Worship
Service for November 28, 2021
Click Here for the YouTube link when highlighted.
Prelude
Announcements:
·
You can join us for in-person worship at Olivet
Presbyterian Church in West Elizabeth, PA at 9:45 or at Bethesda United Presbyterian
Church in Elizabeth, PA at 11:15.
·
Bible Study – Brown Bag and Bible, will meet
this Wednesday at 12:30pm for our continued conversation/study on Micah.
·
Communion will be celebrated at both churches today
which is the First Sunday of Advent, if you are celebrating this day with us
on-line and wish to participate in communion as well, prepare your own with a
bit of bread and a bit of drink and share with us at the appropriate
time during your reading of the service or following the recording of it on YouTube.
Christ Be Our Light - Choir
Call to Worship
L: Advent is a time for the human heart to
wait, while trusting God’s eternal time.
P: How long, O Lord, how long?
L: For those waiting for answered prayer:
P: Grant your steadfast patience.
L: For those waiting in the face of
uncertainty:
P: Grant unshakable confidence in Your
sovereign provision.
L: For those waiting for justice and mercy to
reign:
P: Grant a glimpse of Your glory in our
wounded world.
L: for all of us waiting for God’s kingdom to
come:
P: Grant that we might have the peace of Christ
as we wait, the love of Christ as we act, and the grace of Christ as we speak.
Lighting of the Advent
Candle
Opening Hymn – Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus #2/244
Prayer of Confession
We confess,
O God, that we do not take seriously Your coming into our lives. We do not believe that salvation is near; we
do not act uprightly, loving You, our neighbors, or ourselves; nor do we bend
our swords and spears. Forgive us, we
pray, that we might once again walk in Your light. Forgive us, we pray, that we might once
again, act faithfully, love tenderly, and find hope in this season of
Advent. We ask this in the name of Jesus
Christ. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Watch!
Wait! God is bringing to you new
hope and peace. It is a gift, given
especially for you – one that you cannot earn – it’s a gift. Praise be to the Giver of All Great Gifts,
our Lord.
P: Let us rejoice and be glad, for God comes
to us!
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
Choral Anthem: Receive His Son
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Almighty and merciful
God we believe, despite all the strange coming and goings of humanity, that our
history belongs to you. We give thanks
that your eternal purpose is weaving its way through the events of time and
space. Sometimes, O Lord, it’s a challenge
to hold on to this belief, but our confidence is in Christ, your Son and our
Savior. We believe his death and
resurrection are our confirmation that even though we can’t understand the big
picture of things, we can know history’s final outcome. Gracious God, we watch with eager expectation
for the return of Christ. Our souls buzz
with anticipation of seeing the One, face to face, who authored and sustains
the universe, the One in whom and through whom all things hold together, the
One who will one day sit in judgment. We
believe that on that last and great day all of history’s scoffers will drop to
their knees in recognition of your Son.
In this season when the darkness is banished and the light
has come, we look to you for comfort and strength. We hand over to you the concerns of our
hearts and pray for….
Not only these do we pray for, but we also pray for the
burdens that are too difficult to share…hear us, Lord, in this time of silence.
With hearts of endless joy we pray to you this morning, the
prayer that your Son taught us to pray 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 – Lo,
How a Rose E’er Blooming #48/255
Scripture Reading(s):
OT – Jeremiah 33:14-16
NT – Luke 21:25-36
Sermon –
The Days are Surely Coming
(based on Jeremiah 33:14-16, Luke 21:25-36)
If
there was ever a time when we needed to look away from all the negative noise
around us, it’s now. With so much bad
news everywhere in the world, we need good news. It is the longing of good news that turns
lives around, enabling us to somehow navigate through all the bad news, all the
struggles, all the negativities. Advent
is that time which anticipates good news just on the horizon of human destiny -
in which the Son of Man comes in glory.
Jeremiah
prophesied about it years ago, “Behold, the days are surely coming, declares
the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the
house of Judah.” In the midst of their
own time of exile in Babylon from the land of their ancestors, Jeremiah speaks
words to the Israelite people of Advent – waiting, watching, and hoping.
And the
word that the Righteous Branch which came out of Judah speaks to us in Luke is
this, “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near”.
Advent is the season of our awareness and
watchfulness of that waiting and that hope.
Before
the days of Jeremiah, Israel had become a divided nation, the northern kingdom of
Israel had succumbed to inner rebellion and disobedience of God’s laws before
being taken over by a powerful foreign.
