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 2176 to 2200 of 3314 results

2176. A High FLOSS Church

Romans 14:1--15:13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... . But I want us to even FLOSS more regularly. I want this church to be known as high FLOSSers. And if ever there were a time for FLOSS projects, it's now. The word "new" needs to be put back into the city called New Orleans. This is how the Apostle Paul defined a high FLOSS church in 1 Timothy 6:18-19: "To do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share, this is the way to make sure of the only life that is real." Is there a better definition of the church ...

2177. Move Life from Duty to Destiny

Luke 21:5-38

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... distance binoculars are now urged to focus on a much more immediate, and personally significant, future. It is here in Luke’s gospel that Jesus spells out the whole plot developed further in the writer’s second volume of writings, The Acts of the Apostles. For Luke, Jesus’ prophetic identity is not proved by any elaborate outline of the future, but by his warnings of what his disciples will face as they follow him. First, “they will lay hands on you and persecute you” (v.12), language that recalls ...

2178. Thanks for Nothing!

Luke 21:5-38

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... it the gift of eternal life. As we join together with friends and family this week, whether it be at a huge table groaning with food, or a single Spartan serving, disciples need to open themselves to Christ and give thanks for...nothing. How did the Apostle Paul put it when he wrote from prison to the church at Philippi? You want the peace that passes all understanding? Then this is how you get it. Master these nine words: Anxious in nothing. Repeat after me: Anxious in nothing. Prayerful in everything. Say ...

2179. Don't Be a Turkey (Thanksgiving)

Luke 17:11-19

Sermon

Alex Gondola

... . He found his lack of sight forced him to become a better listener, to be more patient with others, to be more willing to receive the help and care of others, to be more sensitive to other people’s suffering. It also helped Matheson identify with the Apostle Paul, who had his own "thorn in the flesh." Most importantly, it helped Matheson better to appreciate the sufferings and sacrifices of Jesus, who not only had a thorn, but who wore a crown of thorns. A first step in the tenth leper’s journey to ...

2180. Hands On

Luke 7:36-50

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of the exhibit became. If there was no interaction--then the exhibit and the area around it remained dark. Two Possible Endings: 1) "Gerald Coates, leader of the Pioneer movement in England, compared the fivefold ministry to the five fingers of the hand. The apostle is the thumb. He gives stability, holds the counterbalance, and can literally touch all the other fingers. The prophet is the index finger. He points at you and says: 'you are the man!' The evangelist is the middle finger, the longest of all and ...

2181. Others

Romans 9:30--10:21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... that we had no intention of shopping for. Getting us off the familiar beaten track, the one-way straight-line, opens our eyes to new possibilities and forcibly expands our tunnel vision. Today's text from Paul's epistle to the Romans demonstrates how the apostle engaged in the same sort of tactics to get his listeners to think outside the lines. Steeped in the tradition of the law, observant Jews could only see the law path to righteousness. Paul takes issue with those who would take the living, breathing ...

2182. Your Cheatin' Heart

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... heart of his kingdom-of-God-faith. The Sermon on the Plain, as it is known in Luke, reveals to Jesus' listeners the "spiritual heart" of the faith he came to embody. Jesus pointedly proclaims this message in front of his newly chosen twelve apostles, those who will physically constitute the heart of the first generation of the church. It is crucial that those who will pump the blood supply of this new faith community properly represent and proclaim the genuine heart of Jesus' mission and message. From the ...

2183. You've Won the Heavenly Sweepstakes!

John 14:15-31

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... ' presence, to divine perfection and providence, to God's pre-eminent place in their lives. We can read about the immediate effect this Spirit-possession had on the disciples. Overnight this confused, inarticulate group became on fire: governing apostles, fearless prophets, relentless evangelists, discerning teachers, compassionate pastors--proud eye-witnesses of all Christ's words and deeds. Only when they gave up trying to "process" Jesus life and death and instead became "possessed" by Christ's Spirit ...

