Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 1626 to 1650 of 2332 results

1626. Cross Eyed: Focus

Mark 1:9-15

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

... this time we follow Jesus a little further. For while His baptism was marked by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, God's blessing and God's words, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." We also read that the Spirit drove Jesus into the desert where He was tempted. Mark 1:9-15 (NRSV) [9] In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. [10] And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like ...

1627. Haiti

Job 1:6-22

Sermon

Brett Blair

... and business is wiped out. In the middle of the business of everyday life two rogue groups conduct a raid taking away Job's livestock and putting his servants to the sword. Then his family is lost in a freak accident when a mighty wind sweeps in from the desert, strikes the four corners of the house, collapses it, and all are lost. It was swift. It was unwarranted. It was unconscionable. A very large hit and hit hard. In many ways the events of this past week seem eerily echoed in the story of Job. Why is ...

1628. Luke 9:28-36

Luke 9:28-36

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... of an all-enveloping “cloud” (“nephele”). This is the same image that was used to describe what enveloped Moses on Sinai (Exodus 24:15-18), Elijah on Mt. Carmel (I Kings 18:44-45), and which led the people in the desert (Exodus 13:21). This “cloud” is unmistakably God’s very presence. As Mary herself was “overshadowed” (“episkiazein”) by God’s glorious presence (Luke 1:35), so all those on this mountaintop find themselves wholly enveloped by the divine shadow. The disciples ...

1629. Isaiah 55:1-9

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... . The link to Deuteronomy, which celebrated Israel’s joy in the Lord with the images of eating and drinking (Deuteronomy 8:7ff; 12:15) is echoed in these verses where the physical is used as an image for a deeper, spiritual connection. For a desert people, what could be a better image of satisfaction and unlimited fulfillment than never ceasing waters. For nomadic people used to subsisting on the merest basics, what could be more opulent than a table awash in milk and wine, as well as the life sustaining ...

1630. Resurrected Obedience (Series: Living on the Resurrection Side of Life)

John 14:15-31

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

... Him? I think one of the greatest statements of the Bible is John 14:18. Jesus says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” Abandonment is an awful feeling. Sometimes parents will abandon children, husbands will abandon wives, families will desert each other in selfish strife, but Jesus says, “I will not abandon you.” You are mine. Mine now, mine forever. Can you trust Him, can you trust Him now? We don’t need more insights, knowledge, and understanding. What we need is more trust ...

1631. Am I In Shape Spiritually? (Series: Real Faith for Real People)

1 Timothy 4:1-16

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

... . Wesley advised fasting as a means of grace. For most of his life, Wesley observed Friday as a day of fasting. Fasting for Wesley became a way to turn his body toward God. Moses fasted on the mountain. Elijah fasted in a cave. Jesus fasted in the desert. The early Church fasted before making decisions. Fasting is a form of penance, a way of being sorry for our sins. Fasting is an act of freedom from addictions that control us. Fasting provides a time for prayer and thoughts of the poor. II. Some Spiritual ...

1632. The Golden Hour

Jn 21:1-14

Illustration

King Duncan

Artist Bill Herring loves his home state of Texas. He sees beauty in the landscape, even in the dry desert ground and the dull, green bushes that squat along the horizon. Ordinarily, this landscape is dry and ugly. But then there comes what Herring calls the "golden hour." Sometime in the fall, these bushes bring forth gorgeous yellow flowers. Just before sunset, when the fading sunlight washes over the caramel ...

1633. Easter Heart Burn

Luke 24:13-35

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

... Risen Christ and this Easter Heart Burn across the family table or in fellowship with friends. B. The Risen Christ meets us wherever we are on our faith journey. There is a story of a British soldier in the First World War who lost heart for the battle and deserted. Trying to reach the coast for a boat to England that night, he ended up wandering in the pitch black night, hopelessly lost. In the darkness, he came across what he thought was a signpost. It was so dark that he began to climb the post so that ...

1634. The Real Thirst Quencher

Revelation 22:1-6

Sermon

King Duncan

... 42:1-2) Someone has noted that in warm weather a fully grown deer must drink more than two quarts of water every day. Deer don’t sweat. They pant instead. So, what’s a poor deer to do in a part of the world where there are stretches of desert? The Psalmist compares his own plight in a desolate world with that of a deer and he writes, “As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God . . .” Jesus knew what it is to thirst. It was his ...

1635. More Than a Book

2 Timothy 3:10--4:8

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... – he experienced God in the setting of the worship and God confronted him with this eternal call – “whom will I send and who will go for us?” John the Baptist, in his heart of hearts had experienced the revelation. Flocks of people came out of the desert and Galilian hills to be baptized by him in the Jordan. But no messages overcame John as it does too many of religious leaders. He had been confronted by the eternal God who had an ultimate plan, so he could humbly say, “I baptize with water unto ...

1636. Magnificent Fools

1 Corinthians 3:1-23

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... he laid down the flail of the persecutor and took up the torch of the evangel on the Damascus Road, and started the course of the great adventure. An adventure that led him from one fiery ordeal to another - through the blistering sun and sand of the desert, and the raging storms of the sea; beaten by the Jew, stoned by the Romans, thrown over city wall after city wall for dead; carrying on in the magnificent spirit and with the more than human strength of one totally committed to Jesus Christ and the cause ...

1637. Happy Marriage...It's All About Choices

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

James W. Moore

... LAMENT. Some people go miserably thru life crying “Woe is me,” lamenting at every turn. This is sad because God meant life to be joyous. A good sense of humor has never hurt a single person… and it has made life blossom like a flower in the desert for many. Sir Max Beerbohm once wrote: “Strange when you think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or legend as having died of laughter.” And, Abraham Lincoln once said: “With ...

