Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 2101 to 2125 of 5000 results

John 16:5-16

Children's Sermon

King Duncan

... to help you with this lesson (two women of different generations OR two men of different generations. Be sure to ask these people before hand if they are willing to help you. Some people don't like to be "put on the spot!" Option: Make triangle book marks out of bright colored card stock. With a sharpie, write FATHER on one side of the triangle, SON on the second side and SPIRIT on the third side of the triangle. Make a bookmark for each child. Today is Trinity Sunday. Trinity is a hard concept for even ...

2102. Loved By The Father

Galatians 3:26--4:7

Sermon

King Duncan

... had pictures of animals and the children were supposed to spell the names underneath. His quiz had a series of illegible marks scribbled across the page in yellow crayon. A smiley face sat atop the page giving the work its approval. Erik could ... . With a black pen, she made him spell out the names of the pictures all over again. He rewrote the words right over the faint yellow marks. He says, "Each new stroke of the solid black pen gave me a sense of security and comfort, and seemed to bring a layer of order ...

2103. Hugging The Coastline

Hebrews 11:1-40

Sermon

King Duncan

... Cullowhee Mountain Church of God was listening intently to a sermon delivered by their minister, Albert Teaster. A man walked in and placed a box in front of Teaster. It was not a gift; rather, it was a challenge. Two weeks earlier, Albert Teaster had preached on Mark 16: 15-18. This is the passage that says that believers are able to take up poisonous snakes and not be hurt. This man, in the hopes of mocking Rev. Teaster, had brought a five-foot long rattle snake to the service. The congregation held their ...

2104. The Christ Of Healing

Mark 5:21-43

Sermon

King Duncan

... complicated, but doesn't it hurt when you hear of someone who was denied help at a hospital just because they were poor? Jesus never turned away anyone who needed help. He certainly did not turn away this poor woman with the blood disease. I like what Mark says next about her. In the King James translation it reads like this: "And (she) had suffered many things of many physicians. . ." I'll bet she did! Can you imagine the primitive state of medicine in those days? But these next words sound all too modern ...

2105. Frustrated By Their Lack Of Faith

Mark 6:1-6

Sermon

King Duncan

... the carpenter who is teaching?" they asked. "Isn't he the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and Judah and Simon? Aren't these his sisters here with us?" They knew him. They knew his family. Mark tells us that they were offended by him. It is here that Jesus spoke those well-known, often quoted words recorded in Mark's gospel: "A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own family." How true that is. One definition of an expert is that you have to be ...

2106. Twelve Inches From God

Mark 7:1-23

Sermon

King Duncan

... Martin discovered that the spacer between the carburetor and the intake manifold was one-half-inch too long according to NASCAR rules. He was fined $40,000 and penalized 46 points in the season standings. Something that small seemed very significant for Mark. (2) In his book The Range of Human Capacities, Dr. David Wechsler says that if Cleopatra's nose had been just a fraction of an inch longer, the face of Europe might have been changed because Caesar might have shown less interest in the lady. This is ...

2107. A Church Fueled By Prayer

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Sermon

King Duncan

... a shame. For PRAYER IS THE KEY TO A RENEWED LIFE. Evangelist Gypsy Smith was once asked how to start a revival. He replied, "Go home, lock yourself in your room, and kneel down in the middle of your floor. Draw a chalk mark all around yourself and ask God to start the revival inside that chalk mark. When He has answered your prayer, the revival will be on." Prayer is the key to a renewed life. And PRAYER IS ALSO THE KEY TO THE RENEWAL OF A CHURCH. If you have ever studied the growth of the early Christian ...

2108. The Competitor

Genesis 25:19-34

Sermon

King Duncan

... walks away. It is interesting. Jesus did not criticize his disciples for their ambition--for wanting to be great. Remember that place in Mark's Gospel where the disciples are arguing about who was the greatest. Jesus did not scold them. Instead he said to them, "If anyone ... wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." (Mark 9:34-35) There is nothing wrong with being ambitious, competitive, a striver--as long as you play by the rules and as ...

