Sermon and Worship Resources

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Matthew 7:15-23

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... use it to pay for gas. The station owner then uses it to pay an employee, who buys groceries for the family. After several more circulations and innocent transactions it goes to the bank where the cashier says, “This bill is counterfeit.” The fake note did lots of good while in circulation, but when it arrived at the bank, it was exposed and taken out of circulation. A counterfeit Christian may do many good works, but still be rejected at the gates of judgment.”18 So with the false prophets of whom ...

2. The True Story Wins

Matthew 28:11-15

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... will you allow him to come into your life and to smash the power of sin that keeps you from living an authentic and beautiful life? What kind of liar ARE you? Based on the Story Lectionary Major Text The Gospel According to Matthew on the Story Circulated by the Guards After the Resurrection Minor Text Psalms 77, 91, 111 The Song of Moses (Exodus 15) Job 33 (Elihu’s Sermon to Job) Hebrews 4 1 Samuel 28 (The Ghost of Samuel) John 11 (The Raising of Lazarus) Revelation 18 The Story of the Guards (According ...

3. Faith Bridges the Gap

Luke 7:1-10

Sermon

... Jewish healer, Jesus, to seek help and healing was absolutely remarkable. Jesus was his last resort and his mysterious faith, coupled with his sense of personal unworthiness, convinced him that Christ would not fail him. But if this story ever got out, if it were circulated by his troops so that other Roman officers heard about it, he would be a laughing stock among the professional officers and men. And if rumors of his appeal to Christ ever reached Rome, it is almost certain that the least he could expect ...

4. Surprise! Surprise!

Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon

Michael L. Sherer

... about the host and where he was and what his motives were. "I’ll bet," one of them said, "he plans to win the prize for best disguise himself!" Someone else replied, "I hate to mention this, but I think we’ve been set up. I think he’s been circulating all night, unbeknownst to any of us, listening to everything we say, so he can find out what we’re really like, and what we really think of him." Somebody else said, "Good Lord, do you think so? I’ve said all sorts of things already that I wouldn’t ...

5. Blind Bartimaeus - Model For Healing

Mark 10:46-52

Sermon

James W. Robinson

... - she had all the evidence she needed to convince her that she could entrust her very life to the medical and surgical teams. She entered the operating room calmly, and emerged cured. Was it not thus with Bartimaeus? He had never met Jesus. But the stories that circulated so wildly and widely spoke of a person with the compassion and skills of a great physician. He was not known to have turned anyone away. Rich and poor were alike to him, it was said. He had restored hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb ...

6. I Was There

Isaiah 43:14-28

Sermon

Gary Whitbeck

... order with their soldiers. I'll tell you, there is much rage within a captive people. We were looking for someone, somewhere, to deliver us from this bondage. So you can understand that many of us zealots didn't get too concerned over some prophet who circulated stories of turning the other cheek, and praying for your persecutors. We needed someone who would lead a revolt and drive the Romans out of our sacred city. They had no respect for God. They had no respect for our temple. They only lived on might ...

7. Turn Right with the Right Turn

Luke 13:1-8

Sermon

James Merritt

... will do a lot of good. That $100 bill can buy food, it can buy medicine, it can even go to church and be put in the offering plate and help pay the church's bills, and go on to the mission field. But if that $100 bill stays in circulation long enough, eventually it is going to get into the hands of a bank teller, whose expert eyes and sensitive fingers will know it is a counterfeit. When it is discovered it will be destroyed. I want to tell you the burden of my heart. I am becoming more convinced ...

8. His Way is the Right Way

Psalm 23:3

Sermon

James Merritt

... down sheep, he doesn’t do it immediately. It takes time to restore that sheep. First, a shepherd will come to the sheep lying on its back with its legs sticking up in the air. The first thing he will do is to begin to massage those legs to get circulation back in the legs. He will then roll the sheep over on its side to relieve the pressure of gasses in the stomach. He begins to talk to the sheep in very reassuring tones to lower the fear-factor. Then he very gently puts his hand under the sheep’s ...

