Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: beginning, start, origination, genesis, birth, dawning, dawn, emergence, inception, launch, creation, birthplace, cradle, early stages, conception, inauguration, foundation, outset, source, derivation, root, roots, provenance, etymology, descent, ancestry, parentage, pedigree, lineage, line, line of descent, heritage, extraction, background, family, stock, blood, bloodline, genealogy, beginnings

Antonyms: end, conclusion, termination

Showing 1 to 25 of 2208 results

1. Stewards of Creation

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... is my father’s world Oh, let me not forget that, though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.(1) In the creation story Adam and Eve are told that the creator God will require an accounting of their stewardship. What God says to us, then, is this: "I ... we will be happy. It’s simply not so. When we make decisions about energy, we must not only love God in his creation, but, as Jesus asked us to do, we must also love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. That neighbor would include: ...

2. New Creations in Christ

Revelation 21:1-6

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... Eve, and later to the nation of Israel, when the people traveled through the desert, and through God's presence in the temple, is now granted to all God's people. The former world, with all its repulsive characteristics that gave it the appearance of a creation enslaved to sin, will disappear. No longer will there be tears, death, pain, or mourning. Then, in the only passage in Revelation where God speaks, we hear the Lord say, "See, I am making all things new ... I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning ...

3. New Creations

2 Corinthians 5:6-10; 14-17

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

... ways have changed and so have everyone else's. None of us are what we remember. And to me that's Good News, for some folks have risen far above what they once were. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! " For those of us who have changed, that really is Good News. For we can see and rejoice in what we have each become through Christ and not try to choke down what we once were. We really are New ...

4. A New Creation in Hope

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Sermon

Bonnie Bates

... as ourselves ― and we are loved when we do not behave in the ways God calls us to behave ― when we are angry, spiteful, and filled with prejudice and selfishness. We are loved in any case. Yet, if we want to be a part of the reordering, the new creation, we must choose to act with mercy, compassion, kindness, and love as a means of thanking God for the wonder of our birth, our life, our blessings. We must act as one who follows Jesus, not to earn our way into God’s family, but in thankfulness for our ...

5. Finding Our Place in All Creation

Genesis 1:1, 26-31

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

... created with promise. We were born with possibility. Such kinship to God brings a particular partnership with God. As children of God, the first chapter of the Bible tells us we are supposed to help God take care of the place. We are responsible as the supreme of creation to make the place safe. If there is a hole in the ozone, then it is our problem. If our streams are polluted, it is our issue. If haze covers our cities and hazards fill our highways, then is it not a result of our greed and our grabbing ...

6. Creation Reborn

John 20:1-18

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

... of “Up from the grave he arose…!” We did not shake the earth as much as we hoped. But we were confident that Jesus, who had once laid in a grave, would someday break open these tombs of our friends and family members, and bring in the new creation. We all ache for resurrection, don’t we?! In 1954, Marcelle Maurtette penned his powerful play Anastasia. It was based on the true story of a woman named Anna Anderson who claimed to be the long-lost daughter of the last emperor of Russia, Tsar Nicholas II ...

7. Humankind: The Climax of Creation

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... . God must have had a blast--painting the stripes on the zebra, stretching the giraffe's neck, teaching a opossum how to "play possum," and designing a bird dog that would "hunt close." But then came afternoon of the 6th day. It was time for the climax of creation. With creative flair, God grabs a handful of clay and begins to shape it with a special gleam in his eye. As we works that clay, he thinks out loud, "This creature is going to be different from all the rest. This one will be family, not a creature ...

8. All Creation Yawns

Romans 13:8-14

Sermon

Frank Luchsinger

... a season of alarm, but a season of gradual awakening, of preparing to embrace a new day. Oh, how we long for the Son! In this season as we doze and dream, dream and doze, the night is far gone, the day is at hand. In this season all creation yawns and yearns for the coming of the Light. 1. Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), p. 2. 2. Nytt fra Norge, The Dramatst Henrik Ibsen (Norway: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1995), www.norway.org/ibsen.html. 3. Ibid.

9. Finding Our Place In All Creation

Job 38:1-18

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

... am going through, I might give You the honor of a little bit of my attention and my devotion.' C.S. Lewis suggests the problem with that is that we have the wrong person in charge of the world. IV. WE HAVE A CREATOR. You and I are God's creation. We are not gods and the quicker we discover it, the better we will understand life. I may have a point of view, you may have a point of view, but God has a view. Let God be God. How do you gain perspective in the midst of life? You ...

10. God Is Not Yet Finished With You

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... ending in a human being. It does not really matter how God created homo sapiens, nor how long it took him to create man. The essential fact is that God the Father is responsible for our being what and where we are. Out of this basic fact of this first creation come several implications. One of them is the truth that we human beings belong to God and to no one else! The Father made us for himself. Since God is love, he made us as being capable of receiving and giving love. To be filled with love and have no ...

11. Revised and Revisioned

John 8:48-59, John 9:1-12, John 9:13-34, John 9:35-41, John 10:1-21

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... of scripture trying to figure out how to be in relationship with us, how to entice us to be back in relationship with God the way we were at the start! God…wants to bring us home! God’s mission is to restore, repair, and redeem God’s beloved creation. So how does God do that? [You can allow people to answer.] God chases us everywhere, trying to prevent us from destroying ourselves, trying to get us to listen, to obey, to love God, to love each other. God tries to build a loyal people with Abraham. God ...

12. The Fruit of the Word

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sermon

Harry N. Huxhold

... always the lively, active power of God exerting and expressing what is in the mind of God. The Hebrew helps us understand that best. The “word” can also be translated as “he says,” or “he acts.” In the word God is acting on the creation, in the creation, or through the creation. In the word God also acts on us, for us, or through us. That is the point that the prophet Isaiah wants to make clear for us. The Word Serves God Isaiah writes that the word which God addresses to us is as effective as ...

