Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1 to 25 of 150 results

John 15:18--16:4

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... no judgment, their children rightly perceive they are indifferent and have no guiding values. If God exercises no judgment, we might rightly perceive him to be indifferent or even non-existent. But this is a text of hopefulness. There is judgment because God cares. He uncovers the cover-ups, not to destroy us, but to bring us to the light so that we might be healthy and flourish. The sin and evil of the world attempt to squelch truth and justice and purpose. But take heart says Jesus, because the Divine ...

2. Uncovering Cover-Ups

John 16:5-16

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... classmates stops cold. Suddenly, the shortest, ugliest, and weakest kid becomes a player" (Time, August 2, 1993, p. 23). Consequently, kids, like nations, come to believe with Chairman Mao that morality begins at the muzzle of a gun. Yet, this Holy Spirit of God is uncovering this cover-up of his eternal truth. A group of parents has organized to counteract the violence. They meet each night to pray and then to patrol the streets to ward off violence and keep kids from shooting one another. So long as there ...

3. If the Confession Doesn't Fit You Cannot Acquit

Proverbs 28:13

Sermon

James Merritt

... canceled. Now learn this lesson well about sin, and how you deal with sin and how God deals with you. When you cover your sin, God uncovers it. Sooner or later He will bring it out into the open. IT may be in time, it may be in eternity; but one way or the ... other He will do it. "Be sure your sin will find you out." (Num. 32:23) On the other hand, when you uncover your sin, God covers it. That is, when you come to God and confess your sin and forsake your sin and repent of your sin, you know ...

4. Good for the Soul

Proverbs 28:13

Sermon

James Merritt

... it." (Proverbs 28:13a, MSG) There is a danger to covering sin. II. There Is A Deliverance In Confessing Sin Now if it is true that "He who covers his sins will not prosper" then the opposite of that is also true - "He who uncovers his sin will prosper." You uncover your sin by confessing your sin. Listen again to the second half of the verse, "People who cover over their sins will not prosper. But if they confess and forsake them, they will receive mercy." (Proverbs 28:13, NLT) The word to confess literally ...

5. The Art of Restoration

John 3:1-17

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... remold us back into our original image of beauty with all of the freshness and potential gifted to us at the moment of our birth. God has the power to reveal the best of us and rework the parts that need restoring. God has the power to uncover and recover the “us” we thought we had destroyed! God is the great Restorer! In fact, this is what it means, as we look to our scripture for today, to be “reborn” in the Spirit of God: “gennetheanothen”! It means to be saved, healed, rescued, restored by ...

6. Bread for the Party (Bread of Life I)

John 6:1-15

Sermon

Charles R. Leary

... very large crowd and still have baskets of leftovers. What does it mean? One view says the five loaves and two fish were multiplied into substantial amounts of food so all could eat. Another view says, enough food was in the crowd that once it was uncovered it fed the people all they could eat and still had leftovers. This second view is illustrated by the mosaic an early artist made on the walls of a third century church in Israel, the Church of Multiplication. The logic is something like this: you wouldn ...

7. Moving Words

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

Larry Goodpaster

... coach and band director who together taught me discipline and teamwork; of pastors who brought the gospel alive for me; and Sunday school teachers who taught me to integrate faith-language with faith-living; of two professors who taught me the discipline of study and the means of uncovering buried treasures in texts. But in the words and life of Jesus, the Teacher, I catch a glimpse of what I am to do, and who I am to be. If we only skim the words of this passage, we will miss a rich phrase: “it is enough ...

8. Which Self Are You?

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... where, strangely enough, all the great churches are sinking, so you don’t walk up to the church now, you walk down, because it’s built on a lake bed. It has something to say about the culture, too, I’m afraid. Yes, we walked the recently uncovered ruins archaeologically of the Teotihuacan - the valley of the gods - where a shrine and a great city were built, which Cortez, when he invaded that part, never saw, because it had been covered by the sands of the eons. Yes, we climbed the twenty story high ...

