Worship Service for July 19, 2026
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: We come from many places, carrying both
our hopes and our burdens, wondering where God may be found.
P: God is faithful to every promise and never
abandons God’s people.
L: We gather today believing that this place
can become holy ground – not because of these walls, but because the living God
is here among us.
P: Surely the presence of the Lord is in this
place, and we have come to worship with awe, gratitude, and joy.
L: Come, let us worship God who meets us in
our journeys, transforms ordinary moments with holy presence, and calls us into
the future filled with hope.
P: Let us worship God!
Opening Hymn – God of the
Ages, Whose Almighty Hand #262/809
Prayer of Confession
Most holy and most merciful
God, in Your presence we must face the sinfulness of our nature and the errors
of our ways, intended and accidental.
You alone know how often we have failed by wandering from Your paths, wasting
Your gifts, and underestimating Your love.
Have mercy upon us, O God, for we have broken Your requirements for
justice and overlooked opportunities for kindness. Humble us with Your truth and raise us by
Your grace that we may truly be the people of Christ and the witnesses of Your
Spirit. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Rejoice!
God, whose love is poured over you at all times in all places, has
healed your hearts and spirits. Be
people of love, joy, peace and patience, bringing hope to others.
P: Thanks
be to God for His tender love and grace.
Amen.
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge
the quick and the dead. I believe in the
Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness
of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Holy God,
as we enter this space of quiet and prayer, we are reminded that our prayers
are sometimes one-sided. So, today our
prayer is not only for the usual things we pray for, but also for the opposite
things.
We pray
today not only for the sick who need your tender care and your compassion as
they go through treatments and healing, but we also pray for those who are
well, lest their sense of pride in their own health override Your benevolence
to us. We pray not only for the poor who
struggle with daily living, face days of hunger, who worry about making ends
meet, but we also pray for the rich who find it so hard to enter the Kingdom of
Heaven. We pray not only for the
troubled, those who are depressed and worried about today’s difficulties, but
we also pray for the favored ones, lest peace with the world be confused with
the peace of God. We pray not only for
the dying, those who face terminal illnesses, cancer treatments, but we also
pray for the living, since they face eternity as well.
We pray
not only for the burdened but also for the casual, lest indolence rot the very
soul they hope to save. We pray for not
only the President of our country and leaders around the world, but we also
pray for the people of the world, because it is they who pay for misrule when
it comes. We pray not only for
missionaries on foreign shores, but also for the rest of us who still don’t
know that in Christ there is no east or west, north or south, but one great
human family in a house that grows smaller and smaller by the years.
We pray
not only for ministers of the Gospel, but also for people of the gospel, since
all who believe are called to be doers of the Word and not hearers only. We pray not only for fair weather, but also
for bad weather, since nature is impartial and often prodigal, and human
estimates of good and bad do not count.
We pray not only sinners to turn and be saved, but also for the rest of
us who think we have no sin and are in the greater need of penitence and
healing. And finally, Lord, we pray not
only for others, but also for ourselves, because salvation and righteousness
begins right here, in the household of God.
We especially pray today for…
We pray
with words spoken aloud, but also with hearts unburdened by language in this
time of silence.
Hear us as
we pray... Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth
as it is in heaven. Give us this day our
daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we
forgive our debtors. And lead us not
into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. AMEN.
Hymn – It is Well With My Soul #705
Brown
Scripture Reading:
First Scripture Reading – Genesis 28:10-19a
Second Scripture Reading – Romans
8:12-25
Sermon – Surely
the Presence of the Lord is in this Place
Genesis 28:10-19a
There are seasons in every person's
life when the ground beneath our feet seems to shift without warning, when the
plans we so carefully constructed begin to unravel, and when the future that
once appeared so certain suddenly feels frighteningly unclear. It is often during those moments that we
begin asking questions we rarely ask when life is comfortable. We wonder where God is. We wonder whether our mistakes have carried
us too far from His grace. We wonder if
God can still accomplish His purposes through lives that seem marked more by
failure than faithfulness. The story of
Jacob at Bethel speaks directly into those questions because it reminds us that
God has a remarkable habit of revealing Himself not at the moments when we
believe we have finally arrived spiritually, but in the very places where we
feel most lost, most vulnerable, and most aware of our own limitations.
When Genesis 28 opens, Jacob is not
embarking on an exciting adventure or setting out confidently to fulfill God's
calling. Instead, he is actually fleeing
for his life. Everything that has
happened over the previous chapters has finally caught up with him. If you don’t remember the story of Jacob,
here is a quick recap: Jacob had spent much of his life trying to secure God's
blessings through his own cleverness, beginning with purchasing Esau's
birthright and culminating in deceiving his blind father into giving him the
blessing intended for his older brother.
