Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 1826 to 1850 of 4933 results

1826. Make Up Your Mind!

1 Kings 18:16-46

Sermon

Robert Leslie Holmes

Why hasn’t Hollywood made this into a major motion picture epic? 1 Kings 18 is surely one of the most dramatic accounts in all literature and one of the most significant historical records in the Bible. Its message and natural application are timeless. William Penn said, “Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.” In our Scripture reading for today the people of Israel came together to decide no less a question than who would govern their personal and national lives, who would be their ...

1827. Entering Into The Agony

Galatians 6:11-18

Sermon

King Duncan

The Los Angeles TIMES recently carried a touching story about an 80 year old man who entered into an agreement with three young couples who were renting apartments in his building. He agreed to allow them to buy their apartments at a very low rate. Please do not misunderstand. This was not your typical condominium conversion. He was selling them their apartments at a much lower rate than they could obtain them on the open market. This was his gift to these six young people who had been there when he needed ...

1828. The Gospel

Colossians 1:3-6

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

When I first began to think of preaching for you these days, my intention was to look through the entire letter of Paul to the Colossians and hit the high points of that letter. As I began to work more specifically in preparation for this event, I decided that was altogether too expansive. What I needed to do was to be more focused. So, during this time I am with you, I am going to focus on just the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the church at Colossi. In the services this morning I am going to be ...

1829. Epiphany 6

Mt 5:21-37 · 1 Cor 3:1-9 · Ps 119 · Dt 30:15-20

Sermon Aid

Marion L. Soards, Thomas B. Dozeman, Kendall McCabe

OLD TESTAMENT TEXTS The Old Testament lessons for this Sunday articulate the completion of God's salvation and encourage the reader to enter God's new world. Deuteronomy 30:15-20 is a call for Israel to choose life in the land over death in the wilderness, while Psalm 119:1-8 provides encouragement for the worshiper, who has left the wilderness and entered the land, to persevere in walking on God's roads in God's world. Deuteronomy 30:15-20 - "Bond Yourself to God and Choose Life" Setting. The book of ...

1830. Prison Break

Matthew 28:1-10

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Christ is alive! Can I get a witness? Hallelujah! Or as some of us learned in Sunday School, “Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelujah . . . Praise Ye The Lord.” If Christ is alive, why aren’t we more alive? Why don’t we feel more alive this morning? One word: agoraphobia. Ever heard of it? Every know of anyone who had it? Of all the dozens of phobias people can suffer from, one of the most debilitating is the fear of open spaces. Agoraphobia. A friend born and raised in the Midwest described how she felt ...

1831. Don’t Fear the Wait

Mark 13:1-8

Sermon

Richard Gribble

A long time ago there lived a little boy whose parents had died. He was taken in by an aunt who raised him as her own child. Many years later, after the boy had grown and become successful in business, he received a letter from his aunt. She was terminally ill and from the tone of her letter, quite afraid of death. Thus, the man who had been raised and strongly influenced by this woman decided to write her a letter in response. He began, "It is now 35 years since I, a little boy of six, was left quite ...

1832. It’s All about Jesus

Isaiah 52:13--53:12

Sermon

Ron Lavin

A post-resurrection story is told about Lazarus, the man Jesus brought back from the dead. You won’t find this post-resurrection story in the Bible, but it has the ring of truth. After Jesus was raised from the dead, all the disciples were empowered to witness for him all over the world. Easter set them free. They told everyone they met that Jesus was Lord of all. The Roman officials saw these followers of Christ as troublemakers because they refused to acknowledge Caesar as Lord. Many Christians were ...

1833. Lord of All!

Acts 10:34-43

Sermon

Ron Lavin

A post-resurrection story is told about Lazarus, the man Jesus brought back from the dead. You won't find this post-resurrection story in the Bible, but it has the ring of truth. After Jesus was raised from the dead, all the disciples were empowered to witness for him all over the world. Easter set them free. They told everyone they met that Jesus was Lord of all. The Roman officials saw these followers of Christ as troublemakers because they refused to acknowledge Caesar as Lord. Many Christians were ...

1834. Life on the Rock

Matthew 7:24-29

Sermon

James Merritt

If you could take a world-wide poll and ask this question: Who was the greatest spiritual or religious teacher who ever lived? Without question, hands down, I am convinced the winner would be Jesus Christ. There is almost a universal consensus that Jesus was indeed a great, if not the greatest teacher who ever lived. That is exactly the way people who actually heard Him teach felt. Because as we come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount, we read – "And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that ...

1835. Carrying the Burdens of Others

Philippians 2:5-11

Sermon

Richard Gribble

There was a man named Sundar, a convert to Christianity who decided to go to India to be a missionary and bear witness to others about Jesus. One day, late in the afternoon, Sundar was traveling on foot high in the Himalaya Mountains with a Buddhist monk. It was bitterly cold and darkness was rapidly starting to fall. The monk told Sundar they would be in danger of freezing to death if they did not reach the monastery before nightfall. As they crossed a narrow path above a steep cliff, a cry for help was ...

1836. Essentials

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

D. L. Miller of Mount Morris, Illinois, was a world traveler among a people who didn't travel much. He was a Dunker, one of the Plain People, who lived in the late nineteenth century. He wore a dark coat and dark pants and a long beard without a mustache. When others bought cars, the Dunkers kept their horses and buggies. If you were a believer, then you dressed like everyone else in your church, and acted like everyone in your church, and made a point of never standing out. His people made a point of ...

1837. Crying Out of the Depths

Psalm 130:1-8

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

In a Peanuts cartoon, Charlie Brown is sitting at Lucy's psychiatric desk getting absolutely no help from Lucy. With a forlorn look on his face Charlie laments, “Where do I go to give up?" One great value of the Psalms is that they put into words what we find difficult to express. Most scriptures speak to us. The Psalms speak for us. They enable us to articulate and bring before God our deepest feelings, our greatest fears, the lingering longings of our hearts, the troubled sorrows of our lives. So Jesus ...

1838. What is the Future of Marriage?

Mark 12:18-27

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

A friend looked me in the eye a few weeks ago and said, “Howard, I appreciate the way you keep politics out of the pulpit.” I can only hope that person is still my friend after this sermon. For when it comes to the private and public aspects of marriage, politics and religion become strange and often conflicted bedfellows. First you need to know that I am not a politician, not even a very good church politician, and it’s certainly not my intent to make a political statement today. Furthermore, it would not ...

1839. What to Do with the Weeds

Matthew 13:24-30

Sermon

King Duncan

Those of you who are gardeners are familiar with Murphy’s First Law of Gardening: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant. And, of course, there is a corollary to that law: To distinguish flowers from weeds, simply pull up everything. What grows back is weeds. Last week we dealt with the parable of the sower and we learned that different kinds of soil produce differing levels of ...

1840. Life In the Valley

Luke 9:28-36 (37-43)

Sermon

David E. Leininger

The story of the transfiguration is one of those passages that have given the phrase "mountaintop experience" to our language. Peter, James, and John had joined Jesus and escaped from the crowd for some spiritual "R and R" up in the wilderness of (probably) Mount Hermon. Night had fallen and their eyes were heavy. Suddenly, they awoke with a start. Just yonder they saw Jesus take on something of a supernatural "glow" — his face and clothes "as bright as a flash of lightning" (Luke 9:29). Then Moses and ...

1841. The Great Sacrifice of Love

Luke 9:18-27, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Sermon

Richard Gribble

In the fifteenth century, a rural village in Germany was home to a family with eighteen children. The family was poor, but despite the difficulty of making ends meet, two brothers in the family still held a dream, namely to pursue their talent as artists. With the financial situation bleak the two boys came up with their own solution to the problem. They agreed to toss a coin with the loser going to the local mines to work so he could support the other while he attended art school. When the first was ...

1842. A Lesson from Jay Leno's Mom

Matthew 22:34-40

Sermon

King Duncan

Comedian Jay Leno had a long run on the Tonight Show before leaving it this year. Leno has always been a fascinating character. But one story out of his past is particularly memorable. When Leno was growing up, there was one firm rule in his family he had to follow. It was to never take the Lord’s name in vain. His mother used to tell him, “People might steal money because they have to eat. Or maybe they get into a fight to protect somebody, then they go to prison. But there’s no reason to ever take the ...

