Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 126 to 150 of 1230 results

1 Kings 19:9-18

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... winning. The thing for us to remember if we are depressed is that God does not demand nor expect us to succeed but only to be faithful to him and to the task he gives us. Indeed, we need worthy goals and high ideals. A person must have a goal which exceeds his/her grasp. We aspire toward the ideal. We make progress toward the goal, but we may not reach it. For instance, Moses’ goal was to reach the Promised Land, but he was not permitted to enter it, only to see it from Mt. Nebo. All God expects of us ...

127. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Romans 13:1-7

Sermon

Carroll Gunkel

... children by teaching them their ABC’s on their fifth birthdays. The Bonhoeffer family was a family noted for its high ethical priniciples; they were persons who daily practiced the Christian ideal although their irregular church attendance raised some eyebrows. Perhaps Dietrich inherited some of his lofty idealism from his grandmother who, although in her ninetieth year, refused to honor picket lines set up around the stores of Jewish merchants for the purpose of discouraging patronization. She would not ...

128. "Lite Beer by Miller"

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Sermon

Peter Rudowski

... it be that Paul is saying to us that when we get into it with another person, there comes a time when we need to stop and remind ourselves that the other comes into the argument with good intentions? The other person can come with lofty ideals the same as I can come with lofty ideals. That person needs to be heard and respected the same as I need to be heard and respected. Let me give you an example. Eight years ago I came to be your pastor. Before I moved here, I had a good friend who lived in the ...

129. What Are Christian Liberals? - 1951

John 16:5-16

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... , if I understand it at all, is aiming at. This is the great objective. This is the banner we lift, the ideal we proclaim as a Christian Liberal Church. There are seven outstanding characteristics. First and foremost is the idea of intellectual freedom. ... , fixed in creed and ritual and practice. It is a growing movement. Old forms become outgrown and must be brushed aside. The great ideal of the Christian liberal is the Master, who said, "Ye have heard of old time ... but, I say unto you" (Matthew 5:21). ...

130. Our Father Who Art on Earth

Proverbs 1:8-19

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... Church And sits among his boys He hears the pastor pray and preach And hears his daughter’s voice, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice." Our children should hold us fathers in a double attitude - fear and love. I remember an ideal Christian father in another parish who was a kindly but stern ruler of his home, his household and his children. He set for them the best kind of example of industry, morality and godliness. But despite all this, his son fell into the influence of this ...

131. Marriage is Forever

Matthew 5:31-32, Matthew 19:1-12

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... in the failure of the marriage. Then I am going to receive God's forgiveness and make a new start. Here as in all of the Sermon on the Mount, we have absolute ideals and absolute grace, without one compromising the other. As we are healed by God's grace and equipped by the Holy Spirit, we are able to reach farther toward God's absolute ideals. Because our Lord is full of forgiveness and grace, I believe that He will hear such a prayer and assist with a fresh start. Let me close with just a few reflections ...

132. The Ultimate Christmas Gift

Psalm 85:1-13, Ephesians 2:11-22

Sermon

Erskine White

... subordinated to the spirit of the person who is our peace, the baby who is born in Bethlehem. Thus, the path to peace lies in emulating the Man that baby became. In personal and in political terms, peace is no longer an abstract idea but an embodied ideal which is available to everyone because it is found in the love, forgiveness, service and sacrifice which are the essence of Christian spirituality. We look in vain to our own devices and are misled by secular wisdoms; true peace has come to us at last in ...

133. Loved People, Love People

John 15:1-17

Sermon

Richard A. Jensen

... our lives touch through our daily work! Charity begins at home. Love for one another begins with all those whom we encounter in the routines of daily life. Loved people, love people. In an ideal world, if everyone loved their nearest neighbor, all the world’s people would be cared for. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world. Love for our nearest neighbor is where the call to love one another begins. It cannot end there, however. Our farthest neighbors, people who do not occupy the same daily time and ...

