Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 126 to 150 of 3852 results

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Sermon

King Duncan

... Eve, with some hesitation. "Yeah, well," says God, "You can have him on one condition." "What's that, Lord?" "You'll have to let him believe that I made him first." That, of course, is not exactly how the original story goes. The original is one of the best-known stories in human culture. The original is more like a popular television commercial back in the 1960s. In this commercial a young wife says to her Mom with exasperation in her voice, "Please, Mother, I would rather do it myself." That is the story ...

127. The Glorious Interpolation

John 7:45--8:11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... 7:36 or after 21:25 or after Luke 21:38, with variations of text; some mark the passage as doubtful.” In other words, this whole passage is what is called an “interpolation.” It is something added from the outside, which was not part of the original text. Here are the facts, as far as we can ascertain them: the story can be traced back as far as the second century. When St. Jerome produced the Latin “Vulgate” edition in the end of the Fourth century, he included it. Later manuscripts and medieval ...

128. Whatever Happened to those Mansions?

John 14:1-4

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... of that poem at home, it is likely that your last lines read “Yet certain am I of the spot/As if the chart were given.” Actors and orators and scholars who dealt with Miss Dickinson’s poem were baffled by the word “Checks” in the original. They thought it must be a typographical error, a mistake, and that she meant “chart” as in a map. But eventually a man named Thomas Johnson edited her poems and noted that in Miss Dickinson’s earlier years, in her travels by train, she was accustomed—as ...

129. With a Bang or a Whimper?

2 Peter 3:1-18

Sermon

Fredrick R. Harm

... Leigh": Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries ...3 The Christian heart -- and mind -- is content in assenting to Peter's understanding of the earth's origin: "In the beginning God." Then Peter moves on to discuss the end of all things: "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the ...

130. A Converting Presence

1 John 2:28--3:10

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... and Eve, we ate the forbidden fruit of selfish desire and self will because we want to control our own life and destiny. Whatever your understanding of original sin, and we could argue about that one all day, whatever your understanding of original sin, the important truth is that there’s nothing original about sin. That’s right. There’s nothing original about sin. From Adam and Eve on, humankind has followed the same patter of choosing their own will over against God’s will, rebelling against God ...

131. Getting a Handle on Our Faith

John 11:1-16

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... closed down to find the “soul of its past.” Maybe the church needs to “close” itself off from all its programs and pageants and plans in order to rediscover why we are what we are. And who are we? And why are we here? What was our original pump handle? The reason we are here is because we are in love. In fact authentic disciples of Jesus are always in the passionate throes of “first love.” That “first love” is the love we have for Christ. It was that “first love” that brought us to ...

132. 1 Kings 19:9-14

1 Kings 19:1-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... at Horeb and the call of Elisha. Textually, the most problematic, convoluted sections of 1 Kings 19 are precisely those texts assigned for this week. Despite the scrutiny of several generations of biblical scholars, there is still little consensus about what form the original text may have had - or even what was the central concern of this unit. A quick glance at these passages reveals one of the most intrusive problems. Verse 9b begins with God's question to Elijah and is followed in v.10 by Elijah ...

133. Romans 5:12-19

Romans 5:12-19

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... can say is that, for Paul, the sin which gained dominion in this world due to Adam's disobedience is present in all human beings, as we all experience death. Whether or not sinfulness is a part of the human genotype, Paul sees each person complicit in original participation in sin. In short, the power of sin came into the world first with Adam, but sin is carried forward by the choices of each new generation. We share a common, tragic history with Adam, even if it is not a genetic disposition. This is also ...

134. Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... wise farmer knows that not all the seeds will fall on fertile ground, that not all the sprouted seeds will grow to fruition. The farmer also knows, however, if he sows abundantly, he can overcome expected losses. The ear-catching part of Jesus' original parable is not that some seeds flourish while others wither and die. The stunner in this story is the overabundance of yield that this farmer enjoys from those seeds that do prosper. Jeremias has commented that an average first-century farmer might expect ...

135. Luke 16:1-13

Luke 16:1-13

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... . Instead of cursing the steward for his actions, the master commends him for his business shrewdness. This conclusion is so unexpected and so hard to imagine on the lips of Jesus that some commentators have simply thrown in the towel. They claim that the original meaning of verse 8 has been lost due to a disastrous scribal error. Whenever in doubt, it seems, blame "scribal error." Of course, there are a variety of explanations for what went wrong. One camp suggests that the tiny difference between a Greek ...

136. Luke 24:36b-48

Luke 24:36b-48

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... of other texts in Luke's works. Luke 24:36, along with Luke 24:40, are among nine verses that until fairly recently had been thought to be "short versions" in their most original Greek form. First elaborated in 1881 by B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort in their two-volume work The New Testament in the Original Greek, their judgment influenced biblical translations for decades to come. Only in more recent years has there been serious movement away from the "short form" of these texts and a general leaning toward ...

137. Jeremiah 18:1-11

Jeremiah 18:1-11

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... if ... then ... I will repent of the evil that I intended to do to it" (vv.7-8). "If ... if ... then ... I will repent of the good which I had intended to do to it" (vv.9-10). In both sequences the first "if" declares God's original plans ("I will pluck up ..."[v.7]); ("I will build and plant ..." [v.9]). The second "if" calls attention to a specific behavioral possibility available to Israel ("... turns from its evil ..." [v.8]; "... it does evil in my sight ..." [v.10]). According to this sequence, then ...

138. Why We Do What We Do

Matthew 6:1-4

Sermon

Mike Ripski

... plants the seed of suspicion, of distrust. What is behind all that exists, can’t be trusted. We live in a hostile environment. The serpent named our human reality. We are not as God. God has something we don’t have. We are less because of it. The Original Sin was distrust of the Creator to have our welfare at heart – and to think that we can save ourselves by own efforts from this sense of being vulnerable and flawed. Adam and Eve ate and their eyes were opened. What they saw didn’t cure their dis ...

139. Decoding the Da Vinci Code (Part Two - Explaining the Facts)

1 Peter 3:15

Sermon

James Merritt

... were very close friends to people who were eye witnesses. What was the criteria by which the church decided whether or not a book should be considered a part of God's Word? I've already given you one and that is a book had to have apostolic origin. An apostle in New Testament in terms is someone who was an eyewitness to the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Only those books that were either written by an apostle or someone who was close to an apostle and had first hand testimony would have his writing ...

140. A Pair of Ducks and Abundant Life

Mark 8:31--9:1

Sermon

King Duncan

... so beautiful; I want to buy it!” And the teacup said, “Ah, but you know I wasn’t always beautiful.” Now in the children’s story the teacup can talk, and the couple isn’t surprised, so they simply asked the teacup what it meant. The teacup said, “Originally, I was just a soggy, ugly, damp lump of clay. They put me on a wheel, and they started turning that wheel until my head became dizzy. Then they started to poke and prod, and it hurt! I cried out, ‘Stop!’ But they said, ‘Not yet.’ At ...

141. The Poverty in the Christmas Story

Luke 2:1-20

Illustration

Edward F. Markquart

... 's special concern for the poor. Both in the whole gospel of Luke and in the first two chapters of prelude, there is a preoccupation with those who live in poverty. I would like to suggest to you that the forgotten element of Luke's original Christmas pageant is the theme of poverty and poor people themselves. The poverty of the Christmas story is often the forgotten element. Dr. Walter Pilgrim's book about the gospel of Luke is entitled, GOOD NEWS FOR THE POOR. This professor, who is from Pacific Lutheran ...

142. Poor Saint Nicholas

Luke 2:1-20

Illustration

Edward F. Markquart

... Christmas pageant in the gospel of Luke, and these same values are found then in the rest of Luke's gospel as well. The poor are to be exalted, not only at Christmastime, but also throughout the whole year. This Christmas gospel, this original Christmas pageant, continues in the story about St. Nicholas. You have learned before, in other sermons and classes, that St. Nicholas was a figure from history and was a bishop of Smyrna in Turkey in the year 350 A.D. St. Nicholas, as you recall, was not some ...

