MTP Sermon Resources

John 8:12 March 7, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC Spring is just around the corner—at least that’s what Siri tells me! Meteorological spring has already come (last Monday), and in just 13 days, astronomical spring, or the spring equinox, will show up. So spring has come and is coming, and that’s good news for all of us, but especially for those who become very “SAD” during the winter months. SAD is an acronym for “seasonal affective disorder,” and it’s a real thing that shows up during the darker, winter months—and having a pandemic in the midst of those darker months doesn’t help. Symptoms include difficulty waking up in the morning, nausea, a tendency to oversleep and overeat, a lack of energy, difficulty concentrating on or completing tasks, and feelings of hopelessness. Lots of things play into it but still the biggest factor is simply the darkness this time of year. A friend of mine who grew up in Indiana but now lives in Texas came to visit one winter and said, “I’d forgotten ho...

  “Never Dark” Sermon Study Guide for March 7, 2021 Downloadable Version Scripture: John 8:12-20 1. Feast of Tabernacles Grand Illumination… “I am the Light of the World” (8:12) 2. What Jesus Meant Light ______________________________ John 1:5 Light ______________________________ Genesis 12:1 Luke 1 Light ______________________________ 3. What it means for us Matthew 5:14-16 - “You are the light…” Matthew 25:40 John 14:1-7; 18:37-38 Darkness is a ____________________. Questions for Discussion and Reflection What differences does light make in your life? Are you affected by a lack of light in any way? What are the ways light impacts our world? How does light “overcome” darkness? Share about a time when you had just enough light for the next few “steps” in your life. How did that feel? How did you respond? What happened? When you think of Jesus as the Light, what images come to your mind? How do you understand the features of light applying to Jesus? Are t...

John 6:30-51 February 28, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC Ever have one of those late-night cravings that you just can’t satisfy? Not even with a Snickers? For me, “late night” is about 9:00 p.m. Many nights, I’ll wander into the kitchen, wanting something to eat but not sure what. I’ll open the refrigerator, then close it. Open the cabinet, close it. Open the pantry, and then close it. I’m not even sure what I want…just something. There are also a lot of evenings when I want to cook something for dinner, but I have no idea what. So I’ll ask the family, “What do you want to eat?” The most popular response is…you guessed it: “I don’t know.” And so it goes. Satisfaction eludes us, and not only when it comes to food. We often will have these cravings for something to make life better, and most of the time we have no idea what that “something” would be. We think more money will satisfy us, yet when the richest man in American history, John D. Rockefeller (whose fortune in 2021 dollars wo...

  “Full of It” Sermon Study Guide for February 28, 2021 Downloadable Version Scripture: John 6:30-51 1. “I am the bread of life” Feeding of the 5,000+ “Give me more bread” 2. Meaning of the saying To those in the crowd… Exodus 16 - “manna” To Jesus… bread eating body/drinking blood 1 Timothy 6:19 - life John 10:10 - abundant For us… Discipline of _____________________ Matthew 6:16-18 Practice of _______________________ 1 Timothy 6:6-8 Philippians 4:12-13, 19 Questions for Discussion and Reflection What do you look to in order to find satisfaction in life? How has God been “I Am” to you this past week? In what ways do we tend to look to Jesus more for “signs” than for his presence? How do we forget his faithfulness from day to day or week to week? When are you most tempted to want to return to some past place or time that seemed better? What prompts that feeling? When you think of “bread,” what images or feelings come to mi...

Exodus 3:1-14; John 8:48-59 February 21, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC How many of you know what your name means? [Take a few responses.] Maybe I’ve shared before that my name is taken from the name of the Greek god of wine, Dionysius—which is odd because neither of my parents drink. But my name fit into the family—we were “the four “D’s”—Dick, Donna, Dennis and Doug. And a lot of names are chosen that way, for the way they sound. How else do you explain names like Blip, Kiwi, Cheese, Panda and Rocket? Those names all appear on Time  Magazine’s “most unusual names” list. And then there are the names that go beyond “unusual” to just plain…well, I’m gonna say it, weird. Some of you may have seen when Elon Musk had a son, they named him X Æ A-Xii, and it’s apparently pronounced “X Ash A-Twelve.” Yeah, I don’t even know what to do with that. Some other…interesting names from 2020 include Portabella (how’d you like to be named after fungus), Mordax (which sounds like it’s from Lord o...