Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 201 to 225 of 1044 results

201. The Agony and Ecstasy of Sight

John 9:1-12

Sermon

Richard Hoefler

The miracle story of Jesus healing the man born blind is placed against the background of a puzzle that has plagued humankind ever since the first person stubbed his toe on a stone and cried out in pain. It is the question of why there is suffering in the world. Despite the many attempted solutions and suggested answers, people are still not satisfied - only more confused. The stubbed toe still hurts. Is the stone we stumble over placed there by chance or circumstance? Are we somehow engaged in a dangerous ...

202. Resurrection: From Lesser to Higher Morality

Matthew 5:17-20

Sermon

Leonard H. Budd

Sarah was five years old. She had lived all her life in a little village in Galilee, six miles from the shore of the great Sea. She had never been farther away than the olive tree grove, a long stone’s throw from the last house of the small community. But then, Sarah was only five. She lived with her grandfather who was unofficial rabbi for the twenty families of the village. Her grandfather, by his knowledge of the scripture, was the source for understanding the Hebrew law. Sarah’s town was distant from ...

203. Coping When It Seems Impossible

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

No problem! No sweat! My life is under control. My family is under control. My business is under control. My Nation is under control. My world is under control. No sweat! How stupid can we get? Help! I need help! Our world is not coping well. We tremble on the brink of suicide. Self-trust dismisses God’s authority. In some cases entire nations fail the most fundamental test of helping their own citizens cope with materialism run amok. Perhaps the most complete expression of a totally materialistic ...

204. The Voice

1 Samuel 3:1--4:1

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Someone has suggested that the title for a sermon about this incident in the life of Samuel should be "The Danger of Sleeping in Church." As you Bible scholars know there is another story in the New Testament which could be titled the same way.(1) Young Eutychus of Troas was at worship one Sunday evening, seated on the window sill. The apostle Paul was the visiting preacher, and he DID preach...and preach and preach and preach. He preached till midnight. Eutychus dozed...and crashed. He fell out the window ...

205. Winning When It Really Counts

Philippians 3:12-4:1

Sermon

King Duncan

Some people will do anything to win. The early days of baseball provide many notable examples. Before stadiums had permanent seats in the outfield, for example, teams were permitted to erect temporary bleachers or simply put up a rope if a large crowd was expected, and any ball hit into that area was ruled a ground-rule double. When Ty Cobb was managing the Tigers and a power-hitting team was visiting, he would have the grounds crew set up temporary bleachers, turning balls that might otherwise have been ...

206. Time To Do Something About The Piano

John 3:1-21

Sermon

King Duncan

Once there was a small jazz club in New Orleans. In a corner of that club sat an old dilapidated piano. All of the jazz artists complained about this antiquated instrument. The piano players dreaded playing on it. The vocalists dreaded singing with it. And all of the combos that played the club wished that they could bring in their own piano ” just like they could a saxophone or a trumpet. Finally, after years of listening to these jazz musicians complain about his piano, the owner of the club decided to ...

207. Walking Into The Heart Of God

1 John 2:28--3:10

Sermon

King Duncan

A Sunday School teacher once asked her students to talk about how they felt about their church. The students responded in the usual ways: some said something silly to get the rest of the class to laugh, while others tried to be more serious. One of the girls was new to the class, and she felt uncomfortable about entering into class discussions, so she never raised her hand, or volunteered an answer. That Sunday, however, she did have an answer for her Sunday School teacher, and it was unforgettable. She ...

208. Angels Announce His Coming

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

King Duncan

Conrad Hyers in his book, And God Created Laughter, tells a wonderful story about Abraham Lincoln. It seems that an eight-year-old girl once wrote to Lincoln suggesting that he grow a beard. In her opinion, Lincoln would stand a better chance of election if he would grow a beard to hide his homely face. Rather than being offended, Lincoln answered her letter personally and thanked her for her suggestion. He further added that should his campaign be coming in her vicinity, he would like to meet her to ...

