Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1 to 25 of 49 results

Luke 24:50-53

Sermon

Robert Noblett

What we want to talk about is not, I am extremely sure, a theme that dominated your breakfast conversation this morning. It is not, I am equally confident, a theme that came up in any church conversation around here in the last little while. It is not even, I am still confident, something that you have ever thought much about at all. And I am sure it is not something you have heard homiletically a...

2. A Sleeping Bag God

2 Samuel 7:1-17

Sermon

Robert Noblett

This is definitely not a text a minister should use if her congregation is thinking of building a new church structure or adding to an existing one. King David, well-meaning to be sure, develops pangs of conscience because he is living in his “house built of cedar” and thinks to do better by God. “Here I am living in a house built of cedar, but God’s Covenant Box is kept in a tent!” (2 Samuel 7:2 ...

3. A Song Sung Blue

1 Samuel 1:1-20

Sermon

Robert Noblett

Years ago, Neil Diamond wrote and recorded a song that became quite popular; it was entitled “Song Sung Blue.” The lyrics have long left me, but that title came rushing back when I began looking at David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan. That’s a good definition of a lament a song sung blue. A Medium for Grief At first this might strike us as a bit strange singing our grief but there it clearly is i...

4. A Thanksgiving Checklist

Luke 12:48

Sermon

Robert Noblett

Do you ever find yourself getting confused over actual holidays and legal holidays? I do. About all that I am ever really sure of is that holidays mean sales. In fact, I am convinced that if you were to take certain holidays and ask the person on the street how we came to have them and what they mean, the majority wouldn’t have the foggiest. Pulaski? Who’s Pulaski? In 1927 Reinhold Niebuhr noted ...

5. A Tireless and Timeless Image

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Robert Noblett

Images are highly influential. They become emblazoned on the wall of our minds and they evoke a wide range of responses. Millions of people will remember the fireman carrying the baby out of the ruins of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. World War II veterans, particularly the ones who served in the South Pacific, will always remember Mount Surabachi and the Marines who raised an Ameri...

6. An Untouchable God?

1 Samuel 6:1-7:1

Sermon

Robert Noblett

The story of the ark’s removal to Jerusalem is vintage Old Testament so far as most of us are concerned. It features a storm-and-battle God, fearful and yet rejoicing believers, and a great deal of religious uncertainty. Reading it from the vantage point of the latter years of the Twentieth Century, we are apt to question its relevance for our day. But let’s not write it off with undue haste. We a...

7. Are You Exercising Your Faith?

Mt 4:1-11 · Phil 3:12 · Gen 32:3

Sermon

Robert Noblett

There was once a woman who had faith. When asked the origins of that faith, she supposed they were many. For one thing her mother and father were, in the best sense of the term, religious people. Prayers in their home were regular and natural, and this woman, together with her siblings, were involved as children in this prayer life. What’s more, this woman’s parents were members of a local congreg...

8. Are You Still Frightened of the Dark?

Genesis 1:1-5 · John 1:4-5 · Psalm 139:11-12

Sermon

Robert Noblett

Children go through a period when they are frightened of the dark. They are convinced that there is a robber inside their clothes closet. They are sure there is some kind of ethereal character lurking about in the basement. Beyond a doubt, they are of the conviction that there is a ghost-like essence biding time beneath their bed. Children usually outgrow that stage, but occasionally you find thos...

9. Are You Under Arrest?

Heb 5:11-13; 10:39

Sermon

Robert Noblett

It was a Saturday morning and I recall it all well. I was at my grandmother’s house when a call came from my mother that there was a policeman who wanted to see me at home. I could hardly believe what she was relating! I couldn’t imagine why a policeman would want to see me. Home I went and there sitting in a chair in the living room was a great big hulk of a sargeant! I still remember his opening...

10. Called to Love, Not Like

John 15:9-17

Sermon

Robert Noblett

The humorist Will Rogers told us that he never met a man he didn't like. In the musical that celebrated Rogers' life, there is a song by that title and in that song Rogers admits that one man "put him to the test," but never pushed him finally to the point where his ability to like evaporated. I don't know what your response is to Rogers' disclosure, but I am led to think he was to utilize an over...

11. Cross Connections

John 18:1-11

Sermon

Robert Noblett

Good Friday is not an easy day on which to preach, nor is what happened on Good Friday easy to explain. Many thoughtful Christians have a difficult time understanding how this very bad day in the life of Christ has become for Christians a good day. What's more, many find it perplexing to say that Jesus died for their sins because he died some 2,000 years before they were born. Then perhaps most pe...

12. David and the Devil

2 Samuel 11:1-27

Sermon

Robert Noblett

We can be thankful that the Bible is brutally honest about the people whose stories it tells. Because of this, we are able to see the power of God at work in the lives of very human people. What’s more, if this were not the case and instead the Bible whitewashed its personalities, we would begin to wonder whether it seriously addressed the very real brokenness and moral failures that can mark all ...

