Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 1451 to 1475 of 4972 results

1451. Epiphany: The Tragedy of Rejection

Luke 4:14-30

Sermon

J. Ellsworth Kalas

... to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum' " (v. 23). Then Jesus reminded them that a prophet is never welcome in his hometown. Perhaps if he had stopped there, the people would have admitted, grudgingly, that it was difficult for them to look at Jesus as outsiders might. But he pressed the issue in way that offended them. Jesus reminded them there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's day, but, for some ...

1452. Saints in Shorts

Luke 6:27-36

Sermon

David J. Kalas

... listening carefully to it. And if it happens that a familiar passage of scripture says something more or something other than what I thought, I stand very little chance of hearing that, for I have stopped listening carefully to it. New translations of old, familiar texts can help to break the logjam in our understandings. Eugene Peterson, a retired Presbyterian pastor and professor of theology, offers us such a fresh translation of these teachings of Jesus. Peterson's version, called The Message, includes ...

1453. Jesus, Desirous

Luke 13:31-35

Sermon

Frank G. Honeycutt

... live in. Foxes have always had a certain allure over God's children, in this or any century. They may not be quite as bizarre and murderous as Herod, but foxes still slyly woo away the hearts of God's brood. And this is the thing: Jesus is powerless to stop it. He can walk on water and raise the dead, but he cannot make us love him. He desires such love, but he cannot force it. Cannot keep us from slamming the screen door in his face, defenseless against the many Herods waiting in the shadows. One of the ...

1454. Return to the Father

Joel 2:12-17

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... shifts on our automobiles, automatic office doors, automatic happiness in marriage, and so too automatic life after death. Few of us stop to tremble before the specter of death, as our text pictures people trembling (2:1). In our day, some even seek out death with ... the help of physician-assisted suicide. But have we stopped to consider the fact that at the end we shall meet God? And that his will be the final judgment as to whether ...

1455. Purpose-Driven

Jeremiah 1:1-19

Sermon

King Duncan

... were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’” You can’t be any clearer in your understanding of your mission than that. No wonder Jeremiah has had such an impact on the history of the Judeo-Christian community. It’s hard to stop a person who knows exactly what he was sent here to do. Jeremiah obviously knew what he was about at an early age. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you . . .” Jeremiah had some idea of his mission from the very beginning. Some people are ...

1456. If You Get Too Close to the Cross, You Will End Up Carrying It

Mark 15:21-32

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... only on signal. As the train neared the cemetery, the conductor would call our: “The next station is Calvary. Is there anyone for Calvary?” Here is a parable of the train of life. It stops regularly to discharge passengers in the marketplace, the beauty salon, the amusement center, and other stations of popular appeal. But Calvary requires a definite request if we choose it as our destination. . . To experience the saving benefits of the cross, we must know the glory of bearing it ourselves. So ...

1457. If I Have Not Love

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... cheek and to save her life I had cut the little nerve. Making my rounds late in the afternoon I walked into her room as the sun was going down. noticed that she and her husband were enjoying a moment of quiet intimacy as he sat on the bed. I stopped as I entered the room not wanting to interrupt their time together. I knew almost at once that I was as standing on Holy ground. Her husband, standing now on the opposite side of her bed. They seemed to dwell there in the evening lamp light, isolated from me ...

1458. Some Healing Is Up To You

John 5:1-15

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... water, and when the water was troubled, if you got into the water first, there would be a healing for you. This man had waited there for for thirty-eight years. Jesus shocked him with the question: “Do you want to be healed?” Have you ever stopped to think as you read this Scripture, that the man never really answered Jesus’ question? He could have said yes or no, but instead he took that opportunity to pour out his sad story of loneliness and disappointment and despair. Now there’s a lot in that ...

1459. How May We Come to God?

Psalm 24:1-10

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. And always -- it never failed -- she would stop at that point in her reading and say to me with earnest conviction, “Son, I’ve got clean hands and a pure heart.” It was her way ... ’s presence in the silence, but , but more than anything else, enjoying the presence of the Lord. Mother Theresa stopped for a long time before a statue of the Crucified Christ, oblivious of Bishop Stafford standing nearby. He could hear ...

