Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: ruler, sovereign, monarch, supreme ruler, crowned head, majesty, Crown, head of state, royal personage, emperor, prince, potentate, overlord, liege lord, lord, leader, chief, star, leading light, luminary, superstar, mogul, giant, master, kingpin, celebrity, lion

Antonyms: queens, peasant, serf, slave, subject, servant, average joe, common man, rank and file, lower class, common person, workers, commoner, the masses, the poor, plebians, bourgeois, proletariat, laborer, working class, middle class, blue-collar, a nobody, subvassal

Showing 1 to 25 of 2332 results

1. Just Common People?

Romans 12:1-8

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... to you therefore, brethren, I appeal to you by the mercies of God, to give your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable before God, which is the only reasonable thing you can do with your life. Do not be conformed to this world - don’t be a common person - but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Perfect! That sort of yanks us out of our common herd, doesn’t it? Don’t be conformed! You are chosen people ...

2. Beautiful

John 20:19-23, Song of Songs 4:1-16

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... unicorns! The unicorn in fact was a symbol of purity, chastity, and holiness, even a symbol for Christ in these magnificent tapestries.* Art declared that beauty and holiness were related, that beauty was for everyone, even the lowliest and most common person. For beauty is holiness, and holiness is beauty. God created beauty…. The first thing God creates after creating the earth and heavens is a beautiful garden –trees, flowers, flora, and fauna. And within that garden, God places his most magnificent ...

3. Dealing with Cantankerous People

Ephesians 4:30-5:2

Sermon

King Duncan

... . But Freud was not a happy man. Armand M. Nicholi, M.D., professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, tells us that Sigmund Freud died at the age of 83, a bitter and disillusioned man. Tragically, this Viennese physician had little compassion for the common person. Freud wrote in 1918, “I have found little that is good about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all” (Veritas ...

4. Confronting Hypocrisy with Humility

Matthew 23:1-12

Sermon

Brett Blair

... day they were called Pharisees): “They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.” Now what did Jesus mean? Simply this: The Pharisees made laws. They demanded that the common person follow those laws. But they themselves found ways to get around those laws. Get it? They were not willing to carry the heavy loads they demanded everyone else carry. In a word: Hypocrisy. In Washington, the standards that the Democrats set for the ...

5. Harmony Within The Family

Genesis 11:1-9

Sermon

King Duncan

... . The church that came out of Pentecost was a compassionate church. They set up one of history’s first welfare programs for widows and orphans for those who could not provide for themselves. They would not have grown in numbers as rapidly as they did if the common person had not been able to say, "they care about me-they understand what I am going through really do matter to them." The ability to "feel with" other people has always been the church’s greatest asset. That’s a great asset in the home as ...

6. All in the Family

Acts 2:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

... church that came out of Pentecost was a compassionate church. They set up one of history’s first welfare programs for widows and orphans--for those who could not provide for themselves. They would not have grown in numbers as rapidly as they did if the common person had not been able to say, “They care about me--they understand what I am going through--I really do matter to them.” The ability to “feel with” other people has always been the church’s greatest asset. That’s a great asset in the ...

7. Plain Talk

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

... and leaves the earth, the launching pad is a mountain. So for Matthew this collection of Jesus' important teachings is uttered close to the sky. Luke, on the other hand, writes for a Hellenistic audience. His gospel is a down-to-earth account for the common person. When he records the same materials as does Matthew, the site of the sermon is not a mountain, but the lowlands. We read, "And Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place." We call Luke's account, "The Sermon on the Plain." Plain ...

8. Get Out of Your Big Pickup Truck!

John 12:20-36

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... too is the example Jesus gave his listeners of the wheat grain. Just as we're (almost) all drivers, so was Jesus' audience almost all farmers. The weaknesses and fallibilities of a car-the weaknesses and fallibilities of a crop-these are common, personal, everyday information. The organic nature of the wheat grain led to Jesus' natural rendition of the conclusion: the grain of wheat would either submit itself to death--falling into the fertile ground voluntarily--or would experience dying on the vine. When ...

