Sermon and Worship Resources

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Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

Donald Macleod

Today our focus is upon an unusual event which closed the earthly ministry of Jesus. Perhaps even more so than his Resurrection has the Ascension created unceasing controversy among believers and scholars alike. All four Gospels report Jesus’ Resurrection in considerable detail, but it is only Mark and Luke who include the Ascension, albeit briefly. Luke, however, in this first chapter of The Acts...

2. An Easter Dividend: The Courage To Be and To Do

Acts 4:1-22

Sermon

Donald Macleod

In the year 1793 when the French armies were laying siege to the Mediterranean fortress of Toulon, Napoleon built a battery in such an exposed position that the other officers said he would never get a soldier to man it. But Napoleon set up beside it a large sign with these words, "The Battery of Men without Fear." And he was never at a loss for volunteers to man it. Madame Chiang Kai-shek, wife ...

3. Are Greatness and Christianity Compatible?

Mark 9:33-37

Sermon

Donald Macleod

In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Malvolio comments: "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." There is a large measure of truth in this observation, but it falls short in any discussion of greatness from the Christian point of view. True greatness is neither born in you, nor achieved by you, nor imposed upon you. It is caught, for it is the byproduct o...

4. Beginning with Easter - Then What?

Acts 4:32-37

Sermon

Donald Macleod

How often have we heard this remark: "What can you do for an encore?" Or, "That’s a hard act to follow!" Easter Day is now behind us: we’ve sung the great Alleluias, chanted hymns of victory, and put the blossoms and lilies on a sunny windowsill. But what of it all? Is it now a closed event? Or, more appropriately: Is it just the beginning? Charles Wesley in his Easter hymn sang: "Love’s redeeming...

5. Easter Journeys Out and In

Acts 8:26-40

Sermon

Donald Macleod

A local television station has omitted the use of a commercial during one hourly break and has featured a spot announcement called Reach Out. It is a simple challenge to their viewers to reach out with all their affluence and resources to someone in need - the homeless, the friendless, the confused in mind and soul - and especially to bridge the gap between race and race, class and class, creed an...

6. Easter Turns ONLY into ALSO

Acts 10:23b-48

Sermon

Donald Macleod

Two simple yet rather apt incidents come to mind with regard to today’s text: 1. A story comes from Cincinnati of a little Jewish boy who was told by his rabbi that he must no longer attend athletic classes in the Presbyterian gymnasium and swimming pool. Trying to explain this to the Presbyterian minister, who was much beloved for what he was doing for the boys of the community, the lad choked up...

7. Holy Arithmetic

John 6:1-15

Sermon

Donald Macleod

First Series Up-Dating Out-Dated "Holy"After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a multitude followed him, because they saw the signs which he did on those who were diseased. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there sat down with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a m...

8. Holy Believing

John 6:25-59

Sermon

Donald Macleod

"Truly, truly, Isay to you, he who believes has eternal life." (v. 47) No one wants to die. Yet, who among us would like to live forever? This is our paradox. This is our dilemma. To die means the end of what we are and have; it signifies also the cessation of whatever yet we had hoped to be. But wouldn't living forever be equally undesireable? For it holds out endlessness and sameness, like Shake...

9. Holy Believing

John 6:25-59

Sermon

Donald Macleod

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst. The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, "I am the bread which came down from heaven." They said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" Jesus answered them, "Do not murmur among...

10. Holy Diet

John 6:24-35

Sermon

Donald Macleod

So when the people saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the f...

11. Holy Friendship

John 6:60-71

Sermon

Donald Macleod

After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him. Jesus said to the twelve, "Do you also wish to go away?" Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God." John 6:66-69 (RSV) Jesus said to the twelve, "Will you also go away?" Simon Peter answered him,...

12. Holy Living

John 6:51-65

Sermon

Donald Macleod

Years ago, Harry Emerson Fosdick, then at the height of his influence as minister of the Riverside Church, New York City, was making a tour of Palestine and other countries of the Near and Middle East. He was invited to give an address at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, where the student body comprised citizens of many countries and representatives from sixteen different religions. Wha...

13. How Can We Restore the Christian Home?

Mark 10:1-12

Sermon

Donald Macleod

And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to put her away." But Jesus said to them, "For your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' 'For this r...

14. How Do You Remain Religious?

Mark 7:1-23

Sermon

Donald Macleod

Second Series Questions Jesus Provokes Now when the Pharisees gathered together to him, with some of the scribes, who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their hands, observing the tradition of the elders; and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unl...

