Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 2301 to 2325 of 2844 results

2301. Anywhere Goes

Romans 14:1-12

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

The culture says "Anything goes." The Body of Christ goes anywhere, to anything, to anyone, at anytime. There is an old story of a visiting admiral chatting on the deck of a U.S. Navy ship with some enlisted men. "What would you do if another sailor fell overboard?" A sailor promptly replied: "I would raise the alarm and toss him a life preserver, sir." The admiral asked a second question: "What would you do if it were an officer?" At this, the enlisted man paused and thought before answering: "Which one, ...

2302. God Is Faithful

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

God is most attentive when God seems most absent. Canadian geese are the bane of every golf course manager's existence. The vast expanse of rolling green grass, clipped to just the right height for goose grazing, marvelously accessible water hazards and fine "roughs" for nesting combine to invite sometimes thousands of the winged squatters onto previously pristine golf courses all over the country. The problem, of course, is that everywhere the geese go, well, the geese go. Ever notice how much golfing ...

2303. Fighting Fire With Fire

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

To put out fires in our lives and to quench the fires ravaging our world, we need the fire of the Holy Spirit burning in us, a fire which sears as it heals. In the summer of 1994, there occurred the most devastating tragedy in the history of "smoke jumping."Smokejumpers are elite squads of firefighters, parachuting "hotshots," who take great pride in being on the front lines of out-of-control wildfires. Smokejumpers constitute the first and most dangerous stage of defense for wilderness fires. On a windy ...

2304. A-wake or A-live

Galatians 2:15-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

We are called, less to follow in the wake of Christ than to make new waves for Christ, or more precisely, to allow Christ to make new waves through us. Toward the end of the 19th century, Charles Sheldon, pastor of an average church in an average community in Topeka, Kansas, decided he needed to do something to perk up his Sunday evening services. Sheldon began preaching a kind of serial sermon, in which he told stories about average men and women and the kinds of situations and challenges they might find ...

2305. John 6:24-35

John 6:24-35

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

Immediately following John's rendition of the feeding the 5000, Jesus withdraws from both the crowd and his disciples for a time of peace and prayer. Considering his next encounter with the crowds following him, as related in this week's gospel text, it is a good thing he did! Seldom has a more ungrateful, obstreperous, and pathetically ignorant lot been more clearly portrayed than by John in this chapter. On the day after the miracle of the loaves, the throng wakes to find Jesus and his disciples had ...

2306. Mark 10:46-52

Mark 10:46-52

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

Mark's Gospel tells the story of Jesus' final healing miracle - restoration of sight to the blind Bartimaeus. Chapters 8-10 are organized around the theme of discipleship. Jesus is portrayed as a teacher, taking his followers through a classroom set in real life. Each encounter, each drama, is presented as a lesson on the true nature and meaning of discipleship. Jesus' dialogues, miracles and pronouncements all help to set up the guideposts and guardrails along the challenging road his followers must ...

2307. Luke 4:1-13

Luke 4:1-13

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

All three of the synoptic gospels agree that Jesus experienced a period of temptation; all three give us similar versions of the incident. In addition, Hebrews 4:15 also testifies to Jesus' temptation episode. The author of Hebrews used the temptation narrative to show that Jesus, like us, faced threats to his own fragile humanity. Luke, however, has a different agenda. Seeking to address both the Jewish and Christian worlds, Luke's explicit reference to Jesus' "40 days" of temptation would surely ring a ...

2308. Isaiah 43:16-21

Isaiah 43:16-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

For the desert tribes of Israel, the life-giving presence of Yahweh was intimately tied up in the image of the life-sustaining presence of water. Deliverance and water are found side by side throughout Scripture, beginning with creation's deluvian dunking from human wickedness in Genesis 6 to the New Testament's emphasis on baptism’s power to start life over again. Water cleanses, restores and refreshes, all at the Lord's command. Isaiah 43 is part of the writings of Deutero or Second Isaiah. The enemy of ...

2309. Matthew 10:40-42

Matthew 10:40-42

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

This week's gospel text closes out Matthew's chapter-long missionary discourse. In 10:1, Jesus gives the Twelve their marching orders, and the similarity between the mission of the Twelve and Jesus' own mission is striking. Both healing and preaching are key parts of their repertoire. But the news is not all good, for Jesus reveals to the faithful that they will face along the way hardship and persecution from many sources, even from their own families. The final verses of this mission-instruction chapter ...

2310. Luke 1:26-38

Luke 1:26-38

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

For most of us, it just wouldn't be Christmas without reading Luke's eloquent words foretelling Jesus' birth. Tampa's James A. Harnish says that the difference between Luke's account of the Christmas story and Matthew's account is the difference between a Norman Rockwell painting in Saturday Evening Post and a tax collector's report. "If Luke reads like the Saturday Evening Post," Harnish writes, "then Matthew reads like the Wall Street Journal." In Luke's account, all the facets of this expertly crafted ...

2311. Psalm 23

Psalm 23

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

Psalm 23 is arguably the most memorized, the most quoted, the most cherished piece of scripture in Western culture. Even the most biblically impaired have heard somewhere, sometime, "The Lord is my shepherd." Coupled with its familiarity is its continuing ability to offer deep comfort, solace and strength to a great diversity of people in all sorts of situations. But Psalm 23 does have a particular historical and linguistic heritage in addition to its cumulative spiritual lineage. Indeed, for such a ...

2312. Luke 10:38-42

Luke 10:38-42

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

In this pericope, Jesus' emphasis on active love is brought into question. Both the early and medieval churches latched on to the apparent dichotomy between Martha and Mary as biblical justification for the primacy of the contemplative over the active life of faith. Martha the busy, bustling hostess is gently reprimanded by Jesus for her criticism of Mary's attentive position at Jesus' feet. Mary, Jesus explains to Martha, has chosen "the better part" by resting from the work of the world in order to focus ...

