Pentecost Worship Service May 31, 2020

May 31, 2020 Sermon PENTECOST

Acts 2: 1-21         Sermon                May 31, 2020      Pentecost           Rev. Peter Hofstra

                As surely as we preach from Luke 2 at Christmas, so we have preached from Acts 2 on the Sunday of Pentecost.  It is the climax of the Easter story.  I missed something from the very first verse that has been nagging at me this week.  “Suddenly from heaven there came the sound like the rush of a violent wind…”  This sound filled the house they were in.

                You know how there are different kinds of learners?  Visual, audio, and so on?  I am something of a cinemagraphic learner.  I read something and, when pausing on it, there is usually a scene from a screen that creates a scene for me.  This verse, starting the Pentecost story, always had a rather specific opening.  The violent wind came up, filling the house with noise, and all the candles (there are always a ton of candles) are blown out.  Something big is on its way. 

                But it is not a wind.  It is the SOUND like the rush of a violent wind.  But even more powerful, it comes from heaven above.  Now it might be argued that “from heaven” is from the skies, or from somewhere ‘up’, but they are not outside, they are gathered in a house, in Jerusalem.  And from here, everything starts.

                Why is this so important?  Well, for a couple of reasons.  First of all, this is a repeat of what happened at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.  Remember that?  He was down at the Jordan to be baptized by his cousin, John the Baptist.  And the gospels are together on this, that the heavens opened and the Spirit of the Lord came to rest upon Jesus in the form of a dove.  The heavens opened and the spirit came down to begin the ministry of Jesus Christ.  The heavens have opened once more, but this time it is the sound and the flame that are coming down.

                Secondly, this process also fulfills the promises Jesus has made.  We have gone through these in the Gospel of John.  Jesus is going up but the Spirit of Truth, another advocate, is coming to be with them forever.  And a week ago Thursday, forty days after Easter, we celebrated Ascension Day, the day Jesus was carried up to heaven.  Now, suddenly, from heaven, there is the return of God to be upon the disciples.

                This is an entry, from the supernatural into the natural world, crossing from the realm of the Creator into the creation.  God has come across for us.

                So one of the most important things that Easter accomplishes is that it corrects what happened in the Garden of Eden.  Adam and Eve screwed it up and got tossed into the cold, sinful world.  Jesus came, carried out God’s plan, and we were renewed in our acquaintance with the most high.  But it struck me that Pentecost carries us further forward than just a renewal of the Garden.

                Consider the gift of tongues.  This is not ‘speaking in tongues’ as spoken of elsewhere in the New Testament, some kind of angel-speak that is still the rage in some corners of Christendom.  This was far more useful.  There were people from every corner of the kingdom.  All of a sudden, they are hearing about the deeds of God’s power in their own languages.  The disciples were given the gift of foreign languages.  The accents were still there as the crowd comments about them being Galileans.

                So the book of Genesis is basically in two parts.  The first eleven chapters are something of a supernatural introduction to the rest.  It is the story of the Garden of Eden, it is the story of the Flood, it is the story of people living for centuries, it is the story of the Nephilim, some kind of divine beings, coming to earth and intermingling with human women, it is a lot bigger and more grand than the second part, which starts in Chapter 12 with the call of Abraham.  Even he lived till a hundred and twenty, but that is manageable compared to nine hundred years.  That is Yoda old.

                But the end of the primeval introduction is the tower of Babel.  All humanity spoke the same language, they were going to build a tower up to God.  Because God, for them, was up.  God threw a wrench into the works with the introduction of languages.  The people were divided into different tongues and, being people, they could not get along with those foreigners, so they scattered to the corners of the globe.

                Now see what happens here.  What is the first gift of the Spirit?  It is the gift of language so that the One Message of God can be heard by the disparate peoples of the earth, in their own languages, and they can come back together as one people under the power of Jesus Christ.  This work is something we continue. 

                So here are a few statistics.  There are about 6500 languages spoken in the world, but like 2000 have less than a thousand speakers.  The Bible, as a whole, has been translated into 698 languages, roughly a tenth.  But the New Testament is translated into over 1500 more languages, and portions of the bible into over eleven hundred other languages.  So, round up, 2800 languages.  About 3800 languages actually use some kind of writing system.  That is about 75% of the world languages that use some kind of writing system having the Word of God in that system.  I use written languages, knowing full well that the number of languages the gospel has been shared in verbally is far higher.  There are just no impressive statistics to include in a sermon.  So this is the ongoing work of Pentecost, the message of God penetrating into every language, so that all may know the deeds of God’s power.  So, yes, these are internet statistics, but all are from at least one other source than Wikipedia. 

