Worth's Sermons

Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.
1st in a Series

Due to time constraints, I had to shorten this sermon “on the fly” this past Sunday, and forced to record the changes from memory. I have taken the liberty of shaping it to serve as a proper introduction to a short Lenten series on “The Stages of Life.” WNG

This morning I want to talk to you about Stages on the Journey of Life.

There are actually three texts that I could have used for this sermon:

In Exodus 17:1 we read:

All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the LORD.

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2nd in a Series on Required Living
Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.

8 He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8

We are talking about kindness. I am going to use a circuitous root to demonstrate the blessings of kindness, first from life, then from the Bible.

Let’s begin at home. I have often remarked at the many members of New Philadelphia Moravian Church who have lived to a ripe old age. In my 22 years here, I have lost track of our members who have lived, or who continue to live up and down and around Country Club Road and Peace Have Road and Old Vineyard Road, and Hawthorne Road, who have enjoyed life into their late eighties, and in some cases into their nineties, and in more cases than you might expect into their 100th year and beyond.

Dozens of times, when speaking of these folks, I have grinned and said, “There must be something in the water.”

Of course, that cannot be so, for many years now most of these folks have been drinking the same water most of us drink. It comes out of the tap.
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1st in a Series on “Required Living”
Worth Green, Th.M. D.Min.
In Micah 6:8 we read:

8 He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

This is the first of several sermons on Micah 6:8. I will call the series “Required Living.” We begin with the subject of justice. We begin here or we do not begin at all, for when God makes a list of what he requires from us, justice stands at the top of the list. The Psalmist says that God has “shown us what is good,” and the good that God has shown us certainly includes justice. We know justice when we see it.

Perhaps you have read Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill a Mocking Bird.” Or perhaps you have seen the movie of the same name. It was filmed in glorious black & white, it stars Gregory Peck, and in the opinion of many is the single greatest motion picture of all time.
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Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.
Based upon Acts 10

The thing I like least about ministry is assigning titles to my sermons. I choose titles for my sermons on Wednesday so they can be posted in the Winston-Salem Journal, and I seldom finish them before Saturday afternoon. On Wednesday, I have studied the text of the sermon a little, and my observations are tentative and superficial. By Saturday the text has drawn me in, and I begin to see what is really there.

This sermon is one of those that no longer resembles its title. I began by reading these ten verses and observing:

“My, oh my, what a wonderful text. It is the gospel in a nutshell. It has everything: It has the ministry of Jesus, and the death of Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus. It has Jesus as the judge of the living and the dead, with power over life and death. It has predictive prophecy, and the preaching of the gospel. I will call it “The Gospel in Ten Verses.”

This I did. Then something strange happened. The text drew me in. I now know what the text in its context is really about. And a text without a context is a pretext. In its context, this text is all about the fact that “God shows no partiality; but we do.”
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Worth Green, Th.M., D. Min.

The great Neo-Orthodox theologian Emil Brunner says that children never ask secondary questions, but primary questions. They ask the questions that adults refuse to ask, are afraid to ask. I think this is so because children still have the full use of their senses. Often they see more clearly or hear more accurately than we adults. Let me give two examples.

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Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.
A Sermon based on the John the Baptist tradition within the New Testament.

This morning I want to talk to you about John and Jesus. Let me say right up front that talking about John and Jesus is:

• Like talking about a Chevrolet and a Corvette.
• It is like talking about the light of a single candle, and the light from a lighthouse.
• It is like talking about the Yadkin-Pedee River and the vast and endless Sea into which it runs.

Who was John? John was a prophet. He spoke the word of God in his day. He offered a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John called for personal and social reform. More importantly, he pointed to the future that was coming to us from God in the person of Jesus.

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