Worship
Service for August 1, 2021
Special Announcement:
I
began this blog site a few years ago, even before COVID-19, to give members of
our two partnership congregations, who are homebound or aren’t able to come to church,
a way to connect or at least receive the sermon on Sundays. It was relatively easy to be able to expand
that when the pandemic hit so that ALL (or most) of our members would be able
to continue to stay connected to a weekly or daily message.
This blog’s audience has grown
since then reaching outside the congregational membership to include
others. We are blessed and happy to
provide this opportunity. As you know,
finances can be tight for congregations and any non-profit. Our churches, at both Bethesda and Olivet,
provide meaningful ministries to our local communities; afterschool programming
for kids, the local Food Bank, Elizabeth’s Guardian Angels, etc…. If you have found this blog and our worship
services/meditations helpful, it would be a great blessing to us if you’d help
with those ministries by providing a monetary contribution to either
church.
Olivet Presbyterian
Church
726 Fourth Street Box 526
West Elizabeth, PA 15088
Or
Bethesda United
Presbyterian Church
314 S. 3rd
Avenue
Elizabeth, PA 15037
Click here (when
highlighted) for the YouTube link for the recorded service.
Prelude
Announcements:
·
Please feel free to join us for in person
worship at Olivet (West Elizabeth, PA) at 9:45am or at Bethesda (Elizabeth, PA)
at 11:15am.
·
Olivet Food Bank – Aug 13 for Delivery, Aug 17
for Distribution
Sounding of the Hour (at Bethesda only)
Call to Worship
L: The Spirit of God calls to us,
P: With sighs too deep for words.
L: The Spirit of God calls to us,
P: Claiming us,
L: Summoning us to become more than we now
are.
P: Calling us be name: God’s children.
Opening Hymn – My Faith Looks Up to Thee
Prayer of Confession
O God of
love, God of power and strength, we have heard Your promises of abundant life
and have been afraid to believe them. We
have worshiped You with our lips but have reserved parts of ourselves for our
own purposes and plans. We are bound by
our need for absolute certainty and so we often miss Your living presence in
the surprises of life. Renew us by
turning our trust to You again. (Silent
prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: There is no chasm that cannot be bridged,
no loss that cannot be recovered, no mistake that cannot be forgiven, no life
that cannot be redeemed – by the grace of God in Christ Jesus.
P: In the name of Jesus Christ, we are God’s
by grace. Thanks be to God. 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
It is a good thing to come
into your house, O Lord. We have come
today just as we are, but we dare not go away unchanged from this worship
service. Your voice speaks to us during
worship. Your Word, O Lord, gives us
instruction. Your music, O God, sings in
our souls. Our prayers together form a
bond between us, a covenant and a blessing.
O God, we are grateful that there is a place for us to go where we are
reminded that life is more than physical things, more than food and clothing,
more than show and tell, more than physical pleasures, more than passing
fancies. You are eternal and our
presence here with the eternal reminds us that we are eternal also. Help us to live each day in the light of that
eternity.
We continue to pray
especially during the summer months for all travelers. As they leave home, watch over them and
protect them from any harm, allow them to feel rested while away and refreshed
when they return.
We also pray for …..
Listen also Lord for the
burdens of our hearts as we lift them up to you in this time of silence…
Comfort us O God, and allow
us to see a glimpse of your eternity in our everyday lives. Strengthen us for the journey that you have
placed us on in life and give us a sense of accomplishment as we lead our lives
renewed in your Spirit each and every day.
We pray all this in your Son’s name who taught us to prayer together
saying…
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 – Precious Lord, Take My Hand
Scripture Reading(s):
OT – Psalm 51
NT – Ephesians 4:1-16
Sermon – “A Maturity of Faith Comes from a Full
Measure of Grace”
Do you know how important you
are? Do you know, honestly, how
important you are?
You are so
important that God sent his son into this world, so that you might be
saved. In fact, you are so
important that God thought that perhaps this wasn’t going to be enough. So, God didn’t stop there. Sometimes we think that’s all God did. God came down to earth and did some
miraculous stuff with his son, Jesus, taught us a bunch of things and tried to
reveal the fullness of God’s relationship with us so that we’d have something
to remember God by. Then God paid the
penalty of our sins and washed us clean forever. But, guess what, you are so important to God, that God wasn’t done. God wasn’t finished with us simply after
Jesus’ death. No, to God, even that
wasn’t enough.