                What is the wonder?  The crowd extolled the disciples because they were each hearing the message in their own language, and in that crowd, by my count, they identify fifteen distinct geographic regions whose languages were being shared. 

                So something amazing is going on at Pentecost, works that reflect God’s magnificent power.  How quickly can we torpedo that miracle?  Just tell the world they are drunk.  I do not know about you, but I have been around drunks who have spoken in languages I cannot recognize.  But the consensus is the language of drunkenness is a language no one can recognize.  Besides, it was only 9am according to Peter.

                This spreading of the Holy Spirit has been prophesied.  In consideration of those disciples, now apostles, who are currently spreading the Word, Peter adds this from the Prophet Joel:

¹⁷‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. ¹⁸Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 

Which means, if I read this right, we are in the last days.  Which, in turn, means we have been in the last days for two thousand years.  And we are still seeing the outpouring of the Spirit upon the church.

                The fulfillment begins in the multiple languages shared on the streets of Jerusalem on that day.  The work of that prophecy continues, we can see it in the statistics quoted above.  Such is the movement of the Spirit, to carry the gospel message to the ends of the earth.  That is the centerpiece of the message of Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit, the unleashing of the followers of Jesus to become witnesses to a world in need.  One voice became a dozen, becomes three thousand by verse 41, becomes billions today.

                But this Spirit-filled endeavor is contained within the realm of heavenly power.  Returning to where it opens, from the sound of a violent wind being released from heaven, we move through the gift of the Spirit, we move through the gift of language, we move to the first sermon of Peter.

                Peter, in turn, picks up on the gift of language, as the Spirit will give this gift of vision and prophesy to everyone, regardless of gender, age, or economic status.  But he does not end his passage from Joel with the gift of the Spirit spreading the word.

He picks up on the theme of heavenly signs being unleashed upon the world.  We begin this passage with the heavenly power of a sound like a violent wind unleashed into the house, and we conclude with the “end times” language from Joel:     

And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.

                We are talking Day of Judgment in this moment.  For a far deeper development of this theme, I refer to the book of Revelation.  But I do so with my one caveat.  Read it, be entranced by the imagery, be confused as you try to sort out the story, but always remember this.  THE GOOD GUYS WIN.

                But the wind up is simple.  The last verse of our passage:

Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

                And therein is the purpose of Pentecost, the purpose of the Spirit, the purpose of the noise as of a violent wind down from heaven, the purpose of the visual of flames on the heads of the disciples, the purpose of the gift of language to speak to the gathered communities of Jews represented in Jerusalem, the purpose of what Jesus laid down for the disciples back in John, that He would always be with them-in the form of the Spirit of Truth, the purpose of the plan of God fulfilled in Jesus Christ, that through His death and resurrection, salvation can come to the whole world, it is so that everyone will know the Lord and the gifts offered through our Lord Jesus Christ, to understand their magnificent implication in a world of sin, to realize what salvation means in this world and the next, is to lay down for all humanity this simple truth, that to call on the name of the Lord is to be saved.

                This would be the moment in a Public Service Announcement where the narrator would say something brilliant like “Now the rest is up to you.”  Which, to be honest, kind of fits here.  This is the conclusion to the Season of Easter.  It began that morning when Mary went to the tomb and was the first to meet the Risen Lord.  It has extended through all the times that Jesus appeared to his disciples, showing them his wounds, teaching them what comes next, opening the Word of God (our Old Testament) and revealing to them where Jesus shows up, it feels like on every page.  We have gone back through the high points of the John, the promises that are made for the loved one who has passed on (and we will all be that loved one someday), through the promise of the Spirit of Truth, who is with us now.  Who is Jesus, with us now.

                I am assuming that you are one of those who has called on the Name of the Lord, one who shall be saved when we get through all this blood and fire and smokey mist (as Joel sees it).  If not, we open that possibility every Sunday, the invitation to come to the Lord. 

