Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 1676 to 1700 of 3926 results

1676. The Sin of Judging

Matthew 13:36-43, Matthew 13:24-30

Sermon

Dennis Kastens

... who normally do not listen to such broadcasts. He effected a number of innovations with this in mind, but the reaction was immediate and far from enheartening. Although no compromise with the Gospel was involved, many wrote to say they would no longer support or listen to the program. They had set up their own private concept of how a Gospel broadcast should be conducted and were judging him by those standards. Cruelly and inaccurately, he was being accused of "no longer preaching the Gospel." There was ...

1677. Scenes From a Marriage

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Sermon

Craig Erickson

... doesn’t have its darker side, when the "union made in heaven" is all-too-painfully aware of feet mired in clay. You can hardly think of a marriage that hasn’t at some point needed help. The agony of marriage in our time supports one sociologist’s description of marriage as "a state of tragic tension fraught with difficulties."5 It is this perspective that predominates in the early 1970s film "Scenes from a Marriage," by the brilliant Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman. As in every Bergman film, there ...

1678. God Is Not Yet Finished With You

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... created that second-creation individuals can be mutually sustained and strengthened. The Spirit is a centripetal force that draws and gathers individual Christians into a close-knit fellowship where the continuing creation can take place. In this fellowship, they find support and inspiration for growth into maturity. This means, therefore, that the church is no human organization. It is God’s creation through the Spirit. The church is a divine institution, and because it is of God, Jesus promised that the ...

1679. Count Me In!

Isaiah 56:1-8

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... where there was not one Christian. While their wives worked the farm, the two men went about telling of the love of Jesus. Today there are 20,000 people who are in four Christian congregations there. Evangelism abroad is known as missions. We send and support missionaries to spread the Good News to people who are ignorant of God’s love in Christ. To spread the Gospel to the nations that all peoples will come to God’s house of prayer takes people and provisions. It costs to tell the world about ...

1680. Forgive To Be Forgiven

Genesis 50:15-21

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... office. A motion to do that was made at the monthly Board meeting, but after discussion, it was tabled. Then the Spirit led the church to forgive and to be understanding. As a result, the couple decided to marry and the church continued to give them moral support. After a few years, the father of the child was elected the lay leader of the church. Forgiveness from compassion saved a family for God! Why should we show compassion and mercy to offenders? To be a Christian and as such to be a follower of Christ ...

1681. Looking For God?

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... the cross. There we see the true love of God given for the reconciliation of lost humanity. In the shame, the disgrace, the agony, the brutality, and the very death of the cross, we finally have our eyes open to see God standing in the shadow of the cross, supporting his Son. In J.B., Archibald MacLeish put it, "It’s from the ash heap God is seen always! Always from the ashes." The Roman centurion found God in the man on the cross, for he exclaimed, "Truly, this was the Son of God." You will find God in ...

1682. Two Bodies for Two Worlds

Isaiah 26:1-21

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... ’ visit to the moon. It is another world where there is weightlessness and no oxygen to breathe. A human could not live on the moon because the body was not made for it. The astronauts had to carry their own world with them in terms of a life support system which gave them the needed oxygen to live. For this new and different world beyond earth, we will need a spiritual body which God promises to give us. One thing is sure: It will not be the physical body we are now using on earth. St. Paul definitely ...

1683. Christian The King

Ezekiel 34:1-31

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... . The royal potentate is expected to produce. In our text, God appoints David as shepherd-king in order that "he shall feed them." Indeed, this is a strange kind of king according to his function. The usual king demands that he be served. He levies taxes to support himself. He has a retinue of servants to serve his food, care for his lands, and provide the necessary services required for a high style of living. This was the style of Solomon who was reputed to be the wisest of men. When he died, the people ...

1684. The Disciples’ Dumb Dream

Mark 9:33-37

Sermon

Richard F. Bansemer

... ’s due, then each of us is likely to wonder Why? Why bother? I don’t see the point. I give and give and give and no one seems to care. I think I’m being taken for granted. Maybe we are. Maybe we don’t get the praise and support each of us deserves. Saying thank you is more than a matter of manners. It’s helpful. It makes us feel good, and willing to do even more. For a moment, let’s feel sorry for ourselves. Let’s admit it. Each of us has done his share, and more ...

