Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 1476 to 1500 of 4935 results

1476. The Holy Spirit and You

John 14:15-27

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

A new seminary graduate on her way to her first appointment approached her professor and asked what she should preach about in her new church. Without hesitation the professor replied. “About God and about twenty minutes." Today I would like to preach about God and I will try to do it in about twenty minutes. We believe in God the Father Almighty creator of heaven and earth. We believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord and Savior. We believe in the Holy Spirit as the Divine presence in our lives ...

1477. Exactly How Wide Is It?

Luke 13:22-30

Sermon

King Duncan

Jesus is making his way to Jerusalem. As he makes his way through the towns and villages, he pauses from time to time to teach those who have come out to see him and to listen to him. In the middle of this journey someone poses a question. We don’t know the identity of this questioner. Was he a scribe or Pharisee? Was he a Jew or a Samaritan? We don’t know? His question is an interesting one, though. “Lord,” he asks, “Are only a few people going to be saved?” We don’t know anything about this person, but I ...

1478. The Ark Heads Home

1 Samuel 6:1-7:1

Teach the Text

Robert B. Chisholm Jr.

Big Idea: The holy God must be treated with respect. Understanding the Text This chapter continues the story of the ark. In the aftermath of the Israelite defeat at Ebenezer, the Philistines captured the ark and took it to Ashdod. But it brought death and destruction wherever it went in Philistine territory. Finally the people of Ekron insisted that it be sent back to its homeland (5:11). Chapter 6 tells how the ark returns to Israelite territory, but not without incident! The ark does not make it back to ...

1479. Noah and the Robots

Genesis 9:8-17

Sermon

King Duncan

It sounds like a rock group, doesn’t it--“Noah and the Robots?” Some of you probably think the title of my message is a bit frivolous. It may be, but the subject matter we are going to discuss today is not frivolous at all. I read something interesting about the famous novelist Charles Dickens. It seems that Dickens wrote all his great stories in installments. Week after week, Dickens would spin out his tales and the English public would breathlessly wait to see what was going to happen next to such ...

1480. Lord of the Sabbath

Luke 5:33-39, Luke 6:1-11, Luke 7:18-35

Sermon

Lori Wagner

“If you call the Sabbath a delight then you will find your joy in the Lord.” --Isaiah 58:13-14 “Happy is he who is aware of the mysteries of his Lord.” --Abraham Joshua Heschel Visuals: Have Hubbel Space Images scrolling on screen during your sermon / Psalm 92 may be spoken with a musical background or sung You may also opt during or after your sermon to have people sing the psalm (you can find tunes with words on youtube) https://youtu.be/1I_X2bxfAq8 (This version by James Block is particular beautiful.) ...

1481. The Promise of Prayer

Luke 1:5-25

Sermon

Lori Wagner

All of you know “The Blabber!” You know, the guy or gal who always “by mistake” blurts out the news about the “surprise party” planned for your friends. Or the one who gives away what’s inside of the large box with too many unsubtle hints. Or the one who deliberately guesses the gift you got and ruins your surprise. Or what about the smart aleck older kids who snidely remark about the identity of the one and only Santa Claus right in front of your toddler! The Blabber is less interested in honoring you or ...

1482. Would You Like to Live Forever?

John 10:1-21

Sermon

King Duncan

Let me ask you a question: what would you be willing to do to live forever? I’m not talking about eternal life after you die. I’m talking about avoiding death altogether. Human beings have always searched for a way to cheat death. In Hollywood, Florida, there is a church called the Church of Perpetual Life, and its focus is on extending the healthy human lifespan on this earth for as long as possible. The church’s motto is “Aging and death can be optional.” What a great marketing slogan for a society that ...

1483. More Certain Than a Tom Brady Pass

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Sermon

King Duncan

We all know what it’s like to wake up from a frightening dream and think, “Wait a minute! Was that real?” And once we get a little more alert, we realize that it was just a dream, and we hopefully fall back to sleep. Psychologists say there is one type of dream that is nearly universal. Can you guess what it is? It’s the dream of being unprepared for an exam. It’s awful, isn’t it? School children all over the world report having this dream, or I should say, this nightmare, for that is what it truly is. In ...

