Next Sunday, Aug 17, 2025 we will meet at Round Hill Park for our all church worship and picnic at 11:00am. See you all there.
Worship
Service for August 10, 2025
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: In faith, Abraham and Sarah, set out for a
new land.
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 Jesus Christ, 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 on 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 – Psalm
31
Second Scripture Reading – Hebrews
11 (various passages)
Sermon – Fruit of the
Spirit – Faithfulness
(based
on Hebrews 11, Psalm 31, Matthew 25)
We are on to the last three fruits of
the Holy Spirit. Today’s is
faithfulness. As Christians we use the
word faithful a lot. But was does it
really mean? The Merriam-Webster
dictionary says that faithful means to be loyal, steadfast in affection or
allegiance; to be conscientious, firm in adherence to promises or in observance
of duty; to be binding, given the strong assurance, true to the facts, to a
standard, or to an original.
We know from Scripture that God is
faithful to the people of God. When God
makes a promise, God keeps it. In the
famous story of Noah, God promises that he’ll never flood the whole earth
again, and to show that God will keep that promise, he sent a sign for us to
remember – that whenever it does rain, even if there are widespread floods,
there is a promise that the whole earth would never flood again and as a sign –
God sent a rainbow for us to see and witness.
However, the people of God often break
the promises that they make. Again, if
you read through the Old Testament you’ll see this happening over and over
again. When the Hebrews had finally
settled in the Promised Land and Joshua was an old man, the people of God
promised that they would always obey God and serve God. Did they do that? No, and so time after time, again and again
for not keeping that promise, for not being faithful, they were invaded and
sent into exile in foreign lands.
This morning we read through chapter 11
of Hebrews, often called the Faith chapter, as it lays out a number of those
individuals in the sacred texts that were faithful to God. They were loyal, conscientious, steadfast,
and kept their promises. They were bound
to God, to the standards that God set for them.
The
chapter begins with the statement, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for,
the conviction of things not seen.” So,
chapter 11 of Hebrews lays out a whole list of people who did just that. That although they didn’t know what was going
to happen in the future, they knew that if they stayed true to God, there would
be future blessings.
I
think the most difficult part of that is that sometimes these blessings don’t
come in our lifetimes. We don’t get to
see them. We don’t get to witness them,
be blessed by them, or partake in the harvest.
By faith and faith alone, we have to trust that those blessings will
happen for those who come after us – our children and our children’s
children. Maybe not even for 100 generations
from now, but simply by being steadfast, loyal, conscientious, and firm in our
convictions in this moment; by faith, we have to trust that those rewards will
come.
We
can talk about being faithful in two different ways; the first one is in the
now and how those blessings come to us in the immediate future and we can also
talk about being faithful in the now and how those blessings come to those
after us.
We
have a ton of examples, as we read in Hebrews 11, of biblical characters being
faithful. There is a more poignant story
in the gospels about being faithful. I’m
sure you’ve heard it, but let me remind you. From Matthew 25:14-30.
‘For
it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his
property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one,
to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received
the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more
talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more
talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in
the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those
slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the
five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, “Master, you
handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.” His master
said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy
in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of
your master.” And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying,
“Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.”
His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been
trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter
into the joy of your master.” Then the one who had received the one talent also
came forward, saying, “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where
you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid,
and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.” But
his master replied, “You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap
where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have
invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what
was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one
with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they
will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have
will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer
darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
But
what about today? Read the story of
Clever a boy who lives in Kirinda, a small village in Uganda, Aftrica whose
name perfectly depicts his character and personality. Like many children in Uganda, Clever
tragically lost his mother to HIV at the age of 10. He found himself searching for a way to help
his father provide for his three sisters.
Clever was given a livestock sponsorship through an organization called
Timothy’s Home, a local orphanage and school in Uganda. (We’ve provided similar opportunities through
the Heifer Project International).
Clever was given a rooster and three egg-laying hens in hopes that he
would raise more chickens and make a profit. Clever then raised 75 chickens, selling the
eggs and extra chickens to other families.
He is now moving onto other livestock such as goats. But Clever’s success in raising chickens
encouraged him to expand his business into completely different ventures. At the age of 12, he developed his own brick
selling company making over 10,000 bricks with his bare hands! He then turned around and sold the bricks to
families in his village allowing them to build stronger homes. With hard work and dedication, Clever has been
able to start and manage his own thriving livestock and brick selling business.
With the money he’s earned, he paid his
three sisters tuition fees as well as his own. He also gave back a percentage of his earnings
as a tithe to Timothy’s Home. With his
tithe to that orphanage that helped him, an opportunity was given to other
children in the village to begin sponsorship programs and earn income for their
families.
Clever
is a young entrepreneur who doesn’t let his age define his ability in creating
his own self-thriving business. What
makes Clever so inspiring is that he did not allow his circumstances to define
him. Instead of looking at his situation
as lacking or hopeless he chose opportunity! Where others might have just seen dirt, Clever
saw profit, income, and growth. He
worked hard and learned to trust that God is his provider. He chose to be faithful with the little, and
God blessed him with being faithful with much.
There
are also many examples in Scripture about being faithful now but not seeing the
rewards. In fact, most of the list in
Hebrews is about biblical characters who were faithful in the moment but did
not see their rewards until many generations later. An inspiring
example of faithfulness to his field of science is Galileo. Galileo is often referred to as the father of
observational astronomy, the father of the scientific method, and indeed the father
of modern-day science. Way back in 1610,
Galileo used a very rudimentary telescope, recording the unusual shape of
Saturn. It made no sense to him. Planets were a round sphere, but Saturn
appeared oblong, oval shaped. It would
take generations of wonder and faithfulness in the field of astronomy research
for scientists to discover that Saturn had rings around it, making it appear
the unusual shape Galileo observed. However,
most of his observations in science got him into trouble with the church. The Roman Catholic Church at the time adhered
to an Aristotelian view of the heavens – a geocentric view, meaning that the
known universe revolved around the earth – however, Galileo adhered to Copernicus’s
more closely with the controversial heliocentric view – believing that the sun
was the center of the universe and the planets revolved around it. He further argued that the Bible was an
authority on faith and morals, not science.
This got him into a considerable amount of trouble. He was tried during the Roman Inquisition for
heresy; the specific charge was that he and his followers were trying to reinterpret
Scripture. He was found guilty, was made
to recant his beliefs but spent the rest of his life in prison or under house
arrest. While he was under house arrest,
he finished his most famous and finest work called Two Sciences.
Galileo’s
faithfulness to his own field of study did not yield the rewards in his own
lifetime, in fact, they got him persecuted, tried for heresy and imprisoned;
however, three hundred years later, Albert Einstein studied Galileo’s work and
said that his own work stood on the shoulders of giants, such as Galileo.
Faithfulness,
this Fruit of the Spirit is characteristically important for our own
well-being. God if faithful to us, keeping
his promises and in return we need to be faithful to God – in our convictions,
in our steadfastness, in our conscientiousness, and in our loyalty. That faithfulness and our convictions to being
loyal to God may bring about rewards for us now, like in the case of
Clever. But, that faithfulness may also
reap rewards we’ll never see like that of the giants of scripture and perhaps even
those in other fields of importance like science.
Thanks
be to God.
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, go now in
boldness of your own loyalty to God. In
faith, lead the world in finding love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, and in their own faithfulness.
Go in service to the Lord. AMEN.
Postlude