9. Diamonds Falling From Your Lips

Matthew 23:1-39

Sermon

King Duncan

... replied smoothly, "You see, my dear, her name was posted right up front in the plane, under the names of the pilot and co-pilot." To which the wife replied, "Okay, now give me the names of the pilot and copilot." The man's hypocrisy was uncovered. Jesus spent much of his time uncovering the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his day. He told his followers, "Do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice as they teach." It's important to note that not all the ...

10. Old and New Commandments

Exodus 34:29-35

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... . We know how a person's face can glow with the reflected light of a fire. So too Moses' face glows with the reflected light of God. It is significant in our text that when Moses is giving the commandments of God to the people, he leaves his face uncovered, and the light of God shines forth. Thus, the text testifies to the fact that the commandments that Moses is giving are in fact the Word of God. Moses' shining face becomes the testimony to the truth that the commandments are God's Word to his people. Are ...

11. The Power of Positive Dreaming

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

Susan R. Andrews

... and honoring their dreams. How? By moving beyond the controlled rationality of their minds. In recent years, scientists have been able to establish the presence of dreams in the sleep of every single human being. The movement of the eyelids and brain waves during sleep has uncovered the certainty that each one of us dreams an average of an hour and a half each night - that our inner worlds spin six or seven dreams every time we sink into our pillows. Whether we remember them or not, dreams are truth for us ...

12. The Agony of Defeat

2 Samuel 11-12, 1 Kings 15:5

Sermon

James Merritt

... you ought to couple it with reading Psalm 51. Because Psalm 51 was written after David's sin was discovered and uncovered. Years later, David's son, Solomon, would write: "He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and ... God brings into David's life a prophet by the name of Nathan. I want you to see the stages in which David's sin is uncovered and dealt with. a. Illustration In II Samuel 12 the prophet Nathan comes to David for the express purpose of confronting him with his sin. But ...

13. The Spin Zone

2 Samuel 11:1-27

Sermon

James Merritt

... to try to cover. Then you tell three lies and oh brother! You are in trouble up to your ears. As Walter Scott put it, "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." As we all now know today, David's cover-up was uncovered. In fact, we are talking about it today, thousands of years after it happened. It was recorded in God's word for millions of people to read over the last three thousand years. Remember this – Cover-up always costs more than confession. If you don't believe that ask ...

14. Be Charitable In Your Judgment

1 Corinthians 4:1-21

Sermon

Richard Hasler

... nothing wrong but that even this inner conviction should not be the ultimate test. Adequate judgment cannot be made "before the Lord comes." Only in the last day will the true facts be known, and more importantly, the true motive of the heart be uncovered. Paul closes this section with the following words, "Then each one will receive commendation from God." Does this thought insinuate that God's judgment may not be as severe as that of our critics or of our own assessment? What guidelines are implicit in ...

15. How Not To Throw A Party

Luke 14:1-14

Sermon

Alex Gondola

... about forty years ago. But I did consult the twelfth edition of Emily Post's Etiquette. Luke 14 focuses on etiquette for guests and hosts at dinner parties. I thought I should see what the original "Miss Manners" had to say on that subject. I uncovered a lot while browsing through Emily Post's Etiquette (Funk and Wagnalls, 1969). I learned to kneel, kiss his ring, and address him as "Your Holiness" when having a private audience with the Pope. I learned replies to lunch invitations to the White House must ...

16. Need Help Removing That Roadblock?

Exodus 13:17--14:31

Sermon

Steve Burt

... haunt them -- fears, doubts, and low esteem that will make them consider taking their eyes off the prize. It will be a struggle, but they will not give up. They will persevere, believing God wants them to succeed. So it is with us. Individually and corporately we must work to uncover or discover God's vision for us. Some of us must recover it. We must honor it and ask God to help us achieve it. We must seek the help of others and assist them as they pursue God's plan for them. Some of us can be the ...

17. Taking The Risk Out Of Dy(e)ing

John 20:1-9

Sermon

Lee Griess

... it works. Now that seems to make good sense to me. But it was the headline which attracted my attention: "Test Takes Risk Out of Dyeing." Another recent news article intrigued me even more. It was a report that archaeologists in the Holy Land had uncovered the tomb of the High Priest Caiaphas. It was Caiaphas, you remember, who presided over the plot to have Jesus arrested, convicted, and crucified. Do you know what they found when they opened his tomb? They found Caiaphas, or I should say, they found the ...

