Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1926 to 1950 of 5000 results

1926. Genuine Imitations

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Sermon

Raymond Gibson

... Jesus according to the Gospel of Matthew were, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations ... teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you ..." (Matthew 28:19-20). You can’t teach and be anonymous! According to Mark, Jesus’ last words were, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel" (Mark 16:15). You can’t preach and be silent! According to Luke, Jesus said, "You shall be my witnesses ..." (Acts 1:8). You can’t witness and be unknown as to what you believe! According to John, Jesus ...

1927. A LITURGICAL DRAMA FOR LENT

Drama

Tom Eberle

... next time you fell you wanted it put on your cut again. That’s how it is on the other side of the colored glass. Each time a pain is encountered, each moment a human sore is shared with another person and healing occurs, that open sore becomes a mark of beauty, like the red color that fascinated you. [pause] Can you begin to feel the good news that radiates from a polished cross that once was an instrument of death? Son: It’s almost too much. You have left me standing here between an altar and a cross ...

1928. Winners, Losers and the Gospel

Mt 16:25

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... from this assumption it is but a short distance to that predicament where individuals begin to see themselves as winners or losers exclusively. In the area in which we live, there is a very fine network of cross-country ski trails, and those trails are well marked. If one gets off the beaten track, there are markers which, if followed, will allow one to regain a sense of direction. The Christian faith is like that to its devotees and to the wider population as well. Many there are, methinks, out there off ...

1929. The Circus and My Faith

Ps 139 · Mt 22:37

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... us. Should we allow, on the other hand, what separates us to become more important to us than what unites us, we declare ourselves to be unworthy stewards of the gospel that has been entrusted to us. In Dag Hammarskjold’s book of meditations entitled Markings, there is an entry that envisions the kind of unity that binds us even in our diversity: In a dream I walked with God through the deep places of creation; past walls that receded and gates that opened, through hall after hall of silence, darkness ...

1930. The Un-Parade

Matthew 16:21-28, Luke 19:28-44

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... the quest for salvation is laid aside, a cup of tea with my wife as the sun goes down is as graceful as anything I can imagine. Grace surprises me in modest and hidden places.2 Second, this "un-parade" is different inasmuch as our parades are marked by a show of strength, but this one by a show of weakness. Our parades are usually filled with military units and military hardware. Bayonets glisten in the air and motorized military units capture the attention of the little ones for whom war is still a game ...

1931. What Is Your Holy Week Address?

Matthew 27:45-56

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... I would have stopped right there. I had failed, period. Instead I persisted. I learned something about timing, and I became acquainted with steric acid, an ingredient that gives the candle more body and sheen. Failure is not a red sign marked "stop," it is a yellow sign marked "proceed with caution." William Saroyan wrote: Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know. Success makes a fool of you, but failure can come only from great ...

1932. Jesus Replaced Someone At Calvary

Mark 15:1-15

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... one man in Jerusalem who learned the truth of atonement before anybody else. His name was Barabbas. Let's look at his story as told in Mark 15. Let me set the scene for you. Let's go back to Jerusalem Remember, this was an occupied province of the mighty The Jews ... an effort to placate the Jews, the Romans had a custom of Jewish prisoner each year during the Jewish festival Verse 6 of Mark 15 refers to that custom. The Roman governor Pontius Pilate selected one prisoner to be set free. Verse 7 tells us that ...

1933. Invitation to a New Life-Style

Matthew 11:25-30

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... satisfy. There is more to life than these. We want peace, love, and freedom. The new life-style is one that emphasizes and seeks the quality of life. To know the meaning of life and to get something from life, it would be better to drive a Mark IV Toyota than a Mark IV Continental. To have love, peace, and understanding in the family would be worth living in a $25,000 rather than a $50,000 house. In our time we find that there is no money for schools, libraries, music, and the arts but we have no difficulty ...

1934. In the Spirit's Tether

Ephesians 4:17--5:21

Sermon

Allan J. Weenink

... But behold how these Christians love one another." That fellowship, that new kind of love, was unknown in the ancient world. It marked them as a different breed, and as a force to be reckoned with. They were bound to each other and to Christ ... one who strengthens and sustains us. Each one of us is an individual in every sense of the word. Yet, in spite of our marked singularness, nevertheless there arises one body, of which each believer is a member and Jesus Christ, the Head, controlling and guiding all. In ...

1935. Peace

John 14:15-31

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... fragile mean? [Let them answer.] You are very close. The word "fragile" means that whatever is inside this box will break very easily if it is not handled carefully. What can you think of that is fragile and might be in a box like this so that we would mark it all up with the special word? That’s right, a piece of glass. Glass breaks very easily and it must be handled carefully. Jesus talked about things that were fragile and one of the things he mentioned as being fragile is peace in the world. We know ...

1936. God’s Great Chalkboard

Luke 18:9-14

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... were. I think that this is the way we can describe our sins, and the way that God forgives them. Let’s start over. The marks on the chalkboard are our sins. We see them, and we know that they are there just as God sees them and knows that they ... him to forgive us for our sins. Since God knows that we really hate our sin, he answers our prayers by forgiving them. [Erase the marks again, but leave the impressions.] He wipes them away, and we are forgiven. God says that we are free from sin, and that we are ...

1937. Cross-Bearing

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... he was thinking the way people thought rather than the way God thought. Then Jesus told his disciples what the Christian life was all about. It is one of the recurring themes of Jesus’ teaching. He said these things over and over again. We find them in Matthew 10:34, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23, and John 12:25. He said if we really wanted to be his disciples, this is what we would have to do: "If anyone wants to come with me, he must forget himself, carry his cross, and follow me" (Matthew 16:24). So today in ...