143. But Is It True?

Luke 2:8-20, Romans 16:25-27

Sermon

Scott Suskovic

... . After I had prepared the wine and bread, I opened up Luke 2 and read the Christmas story for her. As I read, she recited the story out loud with me from memory. We stumbled at some points. I was reading from a new translation. She recited from the original King James Version. When I said the shepherds were terrified and she recited, "And they were sore afraid." She knew it by heart. She learned it as a child, taught it in Sunday school, and heard it annually for ninety years. But now, unable to get out of ...

144. Birthdays and Marriages

Acts 2:1-21

Sermon

Stephen P. McCutchan

... became a sign of a new humanity that placed the enhancement of the lives of people above the preservation of structures. They were able to speak a new language that reached across the barriers that the world had erected of language, custom, race, class, national origin, and ideology. They were, if just for a moment, able to reverse the experience of the tower of Babel and catch a vision of the direction toward which the world must strive. Just as the first life created by the breath of God was made in ...

145. Philip and the Ethiopian

Acts 8:26-40

Understanding Series

David J. Williams

... adjective—in this case “holy”—often follows the noun). This reading is not well supported, but in this case it is easier to imagine that these words were accidentally left out than that they were deliberately added later. In other words, the longer reading may be original. But in any case, from the fact that the official went on his way rejoicing, we can fairly assume that the Spirit had “fallen upon him” in accordance with the promise of 2:38 (see disc. on 3:8). Nor does the longer reading make ...

146. Paul Speaks to the Crowd

Acts 21:37--22:21

Understanding Series

David J. Williams

... that either reflect the personal nature of the recollection or are most likely to appeal to his Jewish audience. Thus he mentions here that it was at noon that he saw the light (cf. 26:13). This emphasizes its brightness, since it outshone the sun, and therefore its supernatural origin (cf. Ezek. 1:4, 28). Only under such a constraint would he have changed the course of his life. 22:7–8 He fell to the ground (cf. 26:14, where they all fell) and heard the voice, as in 9:4, except that here Jesus is given ...

147. The Trial Before Felix

Acts 24:1-27

Understanding Series

David J. Williams

... mean “a heresy,” but in this verse and perhaps in 28:22, it had come close to this meaning. And from that charge, Tertullus moved to the next, that of sacrilege, for Paul, he said, had tried to desecrate the temple (v. 6). Notice that the original accusation has been modified to an “attempt” to defile it, with no reference now to the Gentiles, as though to insinuate that it was Paul who was punishable under the law that upheld the sanctity of the temple (see disc. on 21:27ff.). Trophimus, of course ...

148. Accusations

2 Corinthians 10:1-18

Understanding Series

James M. Scott

... R. P. Martin). 10:14–15a Paul denies that his mission in Corinth constitutes an overextension of his apostolic prerogative. It is an undeniable fact that Paul founded the church in Corinth. The point of verse 14 is to underscore this fact. Paul was the one who originally came to Corinth with the gospel of Christ (cf. Rom. 15:19). Corinth was his apostolic work. That being the case, the apostle cannot be accused of boasting in work done by others (2 Cor. 10:15a). Who these others may have been has been the ...

149. The Law and the Promise

Galatians 3:15-25, Galatians 3:1-14

Understanding Series

L. Ann Jervis

... 3:28–31—to stress that Paul’s gospel is the outworking of Judaism, even of God’s giving of the law. For an interpretation that in some regards is complementary to the one given here, see N. T. Wright, who understands Paul to be affirming the divine origin of the law while at the same time considering that “the law cannot be God’s final word.” For Wright the key to Paul’s argument is his conviction that the unity of God means that God desires also a single family. The problem with the law is ...

150. Unity in the Body of Christ

Ephesians 4:1-16

Understanding Series

Arthur G. Patzia

... today does not generally use the office of apostle, for example, the temptation is to find a modern counterpart in church leaders such as area superintendents and overseers (see Stott, p. 160). There may be a certain legitimacy to this, but it does not help to clarify the original meaning of an office and/or gift and to understand it in the context in which it is used. Here, it is not a case of putting new wine into old skins; the church has new skins into which it is trying to pour old wine. There are ...

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