18. Surprised By Joy

Matthew 13:31-35, Matthew 13:44-46, Matthew 13:47-52

Sermon

Donald Dotterer

... thrilled by finding buried treasure? The point of Jesus' teaching here is that there is a great joy in finding God that is not unlike that of finding a fortune. Furthermore, the truth is that the finding of God brings a much deeper and lasting joy than the uncovering of buried gold could ever bring us. Indeed, this finding of God is worth giving up everything one has in order to have it, just as the finder of buried treasure will sell all that he has in order to buy the field in which he made the discovery ...

19. Keeping God First in the Polls

John 3:1-21

Sermon

James Weekley

... us alive. The tang of living is there if we would only toast it with the Host of the Resurrection. What this comes down to is that this Christ connection frees "us" to be "us," the intended, potential "us." After discarding the fat and feathers, we uncover the real truth about ourselves. Recall the comtemporary slogan: "What you are is God's gift to you. What you make of yourself is your gift to God." Religion not only earns its salt by getting our teeth into God, but by sinking our molars into ourselves ...

20. Who Is Your King?

Mark 11:1-11

Sermon

Erskine White

... and fully human at the same time. Then there is the enigma of understanding Jesus just in His flesh and blood, as one of the most multifaceted and complex individuals who ever lived. I suppose one could spend an entire lifetime searching and never uncover every dimension of Jesus’ character and personality. There was Jesus the Teacher, who taught with authority even at the age of twelve (Luke 2:41f) and all through His adult life. There was Jesus the Healer, who healed the sick in body and soul, curing ...

21. A Thankful Heart

Luke 17:11-19

Sermon

Erskine White

... Leviticus 13-14); their situation was even worse than what happens to many AIDS victims today. When you were diagnosed a leper, you were completely cut off from the community. You had to wear mourning clothes, as if you were dead. You kept your head uncovered, your lips veiled and everywhere you went, you had to cry, "Unclean, unclean!" in order to warn others from getting near you. You lived outside the village, in caves or open pits reserved for lepers. You spent your days begging for food and your nights ...

22. “You Did That for Me!”

Mark 8:31--9:1

Sermon

Thomas Peterson

... cannot make it on our own. We do not have enough money, nor can we gain access to it; we haven’t the will to tackle a task; we don’t have enough grasp of our desperation to find a direction to go in; and, we can uncover no resources to help us move off dead center. Financial, religious, social or psychic resources are exhausted, and we are bankrupt. Then, someone comes along. “Yes,” they say, “I’ll co-sign your note.” Or, they listen, caringly, helping us to see viable solutions to our dilemma ...

23. The Road To The Cross

Matthew 27:11-26

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... Jesus, delivered him to be crucified (Matthew 27:24-26)." It is not a pretty story. Yet it is a story full of insights about the nature of our sin. In fact, this is a story that we need to tell. We need to tell it because the story uncovers an element of sin that American Christianity, because of some of our history in this country, has too often overlooked. The story of the sentence of Jesus testifies to us that sin is not just an individual's affair; sin is a social problem. In fact, it was social ...

24. The Quest And The Question Of The Way

Micah 5:1-4

Sermon

Ron Lavin

... to do?" the power brokers of the city asked Micah. "What makes you so sure that you know the will of God?" they queried. Abhorring greed and cruel oppression, this farm boy-prophet of high, holy, moral earnestness, indignantly confronted the deceit and cruelty he uncovered in Jerusalem. "The will of God is on the side of the oppressed people," Micah said. If you want to know who speaks for God, one of the best questions you can raise is, "Who speaks for the people, especially the little people who cannot ...

25. Jerusalem: City for All Time

2 Samuel 5:1-5

Sermon

Donald Zelle

... of Israel, it contains many cultures. Within the Old City now there is a Moslem Quarter, a Jewish Quarter, a Christian Quarter, and an Armenian Quarter. Those same people, as well as scientists around the world, join archeologists each year in digging into the ruins, uncovering the past. The discoveries and the almost universal interest in the city support what has already been said: Jerusalem is a city for all time. You may not have been there. Maybe you have. You may wish you could go, but you don't need ...

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