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 2276 to 2300 of 2815 results

2276. Serving the Poor—Compassionately

Matthew 25: 31-40

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

... rich? More importantly I ask, “What is the difference between a celebrity and a saint"? On our way to Holy Communion, let me just share a few pointers that I hope you think about in the hours to come. I. SAINTS ARE THOSE WHO SEE. Every time I read Jesus' parable of the Last Judgment, I am struck by the adverb “when." ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or when did we see you thirsty, or when did we see you naked, or when did we see you sick?' Both those who see and those who fail to see the ...

2277. Monkey-hold or Cat-hold Salvation

Luke 15:1-7

Illustration

W. Robert McClelland

... . So, which is it? Monkey-hold salvation or Cat-hold salvation? Does God sound the alarm in Jesus leaving us to come running and hold on tightly, or does Christ take us by the nape of the neck and carry us to the throne of grace? At least in Jesus' parables it appears to be a Cat-hold salvation. Jesus pictures God as a shepherd who seeks out a lost lamb and carries it home on his shoulders. Or a homemaker who searches every corner of the house for a lost coin until she finds it and rejoices with her friends ...

2278. Living on the Easter Side of Life

Colossians 3:1-4

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

... life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory." Reinhold Niebuhr once said, “Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime. Therefore, we must be saved by hope." We are full of hope today. Twenty-five years ago, Trina Paulus wrote a touching parable of life called Hope for the Flowers. It's a story about Stripe, the caterpillar, who upon his birth immediately ate the leaf on which he was born. Soon Stripe climbed down the tree of his birth to explore new territory. That's when he ...

2279. Giving Our Gratitude

Philippians 4:10-20

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

... limited. I learned in high school that I was not going to be a professional basketball player. After years of beating a golf ball around golf courses, it became clear to me that I was never going to make any money playing golf—not even from my friends. As Jesus' parable suggests, some of us have five talents, some two, others only one. But all of us do have potential. What will I do with the potential I have? The advice of John Wesley was very wise: Make all you can, Save all you can, Give all you can, As ...

2280. The Good Samaritan - Sermon Starter

Luke 10:25-37

Illustration

Brett Blair

The parable of the Good Samaritan arises out of a discussion between Jesus and a Pharisee. Here is a religious lawyer and he is asking a question on the nature of the law. The stage is set by Luke with these words: "Behold a lawyer stood up to put him to the ...

2281. The Jericho Road

Luke 10:25-37

Illustration

Robert Beringer

... Jerusalem south to the village of Jericho. What is remarkable is that in just 15 miles, the elevation drops from 2,400 feet above sea level to 1,400 feet below sea level at the Dead Sea. (I will always remember those figures because when I once preached on this parable, I announced that the Dead Sea was 1,400 miles below sea level! Afterward, a parishioner said, "Pastor, I know you preachers go pretty deep for your sermons, but your message this morning takes the cake!")

2282. The Little Point

Luke 10:25-37

Illustration

Steven Burt

... can be different than it appears that which Social Darwinists call the "natural order of things" can be changed, that there can be peace in a world of war and violence--that realization of the possibility of the present Kingdom of God is what Jesus confronts his hearers with. His parable springs it on them, and it leaves some of them with their heads spinning.

2283. Colossians 1:1-14

Colossians 1:1-14

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... ” but the natural outgrowth of a rich and deepening relationship with God. The power of God’s spirit as it is made manifest in the lives of the faithful will be expressed to the community and to the world. As Jesus’ parable of the Sower and of the mustard seed demonstrated, the rightly “planted” gospel cannot help but thrive and grow beyond all expectation. Likewise this “walk” with God will be “strengthened” (v.11) by the presence and participation in God’s power (“dynamis ...

2284. The Highest Priority

Luke 10:38-42; Matthew 6:33

Illustration

Arthur E. Dean Windhorn

... with lots of buttons and when you were done, found out that the coat was uneven? What went wrong? I'll tell you what went wrong. When you don't get the first button in the right hole, all the rest are out of sequence too, right?! That's a parable about life. Jesus said it this way in the Sermon on the Mount: "Seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well." (Matthew 6:33) If the Lord is not the high priority in your life, then, like the overcoat, so many ...

