Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1576 to 1600 of 3852 results

Luke 9:10-17

Sermon

Ewart E. Turner

... be saved by it?" "I am taken aback," replied a confused Mrs. Americus. "Nobody every questioned my Christian intelligence and sincerity before. You mean Jesus saved scraps?" "Exactly. ‘Gather up the fragments ... that nothing may be lost.’ " "Well I never," was Mrs. A’s original retort. "You seem to imply that the Master had to order his disciples to use their baskets to gather the left-overs; they weren’t used to doing it as a matter of course?" "No more than you, ma’am," replied Mr. Chompo, Your ...

1577. Clean Light

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

Sermon

William F. Dunkle

... that God could have made both heaven and earth or that the Christ could possibly have been truly man. The ancient baptismal profession which today we call the Apostles’ Creed is, in fact, Christianity’s answer to Gnosticism. It was intended originally to assert the humanity of Jesus Christ - begotten, born, suffering, dying, buried, the human experiences of all people. So in writing to the Christians at Corinth, the Apostle Paul is insisting that human bodies, while not immortal, are important. God ...

1578. Do Not Let Him Find You Sleeping

Luke 12:32-40; Mark 13:1-37

Illustration

Brett Blair

Augustine, a man in the 5th century who became, Bishop of the church and a saint in history, originally lead a life of sin giving himself over to whatever pleasures presented themselves. His mother had earnestly prayed for him his entire life that he would give his life to the service of Christ, but Augustine persisted in his sins until one day he sat with a friend on a ...

1579. Report of a Secret Meeting

John 3:1-21

Sermon

George Bass

... a fishing boat has been beached directly under the cross of Christ; two fishermen are working on their nets, while a dim figure can be seen walking toward them along the waterfront. Webster says, "He (Jesus) is the ‘young Prince of Glory’ as in the original version of Isaac Watts’ famous hymn. He seems to be holding back the great volume of darkness, forcing its retreat ... But the Cross remains, dominating the world, and the world the artist sees is the world on which Christ looks from His Cross."16 ...

1580. The Stranger at the Tomb

Mark 16:1-20

Sermon

George Bass

... had not spoken, or had simply vanished as they watched, they might have taken the same kind of action which Andrus did in helping to form a Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network (MUFON) to help solve the mystery. But the angel took care of the mystery about his origin and his mission when he spoke to the women and told them what we now call "good news": "He is risen, he is not here," adding, "See the place where they laid him." That was what they needed to hear, as a message from God himself, to assure ...

1581. When Ten Equals Two

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Larry Powell

... ego which translates self-respect into respect for others. Love is the word we are reaching for, but it is not yet within our grasp. Reach farther. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, once addressed a meeting of a Scientific Society. Darwin’s "Origin of the Species" had been published the year before and both the learned and unlearned had bantered the merits and demerits of Darwin’s proposition. It was common knowledge that Wilberforce utterly deplored the work and had spoken scathingly of it from ...

1582. The Promise Of Life ("U" Turns Permitted)

2 Samuel 12:1-31

Sermon

Roger Prescott

... that way any more, dear?" said Eloise to her husband. Continuing to look straight ahead, Waiter quietly said, "I haven’t moved." We smile at that, but there’s a lot of truth to it. When relationships have changed - when we have lost sight of our original principles - then it is time to make a "U" turn. David did that, and somewhat redeemed himself in our eyes - and in God’s. Conclusion In this famous narrative of Nathan and David we see revealed the axiom that a "parable" - a "story" - can be truer ...

1583. An Unusual Legacy

2 Samuel 23:1-7

Sermon

Roger Prescott

... not the world which you have made? Oh, give us deeper love for better seeing Your Word made flesh, and in a manger laid. Your kingdom come, O Lord; your will be done!* *Lutheran Book of Worship, No. 413, Stanza 5. This version in the LBW is altered from the original with permission of Oxford University Press, London, England. Prayer: O God, in your mind the past and the future meet in this day. Help us to accept with grace what we have received, and to share all that - and more - with those to come.