2184. By Heart

2 Timothy 3:10--4:8, Deuteronomy 30:11-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... is what they will memorize. You don't think these kids are memorizing words today? Ever listen to them lip-sync the words to the music they're listening to? Or here's another little exercise you can do. Ask someone to recite the Lord's Prayer or Apostle's Creed. Now ask them to recite the ingredients of a Big Mac. Can you say it together, church? Two all-beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun. Even people who've never eaten a Big Mac can rattle off the ingredients ...

2185. The Ultimate Identity Thief

Galatians 3:15-25

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... only recognizes names not distinct individuals. The technology can only highlight pre-programmed information. It cannot intuit interior motivations. It cannot realize true individual identities. What is it that makes us who we are? What is it that makes you who you are? The apostle Paul calls all our self-defined identities into question in today's epistle text. He argues for the primacy of Christ's death on the cross and a complete faith in Christ as the linchpin of our identity. Paul relegates the Law and ...

2186. The Four Marks of Failure

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... all eternity, there are no winners' and losers. There are only the children of God. The church is made up of these children of the Kingdom. The church isn't made up of employees of a corporation. Living at the height of the Roman Empire, the apostle Paul had plenty of political, hierarchical, and civic organizational models from which to describe the character and function of the church. But Paul chose to use the analogy of a body an organic unity in which all facets and functions look out for the care and ...

2187. Mystery

Ephesians 3:1-13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... was about as good as a five year old is at keeping a secret. Tell a child a secret, and what's the first thing they do? They rush to the nearest relative and tell everything about the big secret they hold. The first thing the apostle Paul does is preach throughout the Gentile world the secret of God's mysterious plan for redemption. This big mystery, God's eternally established secret plan for reconciling Jew and Gentile, for redeeming all of heaven and earth, is the person of Christ Jesus our Lord (verse ...

2188. Death by Chocolate

Hebrews 9:11-28

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... made eternal redemption, complete forgiveness, and utter purification available through the power of God's grace. Jesus transformed human death from an ending into a beginning, from failure and defeat into a triumphant new life, an eternal existence in Christ. As the Apostle Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians, "These troubles and sufferings of ours are, after all, quite small and won't last very long. Yet this short time of distress will result in God's richest blessing upon us forever ...

2189. Blue Highway Blessings

Ephesians 1:1-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... mansion, just over the hilltop doesn't mean that this life we live on the way is to be endured as some bleak and blighted landscape as we wait for the pie-in-the-sky-in-the-sweet-bye-and-bye. It's on the way that the Apostle Paul celebrates and praises our adoption, our redemption, our forgiveness, our experience of divine grace. These are pretty impressive landmarks. And while it's true that we must wait until we reach the fullness of time to receive our full and final inheritance, while we await that day ...

2190. Inside-out Living

Mark 7:1-23

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... this blight in our being that rots us from the inside out. So even if we look great on the outside, and even if we tithe our lottery earnings and put lots of people to work, our hidden hungers and deep desires within are our true selves. Paul the Apostle said "the good that I would I do not, and the evil that I would not I do." We all stand as lepers, ritually unclean, standing in the need of grace and prayer. Do you remember your first trip to Disney World? Do you remember your biggest disappointment? The ...

2191. Warts and All

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , admitting and living with this thorn in the flesh, this blemish on his reputation, this blister on his soul. Paul was a decisive, take-charge kind of person. As his forthright, pull-no-punches letters to the repeatedly problematic Corinthian church reveal, this apostle never sidestepped hard issues or shrank from in-your-face confrontations. It might have been a perfect personality match for Paul to be a front-line soldier for Christ, but the thorn that hindered and hurt taught him that he was also a ...

2192. Atlas or Jesus?

1 John 1:1-4

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... hold this world. It takes only one cupped hand. In this image the child, of course, is Jesus--and it's the power of the divine, not the brute strength of human muscle, that keeps the world safely aloft, steady, and protected. Whether the apostle John himself or a witness to his testimony, the author of 1, 2, and 3 John wrote to some struggling, splintered house churches for whom he felt pastorally responsible. He also saw two essentially disparate images of Christianity being presented to the communities he ...