2285. The Sheer Volume of Prayer

Luke 11:1-13

Illustration

Scott Hoezee

... of asking for something. It's curious that Jesus more than once illustrates prayer with images of exasperation. In Luke 11 we have a friend at midnight baying for bread from someone already tucked cozily into bed. A few chapters farther on in Luke we find the parable of the unjust judge who finally gives in to the persistent widow not for any noble reason but just to get her off his back. It has always struck me as odd that Jesus would use these somewhat negative images to talk about prayer. Surely we don ...

2286. Pigs Get Slaughtered

Lk 12:13-21

Illustration

King Duncan

... money." Then the punch line, "Pigs get slaughtered." "Bulls make money. Bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered." He is saying, "Beware of being greedy when you are investing in the stock market. You may overreach and lose everything." Jesus said somewhat the same thing. He told a parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' Then he said, ‘This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones ...

2287. Storing What We Do Not Need

Luke 12:13-21

Illustration

W. Robert McClelland

... he ate, drank and was merry, but that he was withholding the means for others to do the same. He had become a bottleneck in the flow of Shalom blessings to others. The story, so understood, is not a teaching condemning the foolishness of gathering wealth. It is rather a parable which condemns the refusal to share the wealth we do not need. It warns about the shortsightedness of failing to be a good custodian of the abundance that God entrusts to us.

2288. A Just and Simple Lifestyle

Lk 12:13-21

Illustration

King Duncan

... would be wise to heed. The resolution went like this: "We humbly commit ourselves to develop a just and simple lifestyle, and to support one another in it." A just and simple lifestyle . . . Most of us have too much stuff, and like the rich landowner in Jesus' parable, we have to build bigger houses and bigger garages just to hold our stuff. Some of us even have so much that we rent mini-warehouses to hold it all. Does it make us happy? No. We've simply become addicted to acquiring. Randy Alcorn in his book ...

2289. Exactly How Wide Is It?

Luke 13:22-30

Sermon

King Duncan

... marks. Before Jesus was finished with him, he would no longer be so assured that he had all the answers. The second reason he should have known better is that Jesus rarely answered questions directly. Rather, he used such occasions as an opportunity to relate a parable or to pose a question of his own. So, when this person asked Jesus, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” Jesus turned the question back on him. He said, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I ...

2290. Ruining the Christmas Spirit

Matthew 24:36-44

Sermon

Charles L. Aaron

... are called to obedience. We are called to resist the world's evil. Matthew is about more than judgment, of course. The fact that the floodwaters didn't come yesterday means that God gives us time. Just a little bit after this passage is the familiar parable of the bridesmaids. Everybody falls asleep because the bridegroom is taking his time. After the word of judgment comes the word of hope, the word of forbearance, the word of grace. God holds the rushing waters back. The thief takes the night off. We have ...

2291. Becoming Good Trees

Matthew 5:17-30

Sermon

Charles L. Aaron

... with punishment if we don't carry out his commands. If we aren't careful, we can end up in despair over this passage. Even with all of this talk of obedience and judgment, Matthew knows that we are saved by grace not works. In chapter 20 he recounts the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. Some of the workers toil away in the heat for hours. Others work half a day. Some barely break a sweat in a short hour of work. At the end of the day, they all receive the same wage from the owner of the ...

2292. With a Firm Foundation, Application Is Second Nature

Matthew 7:15-23, Matthew 7:24-29

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... act on them, is like a foolish man building a house on sand. People like that fall, their faith shatters when the hard times come, just like when rain falls, floods come, and winds blow, the house built on the sand will fall. The moral of the parable: No matter how spiritual you try to be, you need to be sure you have built the foundation of your faith on Christ. He is your firm foundation, the rock! Let's talk about foundations. Foundations are the chief means of supporting a building, supporting the loads ...

