Zoom
Showing 1 to 19 of 19 results
Sermon
Richard Patt
We wish the story here would have ended another way. Yes, it was the sabbath (always meant to be a beautiful day for God's people!). And even on the sabbath people become sick or continue to be sick. Jesus notices a woman, all hunched over, obviously one who had been ill for a long time. He is a merciful Lord, so he takes the initiative to call her over and lay his hands on her. In these gracious ...
Sermon
Bill Bouknight
One weekend in one of our contemporary services, we invited the worshippers in a time of prayer to say out loud what they were grateful for. There happened to be two young mothers sitting on the front row. One said, "For my healthy children." The other mother said, "For God's provision." I happened to know that that second mother has a child who has suffered recurring seizures throughout his young...
Sermon
George Reed
The story of Jesus healing the woman with a crippling spirit while he was teaching in the synagogue one sabbath is about a lot more than what is appropriate to do on the sabbath. It is a window into the mindset of Jesus about ministry. The first thing we notice in this story is that Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the sabbath. This sounds like such a traditional means of worship and teachin...
Sermon
King Duncan
One Sabbath day, Jesus was teaching in a synagogue. A woman was there who was severely disabled. Her body was all bent over so bent over that her head was nearly even with her waist. Dr. Luke tells us she could not straighten up at all. That strikes me as an unbelievably sad situation. Forgetting the pain and the inconvenience of not being able to straighten one’s body, imagine what that would do ...
Sermon
King Duncan
A man tells the story of leaving a grocery store when he was approached by two small boys selling candy bars for their school band. The man told the boys, “I’ll buy a chocolate bar from you on one condition. You eat it for me.” The boys agreed. The man bought the chocolate bar and promptly handed it back to one little boy so that he could eat it. The boy shook his head and said, “I can’t.” “Why ...
6. Busybodies
Luke 13:10-17
Sermon
King Duncan
People who knew legendary jazz musician Cab Calloway as a man of dignity and humor. One night at Birdland, the legendary jazz bar, Cab was introducing a promising young saxophone player. As the sax player finished his set, a self-appointed jazz critic came over to him and said, in front of Cab, "You aren't that good, man. All you can do is play like Charlie Parker." Cab took the young man's sax a...
Sermon
King Duncan
What's it like to live without hope? What's it like to finally decide that your dreams are beyond your abilities and to resign yourself to living without any prospect that things will get better? The closest thing I could find to a picture of a person totally without hope comes from a book by Dr. David Jeremiah titled The Power of Encouragement. Dr. Jeremiah tells about an old Alfred Hitchcock sh...
Sermon
King Duncan
Have you ever noticed that no matter what you do, you can't please everybody? Somebody, somewhere is going to criticize your best efforts. Former president John F. Kennedy once told about a legendary baseball player who always played flawlessly. He consistently hit and was never thrown out at first base. When on base he never failed to score. He never dropped a ball and threw with unerring accura...
Sermon
From: Priscilla@galilee.net To: Mom&Dad@jerusalem.org Dear Mom and Dad, I just wanted to write and let you know that I'm doing just fine. I know you don't approve of me traveling from place to place with this fellow, Jesus, and his companions, but I need you to know that things are going amazingly well. Before you get to worrying more than you already are, none of the "boys" as you called them,...
10. Love to Life
Luke 13:10-17
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
It is unexpected and agonizing. You reach over to pick up a package, bend down to tie your shoe, or put out your arms to scoop an “arms-up” child . . . and suddenly, something goes terribly wrong. You know it in an instant. A wrench. A tweak. A tear. A back muscle, or disk, or nerve…something has gone completely “off-line.” In the twitch of a muscle, but no twinkle of an eye, moving becomes misery...
Sermon
R. Robert Cueni
As was his custom, Jesus went that Sabbath morning to the synagogue for worship. As he was preaching and teaching, he happened to glance toward the fringe of the crowd where he saw a very crippled woman. She was bent over and was unable to stand up straight. When he inquired, Jesus was told the woman had been that way for eighteen years. Can you imagine? For nearly two decades this woman spent ev...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Way back in cold old February, fourth grader Patrick Timoney came face-to-face with what “zero degrees” really mean. Not “zero degrees” Fahrenheit, but “zero degrees” of tolerance. It seems Patrick had taken some of his favorite Lego toys to school to show off to his buddies. Any parent of young children can tell you those little, tiny Lego guys are natural born killers. They hide in the couch t...
Sermon
David E. Leininger
I wish it were not so, but it is. Religion can be horribly repressive sometimes. Indeed, our text certainly reflects it. The story opens with Jesus teaching in a synagogue where services were normally informal: primarily prayers, reading of scripture, comments, and offerings for the poor. Any man in attendance could read from scripture and then teach or preach if he were so inclined, and on this d...
Sermon
Ron Lavin
Have you ever been crippled by something that happened to you? At age seventeen, Joni Eareckson, dove into the Chesapeake Bay, hit the rocks, and was paralyzed for life. She lives in a wheelchair today. Physically, she is still crippled by the accident, but she has overcome the excruciating mental and spiritual pain of her situation. Faith in Jesus Christ made a major difference in her life. Ron ...
Sermon
Mark Trotter
Some of you give me books that you would like me to read, which I am very happy to do. It usually takes me some time to get to them, so sometimes I save them to take on planes with me. If it is near the summertime, I save them to take with me on my summer vacation. Sometimes, I am embarrassed to confess, by the time I get around to reading the book, I can't remember who it was who gave it to me. ...
Sermon
Brett Blair
I want to encourage you to do something. If you have never read Victor Hugo’s memorable novel the “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” pick up a copy and read it. Hugo uses an interesting literary technique in the story. The reader is allowed to see the basic decency and humanity of Quasimodo, the hunchback, while the crowd sees him only as a monstrous freak. The story, in its essence, is part tragedy, and ...
Sermon
King Duncan
Have you ever wanted to trade lives with someone else for a day or two? I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Freaky Friday series of movies. The first one came out in 1976. Since then, three more versions of the movie have been made. Freaky Friday is about a mother and daughter who wake up one morning to discover they have magically traded lives. For one day, mother and daughter get a rare op...
18. Disabled
Luke 13:10-17
Sermon
Dave Zuchelli
It is no longer politically correct to use the word “crippled.” We are now supposed to say “disabled.” I get it, but the Bible was not written in (or to) twenty-first-century people. So please forgive me as I proceed to “kick against the goads” for a while. Our scripture lesson for today begins with a woman “who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years.” This passage poses a double dose o...
Sermon
Lori Wagner
Today’s scripture is about a woman who had been “disabled by a spirit” for eighteen years. She was bent over and couldn’t stand up straight. Jesus straightened her out! He also straightened out the synagogue leader and his cohort of objectors. They were “put to shame.” The story reads like an interesting allegorical switch, in which a woman no doubt bent under a burden of shame heaped upon her b...
Showing 1 to 19 of 19 results