2193. By God’s Spirit

Zechariah 4:1-14

Sermon

James McCormick

... of our life together, or we are impostors – we are not who we say we are – the people of God! After all, the Bible begins with it: “In the beginning, God…” The first commandment demands it: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The Apostles preached it: “In God we live and move and have our being.” Jesus lived it, spending time every day with God in prayer, always pointing past Himself to the Father, and always insisting that He could do the remarkable things He did because the Father ...

2194. Make Room for Mystery

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sermon

James McCormick

... t know about you, but I don’t want to make the Incarnation sound like the simplest and most natural thing in the world. I don’t want to reduce the Christian gospel to something so innocuous that no leap of faith is required to believe it. The Apostle Paul insisted that the gospel is a scandal, a folly, a stumbling block to the “worldly wise”. No matter how you slice it, there is a mystery to the gospel which does not rest easily on our minds! Mystery! Listen now, because I’m about to say something ...

2195. Vanilla, Chocolate, and Strawberry

1 Corinthians 9:1-27

Sermon

James McCormick

... And, you know, I never found out what flavor was his personal preference. I’m a strawberry man myself. But I do think that those who prefer other flavors should have access to them, as long as I get some strawberry too. Interestingly enough, the Apostle Paul had the same problem in the first century. Paul was passionate about the unity of the Christian community, our oneness in Christ. In one of his magnificent statements, he said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there ...

2196. Sing the Resurrection Song

Mark 16:1-20

Sermon

James McCormick

... , death, and resurrection, there comes to us such a joy, such an excitement, such enthusiasm that we just have to go and tell. And, if you can keep from telling that story, then that is evidence that you have no story to tell! I think about the Apostle Paul who met the risen and living Christ on the road to Damascus. It turned his life around and he proceeded to turn the world upside down. And, from that day on, even though he was rejected, beaten, ship-wrecked, imprisoned, and finally killed, his life was ...

2197. Nothing but Christ, and Him Crucified

1 Corinthians 1:18--2:5

Sermon

James McCormick

... memories of the day I was sitting in his class, waiting for him to arrive. He shuffled in the door, walked to the front, ran a hand across his bald head, and said, “O, I just know so much, I don’t know what to tell you!” The Apostle Paul could have said that. He, too, was brilliant. He grew up in the cosmopolitan city of Tarsus, rubbing shoulders with all kinds of people, representing cultures from around the world. He was a Roman citizen. He spoke Hebrew and Greek. He was a Jewish Pharisee, and he ...

2198. Thanksgiving Is a Choice

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

Sermon

James McCormick

... and expectantly await further expressions of God’s love. No, you cannot explain either the presence or the absence of gratitude by looking only at circumstances. Gratitude has far more to do with the inside than with the outside. Take the Apostle Paul, for example. His was not an easy life. He had been criticized, betrayed, attacked, beaten, stoned, imprisoned, shipwrecked. His “thorn in the flesh” tormented him. And his enemies were such that he lived continuously under the threat of death. If ...

2199. Lifelong Disciples

Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon

James McCormick

... , who will be our teacher? Of course, the answer is: Jesus. That’s what it means to be a “disciple.” In the first century, Jesus called 12 people to be disciples – that is, they were to follow him and to learn from him. Later, they were called “apostles” because they were sent out to be in mission. But, in the beginning, they were disciples, followers, learners. And that is what we are called to be as well – people who learn about life from Jesus. And, there are two parts to that as well. The ...

2200. You Shall Name Him Jesus

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

King Duncan

... to God. Names are important. In the New Testament we discover Jesus changing Simon’s name to Peter (Rock) because he was the rock upon which Jesus would found his church. And still later Saul, the persecutor of the early Christians, becomes Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. These are but a sampling, but a person’s name is very important in the biblical narrative. Especially important is God’s name. Remember Moses’ encounter with God in Exodus 3 when Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the ...

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