Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: take action, take steps, take measures, take the initiative, move, make a move, react, do something, proceed, go ahead, behave, function, perform, operate, work, take effect, serve, be efficacious, play, play a part, take part, be an actor, be an actress, be one of the cast, appear, pretend, play-act, sham, fake, feign, put it on, bluff, pose, posture, masquerade, dissemble, dissimulate, deed, action, gesture, feat, exploit, performance, undertaking, maneuver, stunt, operation, venture, effort, enterprise, achievement, accomplishment, law, decree, statute, bill, Act of Parliament, edict, fiat, dictum, dictate, enactment, resolution, ruling, rule, judgement, canon, ordinance, proclamation, command, commandment, mandate, measure, stipulation, direction, requirement, division, section, subsection, portion, part, segment, component, bit, turn, routine, number, item, piece, sketch, skit, playlet, dance, song, pretense, false display, show, front, facade, charade, guise, affectation, appearance

Antonyms: do nothing

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1. Meeting Jesus At The Well

John 4:1-26

Sermon

John N. Brittain

... is the result of trying to bury things in our subconscious, trying to keep things secret even from ourselves; but we can't do it. We can wear masks and fool a lot of people for a long time. We can even fool ourselves for a while, but the charade cannot last forever. "Nothing is hidden," Jesus says in Luke 8, "that will not be made known." At its most basic level, this means that we cannot control what other people know about us to the extent that we may wish; and nothing is hidden from God. It makes ...

2. The Face Of God

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sermon

Steve Burt

... touches Jacob on his leg, on the thigh (maybe in the place he himself had placed his own hand on Isaac's thigh to receive the father's blessing), and in an instant Jacob is, for all practical purposes, disabled. He lies helpless, crippled. It appears that this was a charade, a cheat, a set-up. It seems that the stranger may have had the power to defeat Jacob at any time during the night, but he chose not to, at least not until morning. And then he did it with relative ease, as if he were some cross between ...

3. Taking The Risk Out Of Dy(e)ing

John 20:1-9

Sermon

Lee Griess

... they met with the soldiers and gave them a large sum of money, telling them, 'Say that his disciples came during the night and stole him away while you were asleep.' " But nothing could have been further from the truth. For while this whole charade was going on, the despair and disillusionment of the disciples were almost complete. Take Simon Peter for instance. His heart was filled with despair over his own shameful denial of Jesus, and his mind was clouded with disillusionment over the fate of Jesus. The ...

4. "The Bitterness Of Betrayal"

Mark 14:43-52, Psalm 55:1-23

Sermon

R. Sheldon MacKenzie

... you every day in the temple preaching, and you made no attempt to arrest me."Despite the protection of numbers, they had lacked the courage to arrest Jesus by daylight in the temple. Their bravery after dark with a paid guide was an empty cowardly charade. He was arrested by his own people. Just as he had been betrayed by his closest friends. The bitterness of betrayal was a significant part of his passion. In fact, some teachers have suggested that what took place in the orchard at night was more painful ...

5. The Illusion Of Neutrality

Deuteronomy 30:11-20

Sermon

Robert Beringer

... our modern world. 1. A Luxury For Which Someone Must Pay First, neutrality is a luxury for which somebody has to pay the price. Think for a moment of the thousands of Poles, French, Belgians and others who died from 1939-41 while we in America hid behind the charade of neutrality in the face of Hitler's Nazi War Machine that was bent on all out destruction. Those men and women in a real sense paid for our neutrality and lack of decisive action. A little more than 100 years ago the slaves in our country were ...

6. Beginning A Healing Ministry

Sermon

... methods of the traditional healing ministry of the Christian church. The most prevalent reservation about instituting public healing services is that they will be associated with the sensational work of faith healers, some of whom have made a charade of the healing ministry, sometimes on nationwide television. There are faith healers who discourage sick people from seeking medical assistance, which often results in personal tragedy. It is important to understand right from the beginning that the traditional ...

