Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: take action, take steps, take measures, take the initiative, move, make a move, react, do something, proceed, go ahead, behave, function, perform, operate, work, take effect, serve, be efficacious, play, play a part, take part, be an actor, be an actress, be one of the cast, appear, pretend, play-act, sham, fake, feign, put it on, bluff, pose, posture, masquerade, dissemble, dissimulate, deed, action, gesture, feat, exploit, performance, undertaking, maneuver, stunt, operation, venture, effort, enterprise, achievement, accomplishment, law, decree, statute, bill, Act of Parliament, edict, fiat, dictum, dictate, enactment, resolution, ruling, rule, judgement, canon, ordinance, proclamation, command, commandment, mandate, measure, stipulation, direction, requirement, division, section, subsection, portion, part, segment, component, bit, turn, routine, number, item, piece, sketch, skit, playlet, dance, song, pretense, false display, show, front, facade, charade, guise, affectation, appearance

Antonyms: do nothing

Showing 1 to 25 of 71 results

1. After Good Friday

Hebrews 10:16-25

Sermon

Richard W. Ferris

... he promised to a man who should have been a great-grandfather by this time, and who, as yet, had no children with his wife Sarah. But God promised, and Abraham believed, and a covenant was made. God made his stipulations to Abraham and gave circumcision as a sign of his covenant. God gave Moses some stipulations of this covenant that he made with Abraham and we call them the Ten Commandments. He told Moses and the Israelites to obey and that he would be their God and that they would be his people. As an ...

2. A Habitat For Humanity

2 Samuel 7:1-17

Sermon

Arthur H. Kolsti

... went through his papers and manuscripts. They discovered a number of proposed plots for stories. One such plot dealt with the varied members of a family who had inherited a house. The bequest had one stipulation. To receive possession of the house they had to live in it harmoniously and purposefully. That's quite a stipulation. Living together in harmony is no easy task in any house large or small. The testator in Fitzgerald's proposed plot doesn't leave any margin for error. It's simply get along or get ...

3. God's Favorite Day

Psalm 118:24

Sermon

James Merritt

... remember, what you don't spend is forfeited. Did you know that every morning a gracious God who loves you, deposits into your bank of time 86,400 seconds of time, or 1,414 minutes, or 24 hours a day. Every second, minute, and day comes with the same stipulation because God gives you this amount of time to use each day. Nothing is ever carried over on credit to the next day. There is no such thing as a 26 hour day. From sunrise to sunrise you have a precisely determined amount of time. That is why someone ...

4. Welcome, Rich and Poor

Luke 16:19-31

Sermon

Ron Lavin

... laid down his gavel. "I'm sorry," he said. "The auction is over." "What about the other paintings?" a woman asked in a shrill voice. "I'm sorry. When I was called to conduct this auction, I was told of a secret stipulation in the will. I was not allowed to reveal that stipulation until this time. Only the painting of the son would be auctioned. Whoever bought that painting would inherit the entire estate, including the paintings. The man who took the son gets everything." God sent his Son 2,000 years ago to ...

5. The Shepherd King

Jeremiah 23:1-6

Sermon

John Wayne Clarke

... like a shepherd leads the flock. This shepherd will be like a righteous branch, the Messiah, who will succeed in his service to God and humankind, and will make possible salvation and security for all. This leader will completely carry out all covenant stipulations in his relationship with God's covenant people. From our reading, especially those verses prior to the ones we are working with today, one would think that such a leader would possess all the qualities that people expect from a king. There are ...

6. The Main Thing is to Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

James W. Moore

... way? He has a precious gift for you. Let Him in. Welcome Him gladly with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. The main thing is (first of all) to love God unreservedly. II. SECOND... IT'S TO LOVE PEOPLE UNCONDITIONALLY. Unconditional love, love with no stipulations, love with no strings attached... Jesus called it the most authentic sign of discipleship. Look it up in John 13:34-35. He says: "A new commandment I give you that you love one another as I have loved you. By this kind of unconditional love ...

7. Put Within Us

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Sermon

R. Kevin Mohr

... more or better laws but a change of heart that would allow God's people to be faithful. That is exactly what God promises to do. "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts," God says in verse 33. The stipulations of the Sinai covenant were inscribed on tablets of stone and later written down in documents, something external to the people of the covenant. God will now ensure faithfulness by making the covenant something radically internalized and a part of who and what the people ...

