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Sermon
Robert Allen
For those of you who are football fans, you know that Lou Holtz is a football coach who likes to win. Every place that he has coached, he has taken the football program and turned it around. He built Arkansas into one of the major football powers in the nation. He was turning the program around at Minnesota when he was offered the position at Notre Dame. Notre Dame’s football program had been stru...
2. Hostage Crisis
1 Kings 19:1-8
Sermon
Carlyle Fielding Stewart
Sweat swarmed and beaded the palms of his hands as his heart thumped and pulse escalated. Bulging eyes blinked rapidly as his face twitched. His brown, swollen hands rumbled nervously through the inside pocket of his urine-stained tweed overcoat. "I got to find a match," he said to himself. "I got to find a match." Again he jerked through every pocket of his pants, jacket, and shirt. Still no matc...
3. At Points of Dispair
1 Kings 19:1-4 (5-7) 8-15a
Sermon
Stephen P. McCutchan
It seems almost inevitable that people who experience the highs of life are also going to experience the lows in life. No one lives on a perpetual high. There are always peaks and valleys. The disciples accompanied Jesus to the mount to witness his transfiguration, but after that they descended into the valley below. Have you ever noticed how often the low comes right after the peaks? As a C...
Sermon
King Duncan
Colonel Jimmy Stewart stood looking out the window of his hut in England. He gazed in the direction of the English Channel and toward the continent beyond. Tomorrow he would command a squadron of B-24 Liberator Bombers on a dangerous mission over Germany. It was understood that some of the planes would not return; that some of the flyers would die or be captured. Jimmy Stewart was afraid. He repl...
5. 1 Kings 19:9-14
1 Kings 19:1-18
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Ironically, 1 Kings 19 contains one of the most familiar, revered stories of the prophet Elijah's tumultuous life, and it is a historical-critical quagmire. There is no reason to believe that the events in chapter 19 chronologically followed those in chapter 18. The consensus is that a skillful redactor put together the two units by adding 9:1-3, thus connecting the flight to Horeb with the events...
6. The Good Yoke
Matthew 11:25-30, 1 Kings 19:1-8, 1 Kings 19:9-18, 1 Kings 19:19-21
Sermon
Lori Wagner
What kind of yoke are you wearing today? Not this kind you say! Are you sure? Indeed, we may not get up in the morning and fit ourselves into a wooden harness like the one you see here –although sometimes our clothing may feel like that if we’ve gained a few pounds, no? But we all do bear a yoke. We yoke ourselves to ideas, concepts, issues, material things, relationships, belief systems. Our...
Sermon
Lowell D. Streiker
1. What Do Daddies Do? Six-year-old Calvin is talking to his stuffed Tiger Hobbes:  Calvin: Here's a box of crayons. I need some illustrations for a story I'm writing. You can draw something besides tigers, can't you? Hobbes: Sure, Leopards, pumas, ocelots....you name it. (Time passes and we find Calvin in bed with his stuffed tiger, ready to be tucked in by his father.) Calvin: Here Dad, read t...
Sermon
Steven Burt
Paul Tillich, the great American theologian, said: “Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone and it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.” That’s elegant. And it rings true. Haven’t we all, at some time in our lives, remarked at the difference between being lonely and being a...
Sermon
Stan Purdum
I'm not sure when the term "burn out" ceased being only a description of what happened to a campfire when you ran out of firewood to a term describing the experience of long-term exhaustion and diminished interest, usually coming immediately after an extended period of overwork, but the expression seems to fit that later situation, doesn't it? Exhaustion, deep weariness, all used up, nothing more ...
Sermon
Robert Leslie Holmes
There’s an old legend that tells how God sent one of his angels to Satan with the message that all the methods the devil uses to defeat Christians would be taken from him. The devil pleaded to be allowed to keep only one. The angel, thinking it an unusual, modest request from the greedy devil, agreed Satan could keep that one. “Which one would you want to keep?” the angel inquired. “Let me keep di...
11. The Lonely Prophet
1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a
Sermon
King Duncan
One of the great concepts that has come out of the sobriety movement and organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous is the acronym HALT—H. A. L. T. The word, of course, literally means “to stop.” But in sobriety circles, the acronym HALT serves as a reminder to be careful how you react when you are Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. Researchers have found that, for someone with addiction issues, these f...
Sermon
Robert Allen
Several years ago, we were living in a community that had a population of less than 10,000 people. Because of the nearby lake and the numerous campgrounds, it was fairly common to have thousands of people visiting in our community on the weekend. However, most of these people did not feel comfortable coming into town for church. They were camping and didn’t feel comfortable coming to church in the...
Sermon
John R. Brokhoff
There he came to a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He said, "I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the people of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thy altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away." An...
Sermon
Bill Bouknight
Is it a commentary on television that nowadays some of the best programs are the commercials? One of my all-time favorites was made by the Aetna Insurance Company. It shows a father going through a goodnight ritual with his young son. First, the father has to look under the bed and then check the closet to make sure no monsters are there. Then, having secured the room, he says goodnight. As he lea...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
God is both inside and outside - in the mountains and their thunder and in the quiet caves of our souls. To Moses God spoke through the mountains with a roar. To Elijah God spoke through the cave in a still small voice. God still speaks in various ways today. The multifaceted nature of God's presence before human beings is demonstrated dramatically in this week's text from 1 Kings. While the reda...
Sermon
King Duncan
Many of us have felt what Elijah felt out in the wilderness. Things are quickly going from bad to worse and I am the only one left who cares! That was Elijah's weary response to God. It came after Elijah's momentous victory over the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. How quickly we can slide from the mountain of triumph into the valley of despond. Elijah did. Queen Jezebel was after his blood. He h...
Sermon
David E. Leininger
One of the reasons I love the Bible is that it is not afraid of the truth, even the sometimes sordid truth about its heroes. Abraham was a liar. Jacob was a thief. Moses had a murderous temper. King David was an adulterer. Heroes of the faith, everyone of them, but the Bible refuses to gloss over their shortcomings. It shows them "warts and all." We find another "wart" in our lesson from I Kings -...
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