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Sermon
Richard Patt
This is the kind of sermon topic that the preacher hesitates to advertise ahead of time. If people come to church to hear some good news, this topic doesn't sound too promising. But I ask you to brace yourself and stick with it. The words we consider here are from the lips of none other than a merciful and loving Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. His words often contained some hard truths, but they a...
Sermon
W. Robert McClelland
"Christ" is the Greek word for Messiah or King. To believe in Jesus Christ, therefore, is to affirm more than certain doctrinal statements about his divinity or the assurance of eternal life. To believe in Christ is to refuse to acknowledge anyone else in this life as King. It is to insist that the powers and principalities of this world do not have authority over us, even when they appear to be i...
3. Faithquakes
Luke 17:5-10
Sermon
Ron Lavin
A woman who went through her first earthquake in California said, as it was happening, "I think a train just hit our apartment building. I think our foundation is gone. We better pray." A faithquake is something like an earthquake. Something comes along and shakes us up. Something shakes our very foundations. Through the foundation-shaking event, we want to know more about God and faith. Somethi...
Sermon
George Reed
In the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark Indiana Jones has to choose which cup would have belonged to Jesus and been used at the Last Supper. There are dozens upon dozens to choose from and each seems more lavish than the next. He chooses the one which is the most simple and would most likely reflect the lifestyle of a simple carpenter. It is the correct choice. While there may be some problems with u...
Sermon
King Duncan
Presbyterian pastor Dave Wilkinson tells a hilarious story about Randy Johnson, a former quarterback for Oklahoma State University. Randy is a nephew of the late President Lyndon Johnson. It had not been a good year for Randy Johnson or the Oklahoma State team. And, to top it off, for the last game of the year, they faced the mighty Oklahoma Sooners. The game with the Sooners was almost over. The...
Sermon
King Duncan
Christians are funny people. In one of his books, Chuck Swindoll tells about a lady who wanted desperately to go on a tour to Israel. But she wanted a sign to confirm that it was God’s will. The morning after she began planning the trip, she woke up at 7:47 a. m. The tour group to Israel was planning on flying over on a 747 jet. That was her “sign” that confirmed God was going to bless this trip....
Sermon
King Duncan
A man named Adrian Plass authored what he calls his Sacred Diary. In it, he tells how he once bought a book on faith that told him that real Christians should be able to move mountains by faith. So he decided to try it. He practiced with a paper clip. He put it on his desk and willed it to move. Nothing happened. He tried commanding it in a loud voice. Still nothing happened. He tried it again th...
Sermon
King Duncan
What do you do when you need a little extra motivation? When your strength or your spirits are depleted, and you’re facing a big challenge—how do you kick up your energy a notch? In June of 2000, a couple of video board operators for the Los Angeles Angels baseball team decided that their team needed some extra motivation. They were playing the San Francisco Giants and they were behind. So the gu...
Sermon
King Duncan
In the 1850s, two men in Rutherfordton, North Carolina--Edward Carter and Nathan Young, both of them loyal Baptists--became concerned that there were no good Baptist schools near their town. Carter first became alarmed when he heard that his niece and nephew had converted to Methodism. This dire circumstance occurred at a local Methodist school they attended. Now you can imagine how this affected...
Sermon
And he said to his disciples, "Temptations to sin are sure to come; but woe to him by whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. Take heed to yourselves; if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him; and if he sins against you seven times in the day,...
Sermon
King Duncan
Can you picture this scene? We are sitting on bleachers under the big top having a wonderful time laughing at the clowns, watching lions and tigers jump at the crack of a whip, and gazing in awe as the acrobats perform. We are caught up in the excitement of the circus and join in with the crowd in thunderous applause after each act. The acrobats perform high above us in what seems to us as death-d...
Sermon
King Duncan
The angle from which we view things makes a big difference. Lord Chesterfield once pointed out that a horse looks pretty much like a horse when viewed from ground level, but when you climb up in the loft and look down on a horse from the top, it looks a good deal like a violin. Your perspective is the difference. It is not unusual, in the Gospels, for the same story to be told by two different au...
Sermon
Dr. Chane M. Hutton
The sales manager of a large real estate firm was interviewing an applicant for a sales job. "Why have you chosen this career?" he asked. "I dream of making a million dollars in real estate, like my father," the young man replied. "Your father made a million dollars in real estate?" asked the impressed sales manager. "No," replied the young man. "but he always dreamed of it." Have you ever not...