9. Our Common Life in Christ

Philippians 2:1-11

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

It glows with light and power today as we turn to verses 1 through 4 of the second chapter of this Philippian letter. “If then our common life in Christ yields any thing to stir the heart, any loving consolation, any sharing of the Spirit, any warmth of affection or compassion, fill up my cup of happiness by thinking and feeling alike with the same love for one another, the same turn of mind, and a common care must be no room for rivalry and personal vanity among you, but you must humbly reckon others ...

10. A Streak of Common Sense

Deuteronomy 18:14-22

Sermon

Thomas D. Peterson

When I was growing up my mother often pleaded with me to use common sense. She was evidently convinced I did not have it or else, for some obstinate reason, refused to use it. Perhaps she was right. I was a wool-gatherer, a day-dreamer, off someplace that she did not know or understand. On the other hand, my older brother was evidently a paragon of common sense. I figured this out because she never urged him to use it. He must have been endowed with a suitable supply, for he was an operator and got things ...

11. Our Most Common Sin

Luke 18:9-14

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

What do you think is humanity’s most common sin? What do you think is your most common sin? There’s an old story about three preachers—a Baptist, an Episcopalian and a Methodist—who lived in the same community and became rather close. They played golf together and met for coffee. One day they decided that they’d spend two days together just to share and get acquainted, to study a little, to talk about their preaching, and to pray. During the course of that time they evolved in their relationship to the ...

12. Seeing The Whole Person

John 4:1-26

Sermon

David Belgum

Not surprisingly, Jesus was dusty and thirsty under the noonday sun after his walk through the high hills and low mountains about forty miles north of Jerusalem. He had come as far as Sychar in the district of Samaria on his way to Galilee. The well near which he sat to rest has great symbolic significance for the story John is about to relate. It was Jacob's well, which means it went back to ancient Israel. Yes, the Samaritan woman even refers to it thus: "... our father Jacob, who gave us the well and ...

13. Security: Deeply Personal

Ezekiel 34:1-31

Sermon

Christian unity proclaims security in a personal King, Jesus the Christ! The whole concept of security has taken on new connotations since the Second World War and especially with the news other nations besides the United States have the atomic bomb. Relatively speaking, it has not been too many years that individuals or even nations could cross mountains and/or oceans to gain security from enemies. Our own nation, for generations, was free from direct interference of the ongoing wars and intrigues of ...

14. Judas, A Person Like Us

Mark 14:43-52

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Would you ever consider naming one of your children Judas? We name our children James and John and Matthew and Peter and Andrew and Thaddeus. You may not have thought of the apostles of Jesus when you gave these names to your sons. You may have been thinking of a father, or grandfather, but the names go beyond that, back to those disciples of Jesus. But Judas! The name is not in our repertoire of treasured names for our sons. Yet, the name was common among the Jews. There are several Judas’ in the Bible. ...

15. What Makes A Person Successful?

Matthew 23:1-39

Sermon

King Duncan

Maxie Dunnam tells about a recent PEANUTS cartoon in which Lucy--that bossy, assertive, always-take-control character--is playing her role as psychiatrist. She sits in her booth with a banner on the top that says "Psychiatric Help--5 cents," and then down below a sign says, "The Doctor Is In." Charlie Brown is her patient. Lucy says to Charlie, "Your life is like a house . . ." In the next frame, she says reflectively, "You want your house to have a solid foundation, don't you?" Charlie Brown has a kind of ...

16. Death: Commonality Explored

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Sermon

Christian unity has a word to say about death. The first century Christians, hour by hour, had to live with the possibility of death. It happened frequently in an excruciating manner. Eusebius, in The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, speaks of the ordeals of one hundred and forty-six martyrs and names ninety-seven of them. In speaking of those in Tebais, he says, "They were torn to bits from head to foot with potsherds like claws till death released them." From the beginning, our spiritual ...

