Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: Levi, disciple, evangelist, tax collector, the 12, the twelve, apostle, sermon on the mount, jewish audience, beatitudes, lord's prayer, great commission, parables, olivet discourse, mount of olives, olivet, synoptic

Showing 2076 to 2100 of 3314 results

2076. A Sovereign God With A Shepherd's Heart

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... in the House of David (1:69). Nor is this a little local colloquialism which came from Christ's Palestinian Jewish origin, but which disappeared when the Christian Gospel moved into the Gentile world: It remained an essential part of the Gospel. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, described the Gospel as "...the Gospel of God...concerning his son who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh..." (Romans 1: 1-3). And years later, writing from a Roman prison, Paul bids Timothy "remember Jesus Christ ...

2077. Swift To Hear -- Slow To Speak

James 1:19-27

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... How important that is. When people listen so little -- when they listen to us, it's important that we have said what we mean. Jesus said, "I tell you, on the Day of Judgment you will render account for every careless word you utter." And the apostle Paul admonished Timothy, "Avoid godless chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge." We need to control the tongue -- discipline the tongue by being slow to talk and say what we mean. There is too much at stake in our relationships not to say ...

2078. How To Be Rich And Poor

James 1:1-18

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... than trusting in things, as those who are rich are apt to do, we are invited as Hebrews 13, verse 5, puts it to "Be without covetousness, and be content with such things as you have. For he himself has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."The apostle Paul teaches us that the person who is truly rich is the person who has learned to be content. You remember his word to the Philippians -- Philippians 4: 11 and 12: Not that I complain of want; for I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content ...

2079. The Church Of Our Dreams

Ephesians 4:1-16

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... the nature of the church-- we gather to study, to have fellowship, to be renewed, equipped and spiritually recharged; but we scatter to serve. When Paul described the church in our scripture lesson, he talked about Christ giving gifts and calling people -- some to be apostles, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, and -- he puts a comma at that point. And then he adds, "for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." There is the purpose of the ...

2080. On Level Ground

Luke 5:1-11

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... read verses 12 - 16 of the 6th Chapter: "Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot, and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor." There follows ...

2081. The Cross Question: Am I Not To Drink The Cup?

John 18:1-11

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... why we erect crosses, much less preach about them. Human wisdom has never comprehended God's purpose in using the Cross. Yet for over 2,000 years that ugly symbol of execution has been the focal point for one generation of Christians after another. That is why the Apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 1:18: "For the message about the cross is, I know, nonsense to those who are involved in this dying world, but to us who are being saved from that death it is nothing less that the power of God." (NSRV) Phillips ...

2082. God's Anxiety Reduction Plan

Philippians 4:2-9

Sermon

John P. Jewell

... what I will do if she says no!" This year when I read the lectionary epistle reading for this Sunday the words jumped right off the page: "Do not worry about anything..." There you have it people. Advice right from the pages of holy writ. Actually the Apostle writes these words in the imperative mode. This is an injunction. "Do not worry about anything..." And Paul is not alone. Three times in Matthew six, Jesus says, "Do not worry." [vv.25,31,34] Amazing! Don't you think? If you listened closely, the way ...

2083. The Divine Opportunity

Luke 3:1-20

Sermon

J. Ellsworth Kalas

... love to fill us. Sometimes I feel -- as I look at neglected places in my own heart, and at the people of the church -- that we Christians have forgotten how to repent. We act as if repentance were something only the ungodly should do; in truth, as the apostle said, repentance should begin at the house of God. Repentance is a particular gift to us believers; we know by experience what benefits it brings. We ought, therefore, to be all the more ready to put this good gift to use. Right now we are in the best ...

