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Sermon
John A. Stroman
Two remarkable things happened. Jesus' words in the synagogue left the people amazed. His confronting of the man with the unclean spirit left them dumbfounded. Jesus' world was a demon-haunted world. Men and women in the ancient world believed in demons. Demons for them were intensely real. The first century world was one of pain and suffering. There was no relief from pain. It was a world ...
Sermon
Daniel G. Mueller
Say the word "demon" and the first thing that might pop into your mind is the image of a child you know. Sometimes we describe an ornery child as "a little demon." But in the Bible, the word demon is never used that lightly. It is a word that is always used seriously and fearfully to describe one of the forces of evil, an unclean spirit. Saint Mark records for us the story of one demon who filled ...
Sermon
Paul E. Flesner
In today's Gospel, Mark tells us more about Jesus by showing his power over unclean spirits. The ironic twist is that it was the demons who recognized Jesus as the Son of God, while the people who were "in the crowd" had no idea who he was. This reversal raises an interesting question: If we met Jesus "on the street" today, would we recognize him as the Holy One of God? Being able to "recognize" ...
Sermon
Charley Reeb
Yard sales are interesting to me. I don’t frequent them very often, but I am always fascinated by the fact that “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” Someone can’t wait to get rid of old tapes and records — doesn’t want them cluttering up the house anymore. Along comes a complete stranger and he just can’t believe anyone would want to sell them. He buys them for a steal and drives hom...
Sermon
King Duncan
There is one similarity between mice and men. None of us wants to die. Self preservation is one of the strongest instincts in living creatures. And yet high in the Scandinavian mountains lives a small mouselike creature that every few years commits mass suicide. The creatures are called lemmings. They have given us the phrase, "like lemmings headed for the sea," for that is what they do. Every fe...
Sermon
King Duncan
[While King Duncan is enjoying a well deserved retirement we are going back to his earliest sermons and renewing them. The newly modernized sermon is shown first and below, for reference sake, is the old sermon. We will continue this updating throughout the year bringing fresh takes on King's best sermons.] Original Title: Casting Out An Evil Spirit New Title: Good Religion The idea of casting out...
Sermon
Billy D. Strayhorn
Maybe you've heard the story about the High School teacher who injured his back and had to wear a plaster cast around the upper part of his body. It was form fitted, fit under his shirt and wasn't noticeable at all. The first day of school he still had the cast on. He looked at his class roster and realized he'd been assigned to the toughest students in school. He walked into the classroom, which...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
Some of you remember Mercury Morris, a great running back for the Miami Dolphins back in their glory days when they were winning the Super Bowls. Mercury was one of the first professional athletes be caught involved in drugs. He was arrested, tried and sent to jail. Why should such a successful athlete do such a dumb thing? Why should he throw his life away? At his trial he said, “I wanted to get ...
Sermon
King Duncan
Our lesson for today may be quite disturbing to some of us. It takes place in Capernaum. It was the Sabbath and Jesus was teaching in the synagogue. The people who heard him “were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.” Suddenly, however, there was an unexpected disturbance. A man began to cry out, “What do you want with us, Jesus o...
Sermon
King Duncan
“I don’t know why I remember the episode so vividly,” writes author King Duncan. “I remember so few instances from my childhood. But this one stands out. I couldn’t have been more than five. We were members of a tiny rural church. Our hymns came from a small paperback hymnal of Gospel songs [the Upper Room hymnal]. “Worship was a bit emotional; the preacher a little loud. There was no formal litu...
Sermon
Robert J. Elder
Every time I have ever studied this passage with other people, it seems to me that we have been all too willing to get ourselves distracted by the thought of first-century people walking around with what Mark called an "unclean spirit," which is rendered by the even scarier "demon" in some translations. Conversation about the passage often runs along the favorite twin therapeutic tracks of the twe...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
As a society, we are obsessed with our external images. As Christians we should recognize that our energies need to focus on how we can allow Christ to shape and mold us into new beings. The two texts focused on for this week approach the question of self image from two different but related perspectives. The text from Mark tells the story of an exorcism, a dramatic but not unbelievable or unhear...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
I am a big sucker for lists. I love lists. Top 10 Lists. Bottom 10 Lists. David Letterman lists. Any list. In fact, there’s a book written for us list lovers called “The Incredible Book of Wacky Lists” by Patrick M. Reynolds (2001), where he has lists of “Plants That Eat Animals” (there are 4 of them: Venus’s flytrap, Butterwort, Sundew, Pitcher plant), “Seas Named After a Color” (Black, Red, Whi...