13. Dessert in the Desert

Deut 32:10-12 · Ez 37

Sermon

Robert Noblett

On one occasion our family went to a park for a picnic, and as my wife and I sat watching our children play, we beheld the most unsettling of sights. There was a child, perhaps eleven months of age, playing in the sand next to his mother, and he was eating handfuls of sand the way you and I consume handfuls of Planters Peanuts. One of his siblings brought this matter to the attention of his mother...

14. Easter for Thomas, Too

John 20:24-31

Sermon

Robert Noblett

The urge to be a part of what is going on is very powerful. Or to say it differently, to be on the outside looking in can be unsettling at best. Just remember the last time you came into a room and found a group of people talking excitedly about a news event or something that happened to someone else in the office. You probably went right up to those assembled and in some way signaled your interes...

15. Easter Transportation

John 20:1-9

Sermon

Robert Noblett

The eyes of our nation have, in recent time, twice been riveted on Antarctica and the need to rescue medical personnel from a weather station there. Happily both rescues were successful, but they were conducted in weather conditions that were exceptionally hazardous for flight. Aircrews had to wait for precisely the right time to make each rescue attempt. The rescuers knew they wanted and needed t...

16. Entrustment

John 17:6-19

Sermon

Robert Noblett

Over thirty years ago, the late David H. C. Read preached and published a sermon series on the National Radio Pulpit that he titled Overheard. In that creative volume, he addressed a series of faith issues one might conceivably have overheard at that time. We overhear comments regularly. We might be riding on public transportation and overhear an amusing or telling conversation between two people,...

17. Extravagant Guestures in a Cost-Effective World

Mark 14:1-11

Sermon

Robert Noblett

Families of faith that dwell in older buildings eventually have to struggle with the issue of restoring stained glass windows. Such restorations can be exceedingly costly. Those same families of faith often struggle to meet their normal operating budget responsibilities. What's more, within a short distance of most church families are community people who struggle to provide the basics for the peo...

18. From Mourning to Morning

2 Samuel 18:19--19:8

Sermon

Robert Noblett

It was a perfectly lovely day and we had no reason to suspect that it would be anything but a typically happy Saturday a day to run errands, wash the cars and anticipate an evening with friends. But that all changed when, around 1:30 p.m., a phone call came from my wife’s father in Cleveland indicating that her mother had unexpectedly died. A week earlier she had had a heart attack, but a full rec...

19. God and the Weather

Matthew 5:45; 16:2-3 · Psalm 18:7-11; 46:1-3, 11

Sermon

Robert Noblett

Imagine for a moment that you are a person who has a great deal of difficulty in sustaining a conversation once you have met a person. After initial introductions, you draw a blank. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit that if in 99% of these situations what you end up talking about is the weather. "Sure is hot today, isn’t it?" "Think it’s going to rain? Sure looks like it." "These weather forecaster...

20. God’s Flowing and Our Ebbing

Isaiah 6:1-13

Sermon

Robert Noblett

My family and I have spent several enjoyable vacations on the Atlantic Ocean, both at Cape Cod and along the rockbound coast of Maine. Always we have enjoyed the beaches and the pastimes attendant to them. One perennial pastime is the building of sand castles, and I well remember our children building them close to the sea’s edge and how, with tidal changes, the parameters of the ebbing and flowin...

21. Heaven's Applause

Matthew 6:1-4

Sermon

Robert Noblett

Some words fall into the mud puddle, are never cleaned off, and become permanently tarnished by the mud that was never removed. Piety is such a word. Think about the way you have heard it used. Usually it has a pejorative taint to it. Bishop Spong of the Episcopal Church has certainly caught religious people's attention. The bishop was interviewed recently and spoke of how he didn't much like rel...

22. Holy Handicap?

2 Cor 12:9

Sermon

Robert Noblett

Reserved parking in shopping malls, newly constructed ramps into public buildings, motorized wheelchairs, special hardware in restroom facilities, experts seen translating the spoken word into sign language for those in the television audience with hearing deficiencies, even monkeys trained to meet the everyday needs of paraplegics and quadriplegics - all are signs that we are, as a nation, becomi...

23. Holy Vexation

John 2:12-25

Sermon

Robert Noblett

We have all probably had the experience of being in the presence of someone who is normally composed and tranquil, and having that person suddenly erupt. A topic is introduced and immediately goes to the quick. It all seems so out of character. I can imagine Christian folks having a similar reaction to this story (found, incidentally, in all of the Gospels) of Jesus cleansing the temple. If you a...

24. How Fares Your Christian Sight?

Is 6:8-10

Sermon

Robert Noblett

Some time ago I had my eyes examined. The doctor went through the usual procedures and at their end said this to me: "From a medical point of view, your eyes are fine." I thought that to be a rather curious way of putting the matter, and it reminded me of the fact that one’s eyes might be in top shape medically, but then the medical point of view is not the only point of view. People can have eyes...

25. In Search of a Leader

Sermon

Robert Noblett

Anyone who has served on a nominating committee knows how crucial talented leadership is to any group, including the body of Christ. God, our story reminds us, shares that concern. God is unhappy with Saul’s leadership and sends Samuel on a mission to secure a replacement. Look Who Is Doing the Calling Perhaps the most salient features of this story is the fact that it is God who is doing the call...

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