Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1526 to 1550 of 3099 results

John 14:5-14

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... a God?” with a surprising “No.” He said there is no God if by the word “God” you mean an object among other objects in the world, an object to be catalogued and classified along with other objects. God is not an object, but the Divine Subject behind all objects. I believe that the answer to the question “Is there a God?” depends upon one’s definition of God. My working definition of God is “Ultimate Reality.” That which is Really Real, the Reality which lies behind and beyond and beneath ...

1527. No Longer Orphans

John 14:15-31

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... . Which means that the year 2000 has already come and gone-in 1994! So, when you hear people making predictions for the year 2000 you can just sit back and smile, knowingly. All of these predictions are hard to understand in light of Jesus' own words on the subject. In Matthew 24:36 He said very plainly, "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Now, if Jesus Himself confessed that He did not know, it seems a bit presumptuous for any of us to ...

1528. Is Conscience the Best Guide?

John 16:5-16

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... . And these customs change from environment to environment, and from time to time. So conscience is far from being a reliable guide. Which view is correct? Is conscience the voice of God or the voice of society? Is it a reliable guide to conduct, or subject to the conditioning of the society around us? In other words, Is conscience the best guide? As Christians, we turn to Scripture for some guidance on this matter. The Bible affirms that there is that within us to which God can speak. We often call this ...

1529. The Thirteenth Apostle

Acts 9:1-19a

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... witnessed the rise of religious fundamentalism among the three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and it smells as bad among any of the three. Someone defined a fanatic as a person who “cannot change his mind and will not change the subject.” Paul at first fit that description. Our first encounter with him is as a young man, standing guard over the clothes of those who were stoning Stephen, the first Christian martyr. That must have had a profound effect on him, for he could ...

1530. Secretary to Saint Peter

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the Gospel writers, set out to write biography. Not at all. They were out to write Gospel -Good News. (Mark’s Gospel is the only one that actually calls itself such.) Its purpose, like the purpose of a good sermon is not the elucidation of a subject, but the transformation of a person. Nevertheless, Mark’s Gospel bursts with realism. You get the feeling of an eyewitness, that the writer was really there-and that you, reading his words, are also there. 2.) There is no Gospel which gives us such a human ...

1531. Jesus and the Baptists

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the will of God. Why was Jesus baptized? What did the Baptism of Jesus mean? Barclay suggests four things: For Jesus, it was: The moment of Decision, Identification, Approval, and Equipment. It meant DECISION. For 30 years (roughly) Jesus had stayed in Nazareth, subject to family responsibilities. He must have waited for a sign, and the ministry of John was that sign. As William Emerson says so cleverly: “John was the dynamite cap that set Jesus off!” (THE JESUS STORY, New York: Harper & Row, 1970. p ...

1532. Jesus Came Preaching

Mark 1:14-15

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the wave of good preaching. II. THIS MIGHT BE A GOOD PLACE TO ASK: WHAT IS PREACHING SUPPOSED TO DO? For one thing, every good sermon should help the listener to understand the Bible better. But the real business of preaching is not the elucidation of a subject, but the transformation of a person. Its goal is to bring about a change in human lives. It is supposed to inspire, motivate, persuade, and move. In Acts, chapter 26, you have the dramatic event of St. Paul on trial for his life, and giving a defense ...

1533. Afraid of Sanity

Mark 5:1-20

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... their pigs more than their neighbor. Their kind is surely not all dead, yet! And one must ask the question “Who are the possessed in this story?” The people’s eagerness to reject Jesus, to get rid of Him, shows that they, too, are “possessed”...subject to evil powers hostile to the kingdom of God. There comes a point when our possessions possess us. There are some businesses Jesus is just plain bad for: any business which puts profits ahead of people, any business whose sole aim is to hurt people ...

1534. Men Like Trees Walking

Mark 8:22-26

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... There is a tendency to see others only as objects in a landscape, with no more emotional impact on us than trees might have. Our first concern is with ourselves - and modern best-sellers extol the virtue(?) of selfishness. But I doubt that we need much tutoring in that subject. We are already pretty good at it. When we see a group picture in which we appear, whose face do we look for first? And then we say, “I take such awful pictures!” Maybe the camera does the best it can with what it has to work with ...