7. The Road To Emmaus

Luke 24:13-35

Sermon

Brett Blair

... will fall to the ground. Paul recognized this when he wrote to the Corinthians. Some were saying that the resurrection never happened. Paul made it clear. He said, if Christ has not been raised then your faith is in vain and the Gospel is nothing but a charade. Scenic Hills United Methodist Church [insert you church here] let me proclaim to you this day that Christ has indeed been raised form the dead! At the end of this story the two brothers do what is only natural. The get up, walk back to Jerusalem and ...

8. The Richest Hill On Earth

John 19:17-27

Sermon

Robert Allen

... he be the kind of person who would be late?" He smiled and replied, "No, I don’t believe the bishop would be late at all. If anything, I think he would be early." She thanked him, and he began to wonder how he was going to stop this little charade. He decided that he had better tell her that he was Bishop Russell. He looked at her and said, "This started off as a joke, but now I feel silly. I’m Bishop Russell." She looked surprised and asked, "You are? Well, I’ll tell you one thing, you don ...

9. Clean Light

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

Sermon

William F. Dunkle

... national gathering of a major Protestant denomination a delegate offered the following admittedly incomplete list of sinful activities: cigarette smoking, Coca-Cola guzzling, card-playing, novel reading, dancing, opera, grand opera, living pictures, tableaux, charades, prize fights, bull fights, dog fights, cock fights, yachting, roller skating, football, baseball, curling, backgammon, billiards, checkers, chess, dice, polo, croquet, pool, golf, lawn tennis, cricket, one o’cat, shinney. But Kenneth Phifer ...

10. Man Of Sorrows

Isaiah 52:13--53:12

Sermon

Larry Powell

... him in the garden on their own. But see how clever they were. Keeping a low profile, they had duped one of the twelve into being the villain, until even today, we name the name of Judas instead of Caiaphas, the man who had masterminded the whole charade: "It was Caiaphas who had given counsel to the Jews that it was expedient that one man should die for the people" (John 18:14). The ploy was that, if one of Jesus’ own disciples would betray him, it would appear that even his vanguard had lost faith ...

11. Deformed, Disfigured, and Despised: A Marred but Magnificent Messiah

Isaiah 52:13--53:12

Sermon

Carlyle Fielding Stewart

... succeed. There is no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. He is familiar with suffering and will take upon himself our infirmities and our sorrows as the stricken of God. Could this be a travesty, a comedy of error? Could this be some kind of charade? How could the Messiah be deformed and disfigured, despised and rejected? How could this new Messiah usher in the new age with power and authority when he himself is so lowly and broken? How could it be that God would choose and call such an unlikely person ...

12. The Secrets Of His Success

Genesis 45:1-28

Sermon

King Duncan

... story. Joseph creates some mischief for his brothers and tricks them into bringing his younger brother Benjamin down to meet him. Joseph is overcome with emotion at seeing his younger brother. He has to leave the room to compose himself. When he returns he decides the charade has gone on long enough. "I am Joseph your brother," he announces to them. "Don't be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now ...

13. The First Easter Sermon

John 20:1-9

Sermon

King Duncan

... be so traumatic that they could have no hope for the future. Therefore, preserving their youth would become an obsession. Old age, and anything associated with aging, would be shunned and devalued. In this way, the rest of society could continue the charade of denying the facts of aging. Every kind of cosmetic and chemical treatment that can possibly slow down the aging process would be necessary. Appearances would be all that matter. Inner beauty, characterized by such things as integrity, compassion, and ...

14. A Man Of Character And Generosity

Genesis 45:1-28

Sermon

King Duncan

15. The Question That Will Not Go Away

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Sermon

Edward Inabinet

... . At the end of the season, they presented the matron with the replacement necklace. It ruined their entire lives--an enormous cost they paid for years. When the older woman was about to die, out of guilt the young woman went to her bedside. She confessed the whole charade. The older woman shrieked from her bed: "You fool! Those were paste pearls. No one ever loans the real ones. You''ve wasted your life for paste pearls." Be careful that you don''t come to the end of the way only to realize you have worked ...

16. Jesus, Our Hope

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Darrick Acre

... . Jesus comes to a world where people mourn and grieve, where hearts are broken and sin reigns. He comes because He is the answer for that kind of world! If Jesus is not an answer for that kind of world, He is no answer at all! Christmas is a charade. Jesus is a charlatan. The message of the angels is old-fashioned snake oil: high on promise, low on cure. If Jesus is not the answer for a broken world, we need to quit pretending. We need to stop playing the Christmas game, silence the carols, and throw out ...