9. A Restless Spirit

1 Samuel 28:1-25

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... 15) Psalm 77: You Are the God Who Performs Miracles Psalm 91: The Lord Will Guard You Psalm 111: Fear (Respect) of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom Elihu’s Sermon to Job (33) The Raising of Lazarus (John 11) Hebrews (4) The Story Circulated by the Guards After the Resurrection (Matthew 28:11-15) The Lament Over Babylon (Revelation 18) The Ghost of Samuel In those days, the Philistines gathered their forces to fight against Israel. Achish said to David, “You must understand that you and your men will ...

10. Sow's Ears And Silk Purses

John 2:1-11

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

... far as miracles go, was a piece of cake. Not only is that reading distasteful, but it misses the point the writer of this gospel was seeking to make. One need not trust the historicity of the event to see the point. This may have been a story circulated in the early church to give evidence that Jesus was indeed powerful. It would not have been the only tale around the ancient world in which the deity started out with water and ended up with wine. John often takes allegories, symbols and tall tales and uses ...

11. Take Up Your Ministry

Mark 9:38-41

Sermon

Steven E. Albertin

... that, if we continued to have a problem, we could call on one of several very capable lay people in the congregation, perhaps even one of them, to handle the preaching in my absence. At first I think they thought I was joking, as a nervous laughter circulated around the room. But after a few moments, when it became obvious that I was serious and not joking, it got very quiet. The council members were visibly nervous. Everyone was avoiding eye contact with me for fear that I would ask one of them to do ...

12. Do You See What I See?

Mark 10:46-52

Sermon

Steven E. Albertin

... was an old feisty German on the outside, but on the inside she was tender and soft and loved Jesus. Hilda suffered badly from diabetes. She was losing her eyesight. She was almost totally blind. She was confined to a wheelchair because of the poor circulation in her legs. Every few months she would have less of her legs because of another amputation she had to endure. But Hilda was never discouraged. She never missed a Thursday service because she loved to sing the songs, listen to Scripture, hear a message ...

13. Wind -- Word -- Spirit -- Community

Acts 2:1-13

Sermon

Arthur H. Kolsti

... layer is persecution. Persecution emerges out of discrimination, which is the next layer down. The bottom layer, which provides the base for the whole pyramid, Alport called circumlocution. By that he meant all the words of prejudice, stereotype, and dehumanization that circulate throughout the whole society, in each little circle that makes up that whole. Out of memory come these words. "Boys flying kites haul in their winged birds. You can't do that when you are flying words." Words travel far and ...

14. The Strange Tactics Of God

2 Samuel 6:1-23

Sermon

Arthur H. Kolsti

... . The God who let the ark go into captivity let's his Son be taken by the principalities and powers. The cross in human hands is a way of writing finished to the story of Jesus. But before long, rumors of a defeated God still alive begin to circulate. From here and there in the empire reports are heard. "Those who have turned the world upside down have come here also." Shades of the Philistines and the ark. There are mice in the grain fields, vexatious boils in the social body. What they thought they had ...

15. Here Is Where It Happens

1 Samuel 2:12-26

Sermon

Arthur H. Kolsti

... the things that are not. This story is a reminder to us of the God who calls us into being and in and through our life together calls to us. This is the real drama of life and history. This story was put in its final shape and circulated three centuries after the birth of Samuel. It was written up in a day when the institutions of Israel had lost their credibility. The kings, captains, and priests had made a mess of the heritage bequeathed to them. Disenchantment was in the air. This story proclaims the ...

16. Who Can Find A Virtuous Woman?

Sermon

Sue Anne Steffey Morrow

... sayings that we think of as proverbs, pride goes before the fall; a soft answer turns away wrath; a friend loves at all times. The last section is four appendix and the last of the four is our text on the virtuous woman. This poem was probably in circulation in ancient Israel, as an individual piece, given to young women. Then as I send along cards with thoughts, or as you put up posters with our favorite sayings. The poem is an acrostic which may explain why it is so disjointed. Does anyone ever do the ...