Sermon
King Duncan
Today’s lesson from Mark’s Gospel is one that troubles many modern Christians. Jesus and his disciples are in Capernaum. Capernaum was a fishing town located on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was a fairly large city of about ten thousand people and lay along a major trade route. When Jesus began his public ministry he made Capernaum his home. Our story takes place on the Sabbath...
Sermon
Richard Gribble
"Free at last, free at last -- thank God Almighty, we are free at last." These words were spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr., when he concluded his famous "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington, D.C., in August 1963. Dr. King was a man of many talents who did great things, but he will be most remembered as one who lived for his people by speaking and acting for them with prophetic a...
Sermon
King Duncan
Today we’re going to talk about casting out demons or, as Mark calls them in today’s lesson, impure spirits. It’s not a subject that we talk about very much in church anymore, even though it figures prominently in the New Testament. Maybe at the end of today’s service I will perform an exorcism and cast out a demon . . . or not. Perhaps you have someone in mind that you think could profit from suc...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
During these usually dark, damp, dreary days of winter, and after almost 30 straight days of rain, Seattle has suddenly been transformed into a hot spot. The rain-forest city of Seattle now basks in the sunny golden glow of victory, the dazzle of a long-awaited Championship: the Seahawks are Super Bowl bound for the first time ever! No small part of the team's success is symbolized by a flag that...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Money Magazine has selected its top "Sin Stocks." If you're going to invest in companies that make money out of our propensity to sin, here are the top Seven Deadly Sin Stocks, the stocks that will give you the greatest return on your investment (Money Magazine (November 2002), 2): 1. Lust: Playboy Enterprises 2. Anger: World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) 3. Avarice: Trump Hotels & Casinos 4. Slo...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
There are two things we absolutely crave in our lives: predictability and spontaneity. We crave the comfort of predictability. We work long and hard to grow life in a steady job, a certain career, a consistent source of income.  We earn degrees, save money, buy insurance, invest for retirement. We have a home, a family, a schedule, which gives structure and meaning to our days and nights. We buil...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
Teachers and teaching have existed as long as humankind. Early man taught his children how to survive -- how to hunt, how to plant and harvest, how to provide shelter and protection, how to fight, how to raise his family in the tribal ways. Learning and teaching took a great stride forward in classical Greece 450 years before Christ with the arrival of Socrates and his brilliant student, Plato. Th...
21. Astonishing!
Mark 1:21-28
Sermon
Brett Blair
For centuries people believed that Aristotle was right when he said that the heavier an object, the faster it would fall to earth. Aristotle was regarded as the greatest thinker of all time, and surely he would not be wrong. Anyone, of course, could have taken two objects, one heavy and one light, and dropped them from a great height to see whether or not the heavier object landed first. But no on...
Sermon
Thomas Long
Some people are masters of understatement. They are able to communicate the size, power, or importance of something, not by flapping their arms wildly and loudly piling one hyperbolic adjective on top of another, but by the slight arch of a single eyebrow and the deft choice of a muted phrase. Masters of understatement. There are, for example, relatives of mine in the South who still describe the...
Sermon
Jesus could have told you his own story. It happened early in his ministry. He stood up in the synagogue in Capernaum- He was what we might call a guest preacher that day. It was going very well, because unlike the other teachers who merely quoted from the authorities, Jesus spoke as one having authority. Then it happened! A demon –possessed man stood up and shouted and interrupted the worship ser...
Sermon
Thomas A. Pilgrim
Dr. Robert V. Ozment served for many years as the pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. In one of his books, Love Is The Answer, he told about a lady he went to see in the hospital. She was very complimentary in the things she said about him. She said, "You are the best preacher I have ever heard. I've read some of your books, and you are a great author. You are the swee...
Sermon
King Duncan
First of all, a word for the ladies. If you think the man in your life is a world-class, gold-medal sports freak, Linda Geyer has a sporting wager for you. Any horror story you have, she can top. Your husband can't bear to watch anything but the sports channels? Linda's husband Mitch has four TV sets placed throughout their home in suburban California, a fifth in the garage, a sixth on the patio ...
Showing 1 to 25 of 34 results