Joint Service today at Bethesda - 11:15am. Discernment Luncheon following worship in the Fellowship Hall.
Worship
Service for August 4, 2024
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Blessed be the Lord of Hosts, who cleanses
and heals our lives.
P: Praise be to God!
L: Blessed be the Holy One, who brings us
from despair to hope.
P: Praise be to God!
L: Blessed be the Giver of life, who nurtures
and comforts us.
P: Let us praise God with our whole hearts
and souls!
Opening Hymn – My Faith Looks
Up to Thee #383/539 Blue/Brown
Prayer of Confession
Holy God, in the daily grind
of life, we are so often taught to climb the ladder of success by stepping on
each other, focusing only on our own wants and needs. Even as children on a carousel, we were
taught to try to grab the brass ring, and it would fulfill our dreams of glory
and wealth. How we have been corrupted
to think in these terms, O Lord. Our
“dollar for a dream” mentality has gotten us into lots of trouble. We chase after all those false idols that
cannot ever sustain us and bring us peace. Forgive our stupidity, Lord. Forgive us when we believe that if we could
only win the Lottery, everything would be OK and we would be happy. It is only Your Son, Jesus Christ, who leads
us in the ways of happiness and peace, sustaining us with his life-giving water
and nourishing bread. Nurture us again,
Lord, that we may truly focus on the ministries and mission You have set before
us. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Jesus Christ is the one eternal Son of
God. Come to Him and know of His great
love for you.
P: We
will find healing in His presence, for God’s love is given to all.
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
O God of
unity and peace, bind us together as we worship You this day. Strengthen the ties that make us Your
family. Grant us the grace to recognize
our gifts and our place in this body.
Guide us to hear Your calling as You speak to our lives. Encourage us, O Lord, to bravely burst forth
as pastors, teachers, elders, deacons, prophets, and healers, evangelists and
leaders. Dwell in our very hearts, that
we may serve in humility – braided with strength and gentleness, intertwined
with passion. Build us up in love, that
we may grow in our knowledge and our love of You. We ask that You speak Your truth to our
lives, that we may lead lives worthy of Your calling.
Eternal
God, generations have risen and fallen before You. Before the world even began, You were already
God, and from everlasting to everlasting You will always be God. Long ago You poured out Your Spirit on the
leaders of Israel and the church. Today,
we gather to experience Your Spirit anew.
Help us, O Lord to be stewards of peace and kindness, gentleness and
joy, full of hope and grace.
This
morning we lift up to You all those for whom we love who are going through
extraordinary moments in their lives. We
pray for…
In this
time of silence we also pray what is heavy on our hearts…
Through
the love and passion of our dear Savior, we pray together... 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 #404/684 Blue/Brown
Scripture Reading:
First Scripture Reading – Psalm 78:23-29
Second Scripture Reading – Ephesians
4:1-16
Sermon –
A Maturity of Faith Comes from a Full Measure of Grace
(based on Ephesians 4:1-16)
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
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) holds Jesus here (hold up your other hand next to it),
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 year or so 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.”
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 Christs.”
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?
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Through
these gifts, O God, may we grow in the knowledge of Christ and be strengthened
in the unity of faith. We ask, precious
Lord, that you transform them into the bread of life so that in our giving
others may be fed. And we ask that You
make these gifts into living waters that spring up into eternal life so that in
our giving others may be nurtured and strengthened as children of God. In Your name we pray. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – Amazing Grace #280/343 Blue/Brown
Benediction –
Friends, we
are joined together in Christ in order to share our gifts with the world. Make every effort to maintain that
unity. Knit together by Christ, we are
ready to serve. Go in peace. AMEN.
Postlude
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