Sermon and Worship Resources

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Matthew 11:1-19

Sermon

George Bass

... we look for another?" which gives ultimate meaning to our lives and enables us to live without fear and anxiety. A few days ago, I was tuning my radio and happened to hear the name John Lewis, along with "missionary pilot in Zaire, Africa," so I listened and heard John speak. He told a story about an encounter with death that happened recently on a river in Zaire. John’s mother, who is our next-door neighbor, had told the story to my wife, and now I heard him tell it. His wife’s parents were visiting ...

2. Battle With The Law

Mark 2:23-3:6

Sermon

King Duncan

... certainly don't have to go back to the world in which Jesus lived to find examples of legalism. The Puritans of 17th and 18th century America were famous for meting out various forms of punishment for people who did not keep the sabbath. For example, two lovers, John Lewis and Sarah Chapman, were tried for sitting together on the Lord's day under an apple tree. A soldier wet a piece of an old hat to put in his shoe to protect his foot. He was fined forty shillings for doing this heavy work. In 1656 Captain ...

3. Marked For Mission

Sermon

George Bass

... , some as missionaries, the rest learning about and supporting the work of missions. The son of our next-door neighbors, John Lewis, is a missionary pilot in Zaire, Africa; he and his wife have been there over eight years. He is in ... also become acute in the meantime. All four of them paid a tremendous price to engage in missionary work in Zaire, Africa. When Anita, John’s wife, became pregnant with her third child, her pregnancy became so complicated that she had to be returned to the United States; her ...

4. Why Just Once A Year?

Deuteronomy 26:1-15

Sermon

King Duncan

... Freeman, Susan Duke, Rebecca Barlow Jordan, Gracie Malone, Fran Caffey Sandin. Eggstra Courage for the Chicken-Hearted (Tulsa, OK: Honor Books, 1999), pp. 234-235. 4. "The last letter from my father" by Patti Davis Ladies' Home Journal, Sept. 2001, p.123. 5. "The Best Is Yet To Come" by John Lewis, AARP Magazine, May/June 2004, pp. 40-43. 6. Leandra Lynch, MD, "It's a Wonderful Life" "Reasons to Believe," Reader's Digest, Dec. 2003, pp. 119-120.

5. Reviewing Our Hungers (Series: Questioning Our Values)

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

... all the good you can, in every way you can, for as long as you can. Righteousness is more than keeping the rules; it is a stand for justice, a search for truth, a life of love. I have been reading the story of Jim Lawson, John Lewis, Diane Nash, C. T. Vivian, Bernard Lafayette, Jim Bevel, Rodney Powell, and Gloria Johnson, all college students who led the Civil Rights sit-in’s in Nashville which integrated department store lunch counters. I’ve been moved by their determination to take their cause for ...

6. Trying To Get The Pageant Right!

John 1:19-28

Sermon

King Duncan

... Elijah. The Jewish people believed that Elijah would return immediately before the Messiah. Was John Elijah? "I am not," John replied. "Are you the Prophet?" John was asked. "No," was John's answer. Again they asked him, "Who are you?" John answered quoting Isaiah, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, `Make straight the way of the Lord.'" John helped build a sense of anticipation. His voice still echoes today. Lewis Grizzard remembers one Christmas that was very special to him. He and his mother ...

7. Lent 2

John 3:1-21, Genesis 12:1-8, Romans 4:1-25

Sermon Aid

Russell F. Anderson

... been given. This righteousness is given not only to the Jews but to all those who, like Abraham, trust in God and obey his promptings. Gospel: John 3:1-17 Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin, comes to Jesus at night, so as not to be noticed by his friends, to explore some ... Unfortunately, their joy is tinged with the knowledge that their relationship must be so brief. Joy dies and Lewis is plunged into despair and doubt. He used to teach concerning the meaning of pain and sorrow, acting as if he had all ...

8. Praying To The Congregation

John 17:6-19

Sermon

Thomas Long

... always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me" (John 11:41-42). Prayer words spoken "for the sake of the crowd"? This is a clear-cut case of praying to the congregation. But before ... was intimacy with God they sought -- that we seek. In a scene from Shadowlands, a film based on the life of C.S. Lewis, Lewis has returned to Oxford from London, where he has just been married to Joy Gresham, an American woman, in a private Episcopal ...

