Sermon Illustrations on Christian Culture

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The Problem with Apologetics

Author

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 13:2, James 2:19-20, 1 Corinthians 8:1-2, Ecclesiastes 1:18, 1 Corinthians 2:5, Philippians 3:10, Matthew 7:21, 24-27, James 1:22

The Oxford scholar and apologist C. S. Lewis... once closed a lecture to a group of apologists like this: I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologis...

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The Principle to Persuasive Christian Communication

Author

Willowbank Report

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 10:1, Ephesians 4:2-3, Romans 12:3, Colossians 4:6, Matthew 23:11-12, Proverbs 11:2, James 1:19

In a statement created by Christian leaders across the world, the Lausanne Willowbank Report calls for church leaders to return to the humility and servanthood that Jesus manifested in His earthly min...

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Getting to the Image

Author

Brian Zahnd

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 12:2, Galatians 6:1, Proverbs 9:10, James 1:4, Isaiah 61:3

Think of an ancient icon of Christ. Imagine that a thousand-year-old Christ Pantocrator painted on a wooden panel is discovered in some forgotten monastery. The image of Christ is there, but it’s cove...

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Christianity Revitalized Roman Cities

Author

Rodney Stark

Keywords

Scripture

James 1:27, Isaiah 1:17, Psalm 68:5, Matthew 25:34-40, 1 Timothy 5:3-4, Zechariah 7:9-10, Matthew 12:48-50, Romans 8:14-17, Luke 4:18, Acts 4:34-35, James 2:15-16

Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems. To cities filled with the homeless and im...

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Learned Ignorance: De Docta Ignorancia

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 1:5, Jeremiah 9:23-24, Matthew 11:25, James 1:21, Colossians 2:3, Matthew 18:3

Becoming a teachable person has two prerequisites: There must be a teacher and a person willing to be taught. Increasingly, Western culture has become an environment that celebrates and platforms the ...

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The Two Runners

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 6:33, Colossians 3:23, Psalm 39:6, Luke 12:15, Acts 15:29, Matthew 5:14-16, Ephesians 2:10, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Jeremiah 9:23-24, Matthew 16:24, Luke 9:62, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, James 1:12, Romans 8:16-17, Galatians 2:20

The true story of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams, two British sprinters who qualified for the 1924 Olympic Games, illustrates two contrasting approaches to life and identity. Abrahams was driven by ...

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Kingdom-Based Coffee

Author

Jonathan Walton

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 3:23-24, Galatians 6:9-10, Philippians 2:4, Matthew 5:16, Proverbs 31:8-9, James 1:27

Brandon and Faith Lee, who started Bird and Branch Coffee, are what faithful witnesses look like. When they sat down across from my wife and me, they had a dream to start a coffee shop that would serv...

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Good vs. Bad Discipline

Author

James K. A. Smith

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 12:5-11, Proverbs 3:11-12, Psalm 94:12, 1 Timothy 4:7-8, Philippians 3:12-14, Matthew 23:23-24, James 1:22-25, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

While formally or structurally speaking, there are mechanisms of discipline operative in both the convent and the prison, in both the factory and the monastery, more specifically, these disciplines an...

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The Spirit & Temptation

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 4:1, Matthew 4:3, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Romans 5:3-5, Mark 1:12-13, 1 Kings 19:4-8, James 1:2-4

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton discuss the poignant insight that it is the Spirit that leads Jesus into the Wildnerness. What does this...

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Name a Day and Give me a Hearing

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Revelation 2:10, Psalm 71:20-21, Philippians 3:10-14, Luke 21:16-19, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, Romans 8:17-18, James 1:12

One of the great leaders of the first generation after the apostles was a man named Polycarp. Polycarp, it is believed, was discipled by the apostle John and carried out a long and fruitful ministry i...

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A Little Girl and The Founding of World Vision

Author

Soong-Chan Rah

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 25:35-40, James 1:19-27, Luke 10:33-37, John 21:15-17, 1 John 3:17-18, Ruth 2:8-12, Acts 9:36-42, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 6:38

In 1947 huge crowds came to hear a thirty-two-year-old Californian preach at mass evangelistic rallies throughout China. Although Bob Pierce had no knowledge of Chinese language or culture, his messag...

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Reading the Gospels for the First Time

Author

Os Guinness

Keywords

Scripture

Revelation 3:15-16, Matthew 6:24, James 1:6-8, Luke 14:34-35, Revelation 2:4-5, 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, 1 Corinthians 1:18

Thomas Linacre was king’s physician to Henry VII and Henry VIII of England, founder of the Royal College of Physicians, and friend of the great Renaissance thinkers Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Late i...

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The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Author

James Cone

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 61:1, Jeremiah 22:3, Micah 6:8, James 1:27, Matthew 25:35-36, Psalm 82:3-4, Isaiah 58:6-7

In the wake of slavery and the Civil War, there was so much ugliness in black life that one would have had to be blind not to see it. And nothing, absolutely nothing, was uglier than lynching in all o...

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Christmas: A Tradition of Gift-Giving

Author

Emily Hunter McGowin

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 2:11, James 1:17, Matthew 2:1-12, 2 Corinthians 9:7, Proverbs 22:9, 1 Timothy 6:18, John 3:16

While Christmas traditions vary the world over, gift-giving is a central practice just about anywhere Christ's birth is celebrated. Sometimes gifts are exchanged on December 6, the feast day of S...

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The Origin of Santa Claus and Stockings

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 6:3-4, Acts 20:35, Proverbs 19:17, James 1:27, 2 Corinthians 9:6-7, 1 John 3:17, Matthew 25:40

The man behind the unlikely tradition of Christmas stockings is usually thought to have been Nikolaos of Myra. He was a Greek Christian who became bishop of Myra, a city of Asia Minor. Nikolaos, or Sa...

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The Dark Side of the Web

Author

Andy Crouch

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 25:40, Romans 12:21, Luke 4:18-19, James 1:27, Micah 6:8, Isaiah 1:17

In October 2014 Wired magazine reported on the dirty work every social media company must somehow handle: moderating the deluge of exploitative, degrading content posted in unimaginable quantities aro...

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Rewiring Our House is Painful

Author

Ken Costa

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 1:6, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 12:2, Isaiah 40:31, 1 Peter 1:6-7, James 1:2-4

God stretches our faith in order to prepare us to receive his promises. That often requires painful rewiring. We need updating, just as an old house may need rewiring. The old electrical wires might b...

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God’s Abundant Provision in Genesis 2

Author

Mark D. Roberts

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 2:16-17, Proverbs 3:10, Genesis 1:29, Psalm 23:1-2, Psalm 34:10, Philippians 4:19, James 1:17

There is a tendency among readers and scholars of Genesis 2:16-17 to focus on the prohibition of verse 17: “but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.” …I want to pause to cons...

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Home: A Desire for Permanence

Author

Jen Pollock Michel

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 10:23, James 1:9-12, 1 Corinthians 15:58, Jeremiah 17:7-8, Colossians 2:6-7

Before Seattle resident Edith Macefield died at age eighty-six in 2008, she refused to sell her house to developers for the $1 million they had purportedly offered. Macefield wanted to die at home. Se...

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Crafting the Perfect Christmas

Author

Andy Cook

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 31:10-31, Matthew 6:19-21 , Luke 10:38-42, Ecclesiastes 4:6 , Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, James 1:17, Isaiah 9:6, Luke 2:11, John 3:16-17 , Luke 2:10

Ann was a working mother in her 30’s, and one of the millions of women who saw the marshmallow castle on the December cover of a popular women’s magazine. Ann confessed, later, that she felt like a “b...

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The Scottish Discus Thrower

Author

John Eldredge

Keywords

Scripture

James 1:2-4, Romans 5:3-5, Job 23:10, 1 Corinthians 9:25-27, Hebrews 12:11

As a young boy, around the time my heart began to suspect that the world was a fearful place and I was on my own to find my way through it, I read the story of a Scottish discus thrower from the ninet...

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Daring to Glance

Author

Terry Linhart

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 12:15, 1 Corinthians 13:12, James 1:22-25, Psalm 19:12, Proverbs 14:12, Jeremiah 17:9, 1 Corinthians 3:18-19

One helpful, practical tool to understand our blind spot is what’s called the Johari Window, an image developed as a counseling tool in the 1950s. Subjects were given a list of fifty-six adjectives, a...

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So he took the paint brush and went out

Author

Source Unknown

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 16:18 , Luke 14:11 , Numbers 22:21-34, Luke 2:8-18, James 1:17, Acts 20:35, 2 Corinthians 9:15 , Jeremiah 31:31 , 2 Corinthians 9:15, John 1:9-10

So he took the paint brush and went out back. She forgot about it until sometime later when there was another knock at the door. It was him. He obviously had been painting because there was paint spla...

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What Do You Want for Christmas?

Author

Rick Warren

Keywords

Scripture

Mark 13:37, Philippians 4:4-5, James 1:17, Psalm 95:2-3, 2 Corinthians 9:7, Matthew 2:10-11

What do you want for Christmas this year? If you were to ask a typical little boy, he’d probably give you two words: video games. There’s a little boy I know named Brian. For weeks he bugged his paren...

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The Christmas Gift

Author

Andy Cook

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 61:3, John 11:32-35, Romans 8:28, Genesis 37:50, James 1:17, Romans 6:23 , 1 Corinthians 12:28

A preaching professor at Harvard University tells the story of the year his 5-year-old son was working on an art project in his kindergarten class. It was made of plaster, resembled nothing in particu...

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Miserable Elvis

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 12:2, Psalm 119:10, James 1:14-15, Ecclesiastes 5:10, Matthew 6:19-21, Romans 7:19, Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Like many others who find themselves in the spotlight, Elvis Presley struggled with his fame, as well as the many temptations that befell him during his time as an iconic musician. In 1958, following ...

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Surviving Navy Seals Training

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Joshua 1:9, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, Isaiah 40:31, Philippians 4:13, 2 Timothy 1:7, James 1:2-4

Becoming a Navy Seal is considered the most challenging training of any military unit in the U.S. military. And as difficult as most of their training is, nothing can compare to BUDS, which stands for...

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The Danger of Discipleship

Author

Eugene H. Peterson

Keywords

Discipleship

Scripture

John 15:5, Matthew 7:24, Romans 12:1-2, Luke 6:46, James 1:22, Colossians 2:6-7

The great danger of Christian discipleship is that we should have two religions: a glorious, biblical Sunday gospel that sets us free from the world, that in the cross and resurrection of Christ makes...

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We are Artful Dodgers

Author

Søren Kierkegaard

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 29:13, Amos 5:21-24, Proverbs 1:7, James 1:22-25 , Matthew 23:27-28, Psalm 51:16-17

We artful dodgers act as if we do not understand the New Testament, because we realize full well that [if we let on that we did] we should have to change our way of life drastically. That is why we in...

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The Crucial Thing

Author

Søren Kierkegaard

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 22:37-39, 1 Corinthians 8:1-3, Ezekiel 36:26-27, Colossians 1:9-10, Philippians 3:10-14, James 1:22, John 14:21

In a journal entry by the Danish Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, the great existentialist philosopher describes the importance not simply of grasping the truth of the Christian faith, but having the tr...

Sermon Illustrations on christian culture

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