Synonyms: Levi, disciple, evangelist, tax collector, the 12, the twelve, apostle, sermon on the mount, jewish audience, beatitudes, lord's prayer, great commission, parables, olivet discourse, mount of olives, olivet, synoptic
Showing 1601 to 1625 of 2273 results
1601. Get a Charge
Matthew 21:28-32
Sermon
Mark Trotter
The news media is turning its attention now to the 2000 elections, which means that for the next year we are going to be preoccupied with politics. I think if you asked someone in our society what they expect of a politician, they would say leadership. If you asked them to define that, I think they would say it means selflessness, giving oneself to the common good of the nation, standing for what is right, and not only for what is expedient, representing everyone, the common folk as well as those in power ...
Sermon
Mark Trotter
Both our scriptures this morning come from the same hand. Or perhaps we could say, they come from the same community of faith, those who followed the Apostle John in his interpretation of Jesus, and what Jesus means for us. One clue to that common authorship is the word "abide." You find it in both passages read to us this morning, in the Gospel of John and in the First Letter of John. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, "Abide in me, as I abide in you." In the First Letter of John it says, "By this we know ...
1603. Easter 6
Acts 17:16-34, 1 Peter 3:8-22, John 14:15-31
Sermon Aid
John R. Brokhoff
COMMENTARY Lesson 1: Acts 17:22-31 (C, E) Paul preaches at Athens. Paul's sermon at Athens was different. It was addressed not to Jews nor to Christian Gentiles, but to educated and cultured pagans, for Athens was the capitol of Greek-Roman civilization. It is interesting to see how Paul adapted to his audience to get a hearing. He begins by complementing them - "You are very religious." He refers to a local situation - an altar erected to an unknown god. This gives him an entree into his subject. Who is ...
1604. Proper 13
Matthew 14:13-21, Romans 8:28-39, Romans 9:1-29, Nehemiah 9:1-37, Isaiah 55:1-13, Genesis 32:22-32
Sermon Aid
John R. Brokhoff
COMMENTARY Lesson 1: Genesis 32:22-31 (C) Jacob wrestles with an angel. Jacob, with his family and herds, was on his way back to his parents' home. When he learned that Esau with 400 men were coming to him, Jacob was scared that Esau was coming to kill him. To appease Esau, he sent gifts in advance and then his servants, wives, and children. He remained at the end of the procession. Jacob spent the night in prayer as he wrestled with a man until he received a blessing. Lesson 1: Isaiah 55:1-3 (RC) God ...
1605. Proper 15
Genesis 45:1-28, Isaiah 56:1-8, Romans 11:11-24, Romans 11:25-32, Matthew 15:1-20, Matthew 15:21-28
Sermon Aid
John R. Brokhoff
COMMENTARY Old Testament: Genesis 45:1-15 Joseph reveals himself to his brothers. Because of a famine in Canaan, Jacob sent his sons to buy food in Egypt. None of them knew Joseph was the prime minister of Egypt and was responsible for selling food. In this passage, Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers, gives God the credit for his being a top ruler, and urges his brothers to tell Jacob that he and his family and herds should come to Egypt so that Joseph could care for them. With this reading we ...
Sermon
Thomas A. Pilgrim
It was a few days after Christmas. A mother was busy cleaning up the den, putting everything away, taking the Christmas tree down. Her son came in and saw her and said, “Mama, what are you doing?” She said, “I’m putting all our Christmas stuff away.” He asked in reply, “Why are you doing that?” She answered, “So everything will be back to normal again.” His response to that was, “Mama, I don’t want things to get back to normal again.” On this second Sunday after Christmas, we have the thought in our minds ...
Sermon
Richard Gribble
One day a man told a story which touched the hearts of all. He began, "I was a timid, frail, lost, and lonely six-year-old child when I first arrived at the farm in Georgia. I would have remained that way had it not been for an extraordinary woman. She lived on the farm in a small two-room cabin where her parents resided when they were slaves. To any outsider she simply appeared as any other African-American on the farm, but to those who knew her, she had a spiritual force whose influence was felt ...
