Sermon and Worship Resources

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1. A God Pleasing Savior and God Pleasing People

Malachi 1:1-5

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

One of the basic rules of interpersonal relationships is that you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can never please all the people all the time. There is a children’s story that illustrates how totally useless it is even to try always to please everyone. The story tells about a father, his son, and their donkey. As their journey began, the father led the donkey and the boy r...

2. All I Need Is A Little Rest!

Mark 1:35-39

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

One of the most effective sermons I have ever preached was shared ten years ago when I was just beginning to preach. I didn’t expect it to be good because I was tired when I wrote it and tired when I preached it. In fact, I was afraid I was failing the people that day because I thought the sermon wasn’t much good at all. In the sermon I shared with the folks why I was so tired, all the things tha...

3. Butterflies and Jesus

Mark 9:2-13

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

As I was working on my sermon this past week I toyed with the idea of bringing a live butterfly along with me to church this morning so I could let it go right about now, as an attention getter. I decided against doing that, however, because I was afraid it would get your attention so well that I might never get it back again. I had visions of all of you sitting out there spending the rest of the ...

4. Cultural Revolution or Spiritual Problem?

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

Can you imagine what it would be like if John the Baptizer were the pastor of this congregation today? I wonder who would run away first, John or all the rest of us? The way the scriptures decribe him, it sounds as if he would have been very hard to get along with. The man could never have come to your home for dinner, for instance, because he ate only locusts and wild honey. Most of you ladies do...

5. Even The Demons Believe!

Mark 1:21-28

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

Say the word "demon" and the first thing that might pop into your mind is the image of a child you know. Sometimes we describe an ornery child as "a little demon." But in the Bible, the word demon is never used that lightly. It is a word that is always used seriously and fearfully to describe one of the forces of evil, an unclean spirit. Saint Mark records for us the story of one demon who filled ...

6. How Can You Tell When People Are Religious?

Mark 2:18-22

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

For seven days King David fasted. Day and night he went without food as he prayed desperately for the life of his newborn child. The baby had been born as a result of his affair with Bathsheba, an adulterous affair that had led to the murder of Bathsheba’s husband. From the moment the baby was born, it was evident the child’s life was hanging by a slim thread. So David prayed for the life of the c...

7. It’s not what you know, but who you know!

John 1:19-28

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

In a dark room, pitch black except for the glaring light from the naked bulb of a small lamp set on a table, there are three men. One, bedraggled and covered with sweat, sits at the table, his face exposed to the light. Standing next to him are the two other men who move in and out of the light, sometimes shoving their faces right into the face of the man who is seated. No doubt you have watched ...

8. Jesus Knows Everything! Jesus Is God!

John 1:43-51

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

It is part of God’s nature to know all things. We call this quality omniscience. God knows everything. There is nothing he does not know. Jesus once said that the Father’s knowledge is so total that he even knows when a single bird falls out of the sky and he knows the number of hairs we have on our head. In the case of some of us it is easier for him to keep track of that last statistic. That God...

9. Just Follow The Signs

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

"God so loved the world ..." begins one of our best-known scripture verses. God loved the world! He didn’t love only one small corner of the world. He didn’t love only one little race, one tiny tribe in the world. God loved the world! He loved Jews and Gentiles alike. He loved a man and a woman named Joseph and Mary. He loved some shepherds. He loved some Wise Men living way off in the East somepl...

10. Lessons From A Girl In Trouble

Luke 1:26-38

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

Mary was "in trouble." A married woman gets pregnant and we say that she "is in a family way," or "expecting." But when an unmarried girl gets pregnant, we say she is "in trouble." And Mary was definitely "in trouble." She was going to have a baby and she wasn’t married. One day, out of the clear blue sky, with no warning or advance preparation whatsoever, an angel from God came to Mary and told h...

11. Memories

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

Hidden away in just about every family’s photo album is a cute little picture of a baby’s buns. Along with all the other photos of baby’s first haircut, first birthday, first bike ride, and the like, there’s also that one picture, that infamous photo showing off baby’s buns. Parents love to have at least one such photo; but the individual whose anatomy is so displayed grows up living in fearful dr...

12. No Longer Afraid

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

It’s amazingly easy to make people feel guilty and afraid. Say to a child, "Dad wants to talk to you about something!" and immediately a worried look will come across the child’s face as he begins to comb through his memory for something he may have done wrong. The same thing happens when a student is told, "You have to go to the principal’s office." When an adult hears, "The boss wants you in his...

13. Ready or Not, Here I Come!

Mark 13:32-37

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

There’s an amusing commercial on television in which a man is about to let go of his bowling ball as he eyes the pins at the end of the lane. Just as he is ready to release the ball, he gets lifted out of himself by two men in sparkling white suits and goes walking off across the lanes, through the walls of the building and onto a staircase surrounded by clouds. At first he doesn’t understand what...

14. The Best Advertising of All

Mark 1:14-20

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

One of the biggest industries in the United States today is the production of advertising. Billboards, signs on benches, magazines, newspapers, placards on the sides of buses, messages on the insides of match books, "junk" mail, computer phone calls, radio and, of course, television, all seek to commercial-ize us, to sell us something. Commercials make a host of promises. We’re told that if we jus...

15. The Chief Miracle of Christmas

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

Three little boys were playing together one day. In the course of their play they began to speak about their fathers. Actually, they began to brag about their fathers, each trying to make his father bigger and better than any other father in the whole world. They bragged about a number of things until they came, finally, to brag about the most important thing of all (in their eyes): how much money...

16. Where’s the Power?

Mark 1:40-45

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

The purveyors of "positive thinking" like to tell us that if we want something badly enough we can get it, no matter what it is. All we need is the desire, the hunger, the commitment, and if we have these three things, we can accomplish whatever we want. If we fail to achieve our goal, it is only because we didn’t want it badly enough. Positive thinking has much to recommend it, but it has its lim...

17. Who Does He Think He Is?

Mark 2:1-12

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

"Who in the world does he think he is?" was the question buzzing around in the threatened little minds of the scribes in our Gospel lesson. Jesus had just spoken forgiveness of sins to a man and he had said it as if he really meant it! The scribes immediately took offense. "Only God can do that!" they said to themselves. "Who does he think he is, anyway?" As our Lord carried out his ministry of he...

18. Word of Mouth Evangelism

Illustration

Daniel G. Mueller

Everyone knows that the best form of advertising ever invented and the one that is still most successful is word-of-mouth — people telling other people. There used to be an automobile named the Packard. Packard was the last car manufacturer to get into advertising. It didn't happen until old man Packard died, because whenever he was approached to buy some advertising for his cars he always said, "...

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