Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 2101 to 2125 of 4508 results

2101. Birdbaths and Flagpoles

Humor Illustration

King Duncan

"I want to start a garden, but my yard's a little problematic," a customer told the proprietor at the yard and garden center. "I get blazing afternoon sunshine for about two hours, but otherwise it's all shade." "What kind of soil," asked the proprietor. "Hard clay, lot of rocks," said the customer, "What do you recommend I plant?" "Hmmm," mused the store owner. "Why don't you look down Aisle B...

2102. "I Don’t Want to Be Perfect - Or Do I?"

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

"I don’t want to be perfect" - but I do want to be better than am. I do want to be as good as I can be. I will never be mathematically perfect, everything just right, fixed. But as long as I live, I am going to be yearning after something that I have not yet achieved, and I am going to be responding to a pull that ever tugs me to a higher level of life. I don’t want to be a semi-Christian. I don’...

2103. Proper 10

Sermon Aid

Marion L. Soards, Thomas B. Dozeman, Kendall McCabe

OLD TESTAMENT TEXTS Genesis 25:19-34 is the story of the birth of Jacob and Esau. Psalm 119:105-112 praises divine instruction. Genesis 25:19-34 - "A Story Without Heroes" Setting. The Old Testament lesson for this Sunday begins a four week series of lessons from the stories of Jacob in Genesis 25:19-36:43. In the present form of Genesis, the cycle of stories about Jacob can be interpreted as ...

2104. More Fully Understanding Christ

Sermon

King Duncan & Angela Akers

I don’t know if you have noticed all the news stories this year about new technologies designed to help us all communicate better. Many of these stories proclaim that artificial intelligence, or AI as it is popularly known, will revolutionize the way we communicate, whether through writing emails or articles or using social media or simply texting or talking on the phone. And all of that is well a...

2105. Seeds

Sermon

William G. Carter

I am always astonished at the tenacity of vegetation. The dandelion pops up overnight, blossoms in a burst of yellow, then explodes in a puff and scatters across the yard. There’s a vine that wraps itself around the back fence. Every year it gets snipped down to the soil, but every year it returns and grows taller. It’s well planted. Or there’s the blade of grass that pokes its head out of the cra...

2106. The Grip

Sermon

Lori Wagner

Readiness. This is a word that our culture often has lost sight of. We tend to be a rather impulsive people today. When we want something, we want it now, …or better yet, yesterday. We leap into new ventures without checking them out fully. We rush headlong into situations that may or may not do us harm. We rack up credit by the thousands without a plan to pay it back. We have children without th...

2107. Vengeance: Human and Divine

Sermon

Will Willimon

We began this service of worship by reciting Psalm 139. Well, not really. For we only recited part of Psalm 139, the nice part. Our hymnal leaves out the last part of this psalm, the part that isn't so nice. After speaking of the Spirit of God, the wings of the morning, the precious thoughts of God, there is a jolt: O that thou wouldst slay the wicked....Do I not hate them that hate thee,... do I ...

2108. For a Thirty-three-year-old Cancer Victim

Eulogy

Harold Warlick

The Backside of the Mountain John 14:1-7 The following meditation was preached at the funeral of Charles Whitlow, age 33. Mr. Whitlow died after a prolonged battle with cancer. He underwent several painful and experimental last-resort bone marrow transplant attempts in Duke University hospital. His father, grandmother, and grandfather, all charter members of Emerywood Baptist Church, died and were...

2109. Matthew 13:24-30, 24-30

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

The parable told, and then carefully explained, in this week's gospel text is part of a series of teaching parables found and featured in Matthew. While many are replicated in the other gospels, the parable of the wheat and the weeds is only found in Matthew. Fittingly for a parable concerned with the growing foodstuff (the wheat), Matthew introduces this story with the introductory formula, "He p...

2110. The Wheat Among The Weeds

Sermon

Marc Kolden

Our gospel passage today is this peculiar parable of Jesus about the wheat and the weeds. Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven (that is, the rule of God) is like this: A man went out in his field and sowed (by hand, of course, in those days) the good seed that he had saved from the previous year's crop. It was sown all over, not in neat rows or spaced evenly. And since nearly 2,000 years ago ther...

2111. Playing By A Different Set Of Rules

Sermon

Larry Goodpaster

Obscenity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. With words to that effect more than two decades ago the Supreme Court of the United States of America left the decisions regarding pornography in the hands of local communities. During the intervening years states and cities have struggled with the issue, desiring to uphold the basic rights of freedom of speech and expression, and at the same ...

2112. It Just Doesn't Work That Way

Sermon

Johnny Dean

I have to admit that I didn’t exactly look forward with eager anticipation to the prospect of planting a garden this year. It’s the first garden we’ve planted in several years, and my track record with gardens is not what anyone would rate as successful. Oh, I can usually manage to grow tomatoes and okra, the low maintenance vegetables. You just dig some holes, plant the seed or set out the young ...