209. A Great And Wonderful New Year

Ephesians 1:1-14

Sermon

King Duncan

At the beginning of a New Year, a high school principal decided to post his teachers' New Year's resolutions on the bulletin board. As the teachers gathered around the bulletin board, a great commotion started. One of the teachers was complaining. "Why weren't my resolutions posted?" She was throwing such a temper tantrum that the principal hurried to his office to see if he had overlooked her resolutions. Sure enough, he had mislaid them on his desk. As he read her resolutions he was astounded. This ...

210. Do You Have A Forgiving Spirit?

Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

Eric Ritz

I want to ask you a very important and penetrating question this morning to set the stage for our sermon today. Please answer it in the quietness of your own heart but with utter honesty. Do you have a forgiving spirit? Do you have a forgiving spirit? You could probably answer this question with both a yes and no. When it comes to the difficult subject of forgiveness, there are always limitations, conditions, circumstances, and varying qualifications to the answer we give. However, as we gather this ...

211. The Three R's Of A Spiritual Life

Romans 8:1-17

Sermon

King Duncan

A heart patient visited his cardiologist for his two-week follow-up appointment. He informed the doctor that he was having trouble with one of his medications. "Which one?" asked the doctor? "The patch," the man replied, "the nurse told me to put on a new one every six hours, and I've run out of places to put it!" The doctor was flabbergasted. He had the patient quickly undress. The man had over fifty patches on his body! He didn't understand that each time he put on a new patch, he needed to remove the ...

212. God's Design and Our Destiny

Isaiah 63:7--64:12

Sermon

King Duncan

In 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt prepared to receive a diplomatic visit from King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain. Every detail of their visit had to be planned meticulously. Only the finest accommodations, food, and entertainment would be appropriate for the royal couple. But on the second night of the King’s visit, Eleanor Roosevelt decided to break with protocol. She invited the King and Queen to come to the Roosevelt’s private cabin for an ...

213. Rebellion in the Vineyard

Matthew 21:33-46

Sermon

King Duncan

A friend of journalist David Halberstam was planning a visit to Japan. It would be his first visit, and he was a little anxious because he couldn’t speak Japanese. How would he communicate with the people he came in contact with? Since most taxi drivers do not speak English, someone suggested that it might be a good idea to carry with him something bearing the name of the hotel at which he would be staying written in Japanese. That was exactly what he did. As soon as he arrived in Japan he picked up a box ...

214. What Would Bill Do?

1 Thessalonians 2:1-16

Sermon

King Duncan

I want to tell you a simple, but moving story about a man named Bill. When Bill was born in the 1930s he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. The doctor predicted that he would be mentally retarded and urged Bill’s parents to have him institutionalized. Fortunately, they ignored the doctor’s advice. At first, Bill attended a school for children with disabilities. Later he gained entrance to a mainstream high school. This was an unusual accomplishment for a physically challenged person of that era. Then, with ...

215. How Do You Explain the Resurrection?

John 11:17-37

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

I find it fascinating that nowhere in the New Testament do the disciples try to explain the resurrection. They did not need to. The resurrection explained them! The entire New Testament itself plus all of the subsequent history of the Church over the past two thousand years is but a commentary on Jesus’ words, “I am the resurrection and the life!” (John 11:25) Let’s take a look at how these words first came to be spoken. In John 11 we have the touching story of the miraculous raising of Jesus’ friend ...

216. Opposite the Treasury

Mark 12:41-44

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

In the first parish I served there lived an elderly widow. She lived alone, except for about a hundred parakeets. She supplemented her meager income from her late husband’s Social Security by raising and selling those popular birds. Her health was none too good, and during the cold winter months she was rarely able to make it out to church on Sunday mornings, so I tried to visit her as often as possible. I recall making one visit on a cold wintry day. We talked about many things, read the Bible together, ...

