Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 2151 to 2175 of 4508 results

2151. How Do You Get Rid of Evil without Destroying Good?

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

How do we deal with evil? More precisely, how do we get rid of evil without destroying good? Today’s parable addresses this question. Like all parables of our Lord, this one comes straight from the life of his own day and people. We find it a bit hard to understand because this incident could not have occurred in the wheat-growing sections of America. We know about farms stretching over hundreds ...

2152. The Sin of Judging

Sermon

Dennis Kastens

Another parable he (Jesus) put before them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the householder came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your fie...

2153. Proper 12

Bulletin Aid

B. David Hostetter

READINGS Psalter - Psalms 139:1-12, 23-24 First Lesson - The dream of Jacob will be identified for thousands of years as Jacob's ladder. Genesis 28:10-19 Second Lesson - Paul defines our relationship with God through the Holy Spirit as that of adopted children. Romans 8:12-25 Gospel - Matthew continues his reporting of the parables Jesus told in preaching to and teaching the multitudes and also gi...

2154. Proper 11, Pentecost 9, Ordinary Time 16

Bulletin Aid

Amy C. Schifrin

Opening Litany Leader: Everyday life, home, and family, All: let the Spirit bear witness with our spirit. Leader: In the city, state, and nation, All: let the Spirit bear witness with our spirit. Leader: In waiting and sorrow, in loss and expectation, All: let the Spirit bear witness with our spirit. Leader: In hope, in faith, in all of life, All: let the Spirit bear witness with our spirit. Pray...

2155. Thistles Among The Wheat

Sermon Aid

William E. Keeney

The parable of the weeds and wheat is intriguing. It raises a number of issues that are complex and can be confusing. Some resolutions of the issues are suggested while for others you need to look elsewhere for more adequate explanations. Some differences are found within the parable itself and the interpretation given to the disciples. One of the issues is the question about the nature of the ch...

2156. Better to Have Weeds than Nothing at All

Illustration

James Somerville

I asked the people at my last church to imagine what would happen if we adopted a policy of weed-pulling, if we drew a circle around the little town of Wingate, North Carolina, and made a vow that no evil would cross that line, that no weeds would grow within that border. I said, "You know, you and I could spend the rest of our lives protecting that boundary, standing shoulder to shoulder with pit...

2157. A Word of Caution to Champion Weed Pullers

Illustration

Richard Patt

I'll never forget the day I became a champion weed-puller. It was a little embarrassing. About thirty summers ago I was a young boy of eight or nine, living with my family on a farm in rural Wisconsin, not far from Milwaukee. My older brothers used to spend a good deal of June and July helping the neighboring truck farmers weed their gardens. I don't know how they do it today, but then it was a ma...

2158. He Saved My Life, I Took His Name

Illustration

James W. Moore

Dr. William B. McClain is the Professor of Preaching and Worship at Wesley Theological Seminary. Dr. McClain once told about meeting a South Korean tailor in Seoul, Korea. Amazingly, this South Korean tailor introduced himself as "Smitty Lee." Dr. McClain was fascinated to discover a Korean named Smitty… and he asked whether the name Smitty was a Korean name. The Korean tailor said "no" and then h...

2159. Full of Hypocrites

Illustration

Zig Ziglar said that he invited a friend to go to church with him. The man answered, "Well, I'd like to go. But the church is so full of hypocrites." Ziglar replied, "That's okay. There's always room for one more."

2160. You Need 100 Points

Illustration

Bill Bouknight

There is a story about a minister who had a strange dream. He dreamt that he had died and was trying to get into heaven. When he approached the pearly gates, St. Peter told him he needed 100 points to get in. Proudly the minister said, "Well, I was a pastor for 43 years.""Fine," said St. Peter, "That's worth one point." "One point? Is that all?" cried the minister. "Yes, that's it," said St. Peter...

