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Sermon
Harry N. Huxhold
A. E. Hotchner has written an autobiographical account of his experience of the Great Depression. He titled this touching account of his boyhood experience in St. Louis King of the Hill: A Memoir. Anyone who lived through that dreadful economic period can readily recognize the painful burdens young and old had to suffer which the author describes. Anyone who did not live through that period wo...
Sermon
Louis H. Valbracht
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, can you possibly understand the overwhelming sense of joy that possesses my heart and soul at this moment? I have just completed a long, long journey. It has taken me 460 years to walk one block - from St. John’s to St. Ambrose - because this Year of Our Lord 1979 is the 460th Anniversar...
Sermon
Richard A. Jensen
The preacher urged his television congregation to tithe. "Give 10¼ of your income to the Lord," he said. "But why should I tithe?" someone asked him. "To get," the preacher replied. "We tithe in order to get. I want to get healed, I want to get well, I want to get money, I want to get prosperous." This popular form of Christianity was recently written up in Time magazine. The "prosperity Gospel." ...
Sermon
Mark Ellingsen
Jesus was drawing near to the end of his farewell discourse to his disciples, a sermon he gave to them (according to John) on the evening of the last supper. In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus broke into a prayer to the Father. It is a famous prayer called the high priestly prayer. There are many spiritual riches to mine in this prayer and our text. For our purposes today on this last Sunday of...
Sermon
James Merritt
We shared with you over the last several weeks just as God has a purpose for your life God has a purpose for His church. Those purposes are identical. The first purpose we learned was worship. That is how the church glorifies. The second purpose is fellowship. That is how the church gains. The third purpose is discipleship. That is how the church grows. The fourth purpose is ministry. That is how ...
Sermon
Thomas Long
According to legend, a certain West Coast radio evangelist would customarily close his broadcasts by praying over the air, "O God, we ask that today you would touch the hearts of those in 'Radioland' to support this worldwide ministry. We pray that you would move them mightily to send offerings of love, and to send them to Post Office Box 345, Pasadena, California." Though he was particularly cra...
Sermon
John E. Harnish
What does it feel like to have someone praying for you? By name, in person, one-on-one? John Indermark remembers a childhood experience of being in the hospital for surgery when he was ten years old. He says he remembers a priest praying for him: "I seem to recall that as he came and stood at the foot of my bed, I felt a mix of wonder and fear. I did not know him, but he prayed. For me. He took ti...
Sermon
King Duncan
It’s an exciting thing to be part of the church of Jesus Christ.  We’ve got a good thing here, and we need to let the rest of the world know just how exciting it is. There’s an old story about a young high school football star who was being recruited by a coach from a major college.  The coach had never seen the young man play, so he asked him some direct questions. “Son,” he said, “I understand ...
Sermon
King Duncan
A visiting preacher in a small town in Kentucky was concerned when he began the first night of a revival meeting and noticed all of the men were wearing guns. Although rattled, he did the best he could with his sermon. When finished, his anxieties heightened as several of the men approached the pulpit with their guns drawn. In panic, he turned to the chairman of the deacons, sitting next to him. ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
The worst thing you can do to your children is to “be cool” as a teen. You say, what? “Being cool” means you will be immortalized in pictures sporting the “coolest” fashions of your teenager years. And one day your children and grandchildren will groan in embarrassment at how “cool” you look in those pictures which, of course, will be the opposite of “cool” by the time they look at them. [Here ...
Sermon
Lee Griess
A few choice words — that's what Jesus gives us this morning — a few choice words about our lives and faith. Just hours before being arrested, just hours before being tried and condemned, Jesus gathered his disciples around him and in all sincerity bowed his head and prayed for them and for us. These words from John 17 are part of a great discourse recorded by the gospel writer John, part of a gre...
Sermon
Billy D. Strayhorn
Have you ever been prayed for? Of course you have. But have you ever been prayed for without knowing about it? I was at a meeting over at St. Barnabas United Methodist Church in Arlington a couple of weeks ago and out of the clear blue, a member whom I'm only slightly acquainted with, came up to me and asked me how my mother is doing. She had heard in their prayer time that Mom needed our prayers....
