Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 2026 to 2050 of 5000 results

2026. Removing Obstacles

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Sermon

James L. Killen

... the Lord. He insisted that he and Apollos, far from being competitors, were actually partners. He uses one image drawn from farming. He said, "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth" (1 Corinthians 3:6). A little later, he draws an illustration from building, saying, "... like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it" (1 Corinthians 3:10). But perhaps the most beautiful image of all comes when he compares the members of the church with different spiritual ...

2027. After Good Friday

Hebrews 10:16-25

Sermon

Richard W. Ferris

... tracks out of the village and find food for their survival. They also found evidence of profound courage and sacrifice. Early Christian missionaries to the Eskimos proclaimed that Jesus Christ is the "Good Hunter" who lays down his life for the world. It was an illustration they could understand, and one that can remind us why Jesus did what he did. Because of God's love and compassion for us, Jesus became the New Covenant he would make with his people. A covenant that transcends all times and all places ...

2028. At War with Myself

Romans 7:15-25a

Sermon

William G. Carter

... from our own rebellion. Sometimes our best efforts are corrupted by the power of sin. Today he simply holds up a mirror and invites us to look at ourselves. Paul speaks about his own spiritual struggles in the seventh chapter of Romans. He holds up himself as a sermon illustration. A lot of scholars think he is talking about the old life before he became a Christian. He says, "I am a slave of sin, a captive to the law of sin," even though one chapter before he said we are no longer under sin's dominion. Now ...

2029. A Radical Faith

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... our Sunday Schools. We picture Jesus as a man, like us, who was a teacher primarily. These pictures show people gathered around him, eager to receive his wisdom and to hear the lovely words he would say to them. Or there would be pictures illustrating his parables, like the Good Samaritan, somebody helping someone out of love. Those are the pictures we are familiar with. But the medieval church had different pictures of Jesus. These pictures were of Jesus in the last days, with a sword in his hand, slaying ...

2030. All Your Facilities Intact

Acts 17:16-34, Colossians 1:15-20

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... here, and we hear music. It is something like that. We can say that there is something in here that has a sense for the holy. Something inside of us, therefore, awakens when we encounter the presence of the holy in the world. There is a fascinating story that illustrates this. It is a story of John and Michael, identical twins with an incredible capacity for numbers. You could say they have a sense for numbers. You can give them any date in the last 40,000 years, or in the next 40,000 years, and they will ...

2031. Body Language

Mark 7:1-23

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... ago entitled, The Silent Language. He delineated the non-verbal language we use to communicate with each other. He said not only is there body language, but there is also time language. We say something with the way that we regard time. He gave the illustration of an American diplomat going to an Arab country. He made an appointment with an important official for three o'clock the next day. Now the American custom of courtesy dictates that you should always be on time. He wanted to be especially courteous ...

2032. Coming Home

Luke 15:1-3,11b-32

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... Not alienation so much, not hostility, not rebellion; but distance, and the inability to talk to one another about intimate things, important things, to express their feelings, to open their hearts to one another. It's just very difficult to do this. To illustrate, he pointed out something Robert Bly, who founded the secular men's movement, often says: "When the son calls home, and the father answers the phone, the father always says, ‘Hi, son. Here's your mother.'" Estrangement from the father. It seems ...

2033. Dig In

Jeremiah 29:1-14

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... a signature on the whole series, saying this is who we are. We are people who believe that the only good a city is for is opportunity, opportunity to find your own pleasure and your own wealth. Not only was community not mentioned or illustrated in that series, it was studiously avoided. Any sort of commitment or obligation to anything, or anyone, beyond the self was impossible. It could not happen. The city exists for opportunity. But cities will become uninhabitable if they don't also create community ...

2034. For Those Who Can't Pray

Genesis 32:22-31

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... . Nothing can separate us from God, not even our inability to pray. For the impulse to pray is itself the prompting of God. If we try, and we fail to find the words, "the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words." I came across some wonderful illustrations of this in rabbinic literature. There is an old Jewish legend about a little farmer boy who had been left an orphan at an early age, and was unable to read. But he had inherited from his parents a large, heavy prayer book. It was now his. On ...

2035. Have You Heard?

Matthew 4:12-23

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... But, he said, Jesus is not discovered through biography anyway. The Resurrection means that Jesus is not some figure who lived in the past and is now gone. Jesus is someone who lives with us now. He used the scene at the end of the Gospel of John to illustrate this, the same scene that takes place in Matthew at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. In the Gospel of John it is at the end, after the Resurrection. The disciples think that Jesus is dead, so they go back to Galilee and take up their old business of ...

2036. He's Back

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... God has given that people. The most visible example of that opportunity, that new future that God gives to nations, is to be seen today in Ireland. It's a wonderful thing that has happened, and almost in the season of Advent. It provides us with a wonderful illustration of "the time is fulfilled, the Kingdom is at hand; repent, and do something with it." For 300 years the people in Ireland have lived in the past. For 350 years, really, all they have done is remember the past. They dwelt on the past, and the ...

2037. How's the Old Complaint?

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... legends, the first Thanksgiving was prompted by the Pilgrims surviving a terrible winter, and then the next fall, having a harvest sufficient to survive. They realized that with all of the mistakes that they had made, it was grace that enabled them to survive. It illustrated what the Pilgrims knew already, we are dependent on God for our existence, and for life itself. That is the perspective of the Bible. Life is a gift, and the Giver is dependable. That is the point of the Noah story. After the Flood, God ...