217. No Angels, No Shepherds, No Star

John 1:1-18

Sermon

King Duncan

It was a Christmas pageant presented by a class of four-year-olds and it was an evening to remember. It began with the three virgin Marys marching out onto the stage. As they stood there, they, of course, were waving to their parents. It’s not every Christmas pageant that has three virgin Marys, but over the years the school had acquired three Mary costumes, and so, quite naturally the script was revised. This gave a chance for more children to be involved and kept down the squabbling over who got the ...

218. Hanging On To Every Word

Luke 19:45-48

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

When Billy Graham was a young preacher, he was leading a series of services in a small-town Baptist church. Because his wife, Ruth, had not accompanied him on this particular trip, he wrote her a letter. It was a small town so he knew that he could find the post office. So he started down the street, but the post office wasn't in sight. Finally, he asked an 8 or 10-year old boy, "Pardon me, son, but can you show me the way to the post office?" "Sure," the boy answered. "It's just down this street and ...

219. A Long Obedience In The Same Direction

Luke 22:39-46

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

A few weeks ago, I mentioned a preacher- writer I have recently discovered. His name is Eugene H. Peterson, and he has served Christ the King United Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland for 27 years. He has a book on the Psalms of Ascents -- Psalms 120 - 134 which he titled, A LONG OBEDIENCE IN THE SAME DIRECTION. He got that phrase from Friedrich Nietzsche. This was Nietzsche's word: "The essential thing in heaven and earth is...that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; thereby, ...

220. I've Been To The Mountain

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

When I first came to Memphis, I visited downtown -- Mid-America Mall. I wanted to see the sculpture commemorating Martin Luther King -- the sculpture entitled "I've been to the Mountain." I must confess that I've never felt too good about that piece of art. It doesn't excite me. Maybe that's my dullness. Maybe my imaginative and visual senses are not cultivated enough. But Martin Luther King's speech is unforgettable. As was the rule for King, he took images from Scripture. "I've been to the Mountain", he ...

221. O Come, O Come Emmanuel

Isaiah 1:1-31

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Back in the early 1980's, there was a best- selling book entitled Blue Highways. The novel chronicles one man's adventures along the back roads and secondary highways of America. His journeys took him into crossroad villages and almost forgotten towns where he met all kinds of interesting people, including a few hitchhikers whom he befriended. Among the hitchhikers was a Bible-toting self styled evangelist, who passed out religious tracts and confronted everyone he met with questions about their salvation ...

222. Epiphany: The Tragedy of Rejection

Luke 4:14-30

Sermon

J. Ellsworth Kalas

In the church, most of us think of Epiphany simply as a season on the church calendar, and sometimes as a season we don't understand too well. We may recall that we are celebrating particularly the revealing of Christ to the Gentile world, via the Wise Men, but not much more. The dictionary, however, adds further dimension to the word, listen: "a sudden, intuitive perception ... into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or ...

223. Partners In the Gospel

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Connections are important. Nobody understands the word connection as do United Methodists. When we talk about the larger church we refer to it as “the connection.” Connections are important. I remember visiting with a young man in Nashville 25 years ago -- I was the editor of the Upper Room and this young man was a student at Vanderbilt University. His parents were friends of mine but I had known him only in passing. This was one of those encounters that we have now and then that we sense are charged with ...

224. The Work of An Evangelist

2 Timothy 3:10--4:8

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

I was driving down Poplar Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in Memphis, when I noticed a bumper sticker on the car in front of me. In large letters, it said, “I AM A GENERIC CHRISTIAN.” Well, that got my attention. I never thought about anyone being a generic Christian. I saw that something else was written on the bumper sticker and I wanted to know what it was. I’m afraid I got dangerously close to the rear end of the fellow, so that I would be close enough to read what was there. It said, “Ask me ...

225. I Thought You'd Never Ask

John 1:35-46

Sermon

Mark Trotter

We all know about famous last words. They are collected because they are supposed to be important. We expect something deep and profound from someone as their last words, the distillation of the wisdom of a lifetime. We also know about the last words of Jesus. Every gospel writer records his own version of the last words of Jesus. They are all different, his words from the cross. And every Good Friday, some place around the world, some church is commemorating the cross by meditating on the seven last words ...

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