1535. God’s Strange Arithmetic

Mark 10:1-12

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... up one wedding and tell the truth. Now that it’s done, death can have no sting.” (Quoted by Ross W. Marrs, in The Clergy Journal, January, 1980, p.22) That silly article sets the stage for some very serious words in Mark’s Gospel on the subject of marriage and divorce. Maybe people would not get divorced for such silly reasons if they did not get married for such silly reasons. How odd it is that folks spend much more time and effort and money getting prepared for a 15-minute ceremony than they do ...

1536. Palm Sunday (Prologue)

Matthew 21:1-11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... lost; the colt had never been ridden before. It was a special animal set aside for a special purpose. “The Lord has need,” said Jesus’ students. And the owner of the animal gave it forthwith. At least a couple of sermons could be preached on the subject of “the dependence of God,” how God needs our cooperation to get His work done in the world; and the immediate response of the animal’s owners to Jesus’ request for assistance. Most of us would have made up excuses. “Sorry, I was planning a ...

1537. A Man Named Pain (Part 1)

1 Chronicles 4:1-23

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... He was named "Pain," but somehow he lived his life in such a way that he became honored in his own time. Dr. Paul Tournier, in his book Creative Suffering, follows the lives of many great world leaders. His research reveals that almost all of his subjects came from unhappy or dysfunctional families. A number of the world’s greatest leaders began life as orphans. As someone has said, "It is always through struggle that we find strength. It is always through pain that we find power. And it is always through ...

1538. Please, Don't Let me Jabez Anyone Else (Part 5)

1 Chronicles 4:1-23

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... those students, saying that the university has a right to make rules about housing, and if the students did not like the rules, they should not have enrolled there. (2) You can imagine the ridicule to which these four young men were subjected. But they were wise. The human mind has an amazing ability to rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior. There have been through history all kinds of outstanding people who have found themselves knee-deep in sin before they realized it. Even more disheartening ...

1539. Bread for Everyone (I am the bread of life)

John 6:1-15, John 6:25-59

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... voice, "Let them eat cake." That is how the upper crust of society has always dealt with those on the bottom--with indifference and disgust. Jesus, on the other hand, lay aside his royalty--his divinity--and became a servant in order to meet the needs of his subjects. Jesus is a different kind of king. So with loving compassion he provides bread for the crowd. In verse 25 we see when the people get to the other side of the lake--after they had been lovingly cared for--Jesus moves the question to a deeper ...

1540. The Lord's Prayer: Deliver us from Evil

Matthew 6:5-13

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... S. Lewis further said, "The reason that the Christian faith is truth is nobody would have developed a religion that told the truth about humanity in the way that the Christian faith does about us." I realize that today I am not preaching on the most pleasant or popular subject, but I think we would all agree that it is necessary to do so. Dr. M. Scott Peck has shared with us the insight that EVIL is the word LIVE spelled backwards. So Evil, in the sense that Dr. Peck shares, is the exact opposite of the way ...

1541. Sealed with a Prayer: The Seventh Word

Luke 23:44-49

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... Hitler from his teaching position in Germany to his native Switzerland where he had held the chair of "Church Dogmatics" at the famed University of Zurich. The crowds jammed the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago to hear him speak on various subjects related to the Christian faith. After some twenty-five years now, all the importance of those lectures have lost their place in people''s hearts and minds all, except one statement he made in response to a somewhat bellicose reporter who asked the ...

1542. The First Commandment: Who's on First?

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... excelling at the basics wins ball games. When God brought his people out of Egypt, he had to teach them the basics. William H. Ralston once said: "Never be afraid to state the obvious. It is what most people have forgotten." God''s people had been subjected to so many false ideas and principles in that strange land. God needed to bring them back to basic training. Dr. William Barclay reminds us, "The first words of the Bible are ''In the beginning God created . . . ,'' and just as the Bible begins the story ...