17. Why I Believe In Tithing

Malachi 3:6-18

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... fired by the fact that, after all, she gave him birth. Money won’t buy love. And money won’t buy respect. We may get some of our selfish wants by money. We may use it to gain loyalty and deference from others, but this loyalty and deference is a charade for respect and usually turns into contempt. And money won’t buy exemption from the problems that are common to us all. Money or the lack of it doesn’t keep children from breaking the hearts of their parents. Money or the lack of it doesn’t prevent ...

18. Would You Make a Good Witness? (Ascension Day)

Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

... engagements, Sousa decided he didn’t want to go through life pretending to be something he wasn’t. So he retired to another business, even though he had to begin at the bottom of his new business. Good idea. Sooner or later, someone would have discovered his charade and he would have been exposed as a fraud. In today’s world it is important to be authentic. A good witness needs, first of all, to be credible. A good witness needs, in the second place, to be caring. There is a saying in business today ...

19. The Paradoxical Power of Weakness

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... I keep my daintiness ... I go caparisoned in gems unseen,I go caparisoned in gems unseen, Trailing white plumes of freedom ...Trailing white plumes of freedom ... — Edmond Rostand, Cyrano De Bergerac (Act 1) Cyrano understood the weakness of powerful appearance, its charade, its vanity and hypocrisy. He saw the power of weakness, the honor of humiliation, the honesty of being despised. Think of Helen Keller, blind and deaf. Yet out of her weakness she became strong — strong enough to speak to the whole ...

20. What Is Your Name?

Genesis 32:22-32

Sermon

Mike Ripski

... into the stew. The other covers Jacob’s arms, so he’ll feel and smell like Esau. Jacob goes in to Isaac. Isaac questions the sound of the voice: "Father, I have brought your stew. Give me your blessing." And you wonder if Isaac doesn’t detect the charade but goes along with it. He has known all along that the son best able to manage his property and family was not his oldest son, but his youngest. So Isaac blesses him with a blessing that cannot be taken back or duplicated. Esau returns. He and Isaac ...

21. On The Night When He Was Betrayed

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Sermon

Nancy Kraft

... body and the spilled blood of Christ in the other. Judas was wondering if this might be a good time to betray the one who was handing him his very life. It's hard to believe that Judas could have turned on Jesus like this and gone through the charade of participating in Jesus' last meal with his disciples. What's even more amazing is that Jesus himself knew exactly what was going on, and he still gave himself to the one who already had been paid to have him arrested and killed. It's like Jesus makes a ...

22. Samuel Was the Search Committee

1 Samuel 15:34-35, 16:1-13

Sermon

William J. Carl, III

... as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). We may put up a great charade among our friends at church, at work, and in our own neighborhoods; we may even be able to fool ourselves for a while. But we can never fool God. Why? Because the Lord looks not on outward appearance or achievement. The Lord looks on the heart. Walk your way through ...

23. Pilate's Ruse

Matthew 27:1-26 · Luke 22:66--23:25 · John 18:28-40; 19:1-16 · Mark 15:1-15

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... to make them mad, make them shout. The high priests insist louder. Finally, Pilate relents. But he goes through a long motion of deliberately “washing his hands,” proclaiming to the Jews that Jesus’ death is “on them.” He should have been an actor, his charade was so good. He watches the priests take it upon themselves as he mimics their purification ritual. He signals to his wife that he has heard her plea, but acts as though the decision is “out of his hands.” Yet at the same time ….. in ...

24. What Jesus Saw

Mark 12:38-44

Sermon

King Duncan

... is not unusual as it may seem. There are people who try to “fake it until they make it” in every profession. Recently I read a humorous story about a man in the sports world—a moderately talented soccer player—who attempted to pull off such a charade. In his newsletter Now I Know!, Dan Lewis tells the story of Carlos Kaiser. Carlos was born in 1963 in Brazil, a country that is known for its superb soccer teams. Carlos was a naturally athletic young man, and at age 16 he joined a professional team ...

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