2084. Christmas and the New Family

John 1:1-18

Sermon

J. Ellsworth Kalas

... bring this wayward planet back to himself. It is a story that concentrates on a chosen people -- the Jews -- who are meant to be the special channel for God's working; and on God's efforts to help that people fulfill their calling. And at last, in what the apostle calls "the fullness of time," God sends forth his Son. Christmas is God's ultimate effort to bring our world back to himself. He seeks to restore Eden by way of Bethlehem. It is also by the way of the family. God wants a relationship with us human ...

2085. Saints in Shorts

Luke 6:27-36

Sermon

David J. Kalas

... 's fine, if you want to fit in in Rome. But the Christian lives with a different ethic, for the Christian has a different ultimate goal. We may live in the world, but we do not aspire to fitting in here. Instead, since our citizenship is in heaven, as the Apostle Paul says, we speak the language and live the customs of the place to which we belong. Simply put, we live like heaven on earth. That should not come as a surprise to us. In the most familiar of all prayers -- a prayer many of us speak once a week ...

2086. God's Messenger

Malachi 2:17--3:5

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... prophets. And if we ask, "How can that be?" the New Testament replies that the judgment will take place in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Then the Day of the Lord Christ will be at hand, and the Lord of the church will be our Judge. The Apostle Paul therefore prayed constantly that his churches would be found pure and blameless through faith "in the day of Christ" (Philippians 1:6, 10; 1 Corinthians 1:8; 1 Thessalonians 5:24), and Jesus repeatedly told us to "Watch!" and to be prepared, for we do not ...

2087. Growing with God

1 Samuel 2:12-26

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... maturity in Christ. We are to grow up into mature manhood or womanhood, says the letter to the Ephesians, up into the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ. In other words, every day and every year, we are to become more like Jesus. In fact, the Apostle Paul tells us that is what God is trying to do in our lives. By the work of the Spirit, Paul tells the Corinthians, God is changing us into the likeness of Christ, from one degree of glory to the next (2 Corinthians 3:18). We rarely think about ...

2088. Evaluating Our Names

Isaiah 62:1-12

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... of God (Jeremiah 2:2; Ezekiel 16:8; Hosea chs. 2-3). And our Lord took up that language in his teachings to refer to himself as the bridegroom (Mark 2:19-20 and parallels; Matthew 25:1, 5, 6, 10; cf. John 3:29; Ephesians 5:32). Thus, the Apostle Paul's hope for the church is that it will be presented as a pure bride to Christ (2 Corinthians 11:2), and the future vision of Revelation is that in the Kingdom of God, the church will come "down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned ...

2089. Old and New Commandments

Exodus 34:29-35

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... 's Word to his people. Are the commandments of the Old Testament then also God's words to us and therefore to be obeyed, all of those laws and statutes that we find scattered through the Torah, the first five books of our Bibles? Obviously the Apostle Paul does not think so, according to our Epistle lesson in 2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2. Paul reinterprets our Old Testament text in such a manner that the commandments become the "veil" whereby God is hidden from us, whereas God's revelation of himself in Christ ...

2090. Responding to the Story

Deuteronomy 26:1-15

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... not true of the biblical faith of the Christian Church. No. Our faith is a response to a history of God's words and deeds, a history that is now preserved and passed on to us in the scripture. So it is that when we confess our faith in the Apostles' Creed, for example, we tell the story on which that faith is based, and the story is the history of what God has done: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth ... I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord, who was born of ...

2091. Passing From Old to New

Joshua 5:13--6:27

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... longer conformed to the world, but to the will of God. Throughout the scriptures, the newness of life that we have been given in Jesus Christ is emphasized. Perhaps nowhere is that newness emphasized more than in Paul's description of our baptisms in Romans 6. The apostle tells us that when we were baptized, we died and were buried with Christ. Our old lives, lived solely for ourselves, with all of their sin and guilt, their lack of hope and of a future, their bondage to the world and its evil, were buried ...