1460. The Prize of the High Calling of God

Philippians 3:12-4:1

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... , she had been jilted by the only man she ever loved? She received a letter from him on their wedding day, calling off their wedding. She was putting on her wedding dress when the letter arrived at twenty minutes before nine. Something died inside her that day. She had stopped all the clocks at twenty minutes before nine – sealed up every window of the house, and never took off her wedding dress. There she sat, while her world wasted and withered away. That’s a parable for us. Crying over the past, we ...

1461. With Jesus In The Wilderness

Luke 4:1-13

Sermon

King Duncan

... of them. But after a while the vast bulk of prisoners appeared, the ordinary German foot soldiers. They could hardly march at all, let alone in step. They were emaciated, with few clothes, truly humiliated, wretched, gaunt, pitiful creatures. The jeers and abuse stopped. There was a hush over the crowded lines of people. Then finally a couple of elderly Russian women, from the margins, broke through to these ghostly figures and held out crusts of bread. The bread was gratefully and eagerly accepted and soon ...

1462. People With Shining Faces

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon

King Duncan

... her beseeching. She gave up on her yearning. And though the groceries seemed heavier, the stove colder, she refused to pray. Until one night a divine voice called out to Hannah in a dream, “Why have you stopped praying to me?” Hannah retorted, “Well you never answered, so I stopped asking.” To which the Divine replied, “Don’t you realize, every call of yours IS itself my response? Your great yearning is my greatest gift.” With this, Hannah’s ceaseless prayer came back to her lips. Her ...

1463. A Chosen People

Isaiah 43:14-28

Sermon

King Duncan

... . Now, how do we declare God’s praise? We do it by living a life of genuine Christian love. Author Max Lucado tells about a woman in a small Arkansas community who was a single mom with a frail baby. This hard-working Mom had a neighbor who would stop by every few days and keep the child so she could shop. After some weeks this neighbor shared more than her time with this hard-working Mom; she shared her faith in Jesus Christ. This young mother was deeply affected by her neighbor’s actions and words and ...

1464. The Man With A Plumbline

Amos 7:10-17

Bulletin Aid

H. Burnham Kirkland

... the orphans; be fair to the needy and the helpless." All: Come, O God, and rule the world; all the nations are yours. Collect O Lord, our God, we pray that you will give us the mind of Christ so that when we see those whom society overlooks we will stop to help and not pass by. Keep us ever mindful of the homeless and the poor, and let your grace shine through us as we seek to lift them from despair. Through our deeds of mercy may they feel the love of Christ who came that all may have life ...

1465. What Making a Difference Looks Like

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... to the nearest station, walked to the home, received her fee, placed the dear departed in the suitcase and left She would then ride the subway home, setting the suitcase down. A thief would slip up and steal the suitcase. She'd look up and scream, "Wait. Stop. Thief." And when the thief opened the suit case..... Surprise! The preacher who put me on to this story added the following comment, “A lot of us are like New York thieves. We grab what we think will give happiness; but when we get it, it doesn ...

1466. What Is Required of Us?

Matthew 5:17-20

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... will pray that God will make you dangerous, so dangerous that demons will flee when you enter the room." "All right. But pray I would be really, really dangerous, Daddy." McManus then asks a question that called me up short, “Have you come to that place in life where you stop asking God to give you a safe life and make you a dangerous follower of Jesus Christ?”1 If I had to summarize the desires of most people who come to me off the streets and from this and other churches I would say they come with two ...

1467. Peacemaking and Self Control

Matthew 5:21-26

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... honor killings went on all the time. No murder was a first step to halting a chain reaction of vengeance that would draw families and clans into a vortex of increasing violence. And if you don’t start the cycle of killing, you don’t have to stop it. And if you deal with the root early, you won’t have to deal with fruit of murder later on. It was then, after quoting what everyone knew, that Jesus said something extraordinary. He put his own words alongside those of the Old Testament in a breathtaking ...