1843. “Their Violence Comes Down on Their Own Heads”

Psalm 7:1-17

Teach the Text

C. Hassell Bullock

Big Idea: While God’s justice is ultimately the solution to the problem of evil, evil also carries in itself the gene of self-destruction. Understanding the Text Psalm 7 is an individual lament, as are Psalms 3–6. The two ingredients that constitute this type of psalm are the lament and the reasons for lament.1 The lament is against David’s enemies, expressed in 7:1, 6, 14, 15, and 16. Whereas the innocence of Psalm 6 was more implied than explicit, here the psalmist is so convinced of his innocence that ...

1844. Pop Verses: John 3:16

John 3:16

Sermon

Charley Reeb

Today I continue our series “Pop Verses.” We are taking a closer look at some of the most popular Bible verses. We are going to find out why they are so popular and how they apply to our lives. What you might discover is that some of these verses don’t mean what you think they mean or they mean a lot more than you think they mean. You see, quite often our favorites verses are just that – they’re verses. They’re not read in light of the passage in which they appear. This can lead to a misunderstanding about ...

1845. Jesus and Beelzebub

Mark 3:20-30

Understanding Series

Larry W. Hurtado

3:20–30 Although this passage is separated from the following passage (3:31–35) in the NIV, the two really must be read together, for we appear to have here the first example of a narrative technique used frequently in Mark: beginning one story and then inserting another before bringing the first to a conclusion. Here, Mark begins telling us about the family of Jesus in 3:21 (see note), interrupts this story by telling us about Jesus’ conflict with certain critics over his exorcisms in 3:22–30, and returns ...

1846. Lawsuits Among Believers

1 Corinthians 6:1-11

Understanding Series

Marion L. Soards

Having raised the issue of the relations of Christians both to other Christians and to those outside the church, Paul’s mind seems to move to the matter of how Christians relate to one another outside the life of the church. His discussion focuses on the issue of Christians suing each other in pagan courts of law. One cannot determine how Paul knows about this problem; nevertheless, he discusses the matter in some detail. Although interpreters regularly refer to these verses as an excursus, the discussion ...

1847. My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

Psalm 22:1-31

Understanding Series

Craig C. Broyles

This is an extraordinary psalm that takes us to the extremes. Its haunting words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” were quoted by Jesus on the cross. It develops from an individual in the dust of death (v. 15) to universal acknowledgment of the kingdom of God. In the lament we read “all who see me mock me” (v. 7) and “all my bones are out of joint” (v. 14), but in the praise sections we hear, “All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!” (v. 23), “All the ends of the earth will . . . turn to the ...

1848. Jesus Prays for All Believers

John 17:20-26

Understanding Series

J. Ramsey Michaels

Earlier, Jesus stated his desire to bring all his sheep into “one flock with one shepherd” (10:16), and in the next chapter the narrator commented that Jesus’ death would be for “the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one” (11:52). Here, the unity of the disciples serves a still wider purpose, expressed in the two additional purpose clauses referring to the world: so that the world may believe that you have sent me (v. 21b) to let the world know that you sent me and have loved ...

1849. Everyone Is Looking for You

Mark 1:35-39

Sermon

King Duncan

Welcome to this special liturgical holy day known as Super Bowl Sunday. No use fighting it. I know that some of you are focused almost completely on football today. I heard about one young guy who is really in a difficult situation. He bought two tickets for today’s Super Bowl far in advance. He forgot that he and his fiancé had scheduled their wedding for this same day and time. Now he realizes he can’t go. It’s out of the question. So, if you’re interested and want to go instead of him, here’s the ...

1850. A Loving Parent

Revelation 7:9-17

Sermon

King Duncan

I want to begin today by saying, “Happy Mother’s Day” to all the Moms here today as well as to those who serve as Mom substitutes. You deserve to be celebrated on this special day because of the incredible impact you have on so many lives. A good mother is such a powerful example of God’s love. Many mothers are willing to do almost anything to communicate their love to their children. Some even try desperately to keep up with the changing styles popular with young people nowadays. Good luck with that. ...

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