Sermon and Worship Resources

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 1626 to 1650 of 2815 results

1626. When The Cheering Stopped

Luke 19:28-44

Sermon

Brett Blair

... persistent call to commitment. Consider a few of the events after he enters Jerusalem: Hungry one morning Jesus stops by a fig tree and finds no figs. He withers the tree because it is producing no fruit. It's an illustration: Jesus demands fruitful committed lives. A Parable is told: Who is more committed? The son who says, “I will work” and then does not or the son who says, “I will not work,” repents, and gets the work done? It is the son who does the work. The greatest commandment is given: Love ...

1627. Sermon Opener - So Much To Say, So Little Time

John 16:5-16

Illustration

Alexander H. Wales

... , and yet, he was aware of the fact that the disciples were just not ready to take it all in. Up to this point, they were struggling just to understand what he had been trying to tell them. They were still stumbling over the meaning of the parables, attempting to put some flesh on stories that seemed to be like a gossamer cloth spun with gold thread, yet impossible to grasp even when they had their hands on it. They were constantly bickering with each other, trying to get a more prominent place in the order ...

1628. What Jesus Saw In Martha

Luke 10:38-42

Sermon

James W. Moore

... describe Martha… three words – distracted, anxious, troubled. That’s what resentment does to you! But, even more, her resentment cut her off… not only from her sister, Mary, but also from her Lord. The same thing happened to the Elder Brother in the Prodigal Son Parable. He resented his brother… and it cut him off from the Father. That’s how resentment affects us and that is why it is so dangerous. It separates us from people… and it separates us from God! In this episode, what is Jesus saying ...

1629. Storing What We Do Not Need

Luke 12:13-21

Illustration

Staff

... he ate, drank and was merry, but that he was withholding the means for others to do the same. He had become a bottleneck in the flow of Shalom blessings to others. The story, so understood, is not a teaching condemning the foolishness of gathering wealth. It is rather a parable which condemns the refusal to share the wealth we do not need. It warns about the shortsightedness of failing to be a good custodian of the abundance that God entrusts to us.

1630. An Everyday Theology

Luke 11:1-13

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... Jesus depicts two everyday experiences that emphasize God’s willingness to respond to our praying: getting up at night to help a pestering friend, and a father who gives good things to his children. Beyond this passage we might think of the many parables as drawn from the common stuff of everyday life. How often our theological perplexities are solved by resorting to an everyday theology. Take the question of ultimate destiny. One might ask if there really is an everlasting hell, apart from one’s desire ...

1631. On Staying Awake

Luke 12:35-48

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... and thought that nothing vital had happened in that cozy little group. How we miss the big moment! How we fall asleep just before the great revealing. How we need to stay awake. I It is perilously easy to fall asleep and miss the prize. Jesus’ parable makes this quite clear. The master had gone off to the wedding and feast. There he would indulge in the celebration - the music, the wine, the dancing - and quite likely would come home in a generous mood. Possibly he would call all the servants together and ...

1632. Lovers Never Ask, 'What's the Least I Can Do?'

Luke 17:1-10

Sermon

Alvin Rueter

... Then Jesus followed that up by uttering a statement he must have made many times because it occurs often in the Gospels: "Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:27) He’s rubbing salt on our sores with the parable in today’s Gospel, asking, "Will anyone of you say to your servant when he’s come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down; I have supper all ready for you. It was kind of you to have done all that plowing’?" (How Jesus’ audience must ...

1633. Real Security

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

... the inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?" And he said to them, "Take heed, and beware of all covetousness; for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." And he told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully; and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones; and there I will store ...

1634. The Gospel of the Little Man

Luke 19:1-10

Sermon

... life that we have carefully protected from his interference might be penetrated. Our need for him would then be clear as crystal, and his supply for our deep need a miracle that would upset our every value, attitude, relationship, and corner of our beings. We recall the parable about a man who planned to build a tower, but who first sat down to estimate the cost. Not a bad idea. When we calculate the cost, we conclude that either we prefer not or we cannot. A rich young ruler came to Jesus with the question ...

1635. Emancipation Proclamation

John 8:31-41

Sermon

... de Vaca say, "You know, Lad, men are often imprisoned by chains of their own forging." This is not a statement so profound that it escapes our understanding. Each of us has seen it happen - in ourselves, and sometimes in our families, just as the father in the parable had seen it happen to his son, and often in the circle of our friendships. We have felt the icy sweat of hopelessness that comes from finding our feet caught in traps of our own making. A young lady who is vivid in my memory said she had ...

1636. The Foolish Farmer

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

Carveth Mitchell

... what is happening around him and within him. This obsession with material things can wither our sympathy and blind us to other people’s needs. A concentration on material things can close us in on ourselves until we become first cousin to the farmer in the parable. In his book The Compassionate Christ, Walter Russel Bowie quotes an unknown author who penned these lines: He used his health To store up wealth To get, to scrimp and save. Then spent his wealth To get back health And only got a grave. 3. He ...

1637. Jesus and the Rascal

Luke 16:1-15

Sermon

Carveth Mitchell

... rents "in kind" - that is, with a portion of their produce; in this case, a hundred measures of oil, a hundred measures of wheat. Any thought that Jesus lived in an ivory tower, unaware of the hard and often sordid facts of life, is banished by this parable. This overseer was a rascal. There can be no doubt about that. He wasted his master’s goods and he falsified the entries in his master’s books. Furthermore, he was dealing with a lot of other rascals, and he knew it. First, turn the spotlight on ...

