Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1526 to 1550 of 4884 results

Matthew 14:22-33

Sermon

Will Willimon

... Greek, ''O little faith!'' Even as Robin Hood called one of his ''Little John,'' Jesus calls Peter ''Little Faith." ''O Little Faith, why did you doubt?'' This is a constant theme throughout the Gospel of Matthew…doubt. Why do we doubt? These disciples are not perfect, they are like us. They doubt when they see the wind, feel the waves, water up to the neck. They begin to sink. But Jesus keeps working with them. Finally, by the end of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus gathers his disciples on a mountain, appears ...

1527. Treasures from the Past

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Sermon

Mary Austin

... from more than antique tools and well-worn watches, from more than Thanksgiving platters and lace doilies. We also inherit the gifts of hard work, or principle, or a knack for listening to people. We receive a talent for making the perfect pie crust. We get a memory for sports statistics or the perfect barbeque recipe. We get a lesson in how to fix things, or how to understand people. We take on all these gifts as part of our inheritance. No matter how we feel about the platters and the watches, these gifts ...

1528. A Question of Trust

Romans 5:1-5

Sermon

King Duncan

... the only way she survived that painful time was because she wasn’t suffering alone. As she wrote, it was Christ living in her by the power of the Holy Spirit, making his power perfect in her weakness, that allowed her to persevere and find hope. (6) It is only in our suffering that God’s power is made perfect in weakness. We can never understand the nature of God, we can never understand the power of God, and we can never truly trust the promises of God until we have endured suffering and persevered ...

1529. We Fools

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

Will Willimon

... invention, people entered a store and told a clerk what they wanted. The clerk would go and obtain for them the merchandise from the storage area. His grandfather was the first to lay the merchandise out to be seen, and touched, and the rest is history. His invention was perfect for a people who now no longer know how even to name what we want. Show us everything and we shall invent a desire for it all. The surest way to drive people like us crazy is to ask us, ''Well, what do you really want?'' We don't ...

1530. Acres of Diamonds

1 Timothy 6:10

Sermon

Russell Conwell

... the trout with his fingers, and sent it to Worcester. They wrote back that they would give a fivedollar bill for another such trout as that, not that it was worth that much, but they wished to help the poor man. So this shoemaker and his wife, now perfectly united, that five-dollar bill in prospect, went out to get another trout. They went up the stream to its source and down to the brimming river, but not another trout could they find in the whole stream; and so they came home disconsolate and went to the ...

1531. The Gift

Luke 2:1-20

Sermon

Will Willimon

... you?' Just because you're homeless doesn't mean you look good in burgundy.''' Thus, Garrison Keillor begins a fun essay on the perils of Christmas getting. I didn't say Christmas giving. Some of us think the toughest job is to go out and find the perfect gift. The perils of Christmas giving. There are also perils of Christmas getting. Much is required to be a good gift giver. But it also takes a good person to receive Christmas gifts in the right way. As Keillor goes on to say, ''A Christmas gift represents ...

1532. Three In One

John 16:12-15

Sermon

Dave Zuchelli

... The second effect the Trinity has on us as human beings is related to the first. The Trinity is not only in a covenant relationship, it forms a community within itself. The fellowship which exists among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a picture of what the perfect community would look like. We might not ever be able to attain that kind of community in this life, but we have an example of what it can be. There is a repeated call to community throughout scripture. We are called to be in community with God ...

1533. Lose the Cape

Romans 13:11-14

Sermon

Charley Reeb

... Are you letting your light shine? Do you have on your “armor of light.” If not, why not? Folks who are not Christians are watching us, wondering if our message has any credibility. If not, why should they bother with our faith? They don’t expect us to be perfect, but they do expect to see some evidence that the light of Christ is real. How can they know unless we let it shine? When Mister Rogers was a little boy and would see scary news on television, his mom would sit next to him, put her arms around ...