2313. Luke 17:11-19

Luke 17:11-19

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

Today's gospel passage comes in the middle of Luke's "journeying" section. The text opens with an obviously Lukan addition that asserts Jesus is still "on the way to Jerusalem." But the path Jesus has chosen is slow and apparently circuitous. In order to be passing through "the region between Samaria and Galilee," Jesus would have been traveling along an east/west boundary, with Galilee to the north and Jerusalem far to the south. By noting Jesus' boundary position, Luke sets the scene for the mixed ethnic ...

2314. John 6:24-35

John 6:24-35

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

2315. Mark 10:46-52

Mark 10:46-52

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

2316. 1 Peter 3:18-22

1 Peter 3:18-22

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

The epistle text for this week has been examined, probed, dissected, allegorized and argued about by biblical scholars since the days of Augustine. Ironically, the main focus of this text is usually not the primary interest of scholarly inquiries. The epistle writer is making a case for Christians to endure suffering while remaining righteous. The writer naturally turns to Christ himself as the ultimate example of suffering for righteousness' sake. But as the writer continues to develop this theme, he ...

2317. Mark 8:31-38

Mark 8:31-38

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

In Mark's orderly account of Jesus' life, today's gospel text introduces a new dimension of the Jesus mission, revealing Jesus and his disciples to be moving along a new and dangerous path. From 1:16 until 8:26 Jesus had traversed Galilee, healing and teaching and preaching the Good News of the kingdom of God. Yet he had done so in relative anonymity. The secret of his messianic identity, clearly revealed at his baptism, was well-guarded only a few unclean spirits had recognized him and called him by name ...

2318. Mark 2:23-3:6

Mark 2:23-3:6

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

As the briefest, tersest version of the Good News, Mark's gospel tends to condense and compress events that the other gospel writers leisurely scatter throughout their books. In Mark, therefore, we end up with units of his gospel known as the journey motif, the miracles section or the confrontation unit. Today's text is taken from the midst of Mark's so-called confrontation section (Mark 2:1-3:6), including two distinct scenes. In both examples the common topic is Sabbath observance. In the first pericope ...

2319. Mark 8:27-38

Mark 8:27-38

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

As Mark's familiar journeying motif continues in today's gospel lesson, the disciples are about to be taken by Jesus to a place they would never have imagined. The disciples have just witnessed some of the most impressive demonstrations of Jesus' powers. Jesus had fed a crowd of 5,000 on five barley loaves and two fish (Mark 6:30-44). He had walked across water to join his disciples aboard ship (Mark 6:45-52). Further along on their journey, Jesus had healed a Gentile girl who was demon possessed and a man ...

2320. Hebrews 12:18-29

Hebrews 12:18-29

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

As he has throughout this epistle, the author of Hebrews emphasizes the profound difference that exists between the old covenant and the covenant of grace, the new "better way" made possible through Jesus Christ. The writer doesn't avoid the greatest glories of the old covenant in order to make his comparison. He goes right to the foot of Moses' smoking mountain itself. While Jews counted Sinai's Covenant of Law among the greatest of feats in their salvation history, this author focuses on the "fear and ...

2321. Luke 17:11-19

Luke 17:11-19

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

Today's recounting of a moment of miracle and faith is found only in Luke. Part travelogue, part healing story, part pronouncement, this text slips and slides out of any one pinpoint identity. One of the most helpful ways to read today's pericope is in answer to the disciples' plea in 17:5, "Increase our faith." Jesus' series of hard sayings about discipleship in 17:1-10 demonstrate the surprising rules of followership while simultaneously revealing that Jesus' closest disciples are not yet ready for all ...

2322. Matthew 11:2-11

Matthew 11:2-11

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

Matthew is closing out his treatment of the emergence of Jesus' preaching, teaching and healing ministry (4:12-11:1) and opening up a more dialectical section in which he focuses just as intently upon the response Jesus' works and words evoke as on the events themselves. The crowds and the disciples lap up Jesus' words and deeds. But the religious authorities are growing more restive and rigid, convinced that Jesus' ministry poses a threat to them and the status quo. The reading branches in two directions ...

2323. Matthew 9:35-10:8 (9-23)

Matthew 9:35-10:8 (9-23)

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

After Matthew records a flurry of miraculous healings and resuscitations (chapters 8 and 9), Jesus' mission to Israel, God's "lost sheep," would appear to be well underway. But at the conclusion of chapter 9 and the beginning of chapter 10, Matthew's Gospel finds Jesus, rather than celebrating any of these recent miracles, lamenting over what yet needs to be done. It is Jesus' overwhelming compassion for these "harassed and helpless" shepherdless sheep (9:30) that motivates this next step in his ministry. ...

2324. Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

Matthew takes obvious delight in retelling Jesus' numerous parables in great detail and with studied finesse. Yet, while Matthew records Jesus' "reasons" for speaking in parables - Jesus says their use fulfills prophecy and creates a specially informed group of disciples (3:10-16) - these tales take on new significance in the life of the Matthean community. The larger focus of the parables in Matthew 13 appears to be an examination of the relationship between Jewish Christians and Jews who have heard Jesus ...

2325. Mark 1:29-39

Mark 1:29-39

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

Mark uses the miracle genre to communicate the unique power and authority Jesus wields in his travels and teachings. This focus is evident in Mark from the very first miracle story onward. At the synagogue in Capernaum (1:21ff.), Jesus' teaching astounds all those present for unlike the simple scribal tradition of retelling, Jesus probes the Scriptures, challenges his listeners and speaks as one with unquestionable authority. The authority theme continues when the unclean spirit reveals itself to Jesus ...

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