Mike Riley Sermon Outlines, Articles, Lessons, etc.

What makes a church successful? A big turnout on Sunday morning? A multimillion-dollar budget? A state-of-the-art building?

Are we bored with worship to God? Do we believe the church with which we assemble is spiritually dead? Do we view the worship of others as lifeless? Do we feel empty, as though God is far from us?

A querist asks, “I was wondering what you could tell me about the meaning of the number 666 and the mark of the beast. I know Revelation is apocalyptic and symbolic, so the meaning of this is not microchips, bar codes, etc.”

In Acts 12:20-23, we read of King Herod delivering an oration to an audience eager to win his favor. He reveled in their flattering response:

One of my Christian friends recently sent me the following words by an anonymous author, regarding the morals of our society as they were forty to fifty years ago via e-mail:

A querist states, “Just ran into these verses (1 Corinthians 7:36-38) over the weekend. I have a sister in Christ whom I spend a lot of time with and we really enjoy looking at the relationship verses. We came to this one and got baffled on how to look at it. Any insight would be […]

A querist asks, “David once thought of the idea to build a house in order to properly honor the Lord but was not permitted to do so because he was a man of war (1 Chronicles 22:7-8). My question is, If God was with

Examples of Commitment in the Bible – Bible study showing the things that the apostle Paul did to show himself to be an example of commitment. The apostle Paul showed himself to be one of the greatest examples of commitment in the scriptures in maintaining the “pattern” of the gospel given to him by inspiration […]

In Proverbs 22:6 (ASV), the wise man states, “Train up a child in the way [marginal reading – Heb. “according to his way”] he should go, And even when he is old he will not depart from it.” The Hebrews taught that nothing was more important than the rearing of a child in godliness. Discipline […]

To simply preach and teach Christ, we must point people to “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). Preaching Christ to folks is showing them His character to be

The above titled article by Brother Gary Workman, appeared in the March 1981, Vol. 1, No. 4 issue of “The Restorer” publication, in which Brother Workman emphasized the importance of our respecting the

During our summer travels, my wife and I attended several churches of Christ. What we observed in one congregation regarding their attitude towards worship was quite “eye-opening”. We hope and pray it will not become a prevailing attitude and practice in all congregations of the Lord’s people. We observed several of the members chewing gum […]

My grandmother kept quite a few recipes, and at her death, I inherited them. As I was going through them one day, I found the following unique recipe called “Recipe For Life.” I’ve added appropriate Scriptures to the ingredients. The ingredients are: 1 cup of Good Thoughts (Philippians 4:8). 1 cup of Kind Deeds (Matthew […]

The following barbs of wisdom come from The Sword and Staff publication, 2006, Volume 44, Number 3; pg. 13 (appropriate Scriptures and related articles have been added):

My brother sent me the following content via email this morning, and so I’m passing it on to my older readers, as I did not want to be the only “old” person receiving it. Actually, being called “old” is not a bad thing as we will see. Old People are easy to spot at sporting […]

A querist asks, In Joel 2:32, Acts 2:21 and Romans 10:13, we see the phrase, “calls on the name of the Lord.” My question is, How do we “call on the name of the Lord” and what does this phrase mean relative to our salvation?

A querist asks, “Why did Jesus come here poor and die poor? Why did Jesus leave so many sick and poor people in the world when He left?”

The ungodly attitude of many folks today, is the desire to usurp the glory that belongs only to God. Ever since he was created, man has always strutted and taken honor that should have been given to the Creator (cf. Genesis 11:1-4; Acts 12:20-23).

In Genesis 9:15-16, we read of God’s Rainbow Covenant, God’s covenant with Noah and his sons, “And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; […]

The Bible teaches us that it’s possible to be dead and yet be alive. In 1 Timothy 5:6, the inspired writer Paul tells us regarding the lifestyle of certain widows: