Sermon and Worship Resources

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John 3:22-36

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... look at the source and the secret of joy THE FIRST SOURCE OF JOY IS FOR IT TO BE GOD CENTERED RATHER THAN CIRCUMSTANCE CENTERED. . One of the most gifted Christian writers today is Max Lucado of San Antonio, Texas. Max tells about meeting a gentleman called Robert Reed. Robert's hands are twisted and his feet are useless. He can't bathe himself. He can't feed himself. He can't brush his teeth, comb his hair, or put on his underwear. His shirts are held together by strips of Velcro. His speech drags like a ...

2. Facing Difficult Decisions in Life! Part VI

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... special saints demonstrates that the source of joy depends on your orientation to life. It has nothing to do with the events of your life, but with the deeper orientation of your life. Joy is a gift that comes when a life is centered on God. People like Robert Reed, David Ring, and Joni Erikson Tada teach us that joy is always only one decision away. Choose God. George MacDonald had great insights when he wrote, "It is the heart that is not yet sure of its God that is afraid to laugh in his presence." C. S ...

3. Eyes Fixed Upon the Goal

Philippians 3:8-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... in Christ Jesus.” St. Paul’s life was focused entirely on serving Christ. There is no stopping anyone with that kind of focus and commitment. Max Lucado in his book The Applause of Heaven tells about a remarkable man named Robert Reed who has that same kind of focus about life. “Robert’s hands are twisted,” writes Lucado, “and his feet are useless. He can’t bathe himself. He can’t feed himself. He can’t brush his teeth, comb his hair, or put on his underwear. His shirts are held together ...

4. Paul, Phoebe, Patronage, and Spain

Romans 16:1-27

Teach the Text

C. Marvin Pate

... 3:1; 4:2; 5:12; 10:12; 12:11; 3 John 9–10; 1 Macc. 12:43; 2 Macc. 9:25).2 From the Greco-Roman literature, Robert Jewett supplies the following example: So-and-so, who is conveying this letter to you, has been tested by us and is loved on account of his ... letters? Pen and ink were staples of ancient writing. Pens often were cut from a small reed plant that flourished on the banks of the Nile River. One end of the reed was cut to a point. The point was cut with a small split, resembling a quill ...

5. Egypt

Ezekiel 29:1-21, Ezekiel 30:1-26, Ezekiel 31:1-18, Ezekiel 32:1-32

Understanding Series

Steven Tuell

... of his master, the Rabshakeh asks, “On whom are you depending, that you rebel against me? Look now, you are depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which pierces a man’s hand and wounds him if he leans on it! Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all ... the pool, to show that “Just a little further” may be a concession to human limitations, and an incentive to hope (Roberts, “Prophetic Prediction,” pp. 249–50). A time of doom for the nations. The MT has only “a time for the nations ...

6. Don't Be Afraid

Matthew 14:22-36

Sermon

King Duncan

... Hedgpeth that she is not alone, that God is watching over her. That might work for some of us who are going through troubled times. “A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” Don’t be afraid. Christ is with you just as he was with his disciples ... Whitney, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc, 2007), pp. 176-177. 5. Robert J. Morgan, Preacher’s Sourcebook Creative Sermon Illustrations (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2007), p. 295. 6. John ...

7. Looking for Shoots or Roots?

Matthew 11:1-19

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... preacher? Each image Jesus uses has multiple inferences. “Reeds” (“kalamos”) grew in abundance along the banks of the Jordan where John preached and baptized. “Reeds” are also notoriously flexible, bending and swaying in the ... No, Jesus said, follow me and I’ll give you the greatest adventures anyone could imagine. In fact, in Romans 16 Paul has what my friend Robert Dale calls a “Risk Takers Hall of Fame.” These were people on whom bet his ministry, and for whom he gives thanks to God for ...

8. Hey! I Want To Believe!

John 20:24-31

Sermon

King Duncan

... Moses leading the children of Israel through the Red Sea with the Egyptian army in pursuit, it really means that it was a Reed Sea. That was no great miracle. There were only about two inches of water in that Reed Sea. It was more like a marsh. A wind came along, blew the water aside, and they were able to slip on through ... as well. 1. David McKechnie, EXPERIENCING GOD'S PLEASURE, (Nashville: Oliver Nelson Publishers, 1989). 2. Robert A. Schuller, POWER TO GROW BEYOND YOURSELF, (New York: Jove Books, 1987).