2161. Which Weed to Pull Out?

Illustration

Johnny Dean

She was the church organist, the mother of two beautiful children. Her father called me and gave me the news. "We've had to have her committed to the mental ward at Baptist Hospital. She was okay as long as she was taking her medicine. But she didn't think she needed it anymore, so she stopped taking it last week. Please go up and see her. We told them it was okay to let you in." I was just a semi...

2162. Gentle Jesus’ Terrible Words

Illustration

Bill Bouknight

That great preacher at City Temple in London, Leslie Weatherhead, made this profound observation: "Jesus Christ, the person with the gentlest lips in history, said the most terrible words about sin ever spoken. It was gentle Jesus who referred to people as 'lost.' He described hell as the everlasting fire, the shut door, and the outer darkness where there are endless tears and gnashing of teeth." ...

2163. The Complex Human

Sermon

Lori Wagner

If you look at a strand of DNA, you will notice what scientists call a “double helix,” two strands winding around each other with connectors in between that contain the make-up of each biological person. If Jesus were a biologist today, I imagine that’s how he might describe the human spirit. For his example of the human spirit as explained by Matthew in chapter 13 is a complex entanglement of ro...

2164. Dealing with T-A-R-E-ists

Sermon

R. Kevin Mohr

This is a hard text for me because I am a typical first child in many respects. You other first children may recognize yourselves in some of what I’m about to say. As a first child I want everything to be black and white, and so, when things go wrong, I become a problem solver who wants to make it all right again. But that doesn’t always work out, as I discovered the year I was eight. Just before ...

2165. No Judgment

Illustration

Stephen Brown

It was F.B. Meyer, I believe, who once said that when we see a brother or sister in sin, there are two things we do not know: First, we do not know how hard he or she tried not to sin. And second, we do not know the power of the forces that assailed him or her. We also do not know what we would have done in the same circumstances.

2166. Trash Into Treasure

Illustration

James Merritt

We have all heard of the Italian violin maker, Stradivarius. His violins are now the most prized violins ever made because of the rich and resonating sound they produce. The unique sound of a Stradivarius violin cannot be duplicated. Now what may surprise you is these precious instruments were not made from treasured pieces of wood; they were carved from discarded lumber. Stradivarius was very poo...

2167. From Outward to Inward Sins

Illustration

Dennis Kastens

The English author, C. S. Lewis, in one of his books, points out that when people become Christians, if they are not careful, their sinning often shifts from the overt, outward, visible sins of lying, cheating, stealing, cursing and swearing, to the more inward, hidden, non-apparent invisible ones ... and among them he lists "a critical spirit" ... a spirit of judgmentalism, a censorious attitude....

2168. Yearning for Security

Illustration

Rudolf Bultmann

Man forgets in his selfishness and presumption ... that it is an illusion to suppose that real security can be gained by men organizing their own personal and community life. There are encounters and destinies which man cannot master. He cannot secure endurance for his works. His life is fleeting and its end is death. History goes on and pulls down all the towers of Babel again and again. There is...

2169. No One Knows What They Will Be Tomorrow

Illustration

Charles Hoffacker

Sometimes we are wheat and sometimes we are weeds. St. Augustine, in commenting on this parable, makes this point when he says: "There is this difference between people and real grain and real weeds, for what was grain in the field is grain and what were weeds are weeds. But in the Lord's field, which is the church, at times what was grain turns into weeds and at times what were weeds turn into gr...

2170. The Children of Light Get Flustered

Illustration

Robert Farrar Capon

In the story that Jesus tells, the enemy sows his evil seed and then goes away. He seems confident that the damage he intends will be done. Robert Farrar Capon says that the enemy doesn't have any real power over goodness anyway: The wheat is in the field, the Kingdom is in the world, and there is not one thing he can do about it. But, Capon adds, "he can sucker the forces of goodness into taking ...

