Sunday, March 28, 2021
Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Order of Worship: Sunday, March 21, 2021
First Presbyterian Church
March 21, 2021
10:00 AM
Order of Worship
CALL TO
WORSHIP (Jeremiah
31:31-34)
God has promised to make
a new covenant with us.
Our Lord has promised to
write God’s law on our hearts.
We will no longer say to
each other, “Know the Lord,” for we shall all know God.
For God will forgive our
iniquity, and remember our sin no more.
Let us worship the Living
God.
Hymn
of Praise: “Oh How I Love Jesus”
1.
There is a name I love to hear, I love to sing its worth; it sounds like music
in my ear, the sweetest name on earth.
Refrain: O how I love Jesus, O how I love Jesus, O how I love Jesus, because he
first loved me!
2.
It tells me of a Savior's love, who died to set me free; it tells me of his
precious blood, the sinner's perfect plea. (Refrain)
3.
It tells of one whose loving heart can feel my deepest woe; who in each sorrow
bears a part that none can bear below. (Refrain)
PRAYER OF CONFESSION (In Unison)
Holy God, we confess that we have failed to live in covenant
relation with you and one another. We have exploited our relationships with one
another and the earth for private gain. Our hearts have become hardened to the
suffering we have caused. Create in us a new heart, O God. Write your law in
our hearts so that we will love you with all of who we are and love our
neighbors as ourselves. Amen.
*SILENT PRAYERS OF CONFESSION
ASSURANCE OF PARDON
Friends,
hear the good news of the gospel. In Christ, we are forgiven and restored to
right relations with God and one another. God in Christ empowers us for
justice-seeking in our world. God has made a new covenant with us. Thanks be to
God.
*THE GLORIA
PATRI
Glory be to the
Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is
now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen.
INVITATION: “Dear Lord, I
need You, please come into my life today.
Amen”
LESSON: John 8: 20-33
20Now
among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21They
came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we
wish to see Jesus.” 22Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew
and Philip went and told Jesus. 23Jesus answered them, “The
hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24Very truly,
I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains
just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25Those
who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will
keep it for eternal life. 26Whoever serves me must follow me,
and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father
will honor.
27“Now
my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’?
No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28Father,
glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I
will glorify it again.” 29The crowd standing there heard it and
said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30Jesus
answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31Now
is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven
out. 32And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all
people to myself.” 33He said this to indicate the kind of death
he was to die.
SERMON: “To Come To The Glory Of Christ”
Rev. Peter Hofstra
AFFIRMATION OF
FAITH (Philippians 2:5-11)
Christ Jesus,
though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something
to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in
human likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became
obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross. Therefore God also
highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at
the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the
earth, and every tongue should confess to the glory of God: Jesus Christ is
Lord! Amen.
PASSING OF THE
PEACE
THE OFFERING OF
OUR TITHES & GIFTS
God is the fountain of all good and has
showered us with good gifts. In let us give all of who we are
in return: our hearts, minds, energies
and resources.
*DOXOLOGY
Praise God, from
whom all blessings flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise Him
above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
*PRAYER OF
DEDICATION
O
God, your gifts are manifest all around us and especially in this community of
hope, love and peace. May the gifts we return to you this day be a sign of our
commitment to do your work in this community and in our world to establish the
flourishing of all your children.
JOYS AND
CONCERNS
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE AND
THE LORD’S PRAYER
Let us pray for the church, our
neighbors in need and the whole world, saying: Hear our prayer. Holy One, we
pray that you would empower the church to be your beloved community on earth,
to live in mutuality and tear down hierarchies that devalue some in order to
benefit others. We pray to you, O Lord: Hear our prayer.
Make us ever mindful of the sick, the
homeless, the hungry, the prisoner, the lonely and isolated, that we might be
agents of your love and justice to these your children. We pray to you, O Lord:
Hear our prayer.
Enable all who live and work in this
region to work for the common good and for the flourishing of all your
children. We pray to you, O Lord: Hear our prayer.
Support the global community as it
struggles with the pandemic — delivering needed aid and vaccines for all who
are in need. Give each of us courage to take responsibility for measures that
protect us all. We pray to you, O Lord: Hear our prayer.
We pray all these things in the name of
Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray 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 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.
CLOSING HYMN: “The Old
Rugged Cross”
1. On a
hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame; and
I love that old cross where the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners
was slain.
Refrain: So I'll cherish the old rugged cross, till my trophies at last I lay
down; I will cling to the old rugged cross, and exchange it some day for a
crown.
2. O
that old rugged cross, so despised by the world, has a wondrous attraction for
me; for the dear Lamb of God left his glory above to bear it to dark Calvary.
(Refrain)
3. In
that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine, a wondrous beauty I see,
for 'twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died, to pardon and sanctify me.
(Refrain)
*BENEDICTION
*THREE FOLD AMEN
Elements of Order of Worship drawn from The Presbyterian Outlook,
written by Roger Gench.