2293. Testing, Testing

Matthew 22:34-46

Sermon

Chris Ewing

... this testing encounter at a different time — during the last week of Jesus' life — and in a different context. For Matthew, this episode is part of a whole series of discussions about what it means to love God. We've already heard a whole string of parables about the kingdom of God and the last judgment; we've had Jesus answer a sticky question about how a faithful Jew can live under a pagan empire; and Jesus is about to go on from here to lambaste the current religious leadership for totally twisting ...

2294. Sleeping through the Alarm

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

Sermon

Schuyler Rhodes

... ? What walls have we built? Who have we kept out? What actions do we take, what rules do we enforce that make a mockery of what Jesus did for us on the cross? Does our church act and look like the kingdom of God that we hear about in the parables of Jesus? When we describe the reality that God calls us to build and give our lives to, does it sound like our church? If not, what do we need to do? All of these are hard questions, to be sure. But friends, our salvation waits in the answers. Let ...

2295. To Say Elohim

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

Sermon

Stan Purdum

... of the verses in the creation story we read. If you take it to mean that Elohim created the world in six actual days, fine. If you take the day reference to mean eons of time, fine. If you take this to be a faith-story, something like a parable, that wasn't intended to teach science at all, but to teach theology, that too is fine. For in each case, we are agreeing on the important point: "In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth." Notice two things about God from the creation story: First ...

2296. No Partiality

Acts 10:34-43

Sermon

John N. Brittain

... . "Christ" is the title, "Messiah" and that is who Peter proclaims. It is worth remembering that Peter had been with Jesus during his earthly ministry. He had seen him eat with sinners, interact with the Samaritan woman, and heal the lepers. He had heard the parables about the lost sheep and the lost son. And yet, it seems, he was too close to the human Jesus to have things really clear. It took some time for him to realize, "I truly understand that God shows no partiality...." Kathryn Henderson, a Houghton ...

2297. Fido’s Dilemma

Romans 6:1-11

Sermon

Steven E. Albertin

... promise of our baptism. We can let go of that old, dry, lifeless bone of sin and death and instead take hold of the offer of that new life that is ours in Christ. Jesus loved to tell stories about the end of Fido's dilemma. We call them parables. Perhaps you remember this one from Matthew 13. A man was walking down a road one day and just happens to come across a hidden treasure. He is so surprised and overwhelmed by this fortuitous discovery that it changes his life. He sells all that he has and goes ...

2298. Legacies of Power

Ephesians 1:15-23

Sermon

Mary S. Lautensleger

... because the majority may oppress them. Our agenda as servants of God is different from these political agendas. We are less concerned about who has power and more concerned about how power is used and for what purpose. Andrew Young relates a "parable of power" about an experience he had while visiting with Nelson Mandela in South Africa. As you may remember, Mandela was a strong opponent of apartheid, South Africa's official policy of racial segregation. In 1964, the white government threw Mandela into ...

2299. Lifestyles of the Rich and Faithful

2 Corinthians 9:6-15

Sermon

Mary S. Lautensleger

... this with our budget all the time." The apostle Paul is feeling a little squeezed, also, as he takes his financial concerns to the Corinthian congregation. The illustration of sowing seeds that Paul uses to explain himself sounds a little like one of Jesus' parables, doesn't it? However, Paul is talking about money when he says, "the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully" (2 Corinthians 9:6). This represents Paul's "Sermon on the Amount ...

2300. He Who Exalts Himself Will Be Humbled

Luke 14:1-24

Illustration

Mark Trotter

... that the man that she was talking to was addicted to some dangerous substance. He was disheveled. He was obviously a homeless street person. She was sitting at table with him, listening intently to what he had to say. Now I want you to have in mind Jesus' parable of the banquet and the seats at the table, and where you are supposed to be at that banquet. She is at table with this street person, giving him her full attention. So she didn't notice Coles come in the room. He stood beside the door, waited ...

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