134. Goodness Is Not Good Enough

Mark 10:17-31

Sermon

James W. Robinson

... and unfeeling as Scrooge, at the time he sought from Jesus the secret of eternal life. But the peril of his becoming so was present. In his youth, Scrooge, too, had been a person of high ideals and impeccable conduct. He may even have possessed a warmer heart than the rich young man. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, the ideals faded, and the tender heart turned to stone as it bowed to the god of gold. It is entirely possible that in his declining years the rich young man did indeed become a first-century ...

135. Monday in Holy Week

Hebrews 9:11-28, John 12:1-11, Isaiah 42:1-9

Bulletin Aid

Paul A. Laughlin

... -compassionate God, we confess with the deepest sorrow our lack of devotion to the justice that is the hallmark of all your covenants, and especially of the one established and enacted by Jesus. We admit as well our reluctance to pay any price for that ideal, much less to make the supreme sacrifice. Forgive us our self-preservation, and give us the compassion and the courage to follow the life-threatening and life-preserving way of Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen Second Lesson: Hebrews 9:11-15 Theme: The ...

136. God of the Weekday

John 4:1-26

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... in our city, and I was discussing the matter with the owner of large real estate holdings here in our community. He put it this way: "I’m as much a Christian as the next guy, but HERE we’re talking business, we’re not talking Christian idealism." That, I submit to you, is evidence of the most primitive type of superstition. SUPERSTITION! Another case in point: It takes place in the Book of 1 Kings. The date, some 500 years before Christ, about 2,500 years ago. The Syrian King, Benhadad II, had just ...

137. The Overlooked

Luke 1:26-38

Sermon

Theodore L. Yewey

... was filled with enthusiasm and the natural inquisitiveness of youth. But add to this some other factors. All that we know about this teenager would indicate that she was the example of innocence. There was about her a sense of purity. She had been taught high ideals and there was a sacredness about her life, her body, and her mind. There is a holiness and a purity about her that makes her life one of radiance, whatever the mechanics of her pregnancy. Further, Mary teaches us a lesson in trust and openness ...

138. My Soul Is Glad - Because of God

Luke 1:46-56

Sermon

... it was. It seems strange and distant that it ever took us awhile to feel comfortable bringing her special day into our worship. Stranger still, though, is what we did with her when we did observe her importance. She became something of an ideal image, first of all of motherhood - gracious, thankful, rejoicing at the imminent birth, as though all announcements of impending motherhood were to be greeted in the same way. We ignored the special events that preceded her knowledge and the special mission she was ...

139. The Family Was God’s Idea

Sermon

Gregory J. Johanson

... mother." And to his mother, "Behold thy son," passing on to John the responsibility that he as a son was leaving. Jesus was clarifying the fact, I think, that the real tie that makes a family is not blood, but faith, the common love of God, of the truth, of ideals. To see this vindicated, I think we need only to look at the adopted child. Every once in awhile, we will meet a child and we will say, "My, you look just exactly like your mother." "Well, I don’t know why, because I’m adopted." And yet, we ...

140. Someone Greater Than a Prophet

Luke 1:26-38

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... ? And most of these people and groups do not mean to ridicule Jesus, says Shea. Instead, "each and every Jesus (they wrote) is an attempt to portray the authentic man according to a certain mission of life" (p. 23). For them Jesus becomes Jung's "ideal of the self: the 'inkblot in which each person sees what he considers true manhood (personhood)' " (p. 23). While these multiple images are prone to manipulation and propaganda, they are, nonetheless, signs of vitality. As Shea puts it, "Jesus lives out of a ...

141. Home for the Holidays

Luke 2:41-52

Sermon

William G. Carter

... people who are raising us, and an obligation to pass on that trust and love to them and others. As Frederick Buechner writes: Our mothers, like our fathers, are to be honored, the Good Book says. But if Jesus is our guide, honoring them doesn’t mean either idealizing or idolizing them. It means seeing them both for who they are and for who they are not. It means speaking the truth to them. It means the best way of repaying them for their love is to love God and our neighbor as faithfully and selflessly as ...

