Sermon and Worship Resources

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Isaiah 1:1-31

Sermon

James McLemore

... God looks down on America, God sees a nation captivated by sex and fascinated with violence. Every time God looks at America, God sees the violence of racism and the vice of sexism. Too many movies with violent content. Too many talk shows with perverse conversations and abusive language. And when God looks down at America, we don't look like America anymore, and we don't act like America anymore. We are beginning to look like Sodom and Gomorrah. African-Americans, you used to hold a standard for strong ...

2. I Am Christ's

2 Corinthians 5:17

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... life has been implanted. Listen now -- this is my most dogmatic statement of the day: Conversion to Christ without immersion in Christ is a perversion of the Gospel. You can remember those key words. Conversion, immersion, perversion. So remember those three words and then remember the whole thought. Conversion to Christ without immersion in Christ is a perversion of the Gospel. John A. Mackay, former Dean of Princeton University Theological Seminary, has captured the truth with succinct clarity in just two ...

3. Don't Forget to Remember

Jude 1:5-7

Sermon

James Merritt

... not repent of their sin. Well, the men of that city came to Lot's house where the angels were staying, and demanded them to come out so they could perform homosexual rape on them. In other words, instead of choosing spiritual prosperity, they chose sexual perversity. They chose adultery, fornication, and homo-sexuality over God's way, which is no sex before marriage, any sex after marriage, and all sex within marriage between a man and his wife. Now you say, "What does Sodom and Gomorrah have to do with the ...

4. God Begins Anew

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Sermon

Robert A. Hausman

... it?" (17:9). In other words, we are prisoners of our own opposition to God. In our walk through life, we always go astray; we cannot direct our own steps (10:23). Jeremiah asks, "Can Ethiopians change their skin or leopards their spots?" (13:23). This same human perversity is addressed by Paul in the second lesson for today, Romans 3:19-28. Paul says "For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:22b-23). This is the same bondage referred to by Jesus when ...

5. A Baptism of Blood

Isaiah 52:13--53:12

Sermon

Carl Hoefler

... gone astray. Judah was a diseased nation dancing a "dance of death." The people practiced greed and injustice. The rich robbed the poor. Their lives were marked and marred by sensual indulgences and perversities. With scathing denunciation, Isaiah lashed out at their hypocritical religiosity. Yet, despite the perverseness of the people, Isaiah was thoroughly convinced that Judah was the nation that God had chosen to be the Messianic Nation - the nation through whom a great and a wonderful blessing would one ...

6. Bad Good News Won’t Sell!

Jeremiah 28:1-17

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... to be honest in seeing the human situation as it really is. In other words, we must be willing to face the facts of humanity’s perverse situation. Things are truly bad, and we are in a deplorable mess. This was the problem with Hananiah. He did not tell it as it was. ... You have made this people trust in a lie." The facts about our society are appalling. We are truly a crooked and a perverse generation. Indeed, this is bad news, and you may have trouble accepting it. But the truth must come out! We have to ...

7. Achieving An All-In Victory - 1952

1 John 5:1-12

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... forces that play all about me - and who is not? In my most pious state I sometimes set forth into the wicked world supposedly well-armed with at least some of the "armor of God," only to find myself "accounted as a sheep for the slaughter." The most perverse suggestions assail me and from such unsuspected quarters. A sign, an ad, a smirk, a word, a bump, an insult, a threat, a wild idea, a cold shoulder - and any one of a thousand attacks or appeals and some self rises to react or respond. And as each ...

8. The Child of Promise

Isaiah 9:1-7

Sermon

Harry N. Huxhold

... reveal to us. Mr. Sagan would have limited his candle light to only what the sciences can establish as hard fact. Isaiah would see the larger light which illumines the hard facts of the perversity of human nature and the largeness of God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ. Those are not fables or superstitions. The perversity of the human condition underlies and underlines all of human history. The fullness of God’s grace in Jesus Christ is written large in what happened in the life of that One who was ...