God could
have said, “Look, I’ve given you everything.
I’ve even sacrificed my own son.
I’ve paid the penalty of your sins; past, present and future. I’ve redeemed you back from the pit. There is nothing more I can do and yet still
you hesitate to follow me. Yet, still
you have questions and doubts about who I am.
Still you sin against me and against one another. What more must I do in order to show you how
important you are to me, to show you how much I love you?”
And so, God gives us grace to live by
every day. In fact, you are so important
that God pours out a full measure of Grace according to the measure of Christ’s
gifts upon you.
Each one of us is given grace to live
by each day.
Not only did God save us from living
eternally separated from him; through the sacrifice of Christ, through the
teaching of Christ, through the work of Christ, God redeemed us back. But you are so important that God wanted to
make sure that you’d really be fully redeemed; that there would be no way that
God could lose you again. And so God
pours out a full measure of grace on you, each and every day. And that it is by this grace alone
that we are truly saved, redeemed, and blessed by God.
What does Grace really mean
though? We sing about it – this amazing
grace, but do we truly understand what it is and what it means for our lives?
Webster’s dictionary says that grace
has a variety of meanings. Grace means
beauty or charm as of form or manner.
Grace means good will or favor.
Grace means a delay granted to allow payment. Grace is a short prayer of thanks for a
meal. Grace is a title given someone
whom you address such as a duke. And finally
grace is the love and favor of God toward humanity.
So, even if we go with Webster’s sixth
meaning for the word Grace, we understand that God’s sacrifice two thousand
years ago, wasn’t something that was static.
It wasn’t something that was done and forgotten. It wasn’t just a blip on the timeline of
creation. It continues constantly,
forever, always, for you and for me. On
each of us God pours out grace, God’s love and favor on humanity, according to
the measure of Christ’s gifts.
Now if God (hold up your hand in a half of a cup) holds Jesus here (hold up your other hand next to it to make
a full cup), as to the model and symbol of what we are to emulate, that God
pours out a full measure of grace to each of us. It’s a full cup. It’s not a scant measure. It’s not a full cup minus a tablespoon or
two. It’s not half a cup. It’s not a tablespoon or a teaspoon. It isn’t a dash or a pinch. God pours out on us a full measure of grace.
Now that we’ve sufficiently
established, I think (I hope) how important you are to God, let’s establish how
important God is to you. If God has
poured out a full measure of grace to you, what do you think your reaction is
supposed to be?
Should it be fear? Should it be hesitation? Should it be indifference? Or should it be love, immediate, service?
Now, I’m
going to come back to fear in a moment, because I think it’s a big one and I
want to spend some time with it. For
now, let’s get the others out of the way.
Hesitation. “He who hesitates is lost”, is the famous
proverbial phrase. I think God expects
our reaction to his love for us to be immediate. It isn’t something that you really need to
mull over. It isn’t something that you
need to process through. God’s love,
favor, grace, isn’t something that requires a whole lot of thinking about.
There was a commercial on television a
few years ago – as usual I have no idea what they were trying to sell, but I do
remember the commercial. There is a man
and a woman sitting at a romantic table for two in a restaurant. She says, “I love you.” The man just sits
there. He says nothing. She looks at him, waiting for a
response. Her eyes get bigger, she leans
forward, the eyebrows go up. Then she
gives that little thrust of the head that’s supposed to mean, “okay, it’s your
turn to say something…preferably…I love you, too.” And still nothing comes from the man. She gets angry and storms out of the
restaurant. It’s then that he smiles and
says, “I love you, too.” It was perhaps,
given the surrounding circumstance, an inappropriate time for him to hesitate,
to wait, to let time pass by before he made his response.
Of course,
God’s love is a bit different from romantic love. There may be reasons for hesitation in
romantic love. But with God’s love,
what’s there to hesitate about. You
either accept that love or you don’t; you either want to respond to that love
immediately in a positive manner or you want to reject it and run away from
it. But in either case, there is no
hesitation.