2092. Suffering Servant Song

Isaiah 52:13--53:12

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... all nations to God, faithful souls draw others to him, to find the strength, the hope, the joy that so illumine their faithful lives. There was One, however, who outdid us all in sacrifice and joy as the Suffering Servant. When the disciples and apostles and authors of the New Testament strained to tell who Jesus Christ is, they could do no other but describe his life and death and resurrection in terms of this Suffering Servant song. Everywhere throughout the New Testament, the words of this song sound ...

2093. Tasks For The Living God

Acts 16:11-15

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... here is the founder and leader of the church in her house, just as Prisca or Priscilla, with her husband who is mentioned second, is the leader of a household church in Rome (Romans 16:3). The first witness of the resurrection and therefore the first apostle was a woman, Mary Magdalene, according to John (John 20:11-18). And in Luke, it is the faithful women, who remained at the cross when the other disciples deserted Jesus, and who first discovered that Jesus' tomb was empty (Luke 24:1-12). Women played ...

2094. A Church Shaped By The Great Commission

Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... in our nation than ever before in our history—172 million. Are we going to them? Ninety percent of the population of the United States lives in urban settings. Are we going to them? But not only in style, we must be apostolic in our passion. For the apostles, Jesus Christ was the Good News. This conviction is the only power that will give us the passion to be for our age what the first century Christians were for theirs: who Jesus is and what God has done and is doing through Him. What we believe about ...

2095. Alive In Christ

Colossians 2:6-23

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... the key to authentic Christian piety and spirituality--to be alive in Christ. It is interesting to me that Paul in all his writing does not tell about his Damascus road experience in descriptive detail. Luke records that dramatic event in the Acts of the Apostles. Paul doesn’t recount an outward description of the experience--being struck down by a blinding light and hearing the voice of Christ. Rather, he talks about the meaning of that experience and almost sings about it in exulting joy: ‘I have been ...

2096. Being A Man of God

1 Peter 2:4-12

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... , because there is absolutely nothing in the New Testament to suggest the notion. Paul Stevens reminds us that the word “‘layperson’ (laikoi) was first used by Clement of Rome at the end of the first century, but was never used by an inspired apostle to describe second-class, untrained, and unequipped Christians.” Stevens suggests that we ought to eliminate it from our vocabulary. I’m not sure about that, but we need to stay aware of the fact that “laity” in its proper New Testament sense of ...

2097. Homesick For a Future: New Life for the New Millenium

Genesis 12:1-8

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... . We give shape to our longing for a new land. II “I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew what I needed. I needed a new land, a new race…” I doubt if Nicholas knew it, but he was expressing the heartbeat of the Apostle Paul. Do you remember. . . A furor was gong on in the Christian community in Galatia. Some preachers, as preachers often do, were insisting that new converts take on all the excess baggage of rules and ritual that, ironically enough, Christ had come to deliver them from. They ...

2098. God Outwits Us

Psalm 31:1-24

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... a power greater than our powers and that power is baptized in love. God’s providence is flavored by God’s grace. So, the Psalmist could be confident: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” And the apostle Paul could testify of his contentment no matter what his circumstances were. In the midst of plenty or want, whether hungry or well-fed, he affirmed, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength,” and he could assure the Philippians, “My God ...

2099. The Vocation of Leadership: A Prophet Among Them

Ephesians 4:1-16

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... 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.” Then there is that marvelous description of vocation in the Church: “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” (Eph. 4:11-12) Paul begins this illuminating and challenging discussion with this plea: “I therefore ...

2100. The Lord's Victory

Psalm 118:1-29, Acts 4:1-22, Isaiah 65:17-25

Bulletin Aid

H. Burnham Kirkland

... celebrate your victory through our Lord's resurrection, we pray that by the renewing power of your Holy Spirit we may arise from the death of sin to the life of righteousness through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Prayer Of Confession O Lord, like the Apostle Peter we know that you treat everyone on the same basis, but we confess that we often find it difficult to put this into practice in our daily lives. By your mercy, forgive our past failures, and grant us a deeper understanding of what it means ...

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