1584. Bonhoeffer of Berlin

Acts 5:17-42

Drama

Michael L. Sherer

... : Good question. LECTOR: Dear Kurt. Thanks for your letter. I’m glad you appreciated the teaching I did while I was leading your confirmation class last year. As a university professor, I don’t always get a chance to do teaching in churches, as I was originally trained to do. I really liked working with you young people - even though, to be honest, it was one of the most dangerous slums in Berlin and I was a little frightened the first time going there, and even though - to be even more honest - some ...

1585. Total Commitment

Mark 9:42-50

Sermon

Richard Patt

... rid of it as well, Jesus says. Jesus is trying to shock us into realizing that some things get in the way of allowing us to keep our commitments. And many times they are little things or common things that bar us from the faithfulness we originally promised or possessed. How true. The common drive toward making money and "succeeding" financially has made many a father a stranger in his own home. The complusion to be tops in the field has turned many a parent into a workaholic, making them strangers to their ...

1586. The Kingdom And The Seed

Mark 4:4-20; 30-32

Sermon

Ron Lavin

... . The day comes when the grain is ripe. Then comes the harvest. We must live with a knowledge that for each of us there will be a harvest day, a time of death, and a time of astounding change. Who would guess the wonders of heaven having seen the original seed of life? The third parable about soil is the parable of the mustard seed (4:30-32). The Kingdom of God, like the mustard seed, starts small, but grows into a large shrub with many branches. These parables of the soil are designed to take the familiar ...

1587. Scandal!

1 Corinthians 1:18--2:5

Sermon

... Paul writes, "Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles." That phrase, "a stumbling block" is a literal translation of the Greek but it’s far too dry because the Greek original is "skandalon" - from which we get, you guessed it: Christ is a scandal! If you think we’re just playing with words, look at the gospel lesson. There it points to several ways Christ scandalizes. First, there’s the scandal of living. Picture the ...

1588. No Huggies

Mark 10:13-16

Sermon

... in Lincoln, Nebraska. Forty percent of the congregation was aged 35 and under, so we had many younger parents and many children in the congregation. A particular contribution of this sermon was the attempt to set the historical situation in which Jesus spoke his word, so that, by understanding the original context, we could grasp how that ancient word becomes his word for today. - Walter F. Taylor, Jr.

1589. A Christian's Duty in Time of War

Nehemiah 4:1-23

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... war. FIRST, WAR IS A TRAGIC FACT OF LIFE IN THIS SINFUL WORLD. Every war is the offspring of sin. Operation Iraqi Freedom would never have been necessary had it not been for Saddam’s cruel, 26-year dictatorship and his two previous wars of aggression. The origins of war are in the sinful nature of man. That goes all the way back to the sin of Adam and Eve. Jeremiah the prophet declared in chapter 17, verse 9, “The heart is deceitful above all things…” In Romans 3, beginning with verse 10, we read ...

1590. Coping When It Seems Impossible

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... bunk in the dark, suddenly I saw how good God has been to me, how hard he has worked for me, how much he has done for me. Pastor, how can I pay him back?" He had begun to answer his own question. He had discovered the source of his origin, his life, his guidance, his strength, his mission, his joy and his peace, and ultimately his destiny. He had glimpsed the Eternal. The old hymn by John Neale throws out the challenge to all of us who struggle with the limitations of our human-ness. Art thou weary, Art ...

1591. Spiritual Blindness

Mark 10:46-52

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... countless priceless pictures stored up in memory: mother’s face, the brillance of an October afternoon, the fire in a diamond, my newborn son, the sanctuary at Easter, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, Christmas morning. I see it all now, though the original experience may have been years ago. What would it mean never to have had these visual encounters? I cannot imagine; it is beyond me. For one who has never seen, the experience takes on an altogether different meaning. Shapes, colors, designs, textures ...