2038. How to Be a Blessing

I Peter 3:8-12

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... . You may have ascended into the ultimate, but they are still living in the penultimate. You may think that you have all the answers. You may think that you've got it all together now. But to them, all that cheap answers do is illustrate how lonely they are. What suffering people understand is not answers but incarnation, presence, being with them. They understand you leaving the safe world of certainty and dwelling where the sufferer must live. The way Jesus did, who "did not count his equality with ...

2039. If You Look Like Your Passport Photo

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... like this? What machine has stamped them? What is it that corrupts this wonderful clay from which we are created?" He could see in their outward appearance that the inner spirit had died. It showed. Our experiences will shape our appearance. Our lessons for this morning illustrate this in a wonderful way. We begin with the Old Testament lesson. It is that scene where Moses comes down from Mt. Sinai with the tablets of stone, The Ten Commandments, one in each arm. He comes down to the people at the foot of ...

2040. Landing Instructions

Isaiah 40:25-31

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... . It expresses our belief that there is something in each one of us that seeks the highest. There is something in us that wants to strive for greatness. Indeed there is something in us that wants to overcome human limitation. The metaphor of flight illustrates that better than anything else. One example of that metaphor is the Old Testament lesson for this morning, the words from the prophet Isaiah. They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall ...

2041. Moving on Up

Luke 14:1, 7-14

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... marriage, and the couple is feuding, and the people in the church all know about it. Anyway, he hears something, and he addresses with the advice, do not do anything from selfishness or from conceit, but in humility count others better than yourself, then illustrates it with the example of our Lord. In that context counting others “better” means see them as “your betters.” That meant be a servant to that other person. Our example is Jesus, “who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped ...

2042. Now Stand Up Straight!

Luke 13:10-17

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... she stood tall, she gained dignity, she became a woman of worth, freed from all these burdens that had tied her down. This is no sabbath story. This is an emancipation story. All these stories of Jesus' encounters with people are there to give us illustrations of what it means to encounter Jesus. If you are a woman, therefore, bent over because of abuse and discrimination from the outside, or if you are bent over because of feelings of inferiority and insecurity about yourself from the inside, to have Jesus ...

2043. Now Try Forgiveness

Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. That is the expectation of the Church that Paul holds for us. We should be a forgiving community. Forgiveness for us is not just a way of healing conflict. Forgiveness is a strategy for changing the world. It was illustrated immediately in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, which is the history of the Church, given to us as an example of how the Church should behave in the world. So we have this example before us. The first incident in the Book of the Acts ...

2044. Now What Do We Do?

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Mark Trotter

2045. The Things That Make for Peace

Luke 19:28-44

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, and giving to us the ministry of reconciliation." That is the peace the Bible is talking about. It consists in right relationships. It consists in living together in harmony. Karl Barth, in a famous illustration, said that shalom, the peace the Bible talks about, is like a gypsy orchestra, where, I understand, each player plays his or her own instrument in improvisation, doing their own thing, but listening all the time to what the others are playing and ...

2046. This Is a Test

Genesis 22:1-14

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... in the first place, can give it again? Martin Luther rediscovered this radical, biblical understanding of faith, and coined the phrase, "We are saved by our trusting in God's grace alone." But he also wrote a hymn, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," in which he illustrated what this kind of radical faith means. Let goods and kindred go, This mortal life also. Which is exactly what Abraham was called to do at the beginning of the story, to "let goods go." He was called to leave Ur of Chaldees, leave all his ...

2047. Timing Is Everything

Matthew 11:2-11

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... the belief that the time has come. But he is in prison now. He is about to lose his head. So he sends his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are you the one that we have been waiting for, or do we still look for somebody else?" It is a wonderful illustration of the way the Bible looks upon time. For the Bible, there are only two kinds of time: there is the time of preparation, and there is the time of fulfillment. There is a time of expectation, a time of waiting, when we look forward to our dreams being realized ...

2048. What Will They Think Up Next?

Luke 1:26-38

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... . He talked about how the Jews had been around for thousands of years, and have gone through all kinds of terrible experiences. But they have survived. They are the only people from that ancient world to have survived in tact. It is just amazing. To illustrate the point, he asked the rhetorical question, "Have you seen any Babylonians lately?" An old lady in the front row, hard of hearing, raised her hand, and said, "No, but you don't have to tell me the neighborhood's changed. But," she said, "They keep ...

2049. When Saying No Means Yes

Luke 4:1-13

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... everything that was there. I did some correspondence. I watched the Utah Jazz play the Miami Heat on television. I went through the airport trash bins and got out the old newspapers, worked the crossword puzzles. I went into the store, checked out Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Edition. Nothing seemed to hold my attention. Then I remembered a piece written by Harry Golden. In that piece he began by describing the creation of the universe. How billions of years ago there was this "big bang," and the universe ...

2050. Where Do You Abide?

John 15:1-8

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... a Counselor, who will abide with you forever." In the lives of Christians that has meant you are somebody, and therefore you ought to live your life with dignity and integrity that becomes someone who is baptized. I was reminded of a powerful story that illustrates this, how this knowledge about ourselves can transform our lives. It is a story that is told by Peter Storey, a bishop of the Methodist Church of South Africa. He told about Popo Molefe and Terror Lekota, two Africans who were arrested and jailed ...

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