2109. Another Great Love Story

Genesis 29:1-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... City Cab Driver's Joke Book, (New York, Warner Brothers, 1998). 2. Interview with Claudia Dreifus in Modern Maturity, March-April 1997. Fleming Rutledge. The Bible and The New York Times (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), p. 108. 3. By Thomas F. Crum, in Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Mark and Chrissy Donnelly, and Barbara DeAngelis, Ph.D. Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul (Deerfield Beach, FL.: Health Communications, 1999), pp. 113-114.

2110. Piercing A Hole In The Darkness

Job 38:1--41:34

Sermon

King Duncan

... to answer him while he is still living. And yet, does God explain the reason for Job's suffering? No. Instead, God reminds Job who the Creator is and who the created is: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!" As Paul Smith writes in his book God's Plan for Our Good, "There is a problem with standing in judgment of God. He Himself is the standard by which all things are judged. We do not know good apart from God. His ...

2111. Where Meek Souls Will Recieve Him Still

John 3:22-36

Sermon

Darrick Acre

... John the Baptist, with his scraggly beard and his camel-hair shirt and the locust pieces hanging from his teeth. He shows up in our Advent journey toward Christmas again. This time the focus is not upon John’s message, like at the beginning of Mark’s gospel; it’s not upon the announcement of a coming Savior and the prep work of repentance His coming demands. Location doesn’t have much significance, either, except it makes sense the Baptist has plenty of water for his baptismal ministry. Instead the ...

2112. What the Heck Is Sin?

Luke 15:11-32

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... Bibles, for they shall never agree with this! Sin is more than merely a slight tendency. It is the one over-arching fact of life. Mark Twain once said that he was not prejudiced toward any race of people, For, said he, All I need to know is that a ... like me...and most of the people I know. The Greek word for sin in the New Testament is hamartia, which literally means missing the mark. The word comes from the field of archery, and it refers to an arrow which is shot, but falls short of the target. Paul said: ...

2113. Through the Eyes of an Eagle (Introduction)

John 20:24-31

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... God. “...the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with a face like a human face, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle.” (Rev. 4:7)* In Christian iconography the man stands for Mark, the plainest, most straightforward, most human and, we believe, the earliest of the four Gospels. The lion stands for Matthew, for he proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah, the “Lion of the Tribe of Judah.” The ox stands for Luke. The ox was an animal ...

2114. The War of Malchus’ Ear

John 18:1-11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... almost an army to do it!” What happened next is not quite clear. Most of us, in our minds, tend to “conflate” or squeeze together the events recorded in the Four Gospels, but there are significant differences between the Gospels. In Mark, a bystander cuts off the ear of the high priest’s slave. (Mark 14:47) There seems to be no protest to this violent action on the part of Jesus. In Matthew, the ear is cut off by one of the disciples... “one of those who were with Jesus,” and Jesus rebukes him ...

2115. That Would Be Some Miracle!

John 6:1-15

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... Bargil Pixner, a Benedictine monk who has spent over a quarter of a century living and doing research around the Galilee, says that there is indeed, symbolism at work here...and also at the second “Feeding of the Four Thousand” reported in both Matthew and Mark. (With Jesus Through Galilee According to the Fifth Gospel, Corazin Press, 1992, pp.83-84) The place where this event is remembered today is on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee and is called “Tabgha,” which is a corruption of the Greek ...

2116. Good Old What’s-His-Name

John 14:15-31

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... , and celebrate their faith. The late Episcopal Bishop James Pike liked to say shocking things to get people’s attention. Once he said, “Muslims have one God and three wives; Christians have three gods and one wife.” In this case, Pike was off the mark. According to the Koran, Muslims may have four wives...and no responsible Christian has ever understood the Trinity to be three gods. The Trinity refers to our experience of God in three different ways. My point is that just like one of the apostles may ...