9. Blazing a Path to Christ

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... I is coming after me: I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit" (Mark 1:7-8). The trailblazers of history, Columbus, Copernicus, Lewis and Clark, Christiaan Barnard, and John the Baptist, have provided models for us to follow. While we, like these famous men of history, have not sensed or experienced the goal of our quest, we have some idea of its greatness. We recall Saint Paul's words, "What no eye has ...

10. Salvation in Jesus’ Name

Acts 4:5-12

Sermon

Ron Lavin

... theology which excludes Jesus as the promised Messiah." That's what happened that strange and wonderful day in Jerusalem when Peter and John stood up to the corrupt court and bore witness to Jesus, the way of salvation. What difference does this story make for ... hearts and that all people are called to obey it (Romans 2:15). "When a culture ignores the moral law," C. S. Lewis said, "such spiritual concepts of the Old and New Testaments as atonement and redemption make little sense. Without a law to transgress ...

11. Swimming With The Sharks

Mark 9:2-13

Sermon

King Duncan

... ' disciples. Go with me to the top of a mountain. Jesus is there as are his three most trusted disciples: Peter, James and John. As usual Mark doesn't give us details about what happened on the mountain. Did they have a time of prayer? Did Jesus ... Yes, Marcellus, I have changed; he changed me!" (4) To see Christ as he really is is to experience personal transformation. C. S. Lewis put it quite pointedly: "He (Jesus) never talked vague, idealistic gas. When he said, Be perfect, He meant it. He meant that we ...

12. The Lamb Wins

Revelation 5:1-14

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... give up. However, John writes that the outcome of the world is certain--they are not alone. There is a whole host, a Great Hall of Fame from Abraham to the present moment, who are cheering them on from Heaven on every side. There are people who will never know Christ unless they see Him in you. Don''t give up. Keep on keeping on. SECOND, DON''T BE OVERWHELMED BY THE WORLD AND ITS SEEMINGLY LARGE SYSTEMS. Dr. Donald English, noted British Methodist, told of a chain of stores in England named "Lewis". It is ...

13. The Lost And Found Collection

Luke 15:1-7

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... because he was going to heaven anyway. Lewis said that he finally met such a minister, but he could not believe him. Why? Because he remembered all the truthful sermons he had heard at Moreland Methodist Church. The truth is that everybody is either lost or found. There are only two places where one can spend eternity—heaven or hell. One day when I stand before Jesus and render accountability, I don’t want him to look at me and say, “Bill, do you remember John Smith in your Myrtle Beach congregation ...

14. Everything You Need to Know about Love

John 15:9-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... Christ died. However we are going to focus a little more intently than normal on the meaning of love today. In our lesson from John’s Gospel we read these words: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you ... of emptiness. The person characterized by need love is always grasping to attain from others things or values which he or she covets. Lewis contends that many times when we humans say to another, “I love you,” what we are really meaning is, “I need you, I ...

15. Lewis on the Importance of Salvation

Luke 13:1-9

Illustration

John Piper

... , the brilliant English scholar and Christian writer died the same day President John Kennedy did. Even today his books on the Christian faith are being reprinted by the thousands. One of the reasons I think God so greatly blessed the ministry of C. S. Lewis, and still blesses it, is that Lewis never had an elitist, artsy love for fine literature or fine music or fine culture in any form, though he himself was a great artist. In his life everything is subordinate to the salvation of lost sinners. I find ...

16. The Revelation Code V: Cruisin' Toward the Dream

Revelation 21:1-27

Sermon

John E. Harnish

... bears the scepter of all the universe and everlastingly makes all things new, here and hereafter; and therefore, I am safe forever. [1] That's John's final vision…the vision of a wedding. The vision of Christ's final victory, God's kingdom come….One day…. 2. But until ... and the striving for good, the children come to the final moment of their journey through the land of Narnia. Lewis writes: Suddenly they shifted their eyes to another spot, and then Peter and Edmund and Lucy gasped with amazement and ...

