Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 176 to 200 of 3099 results

Psalm 42:1-11

Sermon

James Merritt

... . Then I’ll let you make your own decision. Is that fair?” The man said, “I guess so.” Well, the story goes that after twenty minutes of talking they join hands and they both jumped into the water. I don’t say that to make light of the subject, but just to say it is a serious problem that affects other people. But I believe sometimes, and more often than we realize, and perhaps in some way indirectly all the time, it is a spiritual problem. The devil is a master strategist. He is a great tactician ...

177. Engage Mind before Putting Mouth in Gear

James 3:1-12

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... large ship, so the tongue, seemingly so insignificant, directs a human by the words one uses. The apostle uses a reference from the book of Genesis to show how, through God's plan, all of creation is subject to humans. We have the ability to subdue all things; the created world has been made subject to humanity. All is subject to us, that is, except the tongue. He calls it "a restless evil, full of deadly poison." While, as we have seen, words can be used effectively to praise and uplift, so too they can be ...

178. Exodus 17:1-7

Exodus 17:1-7

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... course the expanded parallel of this week's text, found in Numbers 20:1-13 is placed after the Israelites have spent forty years in the wilderness under Moses' leadership and Yahweh's covenantal care.) In the third complaint the Israelites bring to Moses, the subject is once again water. No doubt, finding good drinking water for this large number of people was a continuing quest, a daily challenge. But 17:1 makes it clear that the direction and duration of the Hebrew's journey was being established by none ...

179. Advent 1

Mark 13:32-37, Mark 13:1-31, 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, Isaiah 63:7--64:12

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... for his unexpected coming again. Lesson 1 Pray for his coming to save us from our sins. Lesson 2 Wait for his coming. The new church year begins with the second coming. It is the one Sunday of the year which features the parousia as the main subject. In light of the interest in the second coming, the mainline, established churches would do well to consider this doctrine of the church and the teaching of the New Testament. The gospel calls upon us to be on the alert for the sudden, unannounced coming of ...

180. Close Up - Wives: Sweet Surrender

Colossians 3:18

Sermon

James Merritt

... by respecting her husband. She does that by submitting to his leadership. There are two simple ways that wives are to do this - I. Wives Are To Enable Their Husbands Leadership "Wives, be subject to your husbands." (Colossians 3:18, NASB) The word there for "be subject to" or "submit" literally means to "place under" or "to subject oneself under the authority of someone else." I know already there are a lot of women here whose blood pressure just shot through the roof. The hair on your neck is standing up ...

181. Why God Will Never Get Tenure at Any University

Mark 9:30-37

Illustration

... wrote it Himself. 6. He is not known for His cooperative work. 7. Sure, He created the world, but what has He done lately? 8. He did not get permission from any review board to work with human subjects. 9. When one experiment went awry, He tried to cover it up by drowning all the subjects. 10. When sample subjects do not behave as predicted, He deletes the whole sample. 11. He rarely comes to class--just tells His students to read the Book. 12. It is rumored that He sometimes lets His Son teach the class ...

182. First Things First

Luke 21:25-36

Sermon

Gary L. Carver

... as parents, in relation to religious and moral questions. I remember a bright, young college freshman in Texas coming to see me during the Christmas break and wanting to know about the Second Coming of Christ. She had grown up in our church where the subject of eschatology was rarely mentioned, but that fall she had gotten into a group that was reading Hal Lindsey's bestseller, The Late Great Planet Earth. She was all confused. She claimed that eighteen years of Sunday school with us had given her no tools ...

183. What Gift Do You Bring?

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

Gary L. Carver

... , Oliver Cromwell, who was the Puritan leader of the nation of England, actually banned the celebration of Christmas. In 1659, in the new world, in the state of Massachusetts, it was declared that if people were caught celebrating Christmas, they would be subject to being fined. Even in Boston, schools were open on Christmas Day until 1870. Do you want to resurrect that law? The teachers' union probably would not let us do that today. Not everybody is happy with Christmas. Not everyone responds to Christmas ...

184. Absolute Truth

John 10:22-42

Illustration

Mickey Anders

... discussion about the nature of truth. I have been involved in some of those discussions and listened in on others on Internet discussion groups. Most of them turn into a highly philosophical debate over questions such as these: "Is the Truth objective or subjective?" or "Is the Truth absolute or relative?" Whether we think philosophically or not, the issue confronts everyone sooner or later. In fact, this issue came up in our church some years ago when a young family visited our church for several months. I ...

185. Like a Waving Flag

Luke 7:36-50

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... “balances out,” we feel things are fair and just. But that is not how a “kingdom” works. In a “kingdom” there is one ruler, one power who is in charge, and all others are subject to that ruler. That’s why residents of a kingdom are called “subjects.” Not “objects,” notice, but “subjects.” When the ruler is in residence that monarch is the final authority, the last and the deciding word. Yet the problem with human kings and kingdoms is that they function according to the standards ...

186. Kingdoms in Conflict

Matthew 21:33-46

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

... a gift in public recognition. One obvious example is that of Persian king, Xerxes, honoring Mordecai in the story of Esther (chs. 3-6). The Royal Grant was always a one-way act, with no specific reciprocal deed required. The second type of king-subject covenant was known as the "Suzerain-Vassal Treaty." It was quite different from the Royal Grant. It moved on a two-way street, with both parties giving and expecting much. When a Suzerain-Vassal Treaty was ratified, kings would provide safety and food and ...

187. Dressed for the Banquet

Matthew 22:1-14

Sermon

Chris Ewing

188. Unwanted Freedom

John 8:31-36

Sermon

Chris Ewing

... refused to bow down to the powerful noble when he passed by. Never mind that bowing to nobles was what everyone in Persia did; Jews didn't. They acknowledged the sovereignty of no one but God. They might be exiles over a thousand kilometers from home, subject to a foreign power — whose laws, by the way, they obeyed — but they would not give anything that could be construed as worship or absolute loyalty to any earthly sovereign. It just wasn't going to happen. In spirit they were slaves to no one; and ...