8. Starting Over

John 12:20-36

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

... s mighty hand preserving and protecting a remnant of God’s people as well. God had declared that God’s initiatives were everlasting, so God would always have at least a faithful few who would not bow their knees to Baal or violate the stipulations of the Suzerain-Vassal covenant written on stone and sealed with blood at Mount Sinai (see Exodus 24). Second, along with judgment and the spared remnant, the “Day of the Lord” would also inaugurate the Messianic Age in which righteousness would rule and ...

9. A Dance in the Desert

Philippians 4:4-7

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

... nature of prophecy in ancient Israel is more forth-telling, declaring again the meaning of the ancient Sinai Covenant, explaining the mission of Yahweh as witness to the world, and describing the implications of the morality envisioned by the suzerain-vassal treaty stipulations. By the time the seventh century BC rolled around, the prophets were rarely welcome in the royal palaces, even though all that was left of a once proud and expansive Israel was the tiny mountainous territory of Judah. During the 600s ...

10. Marketplace Christianity

John 2:13-22

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... marry into the faith, and to make sacrifices in the Temple. The “law” did not discriminate but encouraged foreigners to worship the God of the Hebrews. In this way, Israel was truly a “light to the world” for God.In Numbers 15:14-15, Moses stipulated that there should be no exclusion of gentiles from practicing the faith:“For the generations to come, whenever a foreigner or anyone else living among you presents a food offering as an aroma pleasing to the LORD, they must do exactly as you do. The ...

11. You Can Be Real

Matthew 5:33-37

Sermon

Michael B. Brown

... is permanently nullified. Ernest Fitzgerald, in Keeping Pace, told of the wealthy English philanthropist Jeremy Bentham. In his will, Mr. Bentham bequeathed a fortune to a London hospital on whose Board of Directors he had sat for decades. There was, though, one peculiar stipulation. Mr. Bentham's will read that in order for the hospital to keep the money, Bentham had to be present at every board meeting. So, for over 100 years the remains of Jeremy Bentham were brought to the board room every month and ...

12. Are Greatness and Christianity Compatible?

Mark 9:33-37

Sermon

Donald Macleod

... thinking that he or she must now add up the totals in order to be sure to pay God off. Jesus taught that the kingdom of God was offered and given to all who were open to receive it and, unless they accept it without stipulations and conditions, (like little children), they are not eligible to receive it at all. There is one thing more. Receiving the kingdom does not depend only upon our attitude of openness and humility; something further is there - the possibility of growth into spiritual maturity, to ...

13. Divorce-Proofing Your Marriage

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

R. E. Lybrand

... and defending them against all the enemies that seek to destroy them. I once had a couple ask me to marry them. As we were going through the counseling sessions, they asked me if they could write their own vows. I permitted them to do so with the stipulation that the vows be in agreement with the principles of Scripture. When they brought them for me to read, there was one statement I made them change. They wrote: "We will live together as husband and wife as long as LOVE lives in us." I would not permit ...

14. The Quality of Mercy

Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

... contains seven separate petitions; seven separate wishes are expressed in it. One of these is this: "Forgive us our debts (or) Forgive us our trespasses (or) Forgive us our sins," according to the translation one prefers. But there is in this prayer a further stipulation: "Forgive us ... AS we forgive ..." When Jesus gave his disciples this prayer-of-prayers, he made no comment at all about it, except at this point. But in regard to this forgiveness petition he made a most drastic kind of statement. Here is ...

15. L’Chaim!

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Dean Lueking

... dike. The only way he could get to both on winter Sunday mornings was to skate across the frozen body of water separating the two churches. When he asked permission of his ecclesiastical elders to skate the distance, they reluctantly agreed - but only on the stipulation that he would not enjoy doing so. That story illustrates a much larger problem, the problem of knowing God only under the Law and never under the Gospel. Don’t let that blight cripple your spirit and rob your faith of the delighting in God ...

16. God's Glory Manifest

Exodus 24:1-18

Sermon

... oppression. God has led them to Sinai, and there manifests the divine glory. The Lord God is revealed in such a way that produces holy terror and respect in Israel. The terrible and holy God makes covenant with the people which Yahweh God has redeemed. The stipulations of the covenant have been stated to the people. The covenant has been sealed by a sprinkling of blood and a meal between God, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders on the mountain. Our text of today then narrates God's call ...