17. What Shall We Become?

Luke 3:7-18

Sermon

Gary L. Carver

... was by no means a new one. It became obvious that this is the central movement of God in the world. It is not unusual that John the Baptist would call on those of that day to be presented in a way that had not been traditional. It is also the core of ... will get the whole network of relationship, but if we have lived only for ourselves, this is what we get and nothing more." Lewis realized why solitary confinement is such a dreaded punishment. It denies a basic need of ours as social creatures. This is the ...

18. Be Hatched or Go Bad

Mark 16:1-8

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.” What Lewis is “pecking at” here is this: we must be hatched, or we will “go bad.” We must “break out” of the death grip ... it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?” (John Steinbeck, Winter of Our Discontent (Viking Press, 1961), p.115. A resurrection life, once tasted, forever transforms. Look at petrified Peter ...

19. Saints By Faith: Good to the Last Drop

Revelation 7:9-17

Sermon

John E. Harnish

... until she came to a lamppost. [1] The world of Narnia, just on the other side of the wardrobe. I believe C. S. Lewis is suggesting that right alongside this world, this reality, is another—an eternal world, an eternal reality, a different dimension—to be found ... you just couldn't see it. The action goes on downstage, but in that moment you can see what's going on upstage. So John holds two actions side-by-side. Downstage is the gritty "here and now" of the first century world and the suffering of the first ...

20. All-Surrounding Grace

John 3:14-21

Sermon

Elaine M. Ward

... have eternal life." And at the end of his good news, he wrote, "These (stories) are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:31). We have those stories. It is all a matter of believing them. C. S. Lewis wrote such a story about Christ as the lion Aslan in the world of Narnia and when Lucy, human, stepped through the wardrobe, she was in another world. When she returned to share her good news with her two brothers and ...

21. A Faith that Will Transform You

Luke 19:1-10

Sermon

King Duncan

... stood a casket and as Dr. Burrell looked at the face, he knew at once that it was Billy. He turned to John Callahan and asked, “What’s he been up to, John? How did you find him? How did he come down here to the mission?” “He came down here with his face ... yourself feeling lost this day, whatever that may mean to you, won’t you open yourself to his love? 1. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 2. Edwin Orr, “Playing the Good News Off‑Key,” Christianity Today, January 1, 1982, 24‑25. Cited in Robert ...

22. Do You Think That I Have Come To Bring Peace?

Luke 12:49-56

Sermon

Will Willimon

... 4), he created division, this Jesus, this caster of fire upon the earth. John Vannorsdabl, President of Philadelphia Lutheran Seminary, was preaching from this pulpit. And John was preaching on Jesus' calling of his disciples, the calling of Peter and ... the pale, peaceful idol we have created in our own image? C.S. Lewis described his conversion to Christianity, his own experience of, late in life, being “surprised by God." For Lewis, it was not an altogether pleasurable experience when he was embraced by ...

23. Finding Our Roots in God and Country

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 6-10

Sermon

William J. Carl, III

... , this is it," he said with great delight. There on the wall in the broom closet was a simple plaque that read, "John Harvard, who attended Emmanuel College then moved to Massachusetts and started a college there." It was almost a "That's what you ... roots and our common history. You see John Wesley, a Fellow at Christ Church College, Oxford, whose 300th anniversary they were celebrating while I was there. Then you stroll down the street to Magdalene College where C. S. Lewis was cornered by God one day and ...

24. JESUS: Liar, Lunatic, Legend, or Lord

John 6:25-59

Sermon

Brett Blair

... not know that Jesus is anything else but a teacher. You are a first century person who has just been introduced to him. [Read John 6:35, 41-51] Pretty incredible isn't it? For someone to make such claims. What if, later today, you were introduced to someone ... , what did he just say?" Anyone who seriously made such claims would easily be labeled a kook, a nut, certifiable. C.S. Lewis, in his book "Mere Christianity," makes the following statement about Jesus: "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of ...

25. The Wedding Was Saved, but the Marriage?

John 2:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

... has to love. He can no more keep this love to himself than John‑Boy could keep his ideas off the tablet page. It was a deep yearning to express his love to share his heart with another person that drove God to create [humankind]. He didn’t make us so that we would love him but so that he could love us. We were not made to be a race of servants but to be the object of God’s affection.” (4) The brilliant writer C. S. Lewis says that when Jesus changed the water to wine, he simply short‑circuited ...

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