1592. Enduring

Mark 13:1-31

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... and can guide the leaders of nations. History is replete with illustrations of imaginative stalwarts who decided to do something. Mary McCleod Bethune began by selling sweet potato pies to finance her school. Today, in Daytona Beach, Florida, Bethune-Cookman College stands where originally there was a city dump. One black woman refused to give in, to submit to racism, or sexism, or threats of violence. She went on, in spite of opposition, and built a college which today sends out graduates to all the world ...

1593. Called to Be Saints

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... do the changing? Who are the people who have had world-wide influence during the twentieth century? I mean influence which has shaped the course of nations, of countless millions, and the way vast numbers of people think and live. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, (1859) espoused the concept of evolution by natural selection. From that point onward, biology was studied in a new light. He is still the object of controversy among some, but no one can deny the change he wrought in science. Karl Marx ...

1594. The Friends of Jesus

John 15:1-17

Sermon

Brett Blair

... had to face criticism because his disciples broke the Sabbath law. Jesus was also frequently accused of enjoying the company of sinners. These were people who, for one reason or another, were not a part of the strict religious community. To go back to the original question of who were the friends of Jesus we might say that they were a strange mixture of people. They represent both the young and the old. They came from different walks of life. They were both men and women. Some followed him very closely ...

1595. Christmas Every Day

John 1:1-18

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

... when we use the Phillips translation of this sentence: "So the word of God became a human being and lived among us." Thus an American theologian, Nels Ferre, has coined a new term for the incarnation, enmanment. Whether we use the word of Latin or of English origin, it stands for something astounding and unfathomable. The baby born to a young Jewish girl almost 2,000 years ago is none other than "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God." When he grew up and taught people on a mountainside or a ...

1596. Clear and Clean and Good

Titus 2:1-15

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

... deserves such praise, certainly that is what we want the world - and our own lives - to be, clear and clean and good. And it is precisely in these terms that the apostle describes what the coming of Christ means to us. The apostle uses the word epiphaneia, the original for our word epiphany, to describe both the first and the second coming of Christ. He tells us, "the grace of God has made its epiphany for the salvation of all men," and now we are "awaiting our blessed hope, the epiphany of the glory of our ...

1597. On the Night when He Was Betrayed

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

There is a unique beauty and tenderness about the hour of sunset. The sun impresses its memory upon a darkening world by tinting the western sky with its most original and harmonious colors. The last hour of the day is its most beautiful and memorable. So it is in human relations. The tender beauty of sunset glows from the hour of farewell. We say goodbye to those who are not so intimate but reserve the last precious moments to those ...

1598. The Dynamic Word

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

... if the true self is to emerge. Karen Homey saw in preoccupation with self the distinctive trait of the neurotic personality of our time. Even the love-life of the neurotic serves only the purpose of self-assurance. Here is an echo of Luther’s definition of original sin: man cannot but seek his own and love himself above all. On the other hand, the Christian man, says Luther, does not live in himself at all but in Christ through faith and in his neighbor through love. The man of today does not ask in ...

1599. As We Remember - Memorial Day

1 Chronicles 11:10-25

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

... granted, need to recover the reverent appreciation of it which the fathers had and which Lincoln had. In this spirit, when Finland achieved its independence, the poet Koskenniemi wrote a stirring ode "To the Freedom of Finland." These lines are much better in the original poetry but even in prose their message comes through. "You are the highest, the most longed-for, under heaven! In the midst of long centuries, in the stillness of the night, we have waited for you. And now, you long-expected, you bride of ...

1600. True Freedom

John 8:31-41

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

... . It is easy to be deceived in this matter, to think that one is free when actually he is a slave and a prisoner. When the French Revolution, which began as a struggle for freedom, passed into a reign of terror, Madame Roland, one of the original champions of freedom, was herself escorted to the guillotine to be beheaded. She paused and bowed before the clay statue of Liberty and exclaimed, "O Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name!" One of the most common mistaken ideas of freedom is that one is ...

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