1638. Being and Doing as the People of God

1 Peter 1:13-2:3

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... again, this time with a clearer picture of the struggle ahead than ever before. Yet, now once again, I can welcome it. I have the feeling that I am waking slowly after a long sort of unreal dream. As I now look back, I realize I never felt deserted - and I know God was simply waiting patiently for me to let go.” There is a significant lesson in this witness. One of the greatest problems, as we seek to be dynamic disciples is our unwillingness to let go. We want to do it ourselves. We exhaust ourselves ...

1639. The Reluctant Prophet

Exodus 3:1-22

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... the prophet brave enough to walk right into the court of Ahab and Jezebel and tell them that “there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word” (I Kings 17:1). But Elijah was not as brave as he seemed. God send him into the desert for his training. Elijah drank from a brook and there was a drought that caused the brook to dry up and Elijah got the lesson. He watched the brook grow smaller and smaller and said, “My life is no more than a dried up brook.” He was right. Then you ...

1640. The Gospel of Marah

Exodus 15:22-27

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... word I call to your attention is in verse 25: “He proved them.” The big question is not whether we can sing in our triumph at the Red Sea, but whether we can sing in our troubles at Marah. The proof of faith, the testing, always comes in the barren desert at Marah, not in the oasis at Elim, where there were 12 springs of water and 70 palm trees. The testing comes when nothing makes sense, except to God. It’s the kind of testing that came to Job, and his faith lights our way: “Though He slays me, yet ...

1641. Fresh Every Morning - A Test

Exodus 16:1-36

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... in which He leads us.” (F. B Meyer, Studies in Exodus, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1978, p. 186.) It is my observation that the Lord never allows us to linger too long in Elim. He summons us to go forth, and our going forth sometimes takes us into the desert. Our journey really is a pilgrim’s journey. Now and then we may rest in Elim but we can’t pitch our tent for a long season there. In our lives, there will appear a cloud by day and a light by night which is God’s summons for us ...

1642. The Darkness Where God Was

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... of our Lord. The God who came to Israel in the thick darkness of exile, the God who was reconciling the world to Himself in the thick darkness of Calvary the God who was there on Mt. Sinai where the darkness was, has not and will not desert the world. As James Stewart has rightly reminded us, the basic fact of history is not the Iron Curtain, but the rent veil; not the devil’s strategy, but the Divine Sovereignty.” In history, the thick darkness –where God was. II THE DARKNESS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE Let ...

1643. The Ark of the Covenant

Exodus 25:10-22

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... the high priest would take the blood of sacrificed lambs and pour it on the mercy seat as a sacrifice as a covening for the sins of the people. But the tabernacle was not always in place, because Israel was a wandering people; wandering through that desert land. And wherever they went, of course, they would take the ark - it symbolized God’s presence with them. There is the powerful expression of this in the third chapter of Joshua - when Joshua is planning to lead the people on toward the promised land ...

1644. It's Tough to Be God

Exodus 32:1-33:6

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... had carefully selected an oppressed, slave people to be his people and had led them where they never would have gone by themselves. This Yaweh was not the standard deity who paid all when he was praised and received sacrifices. There was a new element in this desert deity: mercy! Forgiveness! Grace!” (Bauermeister, I bid.) It’s tough to be God, because God can’t rest until all of his children have come home. It’s also tough to be God because it’s not easy for God’s children to be found. Look at ...

1645. A Glimpse of God

Exodus 33:19-23

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... said, with a twinkle in her eye, “my dear, what you need is not justice, but mercy.” Sometimes we feel imposed on by the universe and say to our selves, “There’s no justice in the world.” We think if only we could receive our just deserts, we would ask for nothing more. Well, the holiness of God guarantees justice. But suppose there were justice in God and nothing more. Suppose we got just what we deserve and only what we deserve. What would be your score with God on that basis?” (Redhead, Ibid ...

1646. Who Are We Waiting For?

Isaiah 40:1-31

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that has received from the Lord’s hand double for all sins. A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together ...

1647. A Curse for Our Redemption

Galatians 3:1-14

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... which staggered him: “Let this cup pass away from me.” He faced the inevitable — the grim thing that must be: “If this cup cannot pass from me except I drink it - He underwent the last loneliness —— separation from all He loved and the feeling of desertion by God. No one can plumb the depths of his suffering. (Henry Sloan Coffin, The Meaning of the Cross Charles Scribner’s So, New York, 1931 pp. 9k—95) But remember this – He did it freely. That’s important to note. He was not accursed ...

1648. The Harvest of the Spirit, Part 1

Galatians 5:16-26

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... whom nobody else will touch, the outcasts, the destitute and diseased who have been left for dead on the streets of Calcutta. Then she writes; “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, and deserted by everybody. Nowadays for all kinds of diseases there are medicines and cures. But for being unwanted, except where there are willing hands to serve and there’s a loving heart to love, I don’t think this terrible disease can ever be ...

1649. The World's Best-Known Widow

Mark 12:41-44

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... an abomination in the eyes of God. Elijah tells them it was wrong, and, therefore, the famine in the land is the judgment of God. Well, kings don’t take very kindly to subjects telling them how to do their business. So, Elijah had to flee, went off to the desert, east of the Jordan, where there was even less food and no water. He was fed by ravens, until God sent him to a widow in a little dessert village named Zarephath. That’s all we know about her. No, she’s the widow of Zarephath. No name given ...

1650. Should America Repent?

Matthew 3:1-12

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

... , too. As we think about building a highway from Chaos to Christ this Advent, we would do well to hear again the words of the prophet John, who encouraged us and warned us to GET READY TO MEET GOD. In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." For nearly 400 years the prophets had been silent. There was no word from the Lord. People were left to do their own thing and find their own way. Now, looking a lot like Elijah of old ...

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