Sermon and Worship Resources

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Matthew 7:1-6

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

It is not uncommon for someone to be temporarily blinded or at least to have his or her vision impaired by the presence of a small foreign object in an eye. A large object is not required to cause this problem; a mere speck will do it. One’s eye becomes irritated; it hurts; tears begin to form, and one’s vision becomes clouded, all because of that speck. We can all empathize with one having this ...

2. Cheering Stones

Luke 19:28-44

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

It was an excited crowd that lined the road and followed Jesus into Jerusalem on his "triumphal entry." The cheers were loud and enthusiastic. Generally Jesus had sought to discourage such acclaim, but this time he voiced no opposition to it. There were others who did, however. The Pharisees in the crowd considered the conduct of his disciples to be totally inappropriate, and they called upon him ...

3. Drastic Surgery

Matthew 5:27-30

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

In February, 1966, a young surgeon from India, then a resident at a St. Louis Hospital, took a radical step in an attempted reconciliation with his estranged wife. She was a staff physician in Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, and was living in a dormitory there. The surgeon called a taxi driver to his apartment door and gave him a package which he asked him to deliver to his wife’s room. His wif...

4. Expressions of True Gratitude

Matthew 21:1-11

Illustration

Herchel H. Sheets

Bishop Hanns Lilje writes with compassion of the men who were his guards while he was a prisoner of the Nazis during World War II. He tells of one pitiable old man whose job it was, among other things, to fasten his fetters before he went to sleep at night. One evening after he finished this task, the prisoner found himself unable to resist saying to him in a very polite and courteous voice, "Than...

5. God Still Thinks about You

Matthew 10:40-42

Illustration

Herchel H. Sheets

Helmut Thielicke says that during World War II, his students often wrote from the battlefield saying, "I am so exhausted from marching, my stomach is so empty, I am so plagued with lice and scratching, I am so tormented by the biting cold of Russia and so dead tired, that I am totally occupied, without the least bit of inner space for any speculative thinking." Sometimes they would write that they...

6. Hindering Riches

Matthew 19:16-30

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

Shortly after the opening of the popular off-Broadway show, Godspell, in the summer of 1971, Cheryl A. Forbes made an interesting observation about it. She said that the show was for the young, in conception and spirit. It was written, acted, and sung by young people to give young people an answer to their despair. But she pointed out that not many youth were there to get the message; the audience...

7. Mighty Faith

Matthew 17:14-23

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

Engineering by command! That is what Jesus’ words about faith and mountain-moving seem to suggest. He says that if one has only a tiny bit of faith, he or she can move a mountain just by telling it to move. The feats of our modern earth-moving equipment are astounding enough, but they are nothing compared to this engineering by faith! But this could create problems. Suppose a person was unhappy w...

8. Minute Accounting

Matthew 12:22-37

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

"I tell you, on the day of the judgment, men will render account for every careless word they utter." Really? A number of questions arise immediately when one hears that statement. One has to do with the logistics of accounting. A lot of careless words are spoken. Are we to believe that God (or some of his assistants!) keeps a verbatim record of all of these words and then confronts each person wi...

9. Numbered Hairs

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

The Plague is personalized in Albert Camus’ play State of Siege. It comes into a town in the form of a man who is accompanied by his secretary. The Secretary carries a notebook in which she often makes entries. She is always smiling, but at a stroke of her pencil, a person can be struck with plague and die. Few have the courage to challenge this threatening team. But a young medical student by the...

10. Strained Gnats

Matthew 23:1-39

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

Family illnesses and other problems caused Margery Wilson, later to become an outstanding actress, author, and lecturer, to have to try to earn money to support her mother and sister while she was still a young girl. She got a job playing a piano two hours per day, during luncheon and dinner breaks for the orchestra, in a theatre in Cincinnati. But about that time, some well-meaning social workers...

11. Unlimited Forgiveness

Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

I don’t know how much arithmetic Simon Peter knew. But if he did not understand the answer Jesus gave to his question about how many times a person should forgive one who has wronged him, it was not because he was deficient in mathematics, but because he was short on love. In asking the question, Peter must have known that he was speaking for a lot of other people. Injuries of one kind or another...

12. Voluntary Blindness

Matthew 6:1-15

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

"Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." That sounds impossible, doesn’t it? Wholeness was a major emphasis of Jesus’ message, was it not? Is he here asking us to become split personalities? No, with purposeful exaggeration he is simply emphasizing that "theatrical virtue does not count in the Kingdom of God,"1 and that we, therefore, should pay little attention to our good ...

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