The southern kingdom of Judah wasn’t far behind. Conquered first by the Assyrians and then
again by the Babylonians. They were now
mostly living in exile from their homeland and Jeremiah spoke to them of hope for
one day returning, anticipating a time when an anointed king, a Messiah, and a
descendant of David would appear in Israel’s history to bring righteousness and
justice to the nation, and thus give God’s people the security they both needed
and wanted. Jeremiah’s prophetic vision
anticipates that the nation’s future will not be decided by the Babylonians,
but rather by God. It is within these
words of Jeremiah’s that we discover a hopeful faith during difficult times.
Our own
times are perhaps particularly in need of this Advent message – one of waiting,
watching, and hope. Actual and potential
crises abound: we wonder anew about the dangers of the coronavirus. People worry about whether or not they’ll still
have a job, or get one if they’ve been out of work. People worry about whether or not they’ll be
able to feed their families. People worry
if the economy, or the food supply chain will collapse. People worry if they or someone they love
will get sick or the surgery that they need can be performed. People worry about whether the vaccine is
enough to hold off any new mutations of the coronavirus. People worry about some other tragedy that
might await them. I think people worry
if there really is a future or anything to hope for, at all?
The prophesy
of Jeremiah and the message of Advent is that Christ is the very hope for our
own dark time. Just as the Jewish people
were waiting for the appearance of their Messiah, so, too, the Church during
this season of Advent is reminded that God’s people wait patiently for the
appearing of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
Not only do we wait for God’s appearing, but we live in the expectation
that God will come to us; that God will be merciful and show God’s steadfast
love.
Poem by J.D. Smith called Still Waiting)
Waiting!
Yes, patiently
waiting!
Till next steps made
plain shall be;
To hear, with the inner
hearing,
The Voice that will
call for me.
Waiting!
Yes, quietly waiting!
No need for an anxious
dread;
Shall He not assuredly
guide me,
Who giveth me daily
bread?
Waiting!
Yes, hopefully waiting!
With hope that needn’t
grow dim;
The Master is pledged
to guide me,
And my eyes are unto
Him.
Waiting!
Yes, expectantly
waiting!
Perhaps it may be today
The Master will quickly
open
The gate to my future way.
Waiting!
Yes, trustfully
waiting!
I know, though I’ve
waited long,
That, while He
withholds His purpose,
His waiting cannot be
wrong.
Waiting!
Yes, waiting, Still
waiting!
The Master will not be
late;
He knoweth that I am
waiting
For Him to unlatch the
gate.
When
we think of Advent, or the coming of Christ, we need to consider the days for
which He needed to come. Days when the
Roman Emperor, ruler of the most powerful and largest empire the world had ever
seen, believed he was a god. Days when
the world worshipped such a figure. Days
when the religious minority of Israel vaguely worshipped a different god, but
the religious elite, lorded it over the people, were sanctimonious and full of
righteous piety. Yet, these religious
elite, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes rarely behaved and acted by the
truth of their own beliefs. If they
could not do it, how do you think the common people, living in difficult times
could do it? The world needed a
reset. It needed a time of Advent – a time
of waiting, watching, hoping. The Advent
of Christ comes to a people who need a reset, to reprioritize their lives. The Advent of Christ comes to a people who
need to get right with God, to turn away from their own destruction. And this destruction comes in many forms.
It
comes creeping into our lives, not blatantly and openly. It comes through the constant need to find
approval from others, rather than from within.
It comes from a hungry inner void for more stuff, for more conquests, for
more greed, for more power. It comes
from detachment with our fellow travelers on this journey of life, when we no
longer seek out connections with others. It comes from apathy to care for the needs of
others – when we care more about self then one another. And it comes in all the forms of sin that
separate us from one another and from God.
All of it comes at great cost and we’ve got a huge debt to repay.
But Advent
comes to reset us. Advent comes to help us
break free from all of that and find the prophesy of Jeremiah and the words of
the Messiah a balm for our own future.
In Advent we can reboot during this time of watching and waiting. In Advent we can look to the future with
hope, to find within the Word of God a message of love, joy, peace, kindness,
gentleness, and self-control.
Advent
is waiting for you!
Offertory
Doxology
Prayer of Dedication
Eternal God, how majestic is your name in all the
earth. The whole earth is full of your
glory. Please accept our humble
offerings of our selves and our resources.
Please use them to herald your hope to all persons everywhere who are
living in physical, moral, and spiritual poverty. Bless our gifts this day, O Lord. AMEN.
The Lord’s Supper
Invitation to the Table
Prayer of Thanksgiving
L: The Lord be with you.
P: And also
with you.
L: Lift
up your hearts.
P: We lift
them up to the Lord.
L: Let
us give thanks to the Lord our God.
Breaking
of the Bread and Drink the Cup
Closing Hymn – Lord, Make us More Holy #536/screen
Benediction
Amen.
Postlude