15. How Does Religious Conduct Work?

Mark 7:31-37

Sermon

Donald Macleod

Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, through the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech; and they besought him to lay his hand upon him. And taking him aside from the multitude privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, ...

16. Passing the Easter Miracle On

Acts 3:11-26

Sermon

Donald Macleod

Three short illustrations fit aptly into the pattern of our thinking today: 1. Mark Antony, in his eulogy at the funeral of Julius Caesar, had just whipped up the emotions of the crowd to fever pitch, and as they broke out into a vengeful mob seeking Brutus and the other traitors, Antony stood by and remarked: "There let it work!" 2. A visitor to the City of Rome was being shown the wealth and r...

17. Putting Lent into Focus

Joel 2:12-17

Sermon

Donald Macleod

Within the lifetime of many of us of the Reformed or Free Church tradition, any serious observance of the season of Lent had been somewhat rare or, indeed, optional. Lent was the private and sophisticated preserve of the Episcopalians and Roman Catholics and of a few Protestants who wanted others to think they were "with it." Nowadays, however, the whole Christian world recognizes Lent almost rout...

18. Readying the Twelve for Mission

Acts 1:12-26

Sermon

Donald Macleod

After two such unprecedented events as Resurrection and Ascension, certainly this question is in order: what can God do for an encore? Or, one might simply exclaim: what a hard act to follow! The eleven disciples left Mt. Olivet and returned to Jerusalem, as Jesus had commanded them. Naturally, they sought out the Upper Room, a place filled with memories that were now sacred. Other faithful person...

19. Reclaiming Our Covenant

Genesis 9:18-29

Sermon

Donald Macleod

How often in the secular, rough-and-tumble affairs of daily life we hear the quick suggestion, "Let’s make a deal!" What does all this mean? Simply this: two persons or parties agree mutually to put a proposal equally on the line and pledge themselves to abide by the result, come what may. But something is inevitably at stake here: an assumed honesty on the part of each person involved. "I’ve give...

20. Reconciling Palms and Thorns

Isaiah 50:1-11

Sermon

Donald Macleod

Great days are a typical event in the life story of any people. Every nation has a calendar date when they stop, look and listen, accompanied by a backward glance momentarily upon the way by which they have come. We Americans have our Fourth of July; the French, their Bastille Day; and the English - they have so many Victoria, Waterloo, Trafalgar, and so on. Earlier than any of those were the anci...

21. Rediscovering Our Spiritual Dimension

Genesis 17:1-27

Sermon

Donald Macleod

Nearly one hundred years ago, when Albert Einstein was merely a child and his ideas about time and space were wholly unexplored, a distinguished English headmaster, Edwin A. Abbott, wrote a strange little book titled Flatlands. It portrayed a peculiar world of two dimensions: a world that had length and breadth, but no height; a world of surfaces in which neither from desire nor necessity did its ...

22. Restoring Our Sense of Priorities

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Donald Macleod

Whatever happened to the Ten Commandments? It is true, of course, that any one of them is trotted out on occasion to bolster an argument or to nail an offender with the rebuke, "Shame on you! Remember the Fourth (or Fifth or Sixth?) Commandment!" But what of the Ten Commandments as a whole? (The Decalogue, as biblical scholars and liturgists refer to it?) Rudyard Kipling, England’s poet laureate o...

23. Returning to Genuine Religion

Jeremiah 30:1--31:40

Sermon

Donald Macleod

There is a simple poem by Louise F. Tarkington which goes in part this way: I wish there were some wonderful place Called the Land of Beginning Again, Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door And never put on again. What has this to do with the return of the Jewish exiles from seventy years in slavery in Babylon? Everything! Because, as th...

24. Reviving Our Moral Responsibility

2 Chronicles 36:15-23

Sermon

Donald Macleod

Some years ago I spent several weeks during the summer indexing and classifying the Scripture texts in all the volumes of published sermons on my study shelves. Many interesting trends and preferences emerged from this tabulation; for example, among some 4,000 printed sermons only two preachers had ever done a sermon from the Book of Chronicles. And little wonder, someone might very well say. Here...

25. Servant Worship

Psalm 116:1-19

Sermon

Donald Macleod

The season of Lent is drawing now to a close. On Ash Wednesday we said that Lent is not primarily a period when we "don’t do this" or "don’t do that;" rather it is intended to be a time of self-denial and self-discipline during which we tone up the moral fiber of our inner being and when we place greater emphasis upon the spiritual and less upon the material. As someone has said, "It is a matter o...

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