Sermon
Ever since the sign went up on our property that our church was coming I've gotten phone calls from people asking when we'll have a church. I can be a smart aleck as some of you will attest and so I'm often quick to respond that we already have a church, we just don't have a building. "Well," they usually say, "give me a call when you get the building done; I'm not going to worship in a high schoo...
Sermon
Brett Blair
One day the great Michelangelo attracted a crowd of spectators as he worked. One child in particular was fascinated by the sight of chips flying and the sound of mallet on chisel. The master was shaping a large block of white marble. Unable to contain her curiosity, the little girl inquired, "What are you making?" He replied, "There is an angel in there and I must set it free." Every Christian at...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Urbanites and suburbanites might have very different definitions of a “neighborhood,” but both daydream about the gladed landscapes and bucolic beauty of a truly rural setting. Who wouldn’t like to “get away from it all” for a while? Who wouldn’t want to experience a refreshing dose of peace and quiet? Who wouldn’t prefer a two lane gravel road instead of an eight lane “freeway” parking lot? Who ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Not so very long ago the pharmacy and the pantry were one and the same. Curatives and restoratives were cooked up at home, not picked up at the drug store. It is hard for us to realize that 1914 was really the first year when a trip to the doctor made you better. Long before scientific discoveries revealed the inner workings of penicillin, digitalis, or even aspirin, old wives and herbologists pr...
Sermon
Bill Bouknight
I love an old story called “The Legend of Desert Pete.” According to the story, a man was walking across a desert in the summer of 1933. He was dying of thirst and desperately needed water. Imagine his relief and delight when he came upon a pump, right out in the middle of the desert. There was a baking-soda can tied to the handle of the pump, and inside the can was a note. The note read: “This pu...
Sermon
Mark Trotter
The Mustard Seed Parable is a favorite of so many. I can remember mustard seed necklaces, little glass balls with a tiny mustard seed in it, how popular they were. That was J. C. Penny's idea. He distributed them. As I recall you could write him, not to the corporation but to him personally, and he would send you one. J. C. Penny was an active churchman. He practiced tithing in his personal life....
Sermon
Brett Blair
Rabbi Harold Kushner tells a wonderful story about a bright young man, who was a sophomore Stanford pre-med student To reward him for having done so well in school, his parents gave him a trip to the Far East for the summer vacation before the start of his junior year. While there he met a guru who said to him, "Don't you see how you are poisoning your soul with this success oriented way of life? ...
Sermon
Alvin Rueter
I saw a cartoon once showing a man sweating and grunting, carrying a whole church on his back. Can you identify with that? It seems as though the demands of church membership are pretty heavy, aren’t they? Always asking us for money - if not to repair the roof, then for missions or for hunger. If we complain we don’t have anything to spare, then we’re told we should eat a bit less and give the dif...
Sermon
John G. Lynn
One bright day in March a young man awoke at 4:30 a.m. Crystal clear sunlight poured into Jack's room, like a great river leading him to a new day. He was too high up for any river to flow -- springs or small streams, yes, but no rivers. Kurseong, not far from Darjeeling, stood 8,000 feet above sea level, in the foothills of the Himalayas. As he rubbed his eyes in that radiant dawn, he looked out ...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
A son at college was seeking to apply pressure for more money from his dad. In a letter home he wrote: “I can’t understand why you call yourself a loving father when you haven’t sent me a check for three weeks. What kind of love do you call that?” The father wrote back, “That’s unremitting love!” [1] We smile at that. Some of us may even chuckle, though not out loud, because we have all been the...
Sermon
Carveth Mitchell
More than a century ago Sydney Smith wrote in his Lady Holland’s Memoir these disturbing words: "Whoever wishes to imply the absence of everything agreeable and inviting, he calls it a sermon." How shall we escape that indictment today? When we read verses seven through ten in today’s Gospel, it is somewhat shocking to read that Jesus said this in describing our relationship with God. We must rem...
Sermon
King Duncan
I’ve got a pop quiz for you this morning. Prosthetic limbs, artificial body parts, have been around for thousands of years. Would you like to guess what is the oldest prosthetic body part that has ever been found? Do you have a guess? It’s a big toe. Years ago, archeologists in Cairo, Egypt were excavating the tomb of an ancient Egyptian noblewoman who lived about 3,000 years ago. And they discov...
Showing 1 to 25 of 27 results