he was saying is that God is to be at the center of life; God is to be the anchor that holds everything else in its proper place. The whole world is designed to function with God at its center, so when you put yourself or anyone or anything else there, it all goes wrong. You want to mess up your life? Put yourself at the center of it. You want to miss out on the best in life? Put yourself at ...

1472. Are You Getting Hymns Out of Your Lions?

1 Corinthians 7:1-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Cowper was published under the title of Olney Hymns in 1779, it contained 348 hymns, 282 of them by Newton. In his preface to Olney Hymns, the collection that included "Amazing Grace," Newton wrote these words: "They should be Hymns, not Odes, if designed for public worship, and for the use of plain people. Perspicuity, simplicity, and ease should be chiefly attended to; and the imagery and coloring of poetry, if admitted at all, should be indulged very sparingly . . . The workings of the heart of man, and ...

1473. Mark 1:21-28

Mark 1:21-28

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... but what Jesus DOES that gets recorded by Mark. This action gets started in verse 23, with the revelation that among those in the synagogue was a man "with an unclean spirit" (a pneuma akatharton) a typical Jewish term for a demon (daimonion). The designation "unclean" denotes that which is the opposite of holy. Of course, the most extreme opposite of holy is demonic. This unclean spirit further articulates the distance between the holy and the unclean by asking Jesus, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of ...

1474. 1 Corinthians 7:29-31

1 Corinthians 7:1-40

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... spiritual high ground, Paul's words push them over the edge. The fact that Paul refuses to reject marriage in one breath yet then counsels "those who have wives be as though they had none" in the next intentionally destabilizes. Paul's five directives are designed to get the Corinthians in a missional mode. He challenges them to consider how they can live 1) a married life; 2) a life filled with moments of mourning and rejoicing; 3) an economically involved life; and 4) a life lived in the midst of worldly ...

1475. 1 Corinthians 1:3-9

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... to the community, "in Christ Jesus." The divinely gifted enrichment experienced by the Corinthians is further evidenced, Paul declares, by the way in which "the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you" (verse 6). These spiritual gifts aren't designed to cause strife or separation within the community. Exactly the opposite. These gifts will strengthen the bondedness of all the believers. Paul declares that it's among the Corinthians that the experience of Christ and their testimony of Christ ...

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