Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1801 to 1825 of 3160 results

1 Timothy 6:3-10

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... each other. Is this the winning attitude we are hoping to instill in our children? Surveys indicate that in the year 2000, out of 48 million children ages 6-17 in the U.S., 74% of these kids participate in at least one of the eighteen different team sorts available to them ("Who's the Child?" American Demographics 23 (August 2001,15.) That is a tremendous number of children who will be affected by the kind of winning attitude we try to nurture within them. Sadly in this case it seems all too true that kids ...

1802. This Kiss

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... and complacency wipe THIS KISS off our own lips. Instead of feeling the comfort of that reassuring KISS on our bared soul, we've wandered far from the simple, basic confessions of our faith. For 21st century Christians it is easy to hide behind all sorts of protective layers in an attempt to duck THIS KISS. Layers of Time that let us believe anything twenty centuries old could hardly be relevant to issues confronting us and our world today. Layers of Tradition that allow us to go through the old familiar ...

1803. Trash Cans or Treasure Chests

1 Corinthians 1:18--2:5

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... place. I want us to read I Corinthians again. I want us to hear the power of these words. Let's start with verse 1:25: Divine folly is wiser than human wisdom and divine weakness stronger than human strength. My brothers, consider your call, my sisters, consider what sort of people you are whom God has called. Few of you are people of wisdom, by any human standard. Few are powerful or highly born. Yet to shame the wise God had chosen what is foolish in the world. God chose what is weak in the world to shame ...

1804. WaterFire Disciples

Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... as they put it, "what are you freaky" about? They are announcing in no uncertain terms, "I'm a Jesus Freak." We're all freaky about something. What are you freaky about? Earlier theologians didn't feel the need to mask that word anger with all sorts of lingo and euphemisms. St. Augustine put it like this: "Hope has two daughters, Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to make things other than they are." Myles Horton was the founder of the Highlander Center. This was the training center ...

1805. Ever Been Robbed?

John 3:1-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of something at sometime in their life. (You may want to get stories from your congregation of things they had stolen as children or as adults.) Despite all our sophistication and practiced cynicism, our first reaction to learning something of ours has been stolen is a sort of dazed disbelief. · Surely, our car is here somewhere. Maybe I just didn't remember correctly where I parked it. · Well, if my purse isn't where I set it down, it must have fallen on the floor, or under the table, or maybe if I ...

1806. The Weakest Link

1 Timothy 1:12-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... your black lab could answer, being singled out as singularly stupid by his or her fellow contestants, and then being tossed out with the final personal judgment ringing in their ears, "You are the weakest link. Good-bye!" would seem to garner some sort of sympathy factor at least. But no. Everyone now seems to love a put down. Not undeservedly, Anne Robinson has a reputation as the rudest person on television. Before she became Rottweiller Robinson, she was the highest paid woman journalist in Britain. Now ...

1807. Who Let the Dogs Out?

Romans 13:8-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Last Christmas, K-Mart (or was it Wal-Mart?) announced it would be open for 82 hours straight with all sorts of bargains. On the morning the selling marathon began, over one hundred people were lined up waiting to get into the store. Some of them had been there for two or three hours. The crowds watched in disbelief as a man walked past the entire crowd, and began to squeeze ...

1808. Who Put It There? (Mother's Day)

1 Peter 5:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... meant ostracism from one's family and community, spontaneous beatings and lootings, even state-sponsored torture and death (although Emperor Nero's extremes were a few years in the future from 1 Peter's writing). 1 Peter does not see suffering as some sort of divine punishment. Suffering is only the expected result of being in the world. Later in the text read for today, he portrays the devil – the adversary – as a snarling, roaring, pacing lion, a ravenous beast "looking for someone to devour" (5:8 ...

1809. By Heart

2 Timothy 3:10--4:8, Deuteronomy 30:11-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... sheet metal with which today's cars are made is so thin that it has no memory. Many of us can remember when metal or tin cans had memory. It could be brought back to it's original shape without too much trouble if it sustained a dent of some sort. Could it be that as a people of faith, our metal (faith) has become so thin that we're in danger of losing our memory? Our metal is tempered by Bible study, participation in worship, prayer, etc. But we're much too busy these days, much too sophisticated to do ...