2113. Parable of the Crabgrass

Children's Sermon

Brett Blair

Exegetical Aim: Discernment of who is a good person and who is a bad person is sometimes difficult and should be left to God. Props: A tray, a strand or clump of good grass, and a patch of crabgrass (or weed). Try and pull up one whole system of each. Place the grass side by side in the tray so that they initially look like one system of grass. Lesson: I have something in this tray this morning. C...

2114. Judgement Day Is Coming

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

When I was a college student I was tempted by only one other profession than the preaching ministry. That was the practice of law. And I am convinced that God is just as delighted with a Christian lawyer as He is with a Christian pastor. Those poor attorneys! Everybody tells lawyer jokes, including lawyers themselves. And I admire them for that. The only two groups in our society who have the grac...

2115. Judgment Day is Coming (Adapted)

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

The late great Bishop Ken Goodson of Virginia was considered a staunch conservative. He had a very liberal Methodist lady in his conference named Tess Hoover. One day Tess said to him, "Bishop, you're so conservative that you probably believe in the devil." "Yes I do," he said, "and I don't like her at all." The text this morning says that one-day—we do not know when—but it asserts that one day th...

2116. Parables Discourse: The “Already and Not Yet” of the Kingdom

Teach the Text

Jeannine K. Brown

Big Idea: Though the kingdom and people’s responses to it have a hidden quality in the present time, everything will be made clear in the end—both people’s responses and the great value of the kingdom. Understanding the Text The parables in this section of the Parables Discourse build upon the varied responses to the kingdom introduced in 13:1–23 by indicating the hidden nature of the kingdom in...

2117. The Parable of the Weeds

Understanding Series

Robert H. Mounce

Parables of Jesus: In chapter 13 we come for the first time to Jesus’ favorite method of teaching, the parable. The seven parables recorded in this chapter form Jesus’ third discourse as arranged by Matthew, There are in the first three Gospels about sixty separate parables. In the LXX the Greek parabolē almost always translates the Hebrew māšāl, which denotes a wide variety of picturesque forms o...

2118. What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

Sermon

Tom Garrison

Each year, there is a Senior Recognition Sunday for our high school and college graduates. We do this because graduation is a significant milestone for all of us — not just for the graduates themselves, but also for their families and friends and all those who have contributed in some way to the educational processes of our community. The event of graduation can be described in many ways. For one ...

2119. The Tincture of Time

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

An old saw promises, "Time heals all wounds." But what most of us are hoping is that, Time wounds all heels! Surely the guy who cut you off at the freeway exit will eventually get his well-deserved fender bashing. Surely that back-stabbing co-worker who continually takes credit for your ideas will be exposed and be called on the carpet. And surely someday all the liars, cheaters, thieves, and mu...

2120. Welcome or Warning?

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

People who try to revoke other people's tickets to heaven are those who are least likely to be allowed on the train themselves. Was there anyone the least bit surprised when Lisa Marie Presley and Michael Jackson finally announced they were going to divorce? Most of us never even bothered trying to accept the fact that they had married in the first place. After all, what was the point? It may hav...

2121. What to Do with the Weeds

Sermon

King Duncan

Those of you who are gardeners are familiar with Murphy’s First Law of Gardening: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant. And, of course, there is a corollary to that law: To distinguish flowers from weeds, simply pull up everything. What grows back is weeds. Last week...

2122. What About the Weeds?

Sermon

King Duncan

According to Pastor Charles Yoost there is a well-known saying in rural areas in the late summer. The saying is this: “Make sure you lock your car doors when you go into church.” Now in urban areas we are often told to lock our cars even in church parking lots because something might be stolen while we are worshipping, perhaps even the car itself. But there’s an entirely different reason in rural...

2123. Right Choices

Sermon

King Duncan

Someone has made a list of "Politically Correct Ways of Indicating Stupidity." Perhaps you have heard some of these. They're quite creative. Speaking of someone who has done something really dumb, we might say: He's a few clowns short of a circus . . . A few fries short of a Happy Meal . . . A few peas short of a casserole . . . He doesn't have all his corn flakes in one box . . . The wheel's...

2124. Parable of the Crabby Grass

Children's Sermon

Brett Blair

Exegetical Aim: Encouragement to be wheat rather than tares. Props: A tray, a strand or clump of good grass, and a patch of crabgrass (or weed). Try and pull up one whole system of each. Place the grass side by side in the tray so that they initially look like one system of grass. Lesson: I have something in this tray. Can anybody tell me what it is? (grass) Is there anything strange about the g...

2125. Prayer

Bulletin Aid

"Be patient - God hasn't finished with me yet!" I like the thought. I want people to remember it! I'm not perfect. I forget things. I procrastinate (Never do today What you can put off till tomorrow - Or longer!) I make mistakes, And I want - I expect - People to forgive me To make allowances Not to judge me too harshly. Yet I don't give others the same privileges! "I want what I want when I wa...

Showing 2101 to 2125 of 4508 results