1638. The Man Who Didn’t Care

Luke 16:19-31

Sermon

Carveth Mitchell

... ’s take her literally for a moment. As we study the Gospel for today, let’s get out of it some of the things that are not there in order to see clearly the things that are there. It’s easy to read some unwarranted meanings into this parable - like putting on a suit of armor to keep the real point of the story from jabbing us. Let’s take off that armor of unwarranted meanings and expose ourselves to its possibly painful prodding of our personal Christian living. First, this is not a condemnation of ...

1639. The Godness Of God

Exodus 3:1-22

Sermon

... enough to make a way of escape and will give us strength to endure the temptation. How good of God! In a world of temptations, we have a God who will see us through to victory! Today's Gospel continues to show us the goodness of God. Jesus tells a parable about a three-year old fig tree which failed to yield fruit. The owner was about to cut it down, but the gardener asked him to give it another year to produce. Christ is the gardener who asks God to have patience with us. There is one more chance to ...

1640. Born Naked With A Cross

Sermon

... , go a second mile. Jesus asked, "What do you do more than others?" Do you love those who love you? Non-Christians do that. Christians are not to be ordinary persons, but extraordinary persons. We are not to be merely men, but supermen. One time Jesus told a parable about inviting people to dinner. He said that we should not invite people who could invite us back, but invite the poor and outcast who had no homes or money to invite us to their homes for dinner. This means we can never be satisfied with doing ...

1641. If Only We Would Let God Mold Us ...

Jeremiah 18:1--19:15

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... on turning and the Potter kept shaping and reshaping the clay over and over again. Judah was still in God’s hands. Jeremiah began to look for and to build for a future of hope. The picture God presents through Jeremiah is brief and simple, and extraordinarily rich. The parable still speaks to us today. Each of us is clay in the Potter’s hands, just as surely as Judah was. God designs the vessel - the person each of us is created to become - in his mind. It does not even know what is to be made of it ...

1642. Prayer

Matthew 21:33-46

Bulletin Aid

... need something, And can find no one to make a decision To make the investment! I can sympathize with those tenants (Even if I don't condone their violence)! Why should I do all the work, And someone else get the profits? - But this is a parable! The owner is God! The vineyard is the earth! Could one of those rebellious tenants be - me??? Lord, forgive me my self-righteousness My assumption that I'm always Righteous Good Honest And that other people are wrong! Teach me humility And honesty, And to recognize ...

1643. The Day of Pentecost

Isaiah 44:1-5

Sermon

... something positive was about to happen, and they were to be a part of it. Better yet, they were to help it come to pass. It was important for them to accept the necessity of their involvement. Kierkegaard wrote, in one of his vivid parables, about the danger of becoming a specialized hearer of religion - a peril which the Israelites faced, and which all people who are religious face. Believing people can become so absorbed in the occupation of talking about, hearing, and studying their faith that there is ...

1644. Hunger, Health, and Happiness

Luke 14:1-14

Sermon

One sabbath when he went to dine at the house of a ruler who belonged to the Pharisees, they were watching him. Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he marked how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, "When you are invited by any one to a marriage feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest a more eminent man than you be invited by him; and ...

1645. The Ladder of Success

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Paul Hegele

... be like if we did make it to the top; if, instead of getting off the ladder of success exhausted, we actually climbed to the highest rung. The ancients thought of that, too. One place it is spoken of is in an old Japanese children's story, the parable of Tapu. Let's share this familiar story again. Tapu was a very average farmer. Each day he would walk past his wife and children, past his animals and barn, and into the fields where he planted his crop. Sometimes Tapu became very tired of this common life ...

1646. He Can Quench All Your Thirsts

Exodus 17:1-7

Sermon

... by non-Christians who say the church is long on talk and short on action. Does God - and do his people - care more for theology and less for physical involvement with others? Certainly the New Testament deals extensively with teachings - the parables of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, the Pauline letters filled with advice. And certainly most churches today spend less money and energy offering practical help, such as soup kitchens or day care centers or clothing banks, than in giving such nontangibles ...

1647. Christ's Passion Portraits

Isaiah 50:1-11

Sermon

Paul Hegele

... edition of the Bible - which records Christ's words in red - will show our Lord was never that quiet. Rather, he was a dynamic man. He mentally and emotionally wrestled with the devil for forty days in the wilderness. In debate, he cleverly threw parables and trick questions at the Pharisees, who had tried to trip him up with their own clever questions. And Jesus threw anger at them, too. He called them snakes and broods of vipers and growled, "You are like tombs covered with white-wash - nice looking ...

1648. The Two Washings

John 13:1-17

Sermon

Dean Lueking

... . The spirit of avoidance of responsibility, of failure to care, of refusal to risk doing that which sustains justice and furthers love is troubling us more than we ever realize. See it in this way, however. It is not just that we fail each other. Accoding to Jesus’ parable of the final judgment in Matthew 25, it is he who comes to us and knocks at the door of our lives in the persons of the suffering, the victims of injustice, the poor and castaways of the earth. Our sin is against him as well as those ...

1649. The Promise and the Task

Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon

Dean Lueking

... as done to himself. "I was hungry and you gave me food." "When did we see you hungry?" "Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me." These words from the Savior’s parable in Matthew 25 belong in our ascension worship and our ascension awareness. The Task Given The task Jesus left us is enormous. Sometimes the equipment seems derisory. Yet that is what Jesus left us with, and there is no more reliability about it than Jesus himself. We come ...

1650. Is the Lord Among Us or Not?

Exodus 17:1-7

Sermon

... love never dies. I ask you then, "Is the Lord among us or not?" Being in worship is evidence of your faith that the Lord is among us, or that you want to believe he is; being among us, God’s presence is always for good. There is a modern parable which seems to fit to what I have been saying. One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky. In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other ...

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