1534. Lesson from a Prosthetic Toe

Luke 17:5-10

Sermon

King Duncan

... of submitting our will to God that God uses us to do God’s work, to achieve God’s purposes and to bring God’s kingdom to the world. 1. “The Perfect 3,000-Year-Old Toe: A Brief History of Prosthetic Limbs” by Megan Garber, The Atlantic, November 21, 2013. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/the-perfect-3-000-year-old-toe-a-brief-history-of-prosthetic-limbs/281653/. 2. “Meet the 23-year-old inventor Tony Robbins calls ‘the next Elon Musk’” by Kathleen Elkins, CNBC.com ...

1535. The Last Coca Cola in the Desert

Luke 18:9-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... , “He gave his life for strangers. He must have known that he didn't really have a chance. If that doesn't make him a hero, I don't know what would.” (6) We know about heroes. Christ is our hero. He is our atoning sacrifice. He gave his perfect, sinless life to cover our sins. To offer us the mercy we could never be good enough to earn on our own. Two men went up to the temple to pray. One man exalted himself and left unchanged; the other man humbled himself and left justified. What did you expect ...

1536. Put On Your Apocalypse Jacket

Luke 21:5-19

Sermon

King Duncan

... (Little Clark is a big fan of Dolly Parton and dinosaurs, so I guess Dolly on a dinosaur is the ultimate image of courage to him). (5) Clark had more advice for his mother, but I just included these first two affirmations because I think they perfectly demonstrate what it means to prepare yourself beforehand to not be afraid. This young boy had hope and courage because he viewed his future through his mother’s eyes. You and I will conquer fear if we practice looking at the future through Christ’s eyes ...

1537. The Dishonest Manager

Luke 16:1-13

Sermon

Richard Hasler

... ” (Ephesian 5:8). Paul also wrote: “For you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness” (1 Thessalonians 5:5). The people in Jesus’ parables are not perfect people — in fact the people Jesus associated with by and large were far from perfect. Did he not say that he came to call sinners to repentance, not the righteous? The teller of the parable went on to say: “Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest ...

1538. Confidence, Joy, and Hope

Acts 2:14a, 22-32

Sermon

King Duncan & Angela Akers

... from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” “By God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge.” Let those words sink in. God had a plan from before the foundation of the world to let Jesus offer his life as a perfect sacrifice for humanity, to destroy the power of death and heal our separation with God. To open the way to eternal life for us. Life was always God’s plan. Victory was always God’s plan. So it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. And ...

1539. Overcoming Envy

Matthew 20:1-16

Sermon

King Duncan & Angela Akers

... of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm—that’s a problem.” (5) Every one of us is exposed daily to people who have something we would like to have. It might be a larger house or perfect children or perfect teeth . . . Don’t laugh. The list contains all kinds of things that people can envy, even subconsciously. In all kinds of atmospheres envy can flourish. In Parker and Hart’s “The Wizard of Id” comic strip, one monk is putting up a sign on ...

1540. A Second Look

Matthew 5:27-48

Sermon

Will Willimon

"But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you....You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5:27-48 Some of you remember the uproar when President Jimmy Carter admitted to Playboy that he had committed "adultery of the heart." Big deal. Show me a man who has never once "looked at a woman lustfully" and thereby committed, in Jesus' words, "adultery with her in ...

1541. God's Little Acre

Matthew 13:24-30

Sermon

Will Willimon

... out of our little barrel, tell everyone who disagrees at board meetings to take a walk…wouldn't we have a lovely little church then? Yes, it would be a little church. A friend of mine is fond of quoting the alleged Puritan saying that, "There are only two perfect people in this world, me and thee, and sometimes I have my doubts about thee." There are only a couple of us who are good enough to be Christians, me, you, and Jesus, and sometimes I have my doubts about you... If we could just clean up, clear ...

1542. Polite Disobedience

Matthew 21:23-32

Sermon

Steve Molin

... God to forgive us in the same way we have forgiven others, (forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us) and we fail to realize that we have not forgiven others at all. All of this is to suggest that most of us have perfected the art of polite disobedience. We say one thing to God, and we do another. And then we condemn those whose lives are rougher around the edges than ours are. Essentially, we have politely lied to God, and they have belligerently told the truth to God, and we ...