1608. God, the Enemy
Matthew 10:24-39
Sermon
Stephen M. Crotts
Do you remember when Timothy McVeigh, the man responsible for the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, was executed? As the time of his execution drew near, McVeigh gave a handwritten statement to the warden, intending it to take the place of any verbal comment. In that statement, McVeigh quoted a section of the poem "Invictus," which is Latin for "unconquered." That poem, by nineteenth-century British poet William Ernest Henley (18491903), reads, in part, "I am the master of my fate: I am the ...
Sermon
Stephen M. Crotts
Epistemology is the study of knowledge. How does one know anything? How can I know what is true? One means of knowledge is reason. Two plus two equals four is an equation of reasonability. The Bible says, "The wisdom from above is ... open to reason" (James 3:17). The discipline of apologetics is the use of reason to defend the faith. Experience is a second means of knowledge. I know fire burns because I touched it! The blind man Jesus healed was being harassed by the Pharisees over Christ restoring his ...
Sermon
King Duncan
The Rev. Miles Brandon of The Episcopal Student Center, Austin, TX notes that our culture is captivated with making lists. It all started in 1955 when Edgar Smith of Fortune suggested that the magazine publish a list of the largest U.S. companies. At that very moment, the Fortune 500 was born. Today Fortune not only prints up the 500 list, but “The Forty Richest People Under 40,” “The Fifty Most Powerful Women in Business,” “The 100 Best Companies to Work For,” “The 25 Most Powerful Lobbyists in Washington ...
Sermon
King Duncan
There is something odd about the sight of a grown man up in a tree. The Reuters news service carried a story sometime back about a Polish man who climbed a tree to avoid a taxi fare which totaled just a few dollars. Pursued by the irate taxi driver, the passenger climbed a tall tree, jumped from branch to branch and hurled bananas from a shopping bag at a crowd which soon gathered at the scene. More than a dozen firefighters were called in and spread out an air-bag under the tree as a police psychologist ...
1612. The Holidaze Craze
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
The holiday harangues are here. The Holidaze Craze has begun. Catalogs filled with more stuff than sense have been overloading the postal service for months already. At your house I suspect it would be a full time job simply to look through all the slick advertisements that arrive on a daily basis. Retailers put out their Christmas decorations the day after Halloween. The frantic Friday-after-Thanksgiving sale day has become a late shoppers event. Midnight madness now refers, not to burning the midnight ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Someone has called advertising the art of deception. I'm not ready to go that far. But one of the most obvious attempts at deception - you can see right through it, or better yet, you can hear right through it - is one that happens almost every night as soon as you sit down to eat. The phone rings. You answer the phone and hear the tell-tale back ground noise that telegraphs some boiler-room operation. Then after a two-second delay a voice finally comes on and identifies himself as Roger or Jeffrey or ...
1614. Come Back
Luke 21:5-38
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Just when I think that all this talk about A.I. or Artificial Intelligence is a bunch of artificial air, something happens to show me that maybe we're further along the AI path than we think. Maybe the worlds of the born and the words of the made are coming together faster than we ever imagined. In researching this week's theme of betrayal, I undertook a Google search to reference a disturbing news story I remembered hearing the last week of October. Here's the Associated Press news release: TACOMA, Wash ...
Sermon
Richard Gribble
Once upon a time there was a beautiful garden that was owned by an ugly and unfriendly Giant. This was truly a lovely spot -- the flowers bloomed in abundance, the peach trees always seemed to have their springtime blossoms, and the birds sang sweetly in the trees. Each day after school, children came and played in the Giant's garden. One day the Giant, who had been away visiting his friend the Cornish Ogre for seven years, returned to his home and garden. He grew angry when he observed the children ...
1616. Four Cornerstones
Ephesians 2:11-22
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Both Elizabeth and I hail from paper-mill towns. A few years ago the blue collar-redneck-good-old-boy logging town Elizabeth grew up in (Springfield, Oregon) found itself very interested all of a sudden in building sushi bars and trendy, high-tech fitness centers. Why? Sony Corporation seriously considered the town as a new factory headquarters site. Like every other economically struggling small town, the prospect of a large employer coming to town with deep pockets and wide wants encouraged the community ...