9. Embedded In Bedrock Or Destroyed By A Typhoon

John 18:25-27

Sermon

Dale Dickerson

... . Faced with a situation of confessing his Lord, Peter fails. Not once, but three times. Yet this is not the end for Simon Peter. This man who has plays the reed in the courtyard will yet become the rock. Not out of his own strength, but out of the grace of Jesus Christ. In all situations God WILL have the last word. Back in 1968 Robert Schuller traveled to the Soviet Union. "I believed that God's word was direly needed by the people," he said. He was stopped in customs for trying to smuggle Bibles. That ...

10. Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are!

Exodus 1:1-22, 2:1-10

Sermon

... were floated down the Nile in a candlelight procession. And there was baby Moses like a little Egyptian god caught up in the reeds. For all of his youth Moses was disguised as an Egyptian, even while his mother was paid to be his nursemaid. There in ... 2. Quoted in The Living Pulpit: Faith, April/June 1992, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Bronx, N.Y.), p. 25. 3. Quoted by Howard W. Roberts, U-Turns Permitted: God's Grace for Life's Journey (Louisville, Ken.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), p. 115, note 9. 4. Douglas John ...

11. About Miracles

John 2:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

... bit. For example, the Children of Israel didn't go through the Red Sea according to this approach. They went through the Sea of Reeds, a shallow swamp-like area. It was no big deal, then, when the wind came and parted the waters. Jesus didn't feed the ... , "Amy, what are you doing at Baptist Hospital?" She said, "Well, I went out to my mailbox this morning and there was a letter from Oral Roberts. I opened that letter and I was reading it as I walked back up to the house. When I got to the part where it said ...

12. Sitting Shiva Behind Closed Doors

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... with some connections. Tomb / Rock / Locked Door / Enclosed Room / Temple / Tabernacle / Noah’s Ark / Moses’s Basket of Reeds / Sukkah / Bindings / Womb / Sign of Jonah / Shiva Wait a minute . . . Shiva? What could shiva have to do ... into the realm of “anything is possible” in Christ. ------- The image exegesis for this week is dedicated with honor and comfort to Rabbi Robert Feinberg on the death of his mother this week. “From out of your sadness and mourning, may God grant you renewed joy in your ...

13. Faith Bridges the Gap

Luke 7:1-10

Sermon

All through the last half of the movie Reds the viewers were prepared for Jack Reed’s death. After he had lost a kidney when he was a young man, his physician had ... was going through but didn’t deserve. Three years ago, he had begun contributing to Oral Roberts’ fund-raising drives on television and, says Davies, "Rhoads felt he was guaranteed a blessed life ..." He claimed he had given $7,000 to $10,000 to Roberts in that period of time; actually, it turned out he had given considerably less than that ...

14. A Voice to be Heard

John 1:19-28

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... lack of vision and hope and imagination. No wonder Jesus, in admiration, remarked: "What did you go out in the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? Why then did you go out? To see a prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet" (Matthew ... we take the high price out of drugs, would we not collapse the drug cartels and the drug violence overnight? After all, asks Robert Reno in one of his columns, is drug use really a national epidemic? About 0.9 percent of the population regularly uses cocaine ...

15. Faith for Troubling Times

Luke 21:5-38

Sermon

King Duncan

... the force of the winds because of the weight that it bore. "The weight of your responsibilities may rest heavily upon you," says Robert Shannon, "but that weight may be the very thing that keeps you from being swept away by the storm of sin." (4) Is ... Choptank Indians on Maryland’s Eastern Shore believed that God gave them the bay for transportation and for fish, that God gave them reeds for houses and mats and crabs for delicious food. They also believed that God gave them mosquitoes to show that God could ...

16. Against All Hope

Romans 4:1-25

Sermon

King Duncan

... Norman Vincent Peale, positive thinking was the rage. “If you can think it, you can do it!” was the basic message. Robert Schuller repackaged Dr. Peale’s message as “possibility thinking,” but Dr. Schuller’s son is now taking the lead in that ... better than all the positive thinking in the world. Rev. Dr. John Killinger tells about a friend of his named Millard Reed: “Millard is president‑emeritus of Trevecca University in Nashville. Millard was on a speaking trip in South Carolina when he ...

17. Confronting a Christless Culture

2 Timothy 3:1-17

Sermon

James Merritt

... It is the age of Madonna, Dennis Rodman, Gangsta Rap, Sally Jesse Raphael, Jack Kervorkian, Pulp Fiction, and political correctness. Robert Bork, in his magnificent book, Slouching Toward Gomorrah, made this salient observation: "There may be reason to think that a ... a lighthouse." So I want to say to our church specifically, and to all Christians generally, we are never to be like reeds, shaken by the wind, bowing down before whatever way a Gallup Poll may be blowing. We need to be lighthouses standing firm ...

18. The New Jerusalem

Revelation 21:1-27

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

... angel then measured the city with the rod of gold (21:15–17). In an earlier vision (11:1–2), John was given a reed to measure the “temple of God and the altar.” Here, it is the angel and not John who measures the city, simply because its ... a superb treatment of our point that the new Jerusalem is not an actual place but the Bride for Christ, the church, see Robert H. Gundry, “The New Jerusalem: People as Place, not Place for People,” NovT 29 (1987), pp. 254–64. Less convincing is Peter DuBrul ...

19. Join in the Singing

Isaiah 35:1-10

Sermon

King Duncan

... streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. “In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness; it will be for those who ... book on his findings. The book titled Awakenings was made into a movie starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. In the movie, Robert DeNiro’s character, Leonard, has been in a catatonic state for thirty years. The drug therapy brings him ...

20. Deadly Sins - A Matter Of Sutton's Law

Romans 7:14-25

Sermon

R. Curtis Fussell

... Street, Spartanburg, SC 29302), tape number 1, "The Deadly Sins" (1994). 4. Adapted from Jones, ibid. 5. Scott Peck, Further Along the Road Less Traveled: The Unending Journey Toward Spiritual Growth (Simon and Schuster: New York, NY, 1993), p. 45. 6. "I Cost Our Team the Game," by William F. Reed in Sports Illustrated, Vol. 78, April 1993, p. 28ff; adapted from Jones, ibid. 7. Adapted from Jones, ibid. 8. Jones, ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Cited by ...

21. The Problem With Miracles In Our Time

Matthew 14:22-36

Sermon

William J. Carl

... of the world. So the waters didn’t really part, in true Cecil B. DeMille fashion, say some scholars, but the wind blew on the shallow Reed Sea as it often does and the waters moved over a little at that moment. And Jesus didn’t really multiply the loaves and fishes but opened ... Row, Publishers, 1973, p. 36).” Another way of saying it would be you don’t have to be a follower of Oral Roberts to believe in the miraculous healing power of God. You can even be a Presbyterian or a Methodist or a Baptist or an ...

22. And You Thought God Didn't Care!

Exodus 3:1-22

Sermon

... three-month-old child from a ruler who had commanded all male Hebrew babies to be killed, the mother made a basket of reeds, covered it with tar, placed her child in it, and launched it on the water of the river Nile. (You see, "water-beds ... hearing about foreign aid by our government, of problems too large and too multitudinous for us to handle. A minister friend of ours, Dr. Robert Stackel, calls it "compassion burn-out." "Compassion fatigue" may be our problem, but it is not God's. He knows when it rains on ...

23. The Ten Commandments #2: No Idols!

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... ...life. Near the end of Woody Allen's movie, after his complaint about life's uncertainty and his abortive suicide, he says, "MAYBE is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but it is the best we have." Is it? Not for me. I hope not for you. We are not likely ... faith and then to be faithful. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen! 1. Isaiah 44:9-17 2. Orion Pictures, 1986, Robert Greenhut, Producer, Written & Directed by Woody Allen 3. Exodus 25:18-20 4. Exodus 28:33-34 5. John A. Redhead, Uncommon Common ...

24. The Ultimate Evidence of God

2 Peter 1:16-21

Sermon

King Duncan

... astounding leap of faith to say that this humble Nazarene was the Son of the living God. There is a story told about Robert Browning when he first met the poet, Shelley. People wanted to know what else happened on that particular occasion when the two met. ... eternity that no human eye can penetrate. It took the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to change Simon Peter from a reed to a rock. His life was a study in uneven growth. There were mountaintops and there were valleys. We should not expect to ...

25. There's Something About A Mystery

Ephesians 3:1-13

Sermon

King Duncan

... college years, Vernon E. Jordan, top lawyer and former advisor to President Clinton, worked as a chauffeur for a prominent Southern banker, Robert F. Maddox. Jordan drove Maddox around in the mornings, then served him dinner in the evenings. In the afternoons when Maddox napped, Jordan ... Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1996), p. 216. 5. "Great Expectations" by Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. with Annette Gordon-Reed, Reader's Digest, Jan. 2002, pp. 91-95. 6. Luci Shaw, Stories for the Christian Year, edited by ...

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