13. And God Breathed Into Man

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... expect it to tell me the meaning of my life and my destiny. This is precisely what it cannot tell me." (Thielicke, pages 80-81) So we humans are unique. We have had breathed into us God's breath. I've always felt that Michaelangelo's depiction of the creation of man on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is a profound interpretation of how man became man. Adam, the man, is already present, but, so to speak, not as man in the real sense. He's still a candidate, a mere claimant of humanity. He lies half raised ...

14. And God Breathed Into Man

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

15. Morning Has Broken

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Sermon

Curtis Lewis

... any meaning or message that we can glean from this Old Testament Lesson. Together, let us see what lessons there might be for us in the twenty-first century from five simple, yet beautiful verses of scripture. The narration informs us that ... God Brought Creation Out Of Chaos Chaos is a word that Americans perhaps understand in a way that they have never understood before. In the past few years we have discovered what real chaos is. In horror we have witnessed the bombing of the MurrahFederalBuilding in ...

16. Thankful Living

Joel 2:18-27

Sermon

John A. Stroman

... do. Parents do not expect to be repaid. All that parents desire from their children is gratitude and appreciation, not so much in words but reflected in thankful living. I think the same is true of God, who provides us with all of the beneficial gifts of creation. To use these gifts recklessly and carelessly is to disrespect not only the gift but the giver. When we take it upon ourselves to obliterate what God has wrought it is like spitting in the face of God. There is a Jewish folk tale regarding two men ...

17. Let It Shine!

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Carlyle Fielding Stewart

... to let that light shine in the darkness. John says a light shines in the darkness and now the darkness cannot overpower it, cannot put it out, cannot absorb it, cannot appropriate it, cannot be receptive to it. This is the word to those in the new creation of Christ. The spiritual darkness is threatening to blow your light out, and as long as you have the light of Christ in your life that light can never be snuffed out. Stop hiding your light under the bushel. Isaiah says, "Arise, shine for your light has ...

18. Why Did Jesus Have To Die?

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... problem on his hands. He and his Son (the light) did not want to see his creatures eternally punished, as the law of his creation would dictate. Yet, because the world had been structured in this way, so that what is in violation of the law demands punishment, these ... in all this for us and for our faith? Keeping in mind that the purpose of Christ's death was to set right the law of creation alerts us to the fact that Christ did not just die for you and me. If Christ's death was a sacrifice paid to the law ...

19. In The Beginning And The End...God

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... sorrey, and caves where cavemen dwell, and a sense of law and beauty and a face turned from the clod some call it evolution; others call it God." But I don't call it evolution and a lot of folks have quit calling it that I call it Creation God's Creation. In the beginning, God God is eternal. In the beginning, God created. We need to rest on that word for a moment, too: God created. Listen to that second verse: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit ...

20. Steadfast and Faithful

Genesis 9:1-17

Sermon

... established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth." (Genesis 9:16-17) God’s Covenant of mercy extends to all Creation. Noah’s flood was no ordinary flood. According to the Bible, its distinguishing feature was not that it rained for forty days ... flood. It was a flood that threatened to destroy the earth forever, It was a flood that threatened to return earth to its pre-creation state. Noah’s Flood was the event when the world was very nearly swallowed up by Chaos. The story of the Flood is ...

21. In the Beginning, God

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Sermon

Johnny Dean

... in the blink of an eye, turned into chaos, a formless void. How could life have seemed so good only minutes ago? Chaos in your life, the formless void, is only a phone call away. Trust me on this one. I’ve been there. That’s what the creation story of Genesis is about, the story that was first told somewhere around the sixth century B. C. Israel, which had once been secure in its Promised Land, had been invaded, its cities laid to waste, and survivors carried off into exile as slaves. It was Kosovo, it ...

22. News from the Flood

Mark 1:9-13

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... . Those side chapels were constructed with eight sides. That, too, is a symbol of baptism. It goes back again to Noah, when there were eight people on the ark, and also the recreation of the world after the Flood is referred to as the "eighth" day of Creation. The baptismal font, itself, is a symbol of new life, life that comes to us out of the floods. Norman MacLean in his wonderful book, A River Runs through It, has this tremendous phrase: "I am haunted by waters." This Sunday in which we remember the ...

23. Only Human?

Psalm 8:5-6

Sermon

Will Willimon

... sea. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth! (Psalm 8) Little less than God. Sure, compared to the vastness of the starry heavens, we are but small specks of matter in a great universe. But the Bible says we have no equal in all creation. Of all the creatures, we are the only ones invited to talk to, to work with God. God has given us dominion, given us the earth and told us to subdue it. Listen to Genesis: "So God created man in his own image;...male and female he created them. And ...

24. Why Not a Christian Live 8 for the Environment?

Romans 8:18-27

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... we live in shares in our suffering. As Christians it seems only right that we extend our hope of redemption to that creation. Christians who live in hope must in turn give hope to the created world as well. In short, Christians should be ... rather than Christianity spending its time giving capitalism a middle finger? God has a green thumb. Poet Emily Dickinson called God's original creation "This Whole Experiment with Green." If God has a green thumb, why shouldn't we? And why isn't Christianity doing all it ...

25. Water and Spirit

John 3:1-17

Sermon

George Reed

... God's wondrous gift for all. We are God's spiritual earth-creatures. We are human, mortal, and made from the very dust of the earth, but we are also made in God's image, filled with the very life breath of God. We are God's guardians of creation sharing the wonders of this world and of the presence of God's Spirit within us. We have a task to hold together in glorious tension our earth-bound and heaven-sent nature and to live faithfully our dual nature, neither negating nor elevating one over the other. We ...

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