2171. Waiting until Harvest Time

Illustration

Thomas Lane Butts

When Dr. Harold Bosley was pastor of Christ Church in New York City, he preached a sermon entitled, "Shall We Be Patient with Evil?" He pointed out how during the Civil War everything was crystal clear on both sides, if you could judge by what was being said. He then told of an experience he had while visiting a museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where there is a huge painting of Pickett's charge ...

2172. Niebuhr vs. Niebuhr on War

Illustration

D. Mark Davis

Back in 1933, when Japan invaded Manchuria and many persons were rattling their sabers in a call for war, H. Richard Niebuhr wrote an article in The Christian Century entitled "On the Grace of Doing Nothing." Richard Niebuhr was not a pacifist. He did support the US involvement in World War II when it finally came. And, he received a furious rebuttal by his brother, Reinhold Niebuhr in the next ed...

2173. Faith over Time

Illustration

Eugene Winkler

A biographer of the Duke of Windsor, Alistair Cooke, remarks, "The Duke was at his best when the going was good." Aren't we all? Is that true of your faith? We believe in God when things are going well, but give us a few problems, a disappointment or two, and we begin to doubt. But the parable is saying to us: God is in charge of the harvest, hang in there, because things will work out in God's w...

2174. The Weeds within Us

Illustration

Hubert Beck

C. S. Lewis notes that he once had considerable difficulty in the saying that one should "hate the sin but love the sinner." It didn't seem to make sense to him until one day it occurred to him that it was within himself that the saying showed its most certain truth. Did he not "love himself" while at the same time he "hated the sin" that so dominated his life? Is this not a reflection of the word...

2175. The Ideal Congregation

Illustration

Edward F. Markquart

When I was a young man, during my seminary days of training to become a pastor, my ideal congregation was The Church of Our Savior’s in Washington, DC. Among my peers and friends, that congregation was the ideal, the inspiration, the model to which we aspired. It was a small congregation of 200 people who renewed their spiritual vows each year. Their vows were to tithe, to attend Bible study every...

Showing 2151 to 2175 of 4508 results

2151. How Do You Get Rid of Evil without Destroying Good?

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

2152. The Sin of Judging

Sermon

Dennis Kastens

2153. Proper 12

Bulletin Aid

B. David Hostetter

2154. Proper 11, Pentecost 9, Ordinary Time 16

Bulletin Aid

Amy C. Schifrin

2155. Thistles Among The Wheat

Sermon Aid

William E. Keeney

2156. Better to Have Weeds than Nothing at All

Illustration

James Somerville

2157. A Word of Caution to Champion Weed Pullers

Illustration

Richard Patt

2158. He Saved My Life, I Took His Name

Illustration

James W. Moore

2159. Full of Hypocrites

Illustration

2160. You Need 100 Points

Illustration

Bill Bouknight

2161. Which Weed to Pull Out?

Illustration

Johnny Dean

2162. Gentle Jesus’ Terrible Words

Illustration

Bill Bouknight

2163. The Complex Human

Sermon

Lori Wagner

2164. Dealing with T-A-R-E-ists

Sermon

R. Kevin Mohr

2165. No Judgment

Illustration

Stephen Brown

2166. Trash Into Treasure

Illustration

James Merritt

2167. From Outward to Inward Sins

Illustration

Dennis Kastens

2168. Yearning for Security

Illustration

Rudolf Bultmann

2169. No One Knows What They Will Be Tomorrow

Illustration

Charles Hoffacker

2170. The Children of Light Get Flustered

Illustration

Robert Farrar Capon

2171. Waiting until Harvest Time

Illustration

Thomas Lane Butts

2172. Niebuhr vs. Niebuhr on War

Illustration

D. Mark Davis

2173. Faith over Time

Illustration

Eugene Winkler

2174. The Weeds within Us

Illustration

Hubert Beck

2175. The Ideal Congregation

Illustration

Edward F. Markquart

Showing 2151 to 2175 of 4508 results