Sermon
John Smylie
Actions and words are both important, but sometimes actions do speak louder than words. Jesus is coming to the end of his ministry. He knows his time is short. He is aware that before much longer his days of teaching and preaching with his disciples will come to an end, a brutal and terrifying end, as he will be handed over, tortured, harassed, mocked, and finally crucified. As our Lord approaches...
Sermon
David O. Bales
In 1936, near the beginning of the Spanish Civil War one horrible center of fighting was the Alcázar fortress near Toledo. In the middle of horrific fighting, however, every day the firing stopped twice in order to allow a blind beggar to tap his way on the street between the firing lines. We can imagine how welcome those few minutes were to the men on both sides. They probably hoped that the blin...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
In elementary school we all learned the ditty: “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Convinced by Christopher Columbus that a new, faster route to the rich spice regions of India could be found by sailing east instead of south, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain financed an exploratory mission for this new route. Instead of India, Columbus found the New Worl...
Sermon
James Merritt
Today we are going to enter into one of the most interesting, fascinating, and perhaps controversial series that we will ever do that we are entitling, "War of the Worlds". Actually, you could even call it, "War of the World Views." World views act just like contact lenses; if you've got the correct prescription for contact lenses or for glasses then you can see the world clearly and correctly. A ...
17. 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,...
Sermon
Dean Lueking
Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. (John 17:11) Concerning Unity The truth we hear today concerns the oneness of the people of Christ. If I would ask you this simple question, "Are you for the unity of Christians?" there would be no doubt in my mind that all of you present would answer yes. If I could ask you another question,...
Sermon
Bill Bouknight
The great soul singer, Smokey Robinson, was a scheduled speaker for a two-day Youth Anti-Drug rally for the public schools of Sarasota, Florida. On the first day, he testified how God had rescued him from drug abuse. As a result, his speech for the second day was canceled. Smokey Robinson said, "The awful thing is that you can go into many public schools and talk about the Charles Manson murders, ...
Sermon
George Bass
Were the disciples of Jesus to hear the prayer in today’s text in the context of our worship - between the Ascension and the Day of Pentecost - it would have taken them back to supper the night Jesus was betrayed. They would have remembered how he got up from the table and washed their feet, and then how he returned to the table and told them that one of them was not clean and would betray him. Th...
21. Making Sense
John 17:6-19
Sermon
John Jamison
Have you ever come across a piece of scripture that you really just didn’t know what to do with? Everything you read before it makes sense, and everything after it, but that one passage just sits there staring at you, almost defying you to understand why it is there and what it means. We may have that problem with today’s passage from John’s gospel. John is describing the things that happened whi...
Sermon
David E. Leininger
Several years ago, there was a convention of clergy gathered at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta under the auspices of the Promise Keepers organization.[1] Between 40,000 and 50,000 preachers were in attendance. (What's that you say? An awful lot of hot air in one place?) For what it is worth, I disagree with some of the Promise Keepers' positions, but two of their basic emphases I wholeheartedly appla...
23. United We Stand
John 17:11b-19
Sermon
King Duncan
Today is Mother’s Day, a day when we honor our Moms. We learn many things from our Moms. My mother taught me religion. She used to say things like, “You better pray that comes out of the carpet.” My mother taught me medicine: “If you don’t stop crossing your eyes, they’re going to freeze that way.” My mother taught me how to be a contortionist: “Will you look at the dirt on the back of your nec...
24. Science and the Bible
John 17:17, 1 Timothy 3:16
Sermon
James Merritt
Many of you saw the blockbuster movie Independence Day.1 If you are a little bit older, you may have felt like you had seen the film before, and essentially you had because it was a remake of the 1953 science fiction classic War of the Worlds, but it had one very great difference. While both versions feature aliens invading Earth, in the 1953 movie scientists came up with a weapon that is eventua...
Sermon
Brett Blair
In Act 5 scene 5 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the character Macbeth has heard that the queen is dead and he knows his own death is imminent. At this time he delivers his famous soliloquy: Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, Out, brief candle Life's ...
Showing 1 to 25 of 30 results