1810. A Case for Living Together

Revelation 7:9-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... response anyway: "Thank you for your comments. In the future, we will try to make sure that none of our pastors are seen with anyone who needs Jesus or anyone who needs maturing." So this morning, I come with a humble suggestion. There are all sorts of inducement prizes out there. In fact, some of the great advances in history came from responding to inducement prizes. Take Charles Lindbergh. A French hotel owner in NYC named Raymond Orteig created a $25,000 Orteig Prize in 1919 for the first nonstop flight ...

1811. Are You Living the Three Advents?

Romans 13:11-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... ” we wrap the Second Advent around ourselves. I love Paul’s image of “wrapping” ourselves in this “armor” or “garment” of light. Have you ever noticed how, when a degree is conferred on someone who is entering a “profession,” there is some sort of special garment that accompanies the new designation? The garment signifies that the person wearing it is armored to fight evil in the world. A medical doctor is garbed with a full-length white coat. It is while wearing this garment that the ...

1812. Making a Clean Sweep

Mark 13:1-31

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... floors all on their own. Come home to find a clean house. But long before motorized, mechanized, computerized machines cleaned our homes for us, we had to sweep for ourselves. Brooms bound collections of stiff straws or rushes, fastened to some sort of handle served as the primary housekeeping tool for thousands of years. Egyptians swept the sand from their pyramids with brooms, nuns cleaned their cloisters with brooms, medieval merchants swept out their shops with brooms. Anywhere you found people living ...

1813. A Sign or a Son?

John 6:25-59

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... as basic and essential to living a true life as bread was to keeping the body alive. No wonder Jesus called himself the Bread of Life. The relationship between the Son and the world is just as essential and life sustaining. Every culture has some sort of bread that represents the basic sustenance of life. Whether it's with manna or a tortilla, pita-pockets or bowls of rice, breadfruit or Wonder Bread, naan, or challah-bread . . . . Will you offer this world the sign of a Son? Will you crumble some ...

1814. Out of Order

Mark 6:30-44

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , no amount of jostling, kicking, glass-thumping, or swearing will convince those out-of-order machines to give up their empty, fat-laden calories. The goodies seem within easy reach. But the goodies are totally inaccessible. How many people do you know who have all sorts of goodies, all kinds of goodness locked inside them, but you can't get to it because they are out of order? Something has gone wrong in their insides and all those Goo-Goo Clusters and other goodies are within reach but impossible to get ...

1815. Warts and All

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... strange. Bumpy, lumpy, rough, and scaly they spring up out of nowhere like mushrooms. Kids especially seem to grow crops of warts on their fingers and hands, making them miserably self-conscious, embarrassed, insecure. At least they did me. Physicians offer all sorts of scary, messy solutions to remove these miniature mountain ranges. One treatment is to burn them off which is done not with fire but with freezing nitrous oxide. Or there's the slow process of dissolving them with an acidic solution. Folk ...

1816. Attics, Basements, Closets

Psalm 130:1-8

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

[An inventory of things accumulating in one of your closets or a drawer stuffed with all sorts of interesting items . . . these visuals would greatly enhance your preaching of this sermon.] Grace to you and peace, sisters and brothers. From the one who is . . . the one who was . . . and the one who is to come. Good morning, saints. [Wait for a good morning.] Good morning, sinners. [Wait for ...

1817. Don't Lose Your Footing

Luke 24:36-49

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... and expectations led them to rejoice that their master was alive and yet recoil with horror because they knew that Jesus had been killed. (Note: Jesus didn't die. Jesus was killed.) Since Jesus had been killed, this thing before them must be some sort of ghost, an otherworldly apparition, unpredictable, possibly dangerous. To convince them that he is flesh and bone Jesus gets right down to the nitty-gritty, grubby reality of physical existence. He shows them his hands and his feet. This might not seem very ...