Indifference. To me, indifference is the saddest reaction
of all and unfortunately I think it is here where most people live. Most people are indifferent to God and God’s
love for us. Most of society says, “So
what, God loves me, big deal. I’ll send
up a flag next time I feel like getting off my butt and caring about something.” We have become a very dispassionate and
uninvolved society. That apathy has
spread to all aspects of our world, including our thoughts and beliefs about
God, faith and religion. No one really
cares, that people go hungry in Pakistan, that there are people who have no
place to live in Mexico, that children wander the streets prostituting
themselves in Brazil, that suicide is the number one killer in Metlakatla, that
people are killed because of hate in Wyoming and Alabama, that illiteracy is
the highest it’s ever been in West Virginia.
We’ve become so apathetic that we let the few extremists on both sides
of any camp, yell and scream at each other while we sit back and watch. There is no middle ground anymore because no
one cares to take it. No one cares to be
a reasonable voice, to get in the middle of a fight and say, “enough”. Because of God’s love for us, we are called
to be those reasonable voices. We are
called to be wise. We are called to set
a higher standard. We are called to act,
to prayerfully consider our actions, and to serve without regard to society’s
definitions of who is worthy and who is not.
And finally
fear. When it comes to our reaction to
all that God has done for us, I’m not sure I understand why we should be
afraid. What is there to fear, …except…
fear itself? Another one of those famous
proverbial phrases.
But,
honestly, what is there to fear? If God
has poured out a full measure of grace upon each of us, why should we be
afraid? A full measure of grace should
make us feel open and alive. Fear makes
us turn in, huddle up, clench what we have, refuse to let go. It’s like the parable that Jesus taught about
the talents. Loosely paraphrased it went
something like this: A landowner was
going away on a trip and gave some money to his servants to do with as they
wished on his behalf and in his good name.
To one he gave a single gold coin.
To another he gave five gold coins.
And to a third he gave ten gold coins.
Upon his return he asked for his servants to meet with him. The one with the ten gold coins came forward
and was beaming because he had taken those ten gold coins and used them to
profit the landowner an additional ten gold coins. The second servant came forward and told the
landowner that he too had used the five coins given to him to profit the
landowner an additional five gold coins.
And finally the servant to whom a single gold coin was given, came
forward and trembling said to the landowner, “I knew you to be a hard man to
please, so I was afraid to lose what had been given to me to protect, so I
buried it in the sand and now look, you have what is yours back again.”
This last
servant was so afraid to displease the landowner that he could do nothing but
hold on with dear life to what he had, so that he would not lose it and could
give it back to the landowner.
There are
risks involved with life. In fact, there
are huge risks in life. But God has
given us the grace to take those risks.
To be willing to lose everything.
Now, before I hear people say, well that’s fine in theory, but what
about my responsibilities? What about my
family? What about my security?
Well, I’m
not talking about making stupid risks that jeopardize your family’s
security. I’m not talking about just
taking a leap of faith for the purpose of leaping. I’m talking about calculated risks,
first. And second, I’m talking about
verse 12 in this passage.
Your gifts
and talents, your response to God’s grace, your willingness to not hesitate,
but act, to not be indifferent but to be wise, to not fear but to risk, are all
for the purpose “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up
the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the
knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of
Christ.”
That’s what
I’m talking about. That’s the reason
behind what God wants your reaction to be in response to his love for you.
God wants
you, not with any hesitation, but with wisdom and purpose, to leap out in faith
and take a risk. No fear. For the purpose of equipping the saints for
the work of ministry, so that all of us come to maturity in the full measure of
Jesus Christ.
God’s grace
is sufficient for you. Is your response
sufficient for God?
AMEN.
Offertory
Doxology
Prayer of Dedication
We give to you, O God, what is
in reality Yours already. All that we
have is Yours alone. Help us to handle Your
gifts responsibly and to glorify You with this offering and with what we keep,
as Your faithful stewards. AMEN.
Closing Hymn – Amazing Grace
Benediction
Saved by God’s continual
grace, you are precious and wholly made in God’s own image. Go out into the world and reflect that grace
to others. AMEN.
Postlude
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