                So what is it that the disciples shared on this day of Pentecost?  Gifted with language, filled with the Spirit, immersed in the power that came down from heaven?  They spoke of God’s deeds of power.  Never even started on what those are.  Some are obvious, like Jesus’ resurrection.  Others are far more personal, like Jesus’ healing Peter’s mother-in-law.  Like Jesus healing the man blind from birth.  Like Jesus raising Lazarus.  Like Jesus bringing words of comfort to both Martha and Mary in the time of Lazarus’ death before his resurrection.  Like Jesus describing to the disciples what it will be like to live forever.  By promising to be there with them when they come to the dwelling places in God’s house.  Those are the stories from the gospel.  We have our own deeds of power to share.

                When has prayer been answered?  When has Jesus walked with you through a horrible crisis in life, only to bring you to a place where you have the credibility to tell someone else in that crisis that things will be ‘ok’?  When have you had moments of fun and gladness in the company of God’s house?  When has the Spirit moved you through Word and Song into a worship peak that transcends? 

                When was the last time you took inventory of the deeds of power that God has done in life?  What are the amazing gifts we have received?  What are the hurdles we have overcome?  What are the dark nights of the soul for which the morning did, in fact, come?  When did we make it, even though we thought we would not?

                Recognizing what God has done, praising God for what has been done, sharing what God has done in that moment in the life of another when that is what is needed, that is the power of the Spirit.  That is the Holy Spirit within us.  That is the gift of Pentecost.  That is our call, from this day forth and throughout the journey of our lives.

Amen.

May 31, 2020 Scripture Acts 2: 1-21 PENTECOST

Acts 2: 1-21                         May 31, 2020                      Pentecost Sunday

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

⁵Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

¹⁴But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ¹⁷‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. ¹⁸Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. ¹⁹And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. ²⁰The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. ²¹Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

Sunday May 31. 2020 Order of Worship PENTECOST

First Presbyterian Church

Remote and Mail Order of Worship

May 31, 2020

                                                   CALL TO WORSHIP (In Unison)                         

O Spirit sent from heaven, Rekindle faith among us in life’s ebb and flow.

Give us ears to listen, And tongues aflame with praise, glad songs of joy to raise.

Let us worship the Living God

 AMEN

Hymn Today: “Come Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove”

1 Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove, With all Thy quickening powers;
Kindle a flame of sacred love In these cold hearts of ours.

2 In vain we tune our formal songs, In vain we strive to rise;
Hosannas languish on our tongues, And our devotion dies.

 CONFESSION AND ASSURANCE OF PARDON (In Unison)

Dear Lord, on this day, we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit upon us.  May we be filled with its strength that we may look boldly into our lives and confess all that we have done to hurt You, our neighbors, ourselves, and our world.  May the Spirit fill us afresh with the wonder of Your forgiveness that we may celebrate Your name to a world that so needs Your hope and love.  Amen.

 INVITATION

If you do not know Jesus as Your Lord and Savior, but You would like to come to Him, or come to Him again, You can do wo with this simple prayer:

“Dear Lord I need You, please come into my life today.  Amen”

Scripture Lesson for Today, Pentecost Sunday: Acts 2: 1-21

SERMON:

“God With Us Forever”

THE OFFERING OF OUR TITHES & GIFTS

Until we have other options open to us, please mail your tithes and offerings to:

                First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy

            45 Market St.

            Perth Amboy, NJ  08861

Please remember that the bills of the church do not stop even with this virus.

A PRAYER OF DEDICATION (To be prayed individually, out loud or in silence):

Father in heaven, from the bounty You have blessed me with, I give this gift back to You with joy and thanksgiving to further the work of Your church.  Amen.

SONG OF RESPONSE: “Come Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove”

3 Dear Lord, and shall we ever live At this poor dying rate?
Our love so faint, so cold to Thee, And Thine to us so great!

4 Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove, With all Thy quickening powers;
Come, shed abroad a Savior’s love, And that shall kindle ours.

 PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE

Pray for us as we continue to curtail our lives against the virus.

Pray for those who live separated because of the virus.

Pray for our brothers and sisters in this congregation as we continue to worship together.

As you lift each request to God, the appropriate response is “Lord, Hear My Prayer”

THE LORD’S PRAYER (In Unison)

 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 and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.  Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

OUR BENEDICTION AND DEPARTURE (In Unison)

May the Lord bless us and keep us.

May the Lord make His face to shine upon us and be gracious to us.

May the Lord lift up His countenance upon us and give us peace.

Amen.

Worship Service May 24, 2020

Sermon May 24, 2020

John 17: 1-11      May 24, 2020      Sermon                Rev. Peter Hofstra

                When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, at the tomb site, Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.”  It is not a prayer that Jesus had to pray for himself.  He is God and Human.  He does not need to pray out loud to communicate.  But he prays, as he says, for the sake of the crowd standing there.  He prays so they will believe that the power of God has returned and is coming through Jesus as the Messiah sent by God.

                Which is central to the mission of Jesus, because the people of the Promised Land have not seen God’s power in a very long time.  They are now ruled by the Romans who took over for the Greeks who took over for the Persians who took over for the Babylonians in a long history of conquest upon conquest, the only consistent piece being, God’s people were not free.  And when being conquered by an outside power is the mode throughout the Old Testament by which God punished the people so they would turn back to their Lord, it looks like they have been punished for a REALLY long time.

                I would suggest to you that our passage today is a prayer that is to teach the disciples who are listening to Jesus, in the same way as that prayer at the tomb site of Lazarus was for the gathered people.  There is a history of this.  The disciples came out and asked Jesus how they should pray, and we have shared the Lord’s Prayer consistently down from that moment.  But that was not Jesus’ only moment, or mode, of instruction.  But it kind of like writing a high school essay.  The teacher who assigns it is not simply looking for the proper content, but is also trying to instruct the student in the proper form. 

                Jesus does NOT need to pray out loud.  When he does, there is another reason than simply talking to the Father.  It is for the benefit of those who are hearing it, and for us, as those who are reading it so many years later.

                The climax of the prayer comes at the end.  Jesus is asking for God to be there for his disciples.  Verse 9 and verse 11 brought together: “I am asking on their behalf; And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

                So when Jesus begins the passage by basically demanding that the Father glorify the Son, it is not a petulant, childish demand.  It is Jesus laying out for the disciples that the work is done, the hour has come, Jesus has accomplished the mission, and the result is the glory of the Son, for, in turn, the glory of the Father.  What is happening is that the disciples are seeing that God is back at work among God’s people for the accomplishment of salvation itself.

                What is the glory of getting this work done?  It reverses the fall of humanity.  Remember back in Genesis, Adam and Eve were booted from the Garden because the Tree of Life grew there, a tree that, if they ate of it, would provide eternal life.  But they had sinned, turned against God, been tricked by the Serpent, and so they were tossed out.  From dust they came, to dust they returned.  The work of Jesus reverses that. 

                What does Jesus say about eternal life?  It is in this promise that we will know the one True God.  That we will know Jesus sent by God.  The entire passage lays out the relationship of Jesus to God and back, the waterfall of faith that John loves so much, always going from God to humanity and back and again.  The piece that Jesus is hammering home is that God is the power in Jesus, that God is there for the disciples, that God is the author of salvation, and this is SO important because Jesus is returning to the Father and they will be left to carry on the work of God with the Spirit dwelling within, but also they themselves being there for Jesus, witnesses of the faith and messengers of the gospel.

                The glory that comes to the Son is in the accomplishment of the work of salvation.  As Jesus points out in verse 10, this glory has already begun in the people, in the disciples who belong to both Jesus and God the Father.  It is wonderful power to have.

                It can be a little confusing to read this passage, knowing that this prayer takes place before Jesus dies on the cross, but it ends with Jesus assuming that the Ascension has already happened, verse 11, Now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world…”  It helps to consider that Jesus is looking at this from a divine perspective.  Time what part of the creation.  It does NOT bind God.  My best understanding is that God is above the creation and can see the whole carpet of time and history unfolded before the Almighty.  So ‘the hour’, which Jesus has used before to describe the time of his death and resurrection through his ascension, is an event, start to finish, even if the disciples are still standing in the middle of it. 

                But the point of the prayer is not trying to explain a divine take on temporal mechanics.  It is about the reminder, over and over again, that the power of God is there for the disciples.  They are not of the world, they are chosen by God, they are God’s and they are Jesus’…they…we are the same.  Because this prayer is not simply spoken out loud for the benefit of the disciples who happen to be listening.  It is written down for the sake of those who are reading it now. 

                So consider verses 7 and 8, Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.  “They” is us.  The challenge is for us to know that everything given to Jesus is from the Father.  The words from the Father to the Son, those are given to us.  We have received those words (they are written in our bibles) and we know the truth that Jesus came from God.  And we believe that God sent Jesus. 

                For every person who accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior, for every person who accepts the free gift of eternal salvation, the one True God is known more, and the Son is glorified for the work that made all this possible. 

                This is the foundation on which we are headed into Pentecost next Sunday.  Knowing that God backs the work done in Jesus.  Knowing that, in the language of John, the Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in us and back again.  This is to banish all doubts as to what we can accomplish.  Nothing less than sin itself has been reversed.

                Jesus prayed all this out, spelled it out in His conversation with God so that we can be witness to it.  There is something more…powerful that way.  Father and Son talking about the salvation of creation.  It is not a moment of lecture, it is more than that.  Maybe it is the eye-opening moment of an overheard conversation that Jesus and God really believe God is in control, it is NOT just something they preach at us.  If God is for us, who can be against us?

                There is no greater power in all creation than the creator.  There is nothing we cannot accomplish in our Creator.  That promise was being laid down for the disciples because they were going to be living it before too long. 

                I invite you to take a moment to be blown away by this realization.  Pick a problem, any problem, and God’s power is more than sufficient.  And we ARE God’s.  God picked up, gave us to Jesus, we have the word and the promise.  And when we carry out God’s word, through the salvation Jesus won for us at the cost of His own life, we are glorifying Jesus.  This in turn glorifies God.  Which is why we were created in the first place.  Everything is restored to how it was meant to be. 

                The world is beginning to reopen.  All the states are making moves in that direction.  We are watching and praying that it is not too soon.  But God has been there with us through the whole thing.  And God will continue to be with us as we move forward.  But Jesus has been teaching us, by word, by deed, even by prayer.

                No matter what happens, remember what Jesus prayed.  He prayed in the full confidence that God is in control, that everything He did, up to dying on the cross, was in the power of God’s plan.  He prayed to God, asking God’s power be upon his disciples who would carry on the work after his ascension, plainly believing that this is a done deal.  God does NOT abandon God’s own.

                We are God’s own.  We are not abandoned.  We are made God’s children.  We are never alone.  We are in the company of the faithful.  By our faith and our work, we glorify God.  In the end, we share that glory as God’s own children.  I invite you to repeat after me, “Jesus be glorified.” 

Amen.

Scripture and Comments May 24, 2020

John 17: 1-11  Scriptural Notes  May 24, 2020                      Rev. Peter Hofstra

17:1 After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you,

This reads as an Ascension Day prayer.  From John 14, Jesus has been preparing the disciples for the next phase of God’s plan.  Now we see Jesus in direct communication with the Almighty.  These verses lay the groundwork for the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the teaching tool of the Presbyterian Church written at the Reformation.  “What is the chief end of humanity?”  The chief end of humanity is to glorify God and love God forever”.  That comes in the fulfillment of God’s plan, which is coming to pass at this moment.  The Son shall be glorified to, in turn, glorify the Father.

17:2 since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

Two gifts have been bestowed upon Jesus.  The first is authority over all people, believers and unbelievers.  The second is to bestow the gift of eternal life upon all the people given to Jesus.  Note how Jesus is referring to himself, the Son, in the third person.

17:3 And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

This is what turned my head.  Eternal life is not the gracious gift of God for giving our lives to our Lord Jesus Christ.  Rather, it is the way that we may know the only true God, and Jesus, sent by God.  I am still trying to unpack all the potential in that line.

17:4 I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.

As Jesus did, so shall we as well.  It is our turn, in our time, to glorify God by finishing the work we each have been given to do.  What gives me the shudders some days is wondering if I am even aware of the work God has given me to do.

17:5 So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

Taking us back to John 1.  The Word was with God and the Word was God.  God before creation is what we know of as the Father and the Son.  Again, into the mysteries of the Trinity.  Before creation was the Creator.  Notice how Jesus has laid aside something to come among us, that He will be glorified again with that which He had before the world existed.

17:6 "I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

I did not mention it earlier, because there was more to unpack in the earlier verses, but Jesus’ prayer assumes a certain timelessness. In verse 2, Jesus is given authority over all people.  Now he says he has made God’s name known to all those God gave to Jesus.  But he’s only been on the earth, in active ministry for about three year.  He said his hour had come in verse 1, but the events of Easter have not yet come to pass.  Here is a bit of insight into trying to wrap our limited human ability around God.  God does not know the boundaries of time, they were created when the world was created.  Every event in the historical record was known to God from the beginning, was planned by God from the beginning.  I know, I cannot get my head around that either.  But as Jesus talks to his Father in heaven, the proprieties of time and logical progression just don’t count as much.  

17:7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you;

This is true.  It is the waterfall of faith, Father to Son to disciples and back, a theme throughout the gospel of John.

17:8 for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.

So here is an interesting point, does God the Father really need this information?  God has seen all this unfold.  Here is the power of the Bible.  It is for us to understand.  Jesus, praying out loud, is saying these things, things that are all truthful, in thanksgiving to God as he goes through what has been happening, but also-and maybe more-for those gathered, so that they will know it too.

17:9 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.

So here is a contrast, the world versus those whom God has given to Jesus, because those, the Given, are God’s.  Volumes have been written about what it means to be saved and not to be saved, because that is what is assumed is going on here.  But it gets a little fuzzy.  In verse 2, ALL the people were given to Jesus.  I am not making assumptions here about who will be saved.  What I am pointing out is that God’s agenda is bigger than we can comprehend, so it may not be made clear to us.  It may be best not to assume it is.

17:10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.

Again, the waterfall of faith, applied now to the people, tying back into the glorification of Jesus from the start of the passage.

17:11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

Wrapping things up, Jesus is headed “up”, the disciples remain, Jesus is calling down the same God who was with Jesus throughout his ministry to continue among the disciples, that the church may be one as God is one. 

Order of Worship May 24, 2020

First Presbyterian Church

Remote and Mail Order of Worship

May 24, 2020

                                                   CALL TO WORSHIP (In Unison)                         

Praise the Lord that we have received the gift of eternal life.  What wonder, that to know eternal life is to know the One True God.  Let us glorify our Lord Jesus who gave us this gift.  Thank you Jesus for completing the work You were sent among us to perform.  Let us worship the Living God.

 AMEN

Hymn Today: “We All Believe in One True God”

1 We all believe in one true God,
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
Ever-present help in need,
Praised by all the heavenly host,
By whose mighty power alone
All is made and wrought and done.

 CONFESSION AND ASSURANCE OF PARDON (In Unison)

 Dear Lord, to know eternal life is to know You as the One True God.  To know eternal life is to know Jesus Christ, whom You sent to us.  We come to You to know You better in the confession of all our sins and shortcomings, so that by Your forgiveness, we are renewed once more.  Lead us to lay our whole lives in Your hands that You may lead us ever onward through a good and better life here, and into eternal life forever.  Amen.

 INVITATION

If you do not know Jesus as Your Lord and Savior, but You would like to come to Him, or come to Him again, You can do wo with this simple prayer:

“Dear Lord I need You, please come into my life today.  Amen”

Scripture Lesson for Today, the Seventh Sunday of Easter: John 17: 1-11

SERMON:

“To Know Eternal Life is To Know the One True God”

THE OFFERING OF OUR TITHES & GIFTS

Until we have other options open to us, please mail your tithes and offerings to:

                First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy

            45 Market St.

            Perth Amboy, NJ  08861

Please remember that the bills of the church do not stop even with this virus.

A PRAYER OF DEDICATION (To be prayed individually, out loud or in silence):

Father in heaven, from the bounty You have blessed me with, I give this gift back to You with joy and thanksgiving to further the work of Your church.  Amen.

SONG OF RESPONSE: “We All Believe in One True God”

2 We all believe in Jesus Christ,
Son of God and Mary's son,
Who descended from His throne
And for us salvation won,
By whose cross and death are we
Rescued from sin's misery..

 PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE

Pray for us as we continue to curtail our lives against the virus.

Pray for those who live separated because of the virus.

Pray for our brothers and sisters in this congregation as we continue to worship together.

As you lift each request to God, the appropriate response is “Lord, Hear My Prayer”

THE LORD’S PRAYER (In Unison)

 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 and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.  Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

OUR BENEDICTION AND DEPARTURE (In Unison)

May the Lord bless us and keep us.

May the Lord make His face to shine upon us and be gracious to us.

May the Lord lift up His countenance upon us and give us peace.

Amen.

Worship Service May 17, 2020

May 17, 2020 Sermon

John 14: 15-21                  May 15, 2020      “We Are Never Left Alone”          Rev. Peter Hofstra

                Our passage this morning has Jesus reassuring his disciples that they will not be left alone.  He has been preparing them throughout John 14. 

                In the first part of this passage, Jesus spoke of ultimate things.  “I go to prepare a place for you.”  “Where I am, there you will be also.”  And it has mansions (because dwelling places seems a little ‘meh’ honestly).  This is step one of preparing the disciples for his Ascension, which is this coming Thursday.  But now the second part, what are they going to do here when Jesus is no longer here.

                Jesus’ response, he will still be with them.  The world will not know him, they will not see him because he is ascending into heaven, but God the Father is going to take care of things.  Throughout John, Jesus lays out the divine waterfall for the disciples, the Father is in the Son (Jesus), and Jesus in in the disciples and the disciples are in Jesus, spiritually speaking.  Thus the power of God flows to them.

                What he has been preparing them for is the fulfillment of God’s plan.  The disciples don’t know it yet, and I have the feeling, reading the book of Acts, that they really did not know it until Pentecost, but while Jesus would save the world, they would be witnesses to it, and through them, salvation would come to everyone.  And understanding this is really important for us, because we are the heirs to the ministry of the disciples.  What they ended up doing, after Acts 2, is what is the work of God, what is the call to all believers.  What happened before outlines the steps of how Jesus got this motley band of people prepared to do His work.

                Maybe the most important piece is the sure and certain knowledge that we are never without the divine.  He says in the middle of this passage, “I will not leave you orphaned.”  I will not abandon you he says.  Such may be the single greatest fear we can have as people of faith, knowing God and then being abandoned by God.  There is one example of this in the Bible, when Jesus was on the cross and he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  In that moment was the ultimate expression of what Paul says, that Jesus did not consider his Godhood a thing to be grasped, but set it aside and took on the form of a slave.  What does a slave do?  A slave obeys.  And Jesus obeyed, even unto death on the cross.

                But that is NOT what is going to happen to the disciples.  Jesus tells them that the Father is going to send another Advocate, the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit.  The pivotal word there is ‘another’.  Jesus has been their Advocate up to this moment and will be until the Spirit takes over.  But then we get into some Trinity language.

                Humans have, since the time of Pentecost, trying to share about who God is and what God does in our finite, limited vocabulary.  Yet can we really wrap our heads around the power of God who said, “Let there be light” and there was?  Can we understand the implication that if God SAYS “Let the light go out”, its done?  The Trinity is the best description we have, given what God has revealed.  God, THE God, ultimate and all-powerful, the Father according to a family metaphor.  Jesus, human, begotten, not made, very God of very God, but human and walking among us, the Son, born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Reason for the Season of Christmas.  And now, Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the power of God, the essence of God, the Godliness of God that comes upon us and gives us the divine ability to transcend what we are.  It is not about being able to conquer everything, like Superman, but it is the ability to be at Peace with everything, knowing that God is truly in control.

                That’s how we have come to describe God as presented throughout the Bible.  There is no single declarative paragraph that says, “Now thusly we define God…”  Rather, this is how God interacts with us, to overcome the divide between Creator and Creation.

                Sometimes, we get so caught up in the Three, that we forget the other side, that God is One.  John, our Gospel writer, is very aware of the Oneness.  He leads off with it, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  The Word is Jesus, therefore, Jesus WAS God.  This is an important thing to understand in our passage, because Jesus’ language shifts over the course of the middle verses.

                Who is the Advocate?  The description is in verse 17: This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.  But then, there is a shift.  Verses 18 and 19: “I  will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.  In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”  It is a seamless slide, talking about God With Us (which is one of the names for Jesus in the Bible, Emmanuel; God with us), Jesus to the Spirit to Jesus.

                But this passage is not about guessing which person of the Trinity.  This passage is about the absolute assurance that Jesus gives to his disciples that they will NEVER be alone.  Because at this moment, in the cocoon of Jesus’ leadership, they cannot grasp what it means that Jesus is leaving them.  And when it comes to Jesus’ death, they are not going to remember what Jesus said.  The gospels are very clear that it was not until after His resurrection that they remembered what he had said to them-after their memories were jogged by the personal appearance of Jesus in their midst.

                And it is very easy to judge the disciples with the benefit of hindsight and two thousand years of the Holy Spirit.  But remember that Sunday morning, Jesus had been gone three days.  And yes, Jesus had shown them that he was the master of death, he’d raised more than one person, but Jesus wasn’t there to perform the miracle.  The worker of miracles had been killed, most horribly. 

                Most of our lives, this may well be information that is nice to have, but unless we are actively practicing our faith, it will sit in the background.  Jesus is with us as the Spirit, but do we really pursue life changing goals with that information?  Or are we content?  Or have we given it any real consideration?

                Because it is in our face right now.  The proof is in the fact that you are watching me on a screen.  We are no longer in control.  Truth be told, we never were, but now it is pretty obvious.  If we are not firmly convinced that God is, in fact, in control, chances are, deep in our souls, we are looking at some grand chaotic force that is running reality at the moment. 

                It may seem counterintuitive to consider ourselves to be free in the love of Christ when Jesus tells us that he really knows those who love Him because they obey His commandments.  He opens and closes our passage with that affirmation.  It is an important consideration.  I know I have Jesus, the Bible tells me so.  I know the Spirit is within me.  How does that affect my actions?  By the power of love, a power that is outlined in the commandments of Jesus. 

                Since this quarantine has begun, a lot of people basically shut in to their homes are almost desperate to get back out into the world again.  But a lot of those who have to be out, our ‘essential’ workers, would like nothing more than to be those shut ins, at least for awhile.  Living into this passage at this particular moment can provide relief wherever we are.  Jesus is here, within us.  It is the Spirit of God, but Jesus and Holy Spirit are One, and One with no less that God the All Powerful.  Our salvation is assured by the miracle of Easter, what’s left is to live a good life filled with His presence.

                But not everybody does know this.  According to Jesus, the World does not.  What is the World left out of?  Well, the world cannot receive the Spirit of truth, because the world neither sees him nor knows him.  And, in a little while, the World will no longer see Jesus.  They are going to be left out of the miracle granted to Jesus’ disciples.  They won’t know what love can truly be.  They won’t know the comfort of our Savior.  They won’t have the abiding presence of God in their very being. 

                Do you feel that way?  Because I think that Jesus is having this conversation with his disciples because they were feeling this way.  To be without Jesus is to be, simply, without.  There is nothing shameful in that feeling.  Even for the most heartfelt Christian, doubt and worry still exist.  Then, for the person in Christ, we have the divine indwelling us to help us, to carry us forward once again, to rise up once again.

                This is salvation working out in our lives.  We do the best we can, but even in Christ, sin besets us.  But this was never designed as a mechanism of perfection.  It was designed as a mechanism of forgiveness.  It is why we invite people to give their lives to Christ in every service of worship.  It may be for the first time that they truly embrace Jesus.  It may be that their faith has gone cold, lying dormant somewhere in the soul, only to be rekindled.  It may be the spiritual discipline of weekly “charging up” again in the acceptance of Jesus Christ.

                This speaks to my heart because of the very metaphoric nature of the Trinity.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  That third person, that Holy Spirit, is the most nebulous of the bunch.  Its even worse when we use the older form, the Holy Ghost.  Its like the Church meets Halloween.  Or Worship meets Haunting.  Yes, it sounds silly as I write this down, but this is the most intimate, holy space in my life.  Silly can shake it up.

                But in God as One, Jesus is in my heart.  Yes, that is a saying of the faith, but this is the physical indwelling.  This is my friend.  This is the one who died for me.  It is as delightful for us today as it was for those disciples sitting at Jesus’ feet back in that day to know that Jesus was going to be with them. 

                Like I said before, we are never in control of our lives, but most of the time we can build up a pretty convincing illusion that we have some kind of control.  But our faith teaches us that God is in control, all the time.  That is a firm foundation on which to build our hope.  But it is so much more.  God came to us in human form.  And Jesus carried out the plan of salvation.  Then, when the human returned to heaven, God came to us in spiritual form.  So when tomorrow dawns and we are still at home and the Covid is still out there, and when will we hit a new balance…it can be rather depressing. 

                But Jesus is in here.  The love of Jesus is in our hearts.  The teachings of Jesus are on our minds.  The power of God is in Jesus and Jesus is in us, as the Spirit of truth.  This divine waterfall of grace passes from heaven to earth, from Creator to Creation.  We are not alone.  We are never alone.  May God’s grace lift us up.

Amen.