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

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1. Captive To The Word Of God

John 8:31-41

Sermon

Theodore F. Schneider

... the spiritual slavery of foreign cultures, hostile nations, and human servitude. But they had done so only to be enslaved by their traditions and their heritage, which had finally clouded the importance of God's prophetic word. Correct liturgies and proper parentage became the definitions of their identity. Righteousness and justice, the agendas of God, were displaced. The Church In The Days Of The Reformation Let us remind ourselves that those who were Jesus' audience in today's lesson were "Jews who ...

2. The Cross And Our Shadows

Joel 2:1-11

Sermon

Carl Jech

... would not include the likes of Abraham, Moses, John the Baptizer or Jesus in our church - Moses who had committed murder, Abraham with his multiple wives, John the Baptizer with his wild hair and strange diet, Jesus with his unusual lifestyle and questionable parentage. In the name of "standing for something" will we stumble over Jesus? In the name of a narrow-minded "morality" will we exclude everyone who refuses to become "like us?" Let our "missionary style" be a relaxed sharing of the grace of God ...

3. Possibly Our Best Year! (A Sermon for New Year's)

Isaiah 60:1-22

Sermon

King Duncan

... be a saint, But I am somebody, For Jesus is my Savior. I am God's Child! There is the great secret of life to believe you and I are somebody because we are God's child. We may not be a Rockefeller or a Kennedy or Roosevelt. No, our parentage is more exalted than that. We have God for our Father! We have a certain innate dignity because of our heritage. We know who we are. WE ALSO KNOW WHERE WE ARE GOING. Isaiah wanted his people to know where they were going. He painted a picture of a peaceful ...

4. Loving Like God Loves

Matthew 5:43-48

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... by claiming it doesn’t apply to us. If we are not learning to love our enemies and being drawn to the idea as an outrageous possibility, difficult as it is, we are missing something Jesus thought very important. There is nothing that reveals our spiritual parentage and family likeness so much as this one issue: what do we do with our enemies? Thus far the disciples had responded to the challenge of Jesus’ call, “Follow me, and I will teach you to fish for people.” They had seen him heal multitudes ...

5. The Curse of the Cross

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... off a ten-word curse that never repeats the same word or same action twice, as the virtuoso blue-collars of my childhood did with so little effort. Curses used to have clout and coherence. The ancients didn't mess around with insulting anyone's parentage or prowess. They got right down to the business of condemning the next dozen or so generations to an astonishing array of calamities. Curses didn't just insult, didn't just offend. Curses threatened death and destruction upon all who might be even vaguely ...

6. The Lamb's Book of Life

John 1:29-34

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... as we pass a car wreck). We are all hungry for the knowledge of where we come from. We long to know the authors of our life. Adopted children, raised in wonderful homes with loving, nurturing adoptive parents, still go on long quests to discover their biological parentage-not to replace their parents, but to simply find out the genetic rock from whence they were hewn. Forget talk-show derangement. It's less and less necessary for us to see pictures of mom and dad in order to figure out who passed on what ...

7. The Supreme Worth of the Second Birth

John 3:1-9

Sermon

James Merritt

... the purity of your pedigree. Being born into a Christian home doesn't make you a Christian anymore than being born in a bread pan makes you a biscuit. It would not matter if Billy Graham were your father, and Joan of Arc were your mother. Neither pedigree nor parentage makes a person a Christian. The second birth is "not of the will of the flesh." It is not of human desire. It has nothing to do with the fervency of your feelings. You were not born because you wanted to be; you were born because God wanted ...

8. Nobody Is Too Big to Fail. Nobody Is Too Small to Prevail.

Mark 6:1-6

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... face with the failure of familiarity. How could Jesus have anything profound or inspired to offer the people of Nazareth when they had seen him running down the streets with a droopy diaper? How could the “son of Mary,” one of apparently questionable parentage and no social standing, be a possible messiah? How could a mere “tekton”, a stone-mason, a metal worker, a wood carver, a day laborer, claim any authority to speak God’s word with divine insight? And yet he did. Jesus returned to Nazareth ...