2117. Jesus Came Preaching

Mark 1:14-15

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... preacher’s difficult and demanding task to proclaim that coming week by week by week. The danger is that we preachers and you listeners might come to take it for granted, and lose the wonder and amazement of the message. For it is an amazing message! Mark Twain once wrote: “A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be scientifically regarded as a thing of beauty.” Just try telling that to the parents! But you know, that is just the way in which God most fully entered into our world, according to ...

2118. When Compassion Overcomes Irritation

Mark 6:30-44

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... ); we read that “The apostles returned to Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.” (6:30) But as result of their doing and teaching, the crowds pressed in on them so closely that “they had no leisure even to eat.” (Mark 6:312) (And we thought that we invented the overcrowded schedule!) So Jesus said to them: I. “COME AWAY BY YOURSELVES TO A LONELY PLACE, AND REST AWHILE.” (6:31) The “lonely place” was undoubtedly part of “the deserted places of Bethsaida” in the northern ...

2119. When Tradition Gets in the Way

Mark 7:1-23

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... says about forms of government ought to apply: we ought to feel free to change or abolish them. The true test of any government or any religion, or any tradition, is what happens to persons who live under it. In his commentary on this passage in Mark’s Gospel, Prof. Lamar Williamson writes: “If innovation is not always good, neither is tradition always bad. Tradition (paradosis) is used elsewhere in the New Testament to refer to the basic teachings of the Gospel (e.g., I Cor. 11:2; 15:3; II Thess. 2 ...

2120. On the Singing of Hymns

Mark 14:12-26

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

“And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.” (Mark 14:26) This little verse in Mark’s Gospel which occurs at the end of the Last Supper account, has always intrigued me. It may well be one of the greatest pictures of quiet courage and confidence in all of literature. For Jesus and His students were singing in the very shadow of the cross! I. THEY ...

2121. On Being in the Wrong Place

Mark 15:21-32

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... which fate and misfortune lay on our shoulders just because we happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there are those which we willingly shoulder on behalf of others. III. SIMON WAS COMPELLED TO CARRY THE CROSS, BUT SOMETHING GOOD CAME OF IT. Mark alone gives us an interesting detail about this man Simon of Cyrene. He says that he was “the father of Alexander and Rufus...”(15:21) as though those two boys would be well known to his readers. And so they were...for in Paul’s Letter to the ...

2122. Holy Monday

Matthew 21:1-11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the good father in Dayton was precisely the sort of attitude that made Jesus really angry—putting roadblocks in front of people who wish to come to Him. The first place where it says He got angry was when He was forbidden to heal on the Sabbath. (Mark 3:5) The other place anger is not mentioned, but implied, when He came to the Temple on the Monday of Passion Week. There His passion burst forth against the moneychangers in the Temple. Where this happened was not the Temple proper, but “the precincts of ...

2123. Holy Thursday

Mark 14:12-26

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... Last Supper is a problem for scholars. Was it a Passover meal, or was it not? Here I am indebted to a theory put forth by Dr. James Fleming, former director of the Jerusalem Center for Biblical Studies. He notes several things about the event as recorded in Mark, the earliest Gospel. The room of the last supper seems to be in an institutional building of some sort. The disciples are told to follow a man from the water pool to a gateway of a compound of some sort. This entrance would have a doorman who knew ...

2124. Good Friday

1 Corinthians 1:18--2:5

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... But we are not asked to weep over the crucifixion as a unique form of cruelty and injustice, for what is important is not what was done, but to whom it was done. Mark’s Gospel ends the detailed description of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus with the confession of one of the soldiers standing by: “Truly this man was the Son of God.” (Mark 15:39) Whatever he may have meant, he probably spoke more than he knew. For Jesus Christ is not merely one in a long line of martyrs across the centuries. This was ...

2125. GIVE ME YOUR SINS: The First Word

Luke 23:26-43

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... 1:21 - "She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." The gospel of Saint Mark declares, "For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many." The ... have cried out in praise if the people had not. In a lonely cemetery in New York City, there is one grave that is marked by a headstone containing just one word--"Forgiven." The source for that word begins with our Savior''s cry from the cross today. It ...

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