Sermon and Worship Resources

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2 Sam 18:1–19:8

Teach the Text

Robert B. Chisholm Jr.

... deeds. Illustrating the Text Divine discipline is inescapable. Film: Duel, directed by Steven Spielberg. Based on a short story by Richard Matheson (b. 1926), this film (1971) is Spielberg’s (b. 1946) feature film debut. In it a terrified motorist, ... action in our lives. Poetry: “The Hound of Heaven,” by Francis Thompson. A brilliant but tortured poet who struggled a lifetime with addiction to opium, even living as a street person, Thompson (1859–1907) writes about the pursuing God as “the hound of ...

2. Homecoming

Luke 15:11-32

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... of Milan." 2. Kenneth E. Bailey, The Cross and the Prodigal, (St. Louis: Concordia, 1973), p. 31 3. Robert Frost, "The Death of a Hired Man" 4. Dave Wilkinson, "The Lost Younger Son," http://www.moorparkpres.org/sermons/2001/111801.htm 5. Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, Mike Graves and Richard Ward, eds., (St. Louis : Chalice Press, 2001), pp. 101-102 6. Will Lamartine ...

3. A Word to the Wealthy

Mark 10:17-30

Sermon

King Duncan

... Depp was spending $30,000 per month on wine, and even paid $3 million to blast the ashes of the late journalist Hunter S. Thompson out of a custom-made cannon. (4) Of course, as we often say, this is a free country and you can spend your ... distancing us from God. It is an unusual person who can balance possession of great wealth with the call to follow Jesus. A man named Richard Koch recently wrote a book titled, Living the 80/20 Way: Work Less, Worry Less, Succeed More, Enjoy More. In it he cited a recent ...

4. God Never Gives Up on Anyone

John 14:15-21

Sermon

Richard Gribble

The name Robert Stroud is not one commonly heard in ordinary conversation, but this man's contribution to humanity will live on in the minds of many under a different title, "The Birdman of Alcatraz." By nature, Robert Stroud was not a congenial man. As a youth he was always getting into fights, disagreements, and various altercations. When he was only nineteen he killed a man in a barroom brawl, was convicted of second-degree murder, and was sentenced to the Federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, ...

5. Hear No Evil

Luke 1:46-55 (53); 4:18-16; 19:1ff; 16:14-15 et al

Illustration

Richard A. Jensen

Remains Of The Day is a powerful movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. Hopkins plays the role of the chief butler at a large estate in England. Emma Thompson plays his chief assistant. The movie is set in the years immediately preceding and succeeding World War II. The butler is the central figure in the film. He has come by his trade naturally. His father was a butler before him. The estate, therefore, is the only home he has ever known. He knows no other life. In this world he is a man of ...

6. God Is the Hound of Heaven

Jeremiah 31:7-14

Sermon

Richard Gribble

Students of American history have always been fascinated by the life and career of the sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. Honest Abe, as his Kentucky and Illinois peers knew him, is the subject of history lessons from primary school through graduate school education. Lincoln was the stereotypical backwoodsman who felt the call to public service on local, state, and national levels. He became well known for his anti-slavery political and moral stance and saw his goal as president to ...

7. Week Two Of Lent

Sermon

Richard Gribble

Reflections:Week Two Of Lent Monday Week TwoDaniel 9:4-10Luke 6:36-38 The Compassion Of God Joseph Girzone, the popular author, tells the following story in his parable Joshua And The Children.1 Over a hundred years ago in France, a butler attached to a wealthy family knew where the family kept all their money, hidden in a vault underneath their chateau. The butler methodically plotted to kill everyone in the family and steal the money. One night when everyone was asleep, he crept into the house and first ...

8. Have We Kept Our Contract with God?

Genesis 17:1-27

Sermon

Richard Gribble

One day a man went to his son's room and knocked on the door: "John, wake up, it is time for you to go to school!" From inside the answer came back, "I don't want to go to school, Dad." The father was persistent, knocked again, and said, "You must go to school." The answer again came back, "I don't want to go to school!" "Why not?" asked the father. "There are three reasons," came the reply. "First, I find school boring; second, the kids tease me terribly. Third, I simply hate school." Then the father ...

9. Discipleship: The Beauty and the Cross

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

Richard Gribble

Once upon a time a bowl was born. It was not much of a birth — no long months of planning and no great anticipation, no patient shaping under loving hands. Scarcely a thought went into the creation of this little bowl. The quick impersonal movement of a few machines and a trip through a hot oven was all it took for him to be created. There was really nothing to look at, no warmth and no beauty. He was shipped off to a store to be sold. One day this bowl was purchased, not because he was beautiful, but ...

10. Accepting the Lord Once Again

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Richard Gribble

He came softly, unobserved and yet, strange to say, everyone knew him. The time was the fifteenth century; the place was Seville in Spain. He came to announce peace and to proclaim the good news. He came to teach and to cure; he came to bring the light. As he walked by the cathedral, a funeral procession for a little seven-year-old girl was just beginning to form. He heard the sobs and pleas of the girl's mother. Moved with compassion he asked the bearers of the funeral bier to halt. He touched the girl; ...

11. Building God’s Kingdom: The Christian Challenge

Romans 10:8-13

Sermon

Richard Gribble

On December 26, 2004, the greatest natural disaster experienced in the world in over a century struck southern Asia. The 9.0 magnitude earthquake, with its epicenter some 1,000 miles southwest of the island of Java, generated a tsunami that traveled outward at almost supersonic speed in all directions. It created death, destruction, dislocation, and mayhem for literally millions of people in some ten nations that border the northeast regions of the Indian Ocean. Thousands of people, tourists on vacation ...

12. You Are in Good Hands with God

Isaiah 40:21-31

Sermon

Richard Gribble

The SS seemed more preoccupied and more disturbed than normal. The idea of executing a young boy in front of hundreds of spectators was no light matter. The commandant of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was extremely pale, almost calm, and he bit his lip. The gallows threw its shadow over him. This time, the Lagerkapo refused to be the executioner. Three SS soldiers replaced him. The three victims were seated next to each other on chairs. A single noose was placed around each man' ...

13. Reconciliation: The Heart of Love

Hosea 2:14-20

Sermon

Richard Gribble

Have you ever taken a course of action or held a particular attitude, all the while thinking that it was correct and then never giving it another thought? That is what happened with Ludovico Gadda, Pope Leo XIV. Ludovico was born in a small Italian town, like many of the popes, all from Italy, who have occupied the Chair of Saint Peter since the time of the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century. It seemed that Ludovico was destined for ministry and priesthood from his earliest days. He was ordained and ...

14. Rising to New Life

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Sermon

Richard Gribble

Akron, Ohio, in 1935 was the site of what many might call a miracle. That year Bill Wilson, a former New York stockbroker, and Dr. Bob Smith, a surgeon in Akron, met. Both men for many years had been helpless and hopeless alcoholics. Their meeting, however, led to the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous, an international organization which over the last eighty plus years has literally saved millions of lives by assisting people to realize their own brokenness and their need to seek reconciliation and ...

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