Worship
Service for August 9, 2026
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: In faith, Abraham and Sarah, set out for a
new land. And in faith, Jacob raised a
family.
P: In faith, we seek to follow God in our
lives.
L: In faith, the church seeks to discern the
future to which God calls us in our age.
P: In faith, we gather now to worship,
seeking new life in Christ.
L: God of present, past and future, guide us
now in this time of promise.
Opening Hymn – Seek Ye First #333/713 Blue/Brown
Prayer of Confession
God of Abraham
and Sarah, God of Jacob, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah, God of Peter and Salome,
God of our mothers and fathers; You are a God who acts in history. Yet we confess that we are too busy with our
own lives to perceive You at work in our time. We fall into fear and despair about our
troubled world, as if You had no care for us.
Forgive our lack of faith and help us to join You as You labor to bring
new life, new hope, and new plans on the earth; in the name of Jesus Christ we
pray. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Faith is the assurance of things hoped
for, the conviction of things not seen.
People of faith, God is not ashamed to be called your God.
P: By God’s grace we are forgiven. 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 and precious Lord,
you have given us so many blessings that they are difficult to count. So many moments of grace, of beauty, of
love. So many moments of peace, joy,
laughter. These moments are punctuated,
of course, by sorrow and trials and sufferings.
They come in the midst of pain and illness to help us carry on, to give
us strength and courage for the journey.
This morning we pray
for a stronger faith to see those moments of victory more clearly, we pray for
a stronger faith that does not doubt but sees the miraculous. We pray this morning for a stronger faith
that allows us to fail but to not be defined by our failures.
Loving God, in whom we
have the strength and ability to fulfill your will, give us the grace to claim
your blessings upon us. Help us to
understand your will for us and to step out in faith to fulfill it.
Hear our prayers this
day for our loved ones….We pray for…
Hear also our prayers
that we cannot speak aloud in these moments of silence…
We ask all of this in
the name of your son, Jesus Christ, the teacher and rabbi who taught us to
prayer saying…Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed by 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 – Near
to the Heart of God #527/617 Blue/Brown
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Genesis
37:1-4, 12-28
Second Scripture Reading – Romans
9:1-5
Sermon –
The Long Story of Redemption
Genesis
37:1-4, 12-28; Romans 9:1-5
You know this story well. You probably read it countless times in
Sunday School, heard it read in church, maybe you’ve even seen the musical
version of it many times. The story of
Joseph, the extra attention he received from his father and the special robe he
was given. Perhaps Jacob thought he was
simply expressing affection. Perhaps he
believed he was recognizing Joseph's gifts.
Every extra glance, every special privilege, every unequal gift becomes
another thread woven into resentment.
Before long, Joseph's brothers were unable to speak peacefully to
him. The coat was only cloth, but
everyone knew what it meant; Joseph was Dad’s favorite.
What makes this story fascinating
regarding family dysfunction is that it did not begin with Joseph and his
brothers. If you remember, Jacob himself
had been the favored son of Rebekah. And
Jacob had deceived his brother for his father’s blessing. Jacob then spent years competing for the
affection of Rachel while Leah lived with the pain of being overlooked. Bilhah
and Zilpah became part of the family as secondary wives or as the Bible
translates it – concubines; creating a complicated household. At the time, this was culturally
acceptable. Due to all of these
dynamics, Joseph grows up in a family where competition is normal. Where love is measured. Where children are compared. Where mothers are rivals. And where no one fully belongs.
The remarkable thing is not that
conflict emerges. Conflict emerges in
every family, but the remarkable thing here is that God somehow uses all of
that. God does not abandon them as
hopeless, or useless. No, instead, God
uses it for God’s own purposes. Most of
us know families that are less than perfect.
(Maybe even our own?) Some of us
carry wounds from favoritism, misunderstandings, old resentments, or
conversations that ended years ago but still echo in our hearts. Scripture never pretends that faith
eliminates those realities. Instead, it shows us that God's promises continue
even through people who continually fail one another. Jacob's household is held together less by
healthy relationships than by God's persistent grace.
Looking at the long span of history
the way God might, it’s easy to forget that Egypt and Israel are already
quietly becoming part of God's plan long before they become the center of
attention in the story of Moses, then centuries later when Israel is led by a
tyrant and Mary and Joseph have to flee back to Egypt with infant Jesus as
refugees, seeking asylum from genocide.
It’s all woven together.
But the story actually begins with
God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah that their descendants would be numbered
greater than the stars in the sky. And
in Jacob's marriages that promise is being fulfilled. Each of Jacob’s wives; Leah, Rachel, Bilhah,
and Zilpah all bear sons who become extremely important to the story. The twelve sons who emerge from these four
women become the foundation of Israel itself.
Without Leah there is no Judah.
Without Rachel there is no Joseph.
Without Bilhah and Zilpah there are none of the other tribes. God builds the covenant people not through an
ideal family but through a blended, broken, and complicated household. Then comes Joseph.
And if we follow the story, if
Joseph never reaches Egypt, Jacob's family never survives the famine. If Jacob's family never settles in Egypt,
Israel never grows from a small clan into a great people. If Israel never grows into a nation, there is
no Moses and the Exodus of the Israelite people.
The irony in all of it is
striking. The very place that will later
enslave Israel first becomes the place that preserves Israel. Egypt becomes both refuge and prison, then
refuge again. Salvation and suffering
are intertwined long before the Messiah is born. That tension is part of faith.
I think about families that
immigrated to America generations ago.