1543. The Sixth Commandment: Respect and Reverence for Life

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... life sacred and special. Hardness was replaced by humility and compassion. As we study the sixth commandment today, the word and will of God for building our lives in this new kingdom instructs us, "Thou shall not murder." The people that Moses was speaking to had been subjected to the cruelty and bondage of slavery. God speaking to and through Moses had to present to them a vision "of a greater and more excellent way." God had to teach them to say "No" to one way of life in order to say "Yes" to a greater ...

1544. Whose Servant Are You? (Part II)

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... higher level of life. On the Damascus Road, Paul began a series of decisions that would make him a Servant of Jesus Christ and the shaper of the Christian faith and world civilization. In that spirit, let me offer two suggestions today as we consider the subject of servanthood. FIRST, OUR SERVANTHOOD IS A REFLECTION OF THE WORK THAT JESUS CHRIST DID ON THE CROSS FOR THE HUMAN RACE. While this will be more fully explored in Philippians 2:5-11, let me simply share that when it comes to servanthood, God has ...

1545. Christianity and Conflict: Dual Citizenship (Part VII)

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... ALWAYS CONFLICTS IN THE CHRISTIAN''S LIFE BECAUSE THE FIRST CONFLICT BEGAN IN HEAVEN ITSELF. Dr. Calvin Miller, who is one of Christianity''s most creative writers in the modern era, shares this thought in his book, An Overture Of Light. Writing on this subject of conflict, he shares: From a mind, light years wide, came men. From narrower minds came soldiers forth From soldiers, war From wars, decaying silence. What hope can our earth hold of peace? For battlefields came first in Heaven. (1) Then Dr. Miller ...

1546. The Destructive Power of Dis-Unity

Philippians 4:2-9

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... it belongs to me." The enemy of joy is discouragement. It causes one to want to quit running the good race and fighting the good fight. Specialists have wondered why Canadian geese always fly in a "V" formation, so their engineers did a study on the subject. They discovered that the flapping of each goose''s wings provided an upward lift for the goose that followed. When all the geese were flying in perfect formation, the whole flock had a 71 percent greater flying range than if each bird flew alone. Each ...

1547. The Lord Is My Shepherd

Psalm 23:1-6

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... , I studied under Dr. Thomas Oden. Dr. Oden repeatedly explained that the imagery of the shepherd is still the most important analogy for Ordained Ministers, regardless of the urban/technological society and culture we now lived in. Years later, he wrote a book on this subject. Dr. Oden was right--because God has had a long standing love and preference for the role of shepherd. The symbol and imagery of the Shepherd and the Sheep is one of the most constant themes in the Bible. The father of the nation of ...

1548. Feasting and Fasting for Lent (Part II)

Luke 13:22-30

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... grasping for anything intelligent to say. This is the rest of the story: "I said, `Sandra, do you ever do any modeling?'' (It''s a great line. She''s thinking--Oh, he thinks I model.) "She said, `Well, I used to.'' "I could tell it was a touchy subject, but being more inquisitive than I am sensitive, I said, `Tell me about it.'' She told me this story. "When she first went to Georgia Tech as a student, she got some opportunities to do some modeling. That was good because she made some extra money to help ...

1549. Feasting and Fasting for Lent (Part IV)

2 Corinthians 5:11--6:2

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... God, and because there is now a void or empty space created by fasting we can feast on those things which are pleasing and honoring to our Heavenly Father. I especially thank those who shared words of affirmation with me last Sunday about the subject matter. Today, I want to continue the journey by sharing two more suggestions for your consideration. FAST FROM CRITICISM AND FEAST ON AFFIRMATION. Most in this church family know of my fondness for the preaching ministry and stories of faith that come from the ...

1550. The Measure of Love

1 John 4:7-21

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... : "You will know the real one by the life you live." Yes, beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and he who loves is born of God and knows God. In closing today, I must candidly share that if you want to know more about the subject of love, don''t come to this pastor but do go to the one who is the source of the faith commitment of all of us gathered here today--that is Jesus Christ. He teaches in a way far superior to anything I can do. I am not the source ...

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