9. Red, White and Pink

Luke 24:36-49

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... ’Us or wherever you shop, that glows with a Pepto-Bismol-bright pink haze. The corridor you trundle your shopping cart down is awash in pinks . . . there is Barbie and all her accessories, there are dolls of lesser nobility and parentage, there are fingerpaints, Frisbees, . .. Whatever sits on those shelves, they all give off a ghastly pink glow. Stores really should provide special protective eyeshades to their shoppers before letting them venture down those dreaded “pink zones.” The problem with the ...

10. Watch Your Step

Mark 6:1-6

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... a Jewish person of faith should look like a prayer in motion. Just as families and tribes were known for their “walk,” so Jesus introduced his new family, his twelve disciples to a new walk. It was a pace not predetermined by parentage or personal status. Jesus’ family and friends called him crazy and dismissed all of his words and miracles as inconsequential and incomprehensible. But the pathway Jesus prescribed ignored the judgments of others and instead embraced the power and authority of God over ...

11. A Marriage Made In Heaven

Hosea 1:2-10

Sermon

Chrysanne Timm

... would encourage you to read it this week. Chapter 1 will introduce Hosea and Gomer and the three children Gomer bears. You may note, if you read carefully, that the first son is clearly identified as Hosea's child, but the author is vague about the parentage of the two other children. Each of the children is given a name that points to specific prophecies against Israel. Yet even before the first chapter is complete, God promises that Israel will be restored. Chapter 2 begins as a recounting of wife and ...

12. So Send I You

John 20:19-23

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... is that Jesus is affirming that we are all children of God even as Jesus was God’s child, so we are to go out into the world as God’s sons and daughters. In this one commission on the meaning of discipleship, Jesus affirmed our divine parentage. And as Jesus’ surprising entrance into that locked Upper Room testified, the first gifts of belonging to God’s family are peace and joy. Jesus proclaims that “Peace be with you,” and his disciples respond with great joy. But to be a faithful follower of ...

13. The Surrogate

Matthew 1:1-17

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... just reached maturity? In biblical times, the young girl could have been married to Uriah the Hittite before she reached puberty. How old is Uriah? We also don’t know. We sense, she is a Jewish young woman, but the story makes no mention of her parentage. We do know however that she is married to a foreigner, who fights for David in his royal army. Was David’s passion for her out of line because she was young and inexperienced? Were Bathsheba and Uriah under an arrangement of “suspension of marriage ...

14. Precocious

Luke 2:41-52

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... things. “House” did not only mean a building but also meant a “generational line” or a lineage. When we say, Jesus was of the “house” of David, we mean his lineage. The “house” of God therefore meant also “of God.” Jesus knew his true parentage, and where his true devotion needed to lie. And although he “obeyed” his parents, as a good Jewish boy should, and returned then to Nazareth. And grew in wisdom and stature and gained the respect of all, we know he kept his “house” and ...

15. The Pardoning of Jezebel

Mark 7:24-30, 1 Kings 9:10-28

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... the past, no matter what her sin or the sins of her ancestors, no matter who disowned her or excluded her, Jesus reaffirms her faith and her humanity as one of God’s own. And that is a message for all of us. God will always claim parentage of you. No matter what mistakes you’ve made. No matter where you are from, what your background, or what your ancestors or family may have been labeled by their community or neighbors in the past, Jesus will always rectify, forgive, and redeem you. Jesus will always ...

16. Family Reunion

Genesis 29:15-28

Sermon

Will Willimon

... like this? By the time it was told, the practices of selling off daughters into marriage was, thankfully, passe'. Perhaps this story was told as a way of explaining the origins of the various tribes of Israel, Jacob's family. Some of the tribes traced their parentage to Leah; others traced their origins to Rachel. So maybe they said to themselves, in their contemporary feuds, that their feuds go all the way back to the beginning. Maybe. There's no mention of God in the story. Thank goodness. It would be a ...

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