My own family included. Perhaps
they arrived with little more than a suitcase and hope. The city where they settled may have been
dangerous. The jobs were
exhausting. They experienced prejudice
and uncertainty. Yet those same
neighborhoods became places where children received educations, grandchildren
built businesses, and entire generations found opportunities that never existed
before. The place that first felt
foreign eventually became home. The
hardship became part of the blessing.
Not because suffering is good.
But because God has a remarkable ability to bring life out of
circumstances we would never choose.
Joseph's journey to Egypt is like
that. His brothers intend violence, but
instead God prepares for their salvation.
The brothers look at Joseph coming across the fields. They see an arrogant younger brother. God sees the future administrator of
Egypt. They see someone wearing an
expensive robe, a special gift from their father. God sees someone who will save thousands from
starvation. They see an opportunity to
eliminate a rival. God sees an
opportunity to preserve a covenant.
You see, our human vision is always
smaller than God's vision. That remains
true today. Sometimes we write people
off because of one prejudice or another.
We don’t like their personality or we don’t like the style of their
hair, or some other silly reason; or even something more complex like the color
of their skin, or their disability, or their gender, or who they love. Yet God often sees possibilities that we
cannot imagine.
Fred Rogers once said that every
person longs to know they are lovable and capable of loving. Mr. Rogers had an extraordinary gift for
seeing beyond the surface. He looked at
children whom others dismissed and recognized sacred worth. He believed transformation began when someone
was finally seen.
That is something Joseph's brothers
never managed to do. They never saw
Joseph beyond their resentment. Envy
narrows our vision until another person's blessing feels like our loss. We should view them the way Mr. Rogers viewed
them. Love expands our vision until
another person's success becomes part of everyone's joy.
Instead of killing Joseph, Reuben
speaks up. It is a small act. It isn’t really heroic because he still
allows Joseph to be sold. But even
imperfect compassion changes history.
One small decision interrupts greater violence. I wonder how often history changes because
someone chooses not to escalate violence or make one small imperfect
compassionate choice. One person decides
not to post that angry comment. One
family member makes the difficult phone call instead of remaining silent. One teacher refuses to give up on a
struggling student. Or one church that
chooses welcome instead of suspicion.
The world changes not only through
dramatic miracles but through ordinary moments when someone decides mercy is
better than revenge. Reuben does not
know he is helping preserve God's covenant.
He simply makes one better choice than the alternative. Sometimes faithfulness looks exactly like
that.
Paul seems to understand this when
he writes Romans 9. His heart breaks for
his own people. He names Israel's
extraordinary gifts: the covenants, the law, the worship, the promises, the
patriarchs. Yet Paul also recognizes
that God's faithfulness has never depended upon flawless human beings. The entire history of Israel proves exactly
the opposite. Abraham doubted God’s
promises. Sarah laughed at even the
possibility that she could bear a child.
Jacob deceived his brother and was deceived in return into marriage to
two daughters. Joseph's brothers
betrayed him. Moses questioned whether
God had chosen the right man. David
sinned morally and profoundly. Yet God
did not abandon any of them. God
continued to make promises to them not because people were consistently
faithful. But because God was.
Paul's grief over Israel comes from
knowing that the story has always been larger than human success or
failure. God's covenant has always moved
forward by grace. That same grace
continues through Christ, who comes from this very family line—a family filled
with complicated marriages, sibling rivalry, jealousy, betrayal,
reconciliation, and hope. The Messiah
does not emerge from a perfect family tree.
He emerges from this tree, from Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Rachel, Leah,
Bilhah, and Zilpah's family tree. And if
God can redeem all of that, God can certainly redeem you.
There is another image that comes to
mind with this idea. Japanese artists
practice kintsugi, which is the art of repairing broken pottery with
lacquer mixed with gold. They don’t hide
the cracks. They highlight them. The fractures then become part of the
object's beauty because they tell the story of healing rather than pretending
the break never happened. Abraham and
Jacob's family is a kind of biblical kintsugi. Every crack remains visible. Every failure is remembered. Yet God keeps filling those fractures with
grace until what once looked hopeless becomes the very story through which
salvation comes.
Our own lives often resemble that
pottery. We carry visible cracks from
grief, conflict, disappointment, and regret.
The gospel never asks us to pretend those cracks do not exist. Instead, it proclaims that God's grace is
strong enough to work through them.
God, who began with Abraham,
continued through Jacob, worked through Leah and Rachel and Bilhah and Zilpah,
accompanied Joseph into Egypt, sustained Israel through slavery, and fulfilled
the promises in Christ remains the same faithful God today. So perhaps the invitation of these passages
is not simply to admire Joseph or condemn his brothers. It’s to trust that even when our own stories
seem tangled, when our families feel complicated, and when we cannot yet see
how today's pain could ever become tomorrow's blessing, God is still weaving
together a future that reaches far beyond what we can imagine. God who works through imperfect people has
never stopped writing the story of redemption, even with you, today.
Thanks be to God. AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Gracious God, who provides in abundance and in
many ways, thank you for your blessings and the gifts we bring to form
community. Give us the will and the
ability to make the most of the riches you have showered upon us. In our Savior’s name, we pray. AMEN
Closing Hymn – Abide With Me #543/642 Blue/Brown
Benediction –
Friends, leaning
on the faithfulness of giants that we read about in Scripture, though flawed
and imperfect, God used them for God’s own purposes. May God use you, too. Go in peace to serve the Lord. AMEN.
Postlude
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