1484. Seeking the Presence of God

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Sermon

Bonnie Bates

It is a well-known cliché that “God never gives us more than we can handle”, but I have sometimes found that not to be so. When my youngest brother died of brain cancer at age five, it was more than I could handle. When my first husband was emotionally and physically abusive, it was more than I could handle. When my second husband and I lost our twin sons at birth, it was more than I could handle. The COVID pandemic was more than we could handle. Wars and violence are often more than we can handle. ...

1485. Prepared Or Not?

Matthew 25:1-13

Sermon Aid

William E. Keeney

Weddings are wonderful! That is an expression you may hear frequently at the announcement of such an event. A lot of planning and expense usually go into making the event a special and joyous time. In our culture family and friends will travel long distances to be present at the ceremony. Almost every culture has extensive traditions and customs surrounding a wedding. They underscore the importance of the event. In our culture marriage is regulated by law. The state assumes that it has a stake in the ...

1486. King Ahaz,Idolater

Drama

Peter C. Garrison

King Ahaz has a real problem: he's worshiped about everything but the one true God; a blunder of cosmic proportions as we shall see. Could you be making the same mistake? (Please read 2 Chronicles 28) King Ahaz King Ahaz sits outside heaven with a few other people. They are all waiting for something to happen or for someone to come and tell them something. King Ahaz stands up. He walks back and forth. He clasps his hands together and unclasps them. He peers over the shoulders of the others who wait. ...

1487. Followership

Matthew 4:18-22, Matthew 4:12-17

Sermon

Mark Radecke

In today's Gospel text, Jesus calls for repentance, expects Peter and Andrew to drop their nets and follow him, and calls James and John to leave their Father Zebedee in the boat without so much as a "So long, see you later." My task today is to issue that same call to repentance, that same call to radical obedience and decisive discipleship. For that call is urgent and cries out to be issued in all of its majesty and might. But as preacher of the gospel -- the good news of God in Jesus Christ -- I cannot ...

1488. I Want To Go South, Lord

Genesis 12:1-8

Drama

Jerry Eckert

Comment: One of the great figures of Genesis, Abraham, amazed me the first time I read the story of his argument with God over His plan to destroy Sodom. With that in mind, I got to wondering how Abraham might have handled his anxiety over how his obedience to God was paying off. I chose a time early in his career when that anxiety would have been high. The first time I did this story sermon, a friend let me use a classic old black telephone that dated from the early '40s. With it, I conducted a one-sided ...

1489. Is It Better To Catch Or Be Caught?

Luke 5:1-11

Sermon

Richard A. Wing

As a boy I was never good at catching things, except a cold now and then. I tried to catch a pony to ride and failed. The butterfly trip was a disaster. I tried catching frogs but didn't try too hard because I didn't know what I would do with them once I caught them. Fish weren't my favorite for eating, so catching them was no treat, because I knew it implied that I would eat them with delight rather than gagging on them, which I always did. I never was good at catching things. A major church denomination ...

1490. The Wisdom In Waiting

Luke 12:35-48

Sermon

W. Robert McClelland

"Fear not!" Jesus says. These are the same words spoken by the angels to the Bethlehem shepherds on the occasion of his first coming. Now they are used to speak of his second coming. The reason why we need not fear is because God's good pleasure is to give us the kingdom. We cannot earn it. We cannot build it. It is a gift of grace. Despite all the evidence to the contrary and all attempts to oppose it, the promise has been made. The kingdom of God is on the way. We are to wait for it and be ready. The ...

1491. Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Daniel 2:24-49, Daniel 2:1-23

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

My friend Mary Jane had just picked up her little boy from kindergarten. She was in a hurry, so she eased through a stop sign instead of coming to a complete stop. A city policeman saw it all and pulled her over. He was very abrupt and stern. She tried to offer a word of explanation but he interrupted and said, "I'm going back to my car and write you up." Mary Jane sat there seething with anger. She said out loud, "That turkey! That guy is an absolute turkey!" She forgot that her four-year-old son was ...