1818. The Most Important Top Ten List

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... stop killing each other? Oh, yeah, by the way, could you not steal each other's stuff? And it would be really helpful if you wouldn't lie to each other, either. And here's a thought, could you not take other people's husbands and wives and just, sort of, like keep your own?" (Erwin McManus, An Unstoppable Force [Group Publishing, 2000]). It's bad enough that we need to be told these words. After all, do you really forget to put your shoes on before leaving the house for work? Or forget that you need to eat ...

1819. Fear Factor

Psalm 25:1-22

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... the cold fingers of fear grip at my throat when the Office of Homeland Security recently recommended that people should purchase big rolls of duct tape and plastic wrap so that they could seal off one room of their home as a safe zone in the event of some sort of gas/chemical/biological attack. I'll admit it: My fear also stemmed from the fact that I cannot make plastic wrap (the great misnomer of all time is to call the stuff "cling wrap") stick to anything I put it on. My first vision was all my neighbors ...

1820. The World's Best Hearing Aid

Mark 9:2-13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of the most enduring legacies of the raucous 60s rock music is an early onset of hearing problems for the Boomer generation. As Boomers move into their fifties, more and more of them are going to be sporting hearing aid devices of some sort to help them hear the world. As the consummate consumer generation of all time, Boomers' buying trends will spike new R&D in hearing aids. Our parents' and grandparents' clunky squealers that amplify all noise will be replaced by some sophisticated, electronic gadgetry ...

1821. Catch the Fever

Mark 1:29-34

Sermon

James Caldwell III

... of his disciples have just left the synagogue on the Sabbath and have entered Simon Peter's house. Although the text doesn't say this, the custom of the day was to have the big meal of the Sabbath day at midday, after worship at the synagogue. Sort of like our Sunday dinner. Immediately upon entering the house, the disciples tell Jesus about the illness of Peter's mother in law. And then Jesus heals her. And she serves them. I can see her bringing in platters of fried chicken, biscuits, and steaming hot ...

1822. What to Do with Yesterday - A Sermon for a New Year

Psalm 103:1-22

Sermon

James McCormick

One of the first things Patricia and I had to learn when we moved to Big Canoe was how to deal with our garbage. We learned very quickly that if we just let it sit there, it would begin to stink up our lives. It would invite all sorts of pests. It would make our lives unpleasant in a variety of ways. So, as a matter of regular discipline, we had to pack it up, load it in the car, and take it to the dump. We had to get rid of it. Of course, there is more than ...

1823. 1 Corinthians 7:29-31

1 Corinthians 7:1-40

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... rejoicing and sorrowing (Romans 12:15). But as challengingly rhetorical devices, Paul's declarations serve to startle the Corinthians into a new way of considering their relationship to the world. Instead of resting comfortably with the idea that they have reached some sort of spiritual high ground, Paul's words push them over the edge. The fact that Paul refuses to reject marriage in one breath yet then counsels "those who have wives be as though they had none" in the next intentionally destabilizes. Paul ...

1824. Acts 19:1-7

Acts 19:1-22

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... Baptist, the text doesn't identify them as such. The generic use of "disciples" here is more likely to refer to disciples of Jesus. The presence of disciples of Jesus already present in Ephesus when Paul arrives suggest that a Christian community of sorts was already in place and that the testimony of Jesus' identity, death, and resurrection had already been heard in those parts. However, either Paul has some previous knowledge of these believers, or there's something about them that must strike Paul as off ...

1825. A Word of Hope for a Hard World

Matthew 2:13-18

Sermon

King Duncan

... Rev. Cobb forgot that his son had heard the other Christmas story last year at church--the story from the book of Matthew that set Jesus’ birth within an historical context of injustice and bloodshed. Rev. Cobb forgot that his young son had asked all sorts of uncomfortable questions after the service, questions that he and his wife struggled to answer. So as he tucked Jackson in that night, Rev. Cobb began telling the Christmas story, and then he got to the part about the magi leaving gifts, and he said ...

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