1685. "When E. F. Hutton Talks"

Jeremiah 26:1-24

Sermon

Peter Rudowski

... whether we lie, cheat, commit adultery, how we treat our neighbors, our business ethics, and so on. We need to take care of the poor and the hungry. We need to watch out for those who cannot protect themselves in the legal system. We need to support the helpless. God is saying to those who only practice ritual, to those who only see faith functioning on Sunday morning, that things have to change. When God speaks, we are to listen. Buildings and structures also became a security blanket for the people of ...

1686. "Two Men in White Suits"

Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon

Peter Rudowski

... to this side of town looking for help. There are a whole bunch of people making a living going from church to church asking for food, asking for gas money, asking for help. The question comes up, as you sit there with the pastor’s discretionary fund, whether you support that kind of behavior. Do you give money? Do you buy gas? Many times these people won’t go to McDonald’s with you because they’re not quite that hungry. Do you say, "No, we can’t help you. You’re on your own." Jesus said, "You ...

1687. An Almost Anonymous Apostle

Acts 1:12-26

Sermon

George Bass

... a message which he simply entitled "A Very Sad Story." He began: "My name is Tazu Shibama from Hiroshima. I come here to tell you my story ..." He told how he began learning English when he was twelve years old in a Methodist Church-supported mission school. A missionary, Miss Gaines, encouraged him to become a teacher and arranged for him to go to the George Peabody School for Teachers, Nashville, Tennessee. That was in 1930. Tazu returned to the Hiroshima Girls’ High School, where Miss Gaines was, and ...

1688. Do I Dare Be Different?

Matthew 5:10; 10:1-42

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... strength to which the earth belongs. The world says, "Happy are the blase, for they never worry about their sins. Your conscience will make a coward of you. You may find that you are strangers in your own neighborhood. If you make it plain that you support the church, go to worship, observe Sunday as a celebration of the Resurrection Day, you’ll be on the outside looking in, and even your children may bear the brunt of being ostracized. If you seek to live daily in Christ’s way, you will stand ...

1689. An Altered State of Consciousness

Romans 5:1-11

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... we know, have in fact known more. When will we come to grips with essential, central truths about life, and stop spending all our time and effort on the periphery of life? Faith conditions our sense of reality. Too often we see reality as that which is supported "by the social concensus," and that is about as low as you can get. Jesus’ sense of reality was not so limited. He saw a deeper, higher reality (that others did not accept) and acted on it. He calls Christians to this special vision and activity ...

1690. Shepherding One Another in a Collapsing World

Romans 9:1-29

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... see a Christian boy or girl on your campus, fresh from the home church, trying really to be a Christian in a strange new setting, do you tease them, make fun of them, close them out of your circle? Or, do you understand them, support them, help them as mature, winsome Christians, on the college campus? Are you wolves or shepherds?" Malcolm Muggeridge says of Tolstoy, "His own life was his greatest production." What a tribute! In shepherding this is fundamental, my own life is my greatest production. Luther ...

1691. The Glory of the Cross

1 Corinthians 1:18--2:5

Sermon

Hubert Beck

... , and such a task is more than mortal abilities can handle. The cross is revelation of God’s glory, for it is the point where God’s help breaks through the point of our greatest helplessness. Death removes from human hands all sense of self-support. One spins dizzily out of any control and is completely victimized in death. If sin is the master of death, then everything that goes with sin ultimately controls us in our dying unless other hands are available to rescue us from the situation. That is ...

1692. Discerning the Way of God

1 Corinthians 2:6-16

Sermon

Hubert Beck

... strengthens faith and leads us to love the world in the same humble service he first showed us in Christ’s life and death. This is the Spirit who moves among us as a congregation, speaking to us through each other in mutual support, discipline, forgiveness, admonition, encouragement, exhortation, inspiration, and reassurance, emboldening us in this way to live life gladly even in the face of sin and death For we "have received ... the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed ...