1492. Do It For the Joy of It!

Matthew 22:34-40

Sermon

In the text for last week we saw how impossible it becomes to try to limit a description of appropriate Christian behavior to a rigid, inflexible code. There is a danger on the other extreme as well: The Christian can come to the (erroneous) conclusion that everything is relative, in constant flux, and totally dependent on the situation, one’s own feelings, and the individual’s point of view. Not so. Christianity is flexible enough to address a changing world. But Christian faith is also rooted. There is a ...

1493. Chapter II

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Frank H. Seilhamer

"I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; You will have no other gods before me. You will not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you will not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but ...

1494. True or False?

Isaiah 1:1-31

Sermon

John W. Wurster

“Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah” (1:10; cf. Genesis 19). Sodom. Gomorrah. Remember? Places of wickedness, of violence, of perversity. Do you know any place like that? Places where sexuality is twisted and relationships are corrupted and social order is breaking down? Places where people seek to gratify personal desires at the expense of others, where individual pursuits take precedence over common well-being, where anything goes as ...

1495. One Came Back

Luke 17:11-19

Sermon

King Duncan

Gert Behanna was fifty-three years old when she discovered God. The shock and wonder of that discovery haven't worn off after twenty years. Gert had another shock the very next Sunday when she went to church. She says, "I'd never been to church in my life and I remember how eagerly I awaited that first Sunday. I'd just had a glimpse of God Almighty - me, an alcoholic, a drug addict, rich, lonely, and miserable - already I was beginning to know what joy really was." Gert was a new Christian. She was eager ...

1496. Christmas and the Condensed Bible

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

I must confess that I am not a great fan of Reader’s Digest, but in a strange way, the magazine is partly responsible for my being in the United Methodist ministry. You see, during the late 1940’s and 1950’s, the “red-baiting” era of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Reader’s Digest published an article titled “Methodism’s Pink Fringe.” The article purported to show that Methodists were, in reality, Communists, because they believed in such radical things as civil rights and world peace. Having recently ...

1497. So Who Needs A Shepherd?

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

One Sunday morning, following the church service, a layman accosted the pastor and said, “Tom, this church has been insulting me for years, and I did not know it until this week.” The stunned pastor replied, “What on earth do you mean?” “Well,” said the layman, every Sunday morning the call to worship in this church ends with the words, We are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.’ And I have heard ministers over the years call the congregation, God’s flock.’ Then this past week I visited ...

1498. He's Back

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Mark Trotter

You all know what it is like at the airport during the holidays, cars piled up in big traffic jams. You can't even get up to the curb these days of the year. There was a woman who went out to the airport to pick up some friends who were coming to visit her at Christmas time. She could only get as close as about a block away, but she could see her friends standing at the curb. So she got out of the car, and hollered, "Alice, Kathy, over here, over here." They heard this familiar voice, picked up their bags ...

1499. Landing Instructions

Isaiah 40:25-31

Sermon

Mark Trotter

We were all attracted to the story of Lance Armstrong winning the Tour de France last weekend, that grueling bicycle race. It is one of the great endurance races in the world today. Lance Armstrong won it in record time, two years after undergoing surgery and then chemotherapy for cancer that spread throughout his body, including to his brain. It is a testimony first of all to the wonderful advances that medicine has made in curing cancers, but everyone recognizes as well that it is a terrific testimony to ...

1500. Just Do It

Romans 12:1-2

Sermon

James W. Moore

A well-dressed businessman was walking down the street one morning when all of a sudden, a beggar stopped him and asked him if he had a dollar or two he could spare. The businessman said: “Look, if you are down on your luck, I’ll be glad to help you, but first let me ask you something. You look like you are in pretty, good health… why don’t you get a job?”- The beggar answered: “O, I have a job! Actually, I’m an author. In fact, you may have seen one of my books. It was a Best-Seller entitled “500 Ways to ...

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