17. Personal Politics

Matthew 18:15-20

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

Thomas Browne said that "the vices we scoff at in others laugh at us from within ourselves." More than any other relational failure this is true of hurt and vengeance. When the great nineteenth-century Spanish General, Ramon Narvaez, lay dying in Madrid, a priest was called in to give him last rites. "Have you forgiven your enemies?" the padre asked. "Father," confessed Narvaez, "I have no enemies. I shot them all." Too often that is the story of our lives, and Jesus knows it. Lewis Smedes wrote a book we ...

18. Ask the Average Person...

Matthew 11:25-30

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Are you an "average person?" Not in terms of ability or common sense or something that might be quantifiable, but in the sense that your opinions would be more or less typical? What I mean is, if someone began a statement with that phrase, "Ask the average person," would the rest of the sentence sound like something you might say? For example, "Ask the average person, and he would say the sky is blue." Or "Ask the average person and she would say she does not have quite enough money (no matter how much she ...

19. Every Person’s Great Possessions

Mark 10:17-31

Sermon

Thomas Peterson

Jesus was confronted by a man who ran up and knelt before him. You know what? Part of me was right there with that man! I know how he felt, because I have also found reason to kneel before Jesus. What about you? Don’t you know, too? Haven’t you been there along with us? Tempted to follow Jesus, this man was nevertheless compelled by his great possessions to hold back. We are all able to identify with him. We may think, at first, that the only possessions hard to let go of are riches, power, and noble ...

20. Now, It's Personal

Matthew 5:21-37

Sermon

Dean Feldmeyer

Thirty years ago I was serving on the staff of a large church as the minister of Christian Education and Youth Ministry. The Education Commission and the Youth Council were made up, mostly of parents who worked with me on the programs for youth and children — Sunday school, Vacation Bible School, those kinds of things. One year, for Vacation Bible School, we decided to set up a large tent — a really large one under which you could seat 100 or more people — on the parking lot and use it for our opening ...

21. The Importance of Unity

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

Sermon

Hubert Beck

Sometimes want to cry when hear non-Christians say that they have rejected the church because of its divisions. They may mean denominational divisions on occasion, and that is bad enough. But more frequently they mean the internal strife that characterizes all too many congregations. For it is, after all, on the local level that most people encounter the church, and when they see discord and argumentation marking a congregation, they want nothing to do with that. I want to cry because the very body of ...

22. Moses: A Traveling God in a Pop-Up Camper

Exodus 13:17-22, 33:7-11

Sermon

John E. Harnish

So Joseph died in Egypt. Having saved the family from famine, this great-grandson of Abraham dies in hope of the day when they will return to the Promised Land, the land of Abraham's sojourn and God's covenant. And as he requested, the people pack his bones in a coffin, promising to carry them along when the time comes. Decades pass; the people of Israel grow in influence and power. Like many immigrant groups which establish themselves in a new land, they become a threat to the powers that be. (There are ...

23. Jesus: The Ultimate Ordinary

John 18:28-40

Sermon

Thomas Peterson

Once again Jesus gives a curious, cryptic teaching that leaves us wondering. “I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.” These remarks are hard to interpret. Yet, as with all he says, we are inclined to believe they hold great value for us. Not long ago in a study group a man asked me if Jesus were “ordinary.” The question was unusual. On the spur of the moment I replied, “Of course, Jesus is ordinary.” His reply, “Jesus is the ultimate ordinary ...

24. Teammates in the Cause of the Lord

Acts 4:32-37

Sermon

Richard Gribble

"Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuldreher, Miller, Crowley, and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army football team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds yesterday afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below." Grantland ...

25. Acres of Diamonds

1 Timothy 6:10

Sermon

Russell Conwell

I am astonished that so many people should care to hear this story over again. Indeed, this lecture has become a study in psychology; it often breaks all rules of oratory, departs from the precepts of rhetoric, and yet remains the most popular of any lecture I have delivered in the fifty-seven years of my public life. I have sometimes studied for a year upon a lecture and made careful research, and then presented the lecture just once -- never delivered it again. I put too much work on it. But this had no ...

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