1693. On Being a Beautiful Christian

Mark 14:1-11

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... the wrong picture. They thought being Christian was something sad - something terrible. They didn’t want to join something that would make them miserable. Jesus was not that way. Joy surrounded him wherever he went. Too many people have virtues without a supporting spirit and, thus, they make solid morality unpopular. Gerald Johnson wrote a biography of Woodrow Wilson. Listen to a few excerpts: "Woodrow Wilson had a way of rubbing people the wrong way ... He had an unusual share of the more distasteful ...

1694. The Agony and Ecstasy of Sight

John 9:1-12

Sermon

Richard Hoefler

... the baseball bat? And why is it, the moment we cut or burn our finger, we instinctively put it in our mouth? In light of these observations, the holiness and the curative power of spittle is a most understandable detail of this little story - even for us. In support of the idea that the cure of the man’s blindness was not an act of restoration but the creation of new sight, Irenaeus saw a parallel between the mud made of spittle and the creation story where God formed man out of the dust of the earth ...

1695. I Knew You’d Come

John 6:16-24

Sermon

Richard Hoefler

... longer - seven verses (6:45-52). His concern is suggested in the last thing he says. He relates this experience with the multiplication of the bread and points out the confusion of the disciples because "their hearts were hardened." This is further supported by the fact that he places this account of Jesus’ walking on the water just before he presents the controversy with the Pharisees and teachers of the law who fail to understand Jesus because of "the hardness of their hearts." This phrase - "hardness ...

1696. A Daughter of Jacob

Matthew 15:21-28

Sermon

Richard Hoefler

... word "faith," he discovered there was no adequate equivalent in the native language. One day a runner came into Paton’s tent. He was totally exhausted and out of breath and fell down on a bamboo couch, letting the whole weight of his body relax into the soft support of the couch. One of the men standing near by used a word to describe what the runner had done. Paton leaped to his feet, "That’s it! That’s it!" he shouted. He asked his friend to repeat the word, which meant casting all one’s weight ...

1697. A Thinking Person’s Thankful Prayer

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Raymond Gibson

... , and enable one another to keep growing. These great trees - some six thousand years old - are still growing. In exactly the same way must the hearts and lives of a Christian community intertwine. Only as every person feels responsible for one another, supports one another, prays for one another, works with one another - above all, loves one another - can a community be a community worthy of Christ’s name. Therefore, the thankful prayer of every thoughtful Christian should begin as Paul began his prayer ...

1698. When the Church Is the Church

Philippians 2:1-11

Sermon

Raymond Gibson

... Thyatira and her household; Stephanas, the jailer and his family; the little slave girl, whose emotional problems he had purged in the name of Christ; Euodia and Syntyche; and all of the others. He knew that the Philippian Christians, while not perfect, were loving and supportive of his ministry. He was aware that they were being tempted by teachers of false doctrines. Paul knew that the Philippian church wasn’t perfect, but he also knew that Christ, the Lord of the Church was One who was "able to do far ...

1699. One Thing

Sermon

Raymond Gibson

... a moment of madness, had murdered their father and mother. Instead of committing Mary to an insane asylum, as friends urged him to do, Lamb gave up his position as an accountant in business and spent the next twenty-seven years caring for her tenderly. He supported both his sister and himself by writing, and they literally lived in poverty. During all of those long years, he refused to leave her alone. When she finally died, a friend asked Lamb how he managed under all of the strain. Lamb replied, "I could ...

1700. A LITURGICAL DRAMA FOR ALL SAINTS’

Drama

Tom Eberle

... I wouldn’t doubt it. Cypher: Then, why do you complain about the price of bananas? Part of our work as missionaries is to help the peasants of our province gain ownership of a few acres on the huge banana plantations so that they might support their own families. Because of this we are terrorized by the large landowners. Box: Don’t get melodramatic about it. Minister: [Cypher lights candle and returns to his place in the congregation.] On June 25th, 1975, Michael Cypher disappeared. A few days later his ...

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