Sermon and Worship Resources

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Hosea 2:2-23

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... who preached to the Northern Kingdom of Israel who was actually born and brought up there. There is no greater pain and promise than preaching to your own people about suffering and hope. To be certain, outside intervention is often necessary to jog a recalcitrant people into action. But it is also less risky and much less intense to deal with other people. We can always tell other people how they should respond to their children and their domestic problems much more easily than we can gain a hearing ...

2. Mission Ready!

Mark 6:7-13

Sermon

Charles R. Leary

... being mission ready: Be good managers of Time. I note that Saint Mark uses the word “immediately, or “straightway, at least eight times in his short Gospel. To me that says: You have no time to waste. Do not hesitate. Do not mess around with the recalcitrant. Do not get bogged down with non-essentials. The subject of time seems to inspire some preachers to conjure up all kinds of apocalyptic scenes, predicting a near end-of-time, in their anxiety that we be saved before it is too late. Is that valuable ...

3. Tough Faith In Tough Times

Luke 18:1-8

Sermon

Larry R. Kalajainen

... for immediate solutions. Get tough on drug dealers. Mandatory prison sentences, more police, cut off aid to Colombia. Yet our solutions don't seem to solve the problem. They have the virtue of speed and efficiency, but the problems themselves prove more recalcitrant and intractable than we imagined. Because we lack patience and the persistence to search for solutions that may not be speedy and efficient, but which, in the long term, would be more effective, we become frustrated and lose interest. Long-term ...

4. God’s Safety Net

Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon

D. Wayne Burkette

... shepherd the peopie of Israel, a day when there will be a Good Shepherd who will care for and feed the flock with justice and tenderness, not avarice and greed. Ezekiel’s imagery is vivid. The Good Shepherd will seek the lost and bring back the recalcitrant sheep who keep going astray. The Good Shepherd will bind up the injured and crippled sheep, strengthen the fearful and weak. The Good Shepherd will watch over the fat and strong sheep, so that they do not take advantage of the lean and weak ones. The ...

5. Dessert in the Desert

Deut 32:10-12 · Ez 37

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... teaching its young to fly, catching them safely on its spreading wings, the Lord kept Israel from falling. The Lord alone led his people without the help of a foreign god. (Deuteronomy 32:10-12 GNB) It is in the wilderness, as the recalcitrance of the children of Israel comes into contact with the affection and strength of God, that they shape their religious thought and practice. Commenting on this, biblical scholar John Bright writes "that it was during this period that Israel received her distinctive ...

6. The Cunning Craftsman, God

Luke 18:9-14

Sermon

Allan J. Weenink

... seeks to help us refashion, remold and renew that which has been defaced. Each one of us comes with his own private burden. Here we are with our unfinished commitments, duties left undone, opportunities neglected, our consistent inconsistencies, incompetent failures, recalcitrant rationalizing, and misdirected pride. Before God we stand humble and hopeful. That is all he asks. To come to exaltation, fulfillment, forgiveness, and a new wholeness in him, this is the point where we must begin. We must begin ...

7. The Trinity

Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon

Brett Blair

... and loving Father. To be sure there are stern images of God in the Old and New Testaments, even in the Gospels themselves. But the love of God is the major emphasis, which runs throughout the Bible. There is no message which breaks down the resistance of recalcitrant hearts like the message of persistent love. A love bestowed in spite of what we have done; a love given that was not earned; a love that came despite our resistance; a love that healed when sickness pervaded our soul; a love that to this day ...

8. The Star Thrower

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... be the favorite son or daughter. Release us from the compulsion always to demand from you and others and never to give. Enlarge our souls so at least to embrace anew those nearest and dearest. Father of us all, speak in fatherly tones to the recalcitrant and wayward. Grant your tender compassion to those who mourn and your healing power to those ill in hospitals struggling with the powers of disease. And we pray for those in all sorts and conditions -- for all children lost and alone, for families fractured ...