17. Communion Is Relief

Matthew 11:25-30

Sermon

... your parents the way God says you should. Not a one of us can say that we love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. Gosh, we fall short there, don't we? And we fall equally short in loving our neighbor when we put stipulations on the kinds of neighbors we are willing to love. There is no question in our minds concerning that passage of Scripture. We know that we have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. But thanks be to God, he has not abandoned us in our sin. Because ...

18. John the Baptizer

Isaiah 40:1-31, Luke 1:67-80, John 1:19-28

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... his cousin Jesus replied reassuringly, "Come now, this is how we should fulfill our duty to God." John’s brief public ministry moved from crisis to crisis. We can see him as the divinely-called catalyst who made stringent ethical demands, stipulating repentance and righteousness, bluntly warning Pharisees and Saducees, "You brood of vipers, who told you to flee from the coming Wrath?" (Matthew 3:7) He turned on soldiers, the multitude, taxgatherers, with equal candor. No one was spared the strict, moral ...

19. The Evangelism Of Emphasis - 1946

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... and all too generally even since - religion was thought of as something predominantly repressive and restrictive; it was primarily a matter of renunciation, refusal, abstention - what one does not do. Every sect and cult listed its prohibitions and carefully stipulated its numerous taboos. The commandments were for the most part negative, emphasizing the "Thou shalt Not!" Then, when Jesus came, how he reversed all that! From first to last, his life was one magnificently positive adventure. His clarion call ...

20. What Are Christian Liberals? - 1951

John 16:5-16

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... then we’re under a certain high compulsion to accept it - not because of its dogmas, not because Jesus said it, but because it’s true - and because it’s true, Jesus said it. Suppose we set forth the most indispensable characteristics, or better yet stipulate the qualifications for being a Christian liberal. This is what I aspire to, the thing that this church, if I understand it at all, is aiming at. This is the great objective. This is the banner we lift, the ideal we proclaim as a Christian Liberal ...

21. He Ought to Stick Out!

1 John 4:7-21

Sermon

Charles L. Koester

... God." Making a good confession almost sounds too easy, doesn’t it? But Christ comes to live within us when we simply confess and request, "Come, Lord Jesus, be my guest. I can’t go life alone." Christ comes to those who truly want him. He didn’t make any stipulations with strings attached to obtain his spirit, only that you want him. He did not say you would not stagger and fall flat on your face in sin, only that you want him to pick you up and guide you when you do fall. Nor did he say you must ...

22. His Trial

Luke 22:66--23:25

Sermon

Brett Blair

... . Only one person can save it from extinction, and she is a fabulously wealthy woman who left the town years ago and now plans to return for a visit. She arrives with her weird entourage, she offers to put the town on its feet again, but then she stipulates her price. The life of the town’s leading citizen must be taken. It was he she contended who made her pregnant when she was a young girl and then mercilessly deserted her. The town fathers are of course shocked by her criminally insane demand. Murder a ...

23. The Apostles' Creed: Maker of Heaven and Earth

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... of the trial came on the seventh day: according to the New York Times, the most amazing court scene in Anglo-Saxon history. The defense asked that William Jennings Bryan be called to the stand as an expert on the Bible. Bryan agreed, stipulating only that he should have a chance to interrogate the defense lawyers. Dismissing the concerns of his prosecution colleagues, he took a seat on the witness stand, and began fanning himself. Darrow began his interrogation of Bryan with a quiet question: "You have ...

24. A Fool and his Money

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... by a man from the crowd which has been surrounding Jesus: "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." Apparently the man's older brother refused to give him what he felt he was due. The laws of inheritance in that day stipulated that the elder brother would receive a double portion of the legacy,(2) then the balance distributed. For whatever reason, this fellow was feeling cheated and he wanted Rabbi Jesus to act as Probate Judge, just as Moses had done centuries before.(3) But ...

25. Merry XMas

John 1:1-18

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... never have had a true picture of God...one who loves us in spite of our sin. But, of course, there was more reason. He came to die for us...to die that we might live. The God of justice in the Old Testament had made certain stipulations as to what a right relationship required and the basis of it was a system of offerings and sacrifices that human beings had made virtually of no effect. So in divine love, God substituted one all-encompassing sacrifice that gave humanity another chance...the Babe of the ...

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