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Sermon
Charles H. Bayer
Do you ever feel religion is complicated beyond belief? A very pious chap was once explaining to a friend the difference between his denomination and another with which his had been at swordpoints for centuries. "One group believes you are baptized into Christ, and the other believes you are baptized in Christ," he said. "There have been strife, arguments and battles over the issue for as long as ...
Sermon
Richard A. Wing
For those of you who have come here feeling lost, I have good news for you. For those of you who have come here willing to get lost, I have even better news. The good news is "fear not." The God we worship specializes in finding lost people. The God we worship gives life the moment we lose ours for the sake of heavenly causes. Our text has two words that become backdrops for the entire season of A...
Sermon
Richard A. Wing
For those of you who have come here a mite tense today, I have good news for you. Without tension you cannot know the ultimate joy of Christmas. Without facing tension, Christmas is almost certainly missed. We have a tension between our texts today. We find tension between what John says and what Paul proclaims in Philippians. Two things emerge from the texts. First, the essential problem with Jo...
Sermon
James Garrett
Last Sunday we examined the beginning of John’s sermon where he said the King is coming, prepare! Today we continue with that sermon. Hear the words of John, the son of Zachariah, recorded in Luke 3:7-18. John, austere preacher, calls for the multitudes to prepare the way for Christ’s coming with severe earnestness. His message is a call to repentance with actions that demonstrate an altered life....
Sermon
Brett Blair
A number of years ago a couple traveled to the offices of an Adoption Society in England to receive a baby. They had been on the waiting list a long time. They had been interviewed and carefully scrutinized. Now at last their dreams were to be fulfilled. But their day of happiness was another's pain. Arriving at the offices of the Society they were led up a flight of stairs to a waiting room. Afte...
Sermon
Ewart E. Turner
There were giants in those days: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea. Which one of these did Jesus nominate to be the greatest born of women? Not one. In stead he singled out a hairy, harassed desert preacher - John the Baptizer. Why? The clue is found in the fragment of the Baptizer’s teaching which Luke preserved for posterity. It revealed John as the pione...
Sermon
As the people misunderstood the authentic John the Baptist of history ("What did you go into the forest to see?"), people may misunderstand him now. So suggests this sermon. Because John the Baptist may appear today in clothing other than that of camel’s hair, John’s message may appear in different forms. To illuminate a common distortion of the figure of John the Baptist, the sermon uses a childh...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
To tell you the truth, you might not like him if you met him. Chances are you would not invite him for cocktails at the club or for dinner at home with some of your prestigious friends. The likelihood is your children would think him curious and your teenagers would scorn him as not worth an autograph. The tabloids might attempt to puff him up as an oddity or curiosity piece for the sake of profi...
Sermon
Frank Lyman
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was moving toward a fevered climax. NBC had shown marching bands and recording artists who casually paused in the middle of Fifth Avenue to "lip-synch" their latest recording! Massive balloons of "Bullwinkle" and "Underdog" and the excitement in the announcer's voice made it obvious that Santa and his Reindeer were just around the corner. It was then that a small...
10. On Getting Out Of The Way
Luke 3:1-20, Luke 3:21-38
Sermon
Charles H. Bayer
Americans are fascinated with being the best. Young people in warpaint and costume are regularly seen running up and down the sidelines at sporting events, index fingers thrust in the air, shouting, "We're number one! We're number one!" Who, after all, wants to be less than the best? But wait a minute! I know people who love to sing, but won't utter a note because they don't sound like Pavoratti. ...
Sermon
Susan R. Andrews
It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. I was sixteen, and it was my first game as the captain of the varsity cheerleading squad. Much to the dismay of the popular girls in the school, my loud voice had won me this hotly contested honor. The squad had been practicing all summer and we had our routines almost perfected. That early September night we were very excited and more than a...
Sermon
Wayne Brouwer
What difference does my life make for others around me? What difference does anyone's life make? It's always a question related to parenting. Parents make choices that affect the manner in which their children form their identities. Harry Chapin put it well in his song, Cat's in the Cradle. When he was a young father he was too busy making a living to be bothered by his son. When he was finally ol...
Sermon
Johnny Dean
Not too long ago, our family made a journey. It was a long journey, and it took the better part of a day to get there and the better part of another day to get back. It was a tiring journey, but it was well worth everything we had to endure to get there. "There" was home, and "there" was a place where we were surrounded by the love of family members, some of whom we had not seen in more years than...
Sermon
Gary L. Carver
More than forty years ago a play titled, Mourning Pictures, opened off-Broadway. Written by Honor Moore, it is the moving account of the last six months of her mother's life. Jenny Moore was no ordinary human being. She was the wife of the Episcopal Bishop of New York and the mother of nine vivacious children and an author in her own right. About a year before her death, she was in an automobile a...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
In his book, The Gospel For The Person Who Has Everything, William Willimon tells of a young friend, age 4, who was asked on the occasion of his 5th birthday what kind of party he wanted to have. I want everybody to be a king and queen, Clayton said. So, he and his mother went to work, fashioning a score of silver crowns – cardboard and aluminum foil, purple robes – crepe paper, and royal scepters...
Sermon
David E. Leininger
John is an amazing character, isn't he? Not what we would expect as we come up to Christmas. What if, riding atop the last float of the Macy'sThanksgiving Day parade, there was not a jolly old Saint Nick, but a wild-eyed John the Baptist dressed in a glorified burlap sack? Even the perpetually perky Katie Couric would wince as she offered parade commentary from her reviewing stand, not quite sure ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
How many of you remember or have every played the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game? In the mid-90s this silly party game challenged players to find a way to link the actor Kevin Bacon with any other actor using no more than six connections. (For instance, Val Kilmer was in “Top Gun” with Tom Cruise who was in “A Few Good Men,” which also featured Kevin Bacon.) Eventually what was really just a m...
18. A Day of Singing
Zephaniah 3:14-20, Luke 3:7-18
Sermon
King Duncan
Today we want to celebrate the gift of music. After all, what would Christmas be without music? Didn’t angels sing the night Christ was born? (Luke 2) Well, it doesn’t actually say they were singing. It says they were saying, “Glory to God in the highest . . .” but that sure sounds like singing to me. Music is such a wonderful gift. A few years ago a group of junior high school students was given...
Sermon
King Duncan
I want to give you a memory test. How many of you remember these chilling words? “This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters of your area in voluntary cooperation with the FCC and federal, state and local authorities have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed to tune to o...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
We’re still in Advent, but who can resist singing Christmas carols? They are either fun, boisterous and bouncy. Or they are sentimental and sweet. “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Deck The Halls” fit the fun, boisterous and bouncy theme. “Away in a Manger” and “Silent Night” fit into the sentimental and sweet category. Although I do admit that as much as I love Chri...
21. Is There Room For A Prophet?
Malachi 3:1-4, Luke 3:1-6
Sermon
Billy D. Strayhorn
After some last-minute Christmas shopping with her grandchildren, Grandma was rushing the kids into the car when four-year-old Jason said, "Grandma, Susie has something in her pocket." He reached in and pulled out a new red barrette. Though she was tired, Grandma knew it was important for Susie to take the barrette back to the store, tell manager what she'd done, apologize and then put the item b...
Sermon
King Duncan
Bob Beasley belongs to a Baptist Church in Canada, a church that follows the Baptist tradition of baptizing by immersion. Returning home from church one Sunday, his little girl asked, “Daddy, why did the pastor push that guy under the water? Why, daddy?” Bob’s wife tried to answer her question, but the little girl, named Rena, just wouldn’t be satisfied. Later that night Bob and his wife tried to...
23. Fighting Fire With Fire
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
To put out fires in our lives and to quench the fires ravaging our world, we need the fire of the Holy Spirit burning in us, a fire which sears as it heals. In the summer of 1994, there occurred the most devastating tragedy in the history of "smoke jumping."Smokejumpers are elite squads of firefighters, parachuting "hotshots," who take great pride in being on the front lines of out-of-control wil...
Sermon
King Duncan
Pastor John Ortberg was giving a bath to his three children. Johnny was still in the tub. Laura was out and safely in her pajamas. He was trying to get Mallory dried off. Mallory was out of the water, but was doing what has come to be known in their family as the Dee Dah Day dance. This dance consists of running around and around in circles, singing over and over again, "Dee dah day, dee dah day."...
Sermon
John P. Jewell
"All flesh shall see the salvation of God." What amazing words. The deepest sense of these words is that peace, harmony, health and healing will break out all over the world!  "All flesh shall see.." means that every single human being on earth will see this come to pass.  Sounds impossible doesn't it?  This promise from the prophet Isaiah, brought to us in the gospel of Luke courtesy of John the...
Showing 1 to 25 of 81 results