9. The Ten Commandments #5: Honoring Parents

Exodus 20:12

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... not be hastily shortened." You see, in many ancient cultures, parents had the power of life and death over their children. Even in Israel, the penalty for a child cursing his or her parents was death.(5) (You hear that, kids?) A father could say to a recalcitrant son, in the Hebrew equivalent of Bill Cosby's words, "Listen, boy, I brought you into this world; I can take you OUT." But this commandment was not a threat; it was a promise. For the individual, the sound teachings of the parents - the good habits ...

10. Crying On Palm Sunday

Luke 19:28-44

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... could one improve upon Jesus' picture of God as a Mother Hen, brooding over her chicks? God, with outstretched wings, trying to gather together all of His children into one community of faith and hope and love...but they would not! And still will not! Our recalcitrance and unwillingness to be gathered together as God's children still brings grief to the heart of God! Jesus wept as He beheld the city. And why shouldn't He? How the populace had missed the point! The religious leaders, caught up in their own ...

11. Easter Transportation

John 20:1-9

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... up in the rhythm of a vocation that speaks to your soul. Help came and you thought it was the gardener. It wasn't the gardener! And how about that occasion when you all but gave up on that son or daughter of yours, so impudent and recalcitrant had that son or daughter become. Your parental agony wasn't a matter of months, but several years. Then one day that would-be adult became an adult and walked across that stage, or wrote you that letter of rapprochement, or simply stopped fighting. Help came and ...

12. Gentle On My Mind (Fruit of the Spirit: Gentleness)

Galatians 5:23

Sermon

James Merritt

... not only to declare our faith, we are to defend our faith, but we are to defend it with meekness; that is, with gentleness. It is so easy to get impatient with lost people, and especially when you try to share the Lord Jesus with someone who is recalcitrant, argumentative, stubborn, even ridiculing. We must always remember even with the Madalyn Murray O'Hairs of this life, we are not trying to win arguments. We are trying to win souls. Why fuss with a blind man who cannot see; why argue with a deaf man who ...

13. The Trinity

John 16:5-16

Sermon

14. Cross-Bearing

Mark 8:31-38

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... on a lap in a crowded car is not what Christ had in mind when he talked about taking up the cross. Nor did he mean the kind of thing of which people complain — difficult working conditions, aging parents who are no longer able to function, recalcitrant teenagers who refuse to obey, or even giving up chocolate for Lent — as "my cross to bear." The cross was an ugly thing, an instrument of death used for political criminals to maintain Pax Romana, an ancient equivalent of a hangman's noose, a gas chamber ...

15. Our Family Inheritance

Galatians 3:15-25

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... subjective response or changing moods. When they first brought their infants home from the hospital, they already had much love for them. They love them through the terrible-twos and the giggling-fours, through broken windows and smart-alecky back talk. They love them as recalcitrant adolescents and rebellious young adults. God's love for us is also like this, for it is independent of our response. It is not governed by our poor show of love for God. Instead it is given freely, for we have been adopted into ...

16. When the New Comes, the Old Passes

Sermon

R. Robert Cueni

... Jesus had with two convicted criminals as all three were hanging on crosses. The conversation is rich in nuance and meaning. The Lord asks that his tormentors be forgiven. One of the criminals repents and seeks forgiveness. The other remains unrepentant, even recalcitrant. Appropriate to Christ the King Sunday, there is an element of gazing toward the future when the repentant criminal says, "Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in ...

17. The Transformative Power of God

1 John 1:1--2:2

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... around town saying that he no longer needed to go to church or be involved with parishioners or with God. He was content to be by himself, and encouraged others to join him. After a few weeks, as this man’s mantra continued, the pastor decided to visit his recalcitrant parishioner. It so happened it was a cold winter evening and when he arrived he was warmly welcomed by the man who invited the pastor to take one of two seats in front of a roaring fire in the hearth. The two men spoke about all kinds of ...

18. Strength for The Journey

John 16:12-15

Sermon

Dean Feldmeyer

... it wrong, like in the proposed sacrifice of Isaac, he admitted it and corrected the situation immediately. That’s what really good Fathers do, right? And, if you spend enough time with your father, you can actually develop a relationship with him. Even the quiet, introspective, recalcitrant kinds of fathers can be warmed up if we work hard at it. The son part of the Trinity was no more difficult to figure out than the Father part. The Son is Jesus, right? And where do we find Jesus? Why, in the gospels ...

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