1543. Going Where Jesus Goes

Mark 16:1-8

Sermon

Mary Austin

... we know the story, but it’s a huge surprise on that first day. I don’t know that I would have been any different. In fact, I admire their courage. If you were expecting a body and you got a message that Jesus who was missing, being afraid makes perfect sense. Still, we want more. Like the women at the tomb, we want to know where Jesus is, and what he’s up to. Glennon Doyle wrote on her blog about teaching Sunday school at her church. The kids came into the sanctuary and sat down, listening to the ...

1544. Liz

Ephesians 2:1-10

Sermon

John B. Jamison

... We cannot do enough, own enough, learn enough, or give enough to deserve to be accepted. We cannot keep score of our work to see that we are more deserving than anyone else. Those board members sitting around the table wearing their Sunday school fifty-year perfect attendance pins on their collars had earned no more salvation than Liz did. The writer said that God raised up the people of Ephesus like he did Jesus. It was God’s action, not theirs, that gave them their role as an ambassador for Jesus Christ ...

1545. Vengeance: Human and Divine

Matthew 13:1-9 · Isaiah 44:6-8 · Psalm 1-12, 17-18, 23-24

Sermon

Will Willimon

... Spirit of God, the wings of the morning, the precious thoughts of God, there is a jolt: O that thou wouldst slay the wicked....Do I not hate them that hate thee,... do I not loathe them that rise up against thee? I hate them with a perfect hatred! As John Wesley said, perhaps after reading these verses of Psalm 139, “there are parts of the Psa1ms that are not fit for Christian ears.” Now those are not nice thoughts, particularly in church! Worse, such hateful thoughts are not limited to Psalm 139. In ...

1546. The Practice

Mark 1:9-15

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... empathy. We are called to cultivate relationships with the most difficult and unlikely of these. How do we learn to do this? By developing our “community of practice.” We call it the church. For Jesus, the church was never a place in which “perfect” humans led “perfect lives.” All we need to do is read Paul’s letters to know the kind of patient and loving support the early churches needed in order to be reassured in their faith and their commitment to Christ. The Church is called to be ...

1547. Soul Testing Kits

John 15:1-8

Sermon

Mary Austin

... . God who won’t leave us like we are. Where we need it, God will come along to trim us and prune us, to make us grow better and more abundantly. You wise gardeners already know how that works. It’s hard to believe that cutting off something perfectly good will make the plant healthier in the long run. You can’t even tell right away, either. Between the pruning and the growth, there’s a long time of trust ...or worry ...until something new begins to grow. I suspect that’s another part of abiding in ...

1548.

Psalm 126:1-6

Understanding Series

Craig C. Broyles

... , like streams in the Negev, implies the term should have a positive connotation, hence, “fortunes.” The verb tenses of vv. 1–3 are problematic. Because v. 1 announces a restoration and v. 4 petitions it, one might read them as future. But the perfect verbs most often denote action completed in the past, and the confession of v. 3 certainly appears to look back to a past event. Moreover, the OT’s witness of the early postexilic period describes a historical situation that helps us clarify these ...

1549.

Psalm 143:1-12

Understanding Series

Craig C. Broyles

... were not granted entry. While only the one who vows to be a doer of righteousness (15:2) may enter the temple, “he will receive . . . righteousness from God his savior” (24:5, lit.). Thus, worshipers were expected to show loyalty to Yahweh’s revealed righteousness but not to show perfection in the sense of absolute righteousness. Yahweh would thus impute righteousness to them. In this light we can make sense of psalms such as Psalms 14 and 32. In Psalm 32 the “righteous” (v. 11) are not morally ...

1550. Life in the Future

Philippians 1:3-11

Sermon

Scott Bryte & Kimberly Miller van Driel

... better. “If only” we say: “if only we could be the church that I remember from…” “If only we could go back to when…”. But the Holy Spirit doesn’t work that way either. God is not the God of the ideal. Jesus didn’t wait until we got everything perfect to come among us. God doesn’t wait for us to get there. God comes to us, whether we’re ready or not. God comes to us as we are, and then moves us forward. The Holy Spirit moves, and the Holy Spirit moves us. The Holy Spirit never lets ...

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