142. Even Our Business Belongs to God!

Jeremiah 32:1-44

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... man ignored the needs of the poor man Lazarus, and we learn that that was not God’s way. His way is that you do not get hung up on wealth, and that if you have it, you use it generously for the sake of the poor. These are nice ideals, but they will not work on the job tomorrow, will they? The boss expects you to make money for the company. The entrepreneurs among us know that you have to keep expanding the company, you have to increase its wealth, in order to “grow” the business. This brings us back ...

143. Salvation Includes Social Justice

Jeremiah 23:1-8

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... His business). It is about how God rules (using the Church to nurture our spirituality and the state to care for our physical-social well-being). How does God want the state to function? The answer is found in our First Lesson (v. 5). The ideal state over which the Messiah will preside will be one in which justice and righteousness prevail. Perhaps you wonder about the relevance of this Messianic vision for our time and place. Well, Jeremiah was looking into the future, but Christ has come! The Messiah is ...

144. When Your Church Provokes You

Matthew 13:1-23, Hebrews 10:19-39

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... it would be just as easy to worship with the Fellowship of St. Mattress or the Congregation of the Inner Spring, here it is. We gather together from week to week to remind ourselves WHO we are and WHOSE we are and WHAT we are to be about. Yes, the ideal is to provoke one another IN THE RIGHT WAY -- or as the New International Version has it, "spur one another on" -- "to love and good deeds," and to ENCOURAGE one another. YES! We need all the help we can get. For what it is worth, if we are occasionally ...

145. The Pitcher Is Not Alone In This

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

Sermon

King Duncan

... Worship Kit," says Hastings, "tell us they get an extra lift from their own service if at the close, they rush to a mirror and shake hands with themselves. But this is optional."(3) That is some people's ideal of the Christian faith. Just me, myself and I. But this is far from the biblical ideal. Biblically, to be a follower of Christ is to be part of a family, part of a body, as it were. Community is not optional for the Christian. The Christian community is a reflection of the Jewish community out ...

146. Jesus, Where Are You?

John 12:20-36

Sermon

King Duncan

... complete record. For example, we have no idea how Jesus really looked. Was he tall, short, slender, chubby, muscular? You may be offended by the idea of a chubby Jesus, but we really have no idea. Most of us tend to see Jesus according to our own ideals. Books and articles throughout the years have tried to portray Jesus as an executive, as a salesperson, as a hippie, as a fire-brand radical, as a black man, as a blue-eyed blonde and every other way imaginable. Because the historical record is so limited ...

147. Paul's Prayer For Us

Ephesians 3:14-21

Sermon

King Duncan

... of those who witness the crimes and do nothing to help. Such a situation would tempt most of us to despair. Such was the case of Judge Fred M. Mester, a circuit court judge from Oakland County, Michigan. Judge Mester had entered his law career with high ideals and great enthusiasm. He believed in the power of the law, and in making society a better place. But in his courtroom, Judge Mester was forced to confront the fact that, not only does evil exist in our society, but also that evil was aided every day ...

148. Rushing And Realizing

Isaiah 2:1-5

Sermon

King Duncan

... had not been realized. International conditions were grim, and Judah was threatened by powerful enemies. Yet Isaiah cried, "Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord." That is, let us live as though the ideal were present now! (6) And that is our role today two thousand years after Christ's birth. Theologians use the fancy phrase, "realized eschatology." It means to live our lives as if Christ's kingdom were already established. It is to live with pure and loving hearts harboring no anger ...

149. Would You Mind Rescuing Me?

Luke 24:36-49

Sermon

King Duncan

... why the church today is often so anemic. Douglas Hyde was a member of the Communist Party in Britain. He says that as a member of the Communist party which then numbered only 45,000 in all of Britain, he fully expected to win the country to his ideals. His comrades expected the same. When he joined the Catholic Church and left the Communist Party, however, he found himself in a group 100 times larger than his previous one. Yet he found no one who expected the Catholic Church to have much effect. Here was 10 ...

150. What Are You Afraid Of?

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

King Duncan

... we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." (6) Fear can paralyze--whether that fear is based in reality or whether it exists only in our own mind. The Ideal Antidote for Fear Is Faith in God. Jesus says that the ideal antidote for fear is faith in God. "Are not two sparrows sold for a cent?" Jesus says to us. "And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head ...

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