Although God's covenant had always rested upon Jacob according to God's
own sovereign choice, Jacob never seemed content to trust God's timing. He believed he needed to manipulate
circumstances in order to accomplish what God had already promised, and in
doing so he fractured his family, betrayed his brother, and found himself
forced to leave behind everything that had ever given him security.
There is a certain irony in Jacob's
situation because the man who had spent his life grasping for blessings now
possesses almost nothing. He leaves home
with no entourage, no wealth, no comfortable accommodations awaiting him, and
no certainty about what tomorrow will bring.
As the sun sets, scripture simply tells us that he stops because there
is nowhere else to go. He finds a stone
to rest his head upon and falls asleep beneath the open sky. It is difficult to imagine a more ordinary or
more discouraging scene. The grandson of
Abraham, heir to God's covenant promises, spends the night sleeping in the dirt
with nothing but a rock for a pillow.
If we were writing the story
ourselves, we might expect God to wait until Jacob had demonstrated genuine
repentance, or perhaps until he had finally reached his destination and rebuilt
his life. We sometimes mistakenly assume
that God appears after people have put themselves back together, after they
have corrected their mistakes, or after they have proven themselves worthy of
another opportunity. Yet the astonishing
truth is that God does not wait for Jacob to become a different man before
revealing Himself. Instead, God meets
Jacob precisely at the lowest point of his journey, while he is still carrying
the consequences of his own deception, still uncertain about the future, and
still unable to see how any of God's promises could possibly be fulfilled.
That truth runs throughout the whole
of scripture because God consistently chooses to reveal His presence in places
we would least expect to find Him. Moses
encountered God while tending sheep in the wilderness after forty years of
obscurity. Elijah heard the still, small
voice of God while hiding in a cave after believing his ministry had ended in
failure. The shepherds received the
angelic announcement of Christ's birth while working an ordinary night shift
outside Bethlehem. Mary Magdalene
encountered the risen Christ while standing in a cemetery through tears of
grief and confusion. Again and again the
Bible reminds us that God's presence is not confined to sanctuaries,
mountaintops, or moments of obvious spiritual highs. Instead, God delights in meeting us in
deserts, prisons, cemeteries, fishing boats, and lonely roads, transforming
places of despair into places of divine encounter.
There are countless Christians who
will tell you that they first discovered the depth of God's faithfulness not
during the happiest years of their lives but during seasons of illness, grief,
financial hardship, or profound uncertainty.
It is remarkable how often people describe cancer treatments, hospital
waiting rooms, unemployment, or the death of a loved one as the places where
they came to know God more deeply than ever before. None of us would willingly choose those
experiences, yet time and again believers testify that while they would never
wish to repeat those painful seasons, they would not trade what they learned
about God's presence during them. The
wilderness, as difficult as it may be, has always been one of God's favorite
classrooms.
Several years ago, I read an
interview with a woman whose home had been completely destroyed by a
hurricane. She described the devastation
of watching floodwaters carry away almost everything her family owned, and yet
when she reflected on that experience years later, she said that what she
remembered most clearly was not the destruction but the overwhelming kindness
she encountered afterward. Neighbors she
had barely spoken to before arrived with food, strangers spent weekends helping
rebuild her home, churches organized volunteers to clean debris from her
property, and people she had never met donated supplies simply because they
cared. Looking back, she said, "I
lost my house, but I found a community I never knew I had." Her circumstances were unquestionably
painful, yet they also became the setting in which she discovered dimensions of
grace and compassion that might otherwise have remained hidden.
Jacob experiences something
remarkably similar. As he sleeps, he
dreams of a staircase—or perhaps more accurately in the translation of the
original Hebrew word sullam, a great ramp—stretching from earth into
heaven, with angels ascending and descending upon it. For centuries readers have been fascinated by
this ladder, some depicting it as long and narrow, why others call it a highway;
wondering what exactly it looked like or what every detail might
symbolize. Yet the emphasis of the story
is not really on the ladder, the staircase, ramp, or highway, at all. The emphasis is on the God who stands above
it, speaking words of covenant and promise into the life of a frightened
fugitive.
God introduces Himself to Jacob
personally in the dream, not as a distant deity but as "the Lord, the God
of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac," reminding Jacob that His
covenant has never depended upon human perfection but upon divine faithfulness. What follows is extraordinary because God
does not begin by rehearsing Jacob's failures or demanding that he first
explain his deception. Instead, God
repeats the promises first given to Abraham, assuring Jacob that the land will
belong to his descendants, that his family will become countless in number, and
that through his offspring all the families of the earth will be blessed. Then comes the promise that lies at the heart
of this passage: "Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you
go."
Those words remind us that God's
presence is not limited by geography, circumstance, or even our own
failures. God promises to accompany him
wherever he goes—to unfamiliar lands, difficult relationships, years of hard
labor, moments of disappointment, and even through the consequences of his own
poor decisions. The promise is not that
life will become easy, but that Jacob will never face life alone.
Unfortunately, our culture teaches
us that when life is comfortable and prosperous, we must therefore be blessed
by God. But when suffering enters our
lives, we begin thinking that God has withdrawn from us or is punishing
us. Yet Jacob's story turns that assumption
upside down because God's greatest revelation comes while he is sleeping on the
ground as a homeless refugee. God's
faithfulness has never depended upon our successes or failures; it just…is. Indeed, some of the deepest experiences of
God's grace occur precisely when everything else has been stripped away and we
discover that God’s promises are sufficient even when little else remains.
I remember when I first connected my
iPhone and its GPS navigation system to my car and experienced the frustration
of missing a turn while driving somewhere unfamiliar. I became anxious, maybe a little embarrassed,
yet the GPS calmly responded with a single word:
"Recalculating." It was
calm. It didn’t stress out. Of course, we wanted it to feel more human
and exasperated with us, so we added a perceived inflection to it’s tone. “Sigh…recalculating….” Right?!?!
But honestly, it did not lecture us
about the wrong turn we just made, nor did it abandon us because we failed to
follow the original route. “Well, you’re
on your own now, dummy.”
Instead, it immediately began
identifying another path that still led us to our destination. There is something profoundly comforting
about realizing that God's grace often works in much the same way. Our sins have real consequences, and
Scripture never minimizes them, but neither do they possess the power to cancel
God's mercy or God’s purposes. God is
infinitely capable of redeeming wrong turns, detours along the way, or even
broken roads and incorporating them into God’s larger work of grace.
When Jacob awakens, his response
reveals that something within him has fundamentally changed. Looking around at the same rocks, the same
wilderness, and the same lonely landscape, he declares, "Surely the Lord
is in this place—and I did not know it."
Notice that nothing about his circumstances has actually changed. He is still alone. He still has a long journey ahead. His relationship with Esau remains broken. He has not yet found a wife, established a
family, or accumulated any wealth.
Externally, almost nothing is different.
What has changed though is Jacob's awareness. He now understands that even in the darkest
chapter of his life, God has never stopped being present.
How many times has God been quietly
at work in ordinary conversations, unexpected interruptions, difficult seasons,
or painful transitions while we remained completely unaware of God’s
presence? How often have we mistaken
difficult places for godless places simply because they did not resemble the
life we’d imagined? Perhaps the greatest
miracle of this story is not that heaven briefly opened before Jacob's eyes,
but that he finally recognized a truth that had been there all along: God had
never abandoned him, God was always there.
Throughout Scripture, this is one of
the ways God redeems our lives. The very
places that once represented our deepest pain often become the places from
which we are most able to testify to God's sustaining grace. Hospital rooms become places of
testimony. Seasons of unemployment
become stories of God's provision. Broken
relationships become opportunities to proclaim forgiveness. The wilderness becomes holy ground because
God has chosen to meet us there.
That is why this ancient story
continues to speak with such power today.
Like Jacob, each of us travels roads we never expected to walk, carries
regrets we wish we could erase, and occasionally finds ourselves lying awake in
unfamiliar places wondering what the future holds. Yet the good news of Genesis 28 is that God's
faithfulness has never depended upon the strength of our faith or the
perfection of our character. It depends
entirely upon God’s covenant love. The
same God who met Jacob in the wilderness continues to meet us today, not
because we deserve His presence, but because He has promised never to leave us
nor forsake us.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Lord, take these gifts, multiply them for Your
use in the World and make our hearts and hands busy with the burdens of those
in need, trusting in Your patient Spirit that will one day bring all people to faith. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – God Be With You Till We Meet Again
#232 Brown
Benediction –
Go now in the
confidence that the God who met Jacob on the journey walks with you wherever
you go. Live as God's beloved children. May the Lord bless you and keep you, fill you
with hope, and give you peace until Christ makes all things new. AMEN.
Postlude