9. The Children of Promise

Jeremiah 30:1--31:40

Sermon

Harry N. Huxhold

... to the suggestion, and the idea becomes an important factor in discovering the killer. The novel is historical in its setting, and is remarkably well constructed and written. Mr. Carr has rendered us a service in helping us to understand that the perversity of our generation is not new. Furthermore, the novel strongly suggests that our present struggles to assist and strengthen the family are vital to the health of our society. The Lessons appointed for this Second Sunday after Christmas indicate that, in ...

10. How Do You Get To Heaven?

Jeremiah 30:1--31:40

Sermon

King Duncan

... startling, we could buy passage for someone else who had already died. At least that was the impression that many of the common folk had when they purchased indulgences from representatives of the official church. This was a perversion of the real purpose of the indulgence, but it was a perversion that is easily understood. The sale of indulgences was a way of raising funds for the church while dealing with the subject of penance. The church's attitude was that even though sin is forgiven, it must still ...

11. The Seventh Commandment: Indecent Proposal

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... I John 1:9 we are told, "If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." The story is told of a very attractive woman in her 20s who was asked how in the midst of a perverse generation she was able to live such a clean life and make a positive moral witness. How did she resist temptation? She said, "When temptation knocks at the door of my heart to do something morally wrong, I let Jesus answer the door." Perhaps that is the key to this ...

12. The Heart of an Intimate Matter

Matthew 5:27-30

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... every Christian man and woman must win. My guess is that Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code, lusty Jesus is more like Dan Brown than the Jesus of the Four Gospels.7 Just as greed is the shadow side of enjoying any particular thing, and just as gluttony is the perversion of the satisfaction of hunger, and just as sloth is an excess of rest without labor, so lust takes what God intended to be a permanent bond of soul-to-soul and makes it into a temporary contact of skin-to-skin. What is intended as holy becomes ...

13. America in the Mirror

2 Kings 17:5-23

Sermon

James Merritt

... to remove God from sight and mind. The Supreme Court tells us that you cannot pray before a graduation ceremony, you cannot pray before a football game, you cannot hang the Ten Commandments on the walls of a public school room. You can talk about condoms, sex, perversion, but you dare not mention God. Who would have dreamed that on this side of the Iron Curtain you cannot pray in school, nor can you study the Bible; but on the other side of the Iron Curtain they are doing both. Well, America needs to learn ...

14. Confronting a Christless Culture

2 Timothy 3:1-17

Sermon

James Merritt

... that in the last days perilous times will come." (v.1) The word perilous literally means "hard to bear" or "hard to deal with." The last days are going to be dangerously different and difficult days. He then lists nineteen characteristics of this poisonous and perverse period that will usher in the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now as you read this list you realize these characteristics have been present, in one degree or another, throughout history. But in the last days they are not only going to ...

15. Who's In Charge Here

Judges 21:24-25

Sermon

James Merritt

... rape, dignifies police killing, magnifies the use and abuse of women; it mocks parents, home, and family; planting in the hearts of our teenagers the seeds of destructive rebellion. We see rebellion in morals. Fornication has become "co-habitation." Sodomy has become "a gay lifestyle." Perversity and obscenity is now defended in the name of "artistic freedom." The bottom line of the society in which we live, is this: "Nobody is going to tell me what to do, and if it feels good I am going to do it." Social ...

16. Put Up and Shut Up

Proverbs 18:21

Sermon

James Merritt

... . Listen to these two statements back to back: "The heart of the righteous studies how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours forth evil." (Prov. 15:28) "The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked what is perverse." (Prov. 10:32) The first statement tells us that a wise person will think before he speaks, because he realizes every word has a consequence. The second verse tells us that the lips of a righteous person automatically know what is acceptable to say, and ...

17. The Church: The Dwelling Place of Wonder

Ephesians 1:15-23

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... because; the way it is projected suggests that we allow a United Methodist Christian to believe almost anything about God or Jesus Christ, and the essential doctrines that relate to salvation. But this is a perversion of Wesley’s idea of the catholic spirit, and certainly such a perversion allows the Christian to be guided by an essentially relativistic ethic or moral ethos. The result is that moral and ethical decisions are determined by one’s own freedom of conscience, without any objective standards ...

18. A Change of Mind

Exodus 32:1-14

Sermon

Timothy J. Smith

... the people. Notice that God referred to the people as "your" people and not "my people." It was as if the Lord God was so mad that God was ready to disown the people and have nothing more to do with them after this outrageous act. The word translated as "perverse" is the same word used to describe the peoples' activity at the time of Noah and the great flood. Just like in Noah's day, God was ready to destroy the people for what they had done. God was ready to write them off and start fresh with Moses, "and ...

19. The Place beyond Revenge

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10, 9:20-22

Sermon

Donna Schaper

... on the train the morning of September 11, and wasn't remotely curious about how it ended. That I had no desire to read another one. I had always found them relaxing, those page turners, relaxing in direct and strange proportion to their goriness and perversity, as if fictional evil were somehow talismanic against the encroachment of real evil into the world. But no more — I don't want to read about people deliberately hurting and killing other people anymore. That I used to like these things seems to me ...

20. The Art of Critique

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... judgmental, that wants things to go the way they want and people to react the way they expect, according to their own personal preferences and standards. When things don’t pan out the way they want, they become angry and spiteful, discontent, contrary, perverse, ornery, impossible to please. They want people around them to “dance to the tune they play” – to decide how others around them should behave and live. Or sometimes, they have no rhyme or reason to their critique at all, except that they want ...

21. A Maturing Faith

Acts 16:16-40

Sermon

Douglas J. Deuel

... spreading the gospel. Then you learn later that it's really all about money. They live in million dollar homes and drive Cadillacs and Mercedes. There are even some who incorporate their own names to ensure they will receive the profits. It reflects a perversion of their calling, but it is not a new development. How many ministries have we seen on television advertising special missions efforts on behalf of needy children in Third World countries? Then later we learn that many do not send but a token amount ...

22. Naaman Is My Name!

2 Kings 5:1-27

Sermon

Barbara Brokhoff

... using soft-terms. So, we no longer steal, we borrow or confiscate. We seldom refer to fornication, but call it, instead, premarital sex -- it sounds so much better. No one commits adultery, we just have extramarital sex. The practice of homosexuality is not perversion, but rather an alternate lifestyle. Dirty movies are not for dirty-minded people, but for mature audiences. Sin is not sin, but rather human error, a simple mistake, or bad judgment. We've assumed that if we can define sin to a more tasteful ...

23. Roots Near The River

Jeremiah 16:1--17:18

Sermon

Tony Everett

... for life support. Inevitably, we are disappointed. By our own reason and strength we cannot completely trust in the Lord. No matter how hard we try, our will is not always one with the will of God. "The heart (will) is devious above all else," says Jeremiah. "It is perverse -- who can understand it?" (v. 9). The apostle Paul states it differently. "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate" (Romans 7:15). So then, what hope do we have if even Paul ...

24. What Money Can't Buy

2 Kings 5:1-27

Sermon

Carlyle Fielding Stewart

... could have prompted her to bask in Naaman's misery. As retribution for being taken captive and being powerless to redress her condition, she could have watched him suffer day by day, delighting in his affliction and viewing it as a kind of perverse payback for taking her prisoner. However, empathy and compassion provoked her to share what she knew with Naaman's wife. All the money in the world could not buy this valuable information. All the money in the world could not have compelled this servant ...

25. Telling The Truth

John 8:31-41

Sermon

Steven E. Albertin

... of truth in a sea of lies! The truth which the church has to announce to the world is twofold, two-sided, double-edged. The truth is this: On the one hand, as Jesus says in today's Gospel, we are slaves to sin. We are trapped, broken, evil, perverse, and at odds with God! And despite our best intentions, we can't help being anything different. But on the other hand, there is another truth. Jesus is the Christ, "the one sent from the Father." Look at Jesus and you see what God is really like: gracious and ...

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