1617. Hands On
Luke 7:36-50
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Our five-year-old Soren was looking at an over-sized art book. It has lots of glossy full-page reproductions of artwork that made it a fascinating "read" for a five-year old. But on a two-page layout in a series of Renaissance paintings depicting Jesus' life, Soren found a mystifying addition. "Daddy," she asked, "why does Jesus always have a plate on his head?" Her stubby purple-painted fingernail was pointing at the perfectly round golden halo that surrounded Jesus' head in all the paintings. Before I ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Say "Green Bay Packers fan" and what do you think of? Anyone? That's right. Cheese hats. Say "Peabody Hotel" and what do you think of? Anyone? That's right. Ducks. At the classy Peabody Hotel in Memphis, TN, hundreds come to lunch every day for one specific reason. It's not that the chef is glamorous or that the deserts are gigantic or that the menu is gastronomic. That all may be true. But that's not why they come. No, the diners come for the ducks. Not to eat duck. But to watch ducks. The Peabody Hotel ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
In every machine, gizmo, tool, and implement designed by human ingenuity, there always seems to be one malfunction, one fatal flaw, one fault that spells doom for the entire contraption. You know its bad when the auto mechanic solemnly pronounces over your unmoving carcass of a car "it's the transmission." You know you're in trouble when the washing machine repairer proclaims "it's the water pump." You know it's curtains when the furnace maintenance expert just shakes his head, and hands you your heavy ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Except for Christmas and Easter Sunday, there isn't a lot of everyday recognition of the Christian liturgical calendar in our post-Christian culture. But this is a new phenomenon. Our kids might not believe us, but not only did most businesses used to close on Sundays, but other Christian observances were commonly honored as well. McDonald's came out with it's Filet-O-Fish sandwich in the 1960s not out of some kind of early health consciousness, but so that on Fridays observant Catholics could still drop ...
1621. Be Ready!
Matthew 24:36-51
Sermon
King Duncan
Mr. Smith is riding through Manhattan with a reckless cab driver. At the first intersection they come to, the cab driver runs a red light. “Hey, what’s the big idea?” Mr. Smith yells. “That was a red light!” “Don’t worry, fella,” the cabbie replies, “My brother drives a cab too, and he does that all the time.” Mr. Smith grits his teeth and tries to remain calm, but he loses his cool when the driver runs a second red light. “Are you insane? You’re just asking for trouble,” he yells. “I know what I’m doing, ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
It used to be the separation between a positive and a negative could be measured in millimeters. Here's a water glass. Is it half full or half empty? (I always opt for half-full, in the spirit of the bumper sticker that reads "Just say NO to Negativity"). A tiny difference in the water level determined whether we call it half-empty or half-full--whether the glass is a good thing (full) or a bad thing (empty). But have you noticed that it's rare to find anything that's plain old good anymore? In fact if ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
The more we move into the Advent season, the more our scripture texts bring the Christ-child’s birth closer and closer to us. Yet here in Matthew 11:2-11 we are back to the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist. Yet even though this is not part of our text for this week, the mere mention of John’s name should remind us of their cousinly kinship, even of an in utero jump for joy that marked their first meeting--making cousin John the first person to celebrate Advent. As out text opens Jesus has ...
Sermon
James McCormick
I first heard the words of today’s sermon title when I was a teenager. They came over the radio in a country and western song. The words: “I beg your pardon; I never promised you a rose garden.” I encountered those words again a few years ago when they appeared as the unofficial slogan of the emerging nation of Israel. When Jews migrated to Israel and were asked to settle in “kibbutzim” in parched desert frontiers, they were reminded of the arduous task ahead by the signs posted all around the settlements ...
1625. Two Worlds
Matthew 5:13-16
Sermon
James McCormick
I was a young pastor attending a seminar. The featured speaker opened his mouth to speak, and these were his first words: “You and I are living today in a world God did not make. He allowed it, but He did not make it.” That took place many years ago, but I still remember those words vividly. And, I remember the surprise I felt upon hearing them. It had never occurred to me that there was anything God had not made. I now see very clearly that he was right: “You and I are living today in a world that God did ...
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