1468. The Heart of an Intimate Matter

Matthew 5:27-30

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... in an opposite direction. From the bottom of his stomach protrudes a rounded flow of flesh as though it were a separate limb, stopped in half growth. Sasha is in constant pain.” Miller then turns from Sasha’s physical deformities to our moral deformation: “As terrible ... in, they had to override manually six separate computer alarms. One by one the computers would come up and say, Stop! Dangerous! Go no further! And one by one, rather than shutting off the experiment, they shut off the alarms and ...

1469. Comfortable Christianity Is a Big, Fat Lie

Matthew 7:15-23

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... to destruction, and in the end Christian false prophets are consigned to the fires along with their naive, obedient, and adoring followers. But you don’t have to follow false prophets to a dreadful end. You can get off the train of ease and error at any stop this side of death. The narrow gate is always available. The repentance of the thief on the cross at the last minute proves as much. You can always turn around with a cry for help and an appeal for mercy. But comfortable American Christianity, as I ...

1470. Panic Room

John 20:19-23

Sermon

King Duncan

... of the most daring people who have ever walked this earth. Ridicule could not deter them, or torture or the threat of death. They answered Rollo May’s question--“what would it mean for our world if He had truly risen?”--by the way they lived. Nothing could stop them. That’s why more than one billion people on this planet today bow at the name of Jesus. Their terror turned to trusting, their fear was replaced by faith. They left the panic room to plant the Gospel in every corner of our world. Now the ...

1471. The Seven Delightful Blessings of the Word of God in the Believer's Life

Psalm 119:169-176

Sermon

Michael Milton

... creamy white on the interior and a large smear of real butter melting in the middle, was just too much for me to bear. We stopped and I went in to get two. I ate mine, but my son had just had breakfast somewhere else, so I said, “Just save it ... are that lost lamb. Maybe grief has made you loosen you grip. Maybe confusion about God or His will in your life has made you stop holding on. Maybe there is a child who feels like an outsider, who feels different, lonely, and you are losing your grip. My beloved, if ...

1472. Identifying a Christian

John 13:31-38

Sermon

King Duncan

... bus and said, ‘Alright, gang, get out there and tell ’em about Jesus. I’ll be back at five o’clock.' “We made our way off the bus hesitantly. We stood there on the corner and had a prayer, then we spread out. I walked down the sidewalk and stopped before a huge tenement house. I gulped, said a prayer, and ventured inside. There was a terrible odor. Windows were broken out, no lights in the hall. I walked up one flight of stairs and toward a door where I heard a baby crying. I knocked on the door ...

1473. Guidance for a Time of Chaos

John 16:5-16

Sermon

King Duncan

... been in that area before, and they were quickly lost. Seeing a policeman parked in his car, they pulled over and asked him for directions. The policeman said, “You go down two more lights; turn right and go to a fork in the road where you bear left. Go two stop signs . . . or is it three . . . No! Here’s an easier way. Make a U-turn and go back to that little shopping mall back there; you know the one with the gas station on the corner. You hear what I am saying? Turn left there and just follow the road ...

1474. A Time of Grief

Luke 7:11-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... day are about death, and they are quite similar. In the story from I Kings, the prophet Elijah is a lodger in the home of a widow. This widow has been very kind to Elijah. Tragically her only son becomes ill. He grows worse and worse, and finally stops breathing. The poor widow strikes out at Elijah, as if somehow this was his fault. This is not unusual. There was a book written about a decade ago by a Jewish rabbi who noted that people in grief often experience misplaced anger. A death in the family draws ...

1475. Night Moves

Genesis 32:22-32

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... his sermon he read out the first line of this hymn. When he came to the phrase, "My company before is gone, and I am left alone with thee," he thought of his brother, Charles, who had gone before him to the other shore, and was now in heaven. He stopped, and put his hands over his face, and wept. The whole congregation wept with him as they remembered Charles, the great hymn writer of the Methodist movement. This hymn is one of his best. Let me say a word about the tune. It is called "Candler." It is named ...

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