189. Breakdowns and Breakthroughs

Genesis 22:1-14

Sermon

Stan Purdum

... how we live together as a society needs to apply in our understandings of religious faith as well. I say that because when it comes to Christianity, some people view the Bible, which was completed about 1,900 years ago, as God's final word on all subjects. As though it timelessly answers all questions of concern to us mortals without the need for any further input from God — and that no matter what new information or experiences we encounter as a human community, it is already addressed in some way in the ...

190. Kissing Cousins (Father's Day)

2 Corinthians 13:11-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... have given you cause for alarm. You may have thought to yourself, “Oh, no, a deep, dull sermon is coming on the mystery of the Trinity.” That would be a perfectly natural reaction. So, to keep you awake, I’m going to address an entirely different subject that of kissing. And I’m going to begin with the worst joke about kissing that I know. It seems a new weight-loss clinic opened for business. This clinic promised a brand new method of reducing. An overweight man named Harry decided to give it a ...

191. Sex, Sex, and More Sex

Song of Songs 2:8-13

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... late teens - and most of them fell out again within two years. Even more recently, psychologist, Dorothy Tennov, reported that over half the subjects of her wide surveys of romance suffered emotional depression, more than 25% admitting to thoughts of suicide ... hmm.[5] But when it is ... for not joking about sex is exactly the same as for not joking about the holy communion. It is not that the subject is nasty, but that it is sacred, and to joke about it is profanity."[6] Handle it with care. 1. Martin ...

192. An Angry Heart

Illustration

... in their heads, recalling a recent incident that had made them very angry, and giving a short speech to defend themselves against a hypothetical charge of shoplifting). Using sophisticated X-ray techniques, the doctors took pictures of the subjects' hearts in action during these tests. For all the subjects, anger reduced the amount of blood that the heart pumped to body tissues more than the other tests, but this was especially true for those who had heart disease. Why anger is so much more potent than fear ...

193. Long-Term Learning

Illustration

Elden M. Chalmers

... the brain, repetition and drill are very important. If you review any given bit of information for as long as 60 minutes, even over the course of a few days, that material will register almost indefinitely. If you had two hours to spend in studying a subject, should you do it in one sitting or should you break up the time into 10-, 15- or 20-minute segments? Breaking up the time will improve your learning efficiency. There are a couple of additional tips that may help you. First, in serial learning, where ...

194. On the Road with Jesus

Luke 24:13-35

Sermon

David O. Bales

... that their hearts burned when Jesus walked with them and explained the Bible. One can quote scripture all day and not impress people that it’s any more important than the score of a baseball game. The objective statements of scripture must be confirmed by the subjective response of our heart. Boy do their hearts burn! And now also their eyes see. The two unfortunates have been on the road to understanding God’s love. It’s a suffering love, desiring that we all accept God’s grace in Christ, and then ...

195. Be Reconciled With God

2 Corinthians 5:11--6:2

Sermon

King Duncan

... there staring ahead. “I mean, Mom,” he continued, “like . . . how do you want to finally go? Do you want to be buried? Cremated?” There was yet another long pause. Then the mother looked up and said, “Son, why don’t you surprise me?” Death is a difficult subject. We would prefer to disguise it, ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist. And never do we want to admit that it can happen to us. Most of us prefer the attitude of comedian Woody Allen: “I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my ...

196. A Prayer for Persecuted Christians Everywhere

John 17:6-19

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... As the twenty-first century population of Jesus’ disciples we are in exactly the same position. We are weak and unsure of our power and position. The Westminster Confession, chapter 25 (“On Church”), point 5 still applies: The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error; and some have so degenerated, as to become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan. Nevertheless, there shall be always a church on earth, to worship God according to his will. We are being persecuted and ...

197. How to Forgive

Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

King Duncan

... thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.” This was just the advice Corrie needed. She writes, “And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations, but the force which was my willingness in the matter had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at the last stopped altogether . . .” (2) Maybe there is an incident from your past some hurt, some slight done ...

198. Building a New Team

Mark 8:31--9:1

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

... which surface in this new covenant-making event. Along with the parity agreements between individuals of similar social rank in the ancient world (think of Jacob and Laban forming their parity treaty at the end of Genesis 31), there were two forms of king-subject covenants. One was a “Royal Grant.” This was essentially a gift bestowed by a person of power and political privilege upon someone down-caste a rung or more. Usually the king noticed an act of bravery in battle, or striking beauty in the ...

199. God's Adopted Children

Ephesians 1:1-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... knows every single person in the world by name. He knows every Israeli and Palestinian by name. He knows every child in Zambia and South Africa by name. He knows every Saudi and every Iranian by name. He knows all of us by name. The more you know about any subject, the less you think in general terms and the more you think in individual terms. (3) God knows everything about every one of us. He is the source of all knowledge and truth. He does not see us as just a sea of humanity. He sees us and loves us ...

200. Matthias Chosen to Replace Judas

Acts 1:12-26

Understanding Series

David J. Williams

... between Peter and Paul (Gal. 2:11ff.) shows that even an apostle could act contrary to his convictions (Gal. 2:7–9; Acts 15:7ff.). The authority embodied in the apostles was one to which the apostles themselves were subject. Their authority was that of God (1 Thess. 2:13), and they themselves were subject to God (1 Cor. 4:1). It could be said that the authority of the apostles reposed in the gospel, so that even they could not with impunity preach another gospel (Gal. 1:16). In a sense, therefore, they ...

Showing results