17. They Also Serve Who Wait

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

Thomas Long

... not recorded. There were several other requests for the score, and the library staff, unaware that it had been checked out, spent many hours searching in vain for it through the stacks. On the day that Storch returned it, placing it on the circulation desk, he was astonished to hear the librarian spontaneously, joyously, and loudly shout, "The Messiah is here! The Messiah is back!" Every head in the library turned toward the voice, but, alas, as the Times reported, "A few minutes later everyone went back ...

18. If We Are Dreamers

Joel 2:18-27, Joel 2:28-32

Sermon

Clement E. Lewis

... . Dreams should cause us to reflect on what has been, what ought to be, and what our role in life is to become. Reflective memories are precious to us, but ultimate outcomes are even more so. Shepherds was an inspirational magazine that was in circulation in the late 1940s. This article, titled "My Dream," appeared in the magazine. It was written by Hugh O. Isbell, then pastor of St. Paul's Methodist Church in Springfield, Missouri. I dreamed last night -- it must have been a day-dream -- that there ...

19. But God Can

Luke 7:11-17

Sermon

Larry Powell

... ampersand - that peculiar little symbol (&) commonly used in place of the word "and" - for whatever is proclaimed about God must always end with the word "and." God is always more than we can know or express. Millions of books about God are in circulation throughout the world. If all of these books were to be placed together in one great heap, it would surely seem that everything which could be written about God has been expressed in every conceivable combination of words. However, the last page of every ...

20. Right When the World is Wrong

Jeremiah 30:1--31:40

Sermon

George Paul Mocko

... to time, of course, they were considerably nastier than that. Periodically, they got angry enough at him that they had Jeremiah arrested, tried and convicted of treason for that kind of talk. But over those years, clouds were gathering. Then one day, the word circulated in the market places, "The current negotiations between our King Zedekiah and Babylon's Nebuchadnezzar did not go well. It is said a Babylonian army is on the march." As the days went on, the rumors thickened and became a certain report. And ...

21. Beware! Caution! Danger!

Acts 14:8-20

Sermon

Barbara Brokhoff

... Suppose Luther had replied, "Well, perhaps I have been a tad negative, but you know I've had problems with my self-esteem lately, and everyone has a bad day now and then." And they could have replied, "Okay, Martin, let's just take your books out of circulation and your theses off the door, and let's try to understand one another a little better. After all we worship the same God. We simply choose different ways of doing it." Crazy, isn't it? But this scenario is no more foolish than replacing, "Ye must be ...

22. The Public Effect Of Private Living

2 Samuel 11:1-27

Sermon

Robert Allen

... so severely that he could not get Senate confirmation. A prominent minister with a bright future in the church becomes a major topic of conversation when his wife files for divorce and rumors that he has been involved with another woman begin to circulate throughout the community. The point is that the private lives of public figures becomes the topic of conversation with many people. The way that people live their lives in private is often made public and reported to the last embarrassing detail. Just as ...

23. A Sign Of Divine Protection

Exodus 12:1-30

Sermon

Walter Kimbrough

... to eat while appropriately dressed on the one hand and ready to go out to battle on the other. It is most interesting that God would direct the Israelites to eat with the staff in hand. This makes eating more difficult because one hand is taken out of circulation. The person has one hand with which to eat. However, all that one really needs to eat with is one hand. Therefore, it appears that God challenges us to be productive with what we have, to maximize our assets. It is immoral to fail to use our gifts ...

24. Is It Hard To Believe?

Sermon

Erskine White

... the limits of rational understanding, since Paul found it necessary to write in 1 Corinthians:"Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?" There were other gospels and testimonies being circulated in the early church besides the ones we have in our Bible. There was a Gospel of Mary, a Gospel of Peter, a Gospel of Thomas, and dozens of others. And some of these other gospels tried to "water down" the meaning of the Resurrection, much ...

25. The Vine And The Branches

John 15:1-17

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... study and share insights about his Word. When a medical doctor wants to check the vital signs of a body, one thing he/she checks is the pulse, that is, how is the blood flowing throughout the body. A vital sign here is if we, who are the branches, are circulating the source of life through us, and others, from the vine which is God. If Christ is out of the grave and alive with us, a vital sign will be the heartbeat; the pulse can be felt and counted and we learn, grow, expand, deepen, and continue to allow ...

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