1938. The Return to Catholicity

John 17:6-19

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... Church in Nicea in the year 325. In that creed, we, in both of our traditions, state that we hold absolutely to the conviction that the church is ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC. You know there is one verse in Chapter 4 of Ephesians that contains all four of those marks of The Church: "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all." The Oneness, for it is the ...

1939. Voluntary Blindness

Matthew 6:1-15

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

... anxious for others to take note of it. A chief trouble with the idea that one can stack up merits is that it is not true. Mark Twain may have been unjustifiably pessimistic when he said, "Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is a sort ... C. S. Lewis. Surprised By Joy, p. 104. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1955. 6. Bernard DeVoto, Editor, Mark Twain: Letters From The Earth, p. 14. Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, Inc. (A Crest Reprint), 1963. 7. Henry David ...

1940. Strained Gnats

Matthew 23:1-39

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

... To Errors In Judgment These strained gnats may be a testimony to errors in judgment. They may be evidence that one, perhaps with the best of intentions, was simply wrong in what he or she counted of greatest importance. In his Letters From The Earth, Mark Twain ridicules the concept of religion and of heaven which a celestial visitor to earth finds among people. He says that this heaven "hasn’t a rag of intellectuality in it anywhere." He finds this very strange, since on earth humans exalt the intellect ...

1941. Ghosts - 1951

Ephesians 6:10-20

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... strong grey hands of a ghost. As a matter of fact there did use to be an excellent reason. Not so very far in the past Latin and Greek were the only languages having a grammar or a literature. Hence to know Latin was naturally the mark of a scholar. There is now a better body of English, French, and German literature than the Latins ever had, and these languages have also their laws of accidence and canons of style. Any youth will be profited vastly more by studying Shakespeare, Goethe, and Moliere, than ...

1942. EPISODE 1: THE FIRST WEEK IN LENT

Drama

Robert Clausen

... things? JUDAS: Yes. JESUS: What purpose will it serve? JUDAS: Then you can give orders. JESUS: I can force my will on people? JUDAS: If it’s for their good. JESUS: Do you think this way also, Peter? PETER: You’ll have to admit, Lord, we’re just sort of marking time. The people like you, they’re coming out to hear you ... but Judas is right. We’re just a bunch of nobodies. If we don’t use the people now, while we’ve got them with us, who knows where they’ll be tomorrow, next week, next month ...

1943. Trumpets in Church on Easter, The Very Idea!

Mark 16:1-20

Sermon

Jon L. Joyce

... a little place. They don’t seem very eternal, do they? "Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?" [Mark 16:3] This is a wonderful life except for the stone of death staring us in the face. There are other stones. Each man ... someone would crawl out of the tent and go down to the water line. But the message was always the same. "It’s over the last mark on the timber." At the end of about 13 hours the water stopped its furious charge. We figured that the underground lake or whatever it ...

1944. One Good Word - Thanks!

Lamentations 3:1-66

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... was at the peak of his writing career, it is said that his magazine and journal articles were worth $5 a word--a great sum of money in those days. One enterprising Harvard graduate student sent Mark Twain a letter: "Dear Mr. Twain: Enclosed please find $5. Please send me your best word." A few days later, the student received a telegram with this single word response: "Thanks!" "Thanks" may be the most valuable word in any language. It is certainly the word that dominates our thinking ...

1945. "Almost" Is A Sad Word

Matthew 19:16-30

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... of commitment. He almost claimed Jesus as the Lord of his life. But "almost" is not good enough. I call your attention to Matthew's gospel, chapter nineteen, beginning with verse 16. The story of the rich young ruler is in three of the four gospels--Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Each version is slightly different. We tend to blend the three into one composite story. All three tell us that the man was rich. Only Matthew mentions that he was young. Only Luke notes that he was a ruler. Verse 16 of Matthew reads as ...

1946. God Stood Up

Sermon

James Bjorge

... look at the real Jesus who grew and stood up in the pages of Holy Scripture. Once they were bringing little children to Jesus that he might touch them and the disciples rebuked those that brought them for they evidently thought Jesus was too busy for such tasks. Mark records this (10:14), "But when Jesus saw it he was indignant, and said to them, ‘Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God.’ " Jesus was willing to reveal his disgust to his disciples for their ...

1947. Grade Cards

Luke 15:1-7, Luke 15:8-10

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... with all A’s and one marked with a lot of F’s at the beginning and some C’s, B’s and A’s at the end. Lesson: In the same way there is joy in the presence of the angels of God when one sinner repents. Good morning, boys and girls. Today we have some ...

1948. Is Jesus Like A Stapler?

1 Timothy 2:5

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... ideas, but I would like to try a different one on you. Let’s suppose that one of these pieces of paper is God and the other piece of paper is man, or all of the people in the world. I am going to mark one piece of paper "God," and the other piece I am going to mark "people." God is holy and perfect. People are sinners and not holy. God wants people to be with him. God loves us, but there is such a difference in his world and our world that there doesn’t seem to be any way ...

1949. Were You There?

Mark 2:23-3:6

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... book? Lots of you have seen this kind of book. Is this the same kind of a book that your Church School Teacher uses and your school teacher uses? Sure it is. They write your name in the book and then when you are absent she puts another kind of mark that tells her you have missed. This way the teacher remembers your name and when you attend class. When the teacher takes your attendance you know that it is important for you to be there. If you are not there then the teacher wants to know why you were absent ...

1950. Chapter III

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Frank H. Seilhamer

... bear his name that leads the world to discount us, and because of us, to discount God himself. To a greater extent than we may realize, the people around us draw many conclusions about who God is, and how he operates, by watching the people who are marked out as his followers. As they see the way we relate to one another, to our communities, and to the created order, they make assumptions that what we are doing somehow reflects how God relates to these things, too. Saint Paul knew what he was talking about ...

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