Sermon: Sunday, March 21, 2021
March 21, 2021 John
8: 20-33 Rev. Peter Hofstra
In
our passage today, Jesus talks about his “Glorification”. When I think of Jesus being glorified, I
think of Jesus being raised up to sit at the right hand of God, to be the one
who judges us at the end of time. It is
the reward for what Jesus has done in carrying out God’s plan. But when Jesus is speaking today, he speaks
of his Glorification.
At
first glance, this looks like Jesus is going off on a preaching tangent. What is going on? It is Passover and there are Greeks-not
Jewish- in Jerusalem to worship. They
have heard of Jesus and they want to meet him.
So, through Philip, and then Andrew, this request is brought to the
Lord, and this is his response.
When
he wraps up the passage, in verse 32, Jesus says he will be lifted up to draw
all people to himself. My first thought,
when Jesus being lifted up to heaven by the Father-Ascension Day. But the passage ends with a clarifying
statement, Jesus was speaking about the kind of death he must endure, NOT about
the kind of reward he was to receive. So
this is NOT about Jesus being raised up to heaven. It has a much closer parallel to last week,
when Jesus was speaking to Nicodemus.
There, the Son of Man must be lifted up and that was clearly referring
to Jesus being lifted up on the cross!
His metaphor echoes this. He
speaks of the grain of wheat dropped into the ground, where it must die in
order to bear much fruit.
So,
to understand the glorification that Jesus speaks of here, we must understand
that it is tied to the death he is going to suffer-glory comes after, but it
comes at great cost, when he is lifted up on the cross.
In the
midst of this, Jesus confesses that he is troubled in the spirit by all of
this. I think if any of us knew that our
deaths were imminent and in such a horrible manner, “troubled in the spirit”
would be a massive understatement. Jesus
goes so far as to echo his feelings from the Garden of Gethsemene in Luke,
where he asks for the cup of wrath to be passed from him. Here, he asks the disciples if He should
appeal to God the Father to save him from what is to come? The question is rhetorical. The answer is NO. Coming down to die for us is the very reason
that Jesus came down to the earth. And
the results of this work, of his death, is going to be that Satan, the ‘ruler
of the earth’ is going to driven out from controlling this world. It is in that victory that Jesus’ death
blossoms into victory, into glory.
Why
did the request of the Greeks, of these people clearly identified as NOT being
Jewish, trigger this response? Is there
a disconnect? Or is something else going
on? It depends on what we think the
gospel is for. Our best guess is that
the gospels were written from the oral traditions of Jesus that were shared in
the worship and fellowship experiences of the early church. These churches had the disciples (now
apostles) establishing and leading them.
They knew there was a Second Coming of Jesus. But as it became evident the Second Coming
was further into the future than they realized, as the eyewitnesses to Jesus began
to die (many as martyrs), these oral traditions were written down and they were
organized into narratives for the church to know what Jesus has done for
us. The narratives in the gospels are
for the church to know what Jesus has done.
So,
in this case, the glory of Jesus, which comes through his death and
resurrection, which bears fruit like the grain of wheat that has died, which
comes through the driving out of the devil, all is in the context of non-Jews
coming to meet him. Which is what the
church became, a faith of non-Jews. I
believe John is tying together the Plan of God in Jesus’ death and
resurrection, pointing to Jesus’ glorification, as something explained because
of these Greeks precisely for their benefit, and our benefit, in knowing what
Jesus is doing for us, as our Savior.
Being recorded in the gospel, this truth is there for all Christians in
all seasons of life.
I
find this passage asking a hard question of us, right here and right now, in
our own collective walk of faith in Jesus.
It was through the valley of the shadow of death, death on the cross,
that Jesus saw glory coming to him. Can
we see the possibility of the glory of Christ coming through our church once
again, or have we passed so far, shrunk so much, that we are in the valley of
the shadow of death, destined to meet that end?
That
question has hung over this church since before my arrival. When Harborview was brought into this
building, what was the balance of reasoning?
Was it to be community resource to address the need of a lack of pre-K
educational programs in Perth Amboy? Was
it in the hopes that establishing a pre-school in the building would serve as a
funnel for neighborhood families into the wider life of the church? Was it for the possibility of making the
square footage of this large physical plant pay, in part, for its upkeep? I don’t think any one of those answers is
absolute. It is not either/or/or but
rather all these elements, and others, came into play as the future of the
church was considered. The overarching
question, taking all these elements into account, is what does our church, here
in Perth Amboy, do for Jesus?
Our
truth is that we are a commuter church, people drive to get here. Yet we are an urban location, so unlike a
suburban church that can sprawl with parking and a campus and all that, all the
confines of city life (parking, congestion, etc.) play against us. What can we draw from our Scripture this
morning? Have we the hope of passing
through a time like that of the grain of wheat that has to die before it can
bear fruit? Are we looking forward to
resurrection? Or just dying
comfortably? Are we content to simply
wait for ‘something’ to happen?
I am
frankly jealous of the church folks we have been in conversation with, looking
to transplant from Jersey City to Perth Amboy as their congregational base has
shifted. What freedom! If we were to try that, we’d been ‘invading’
the ‘territories’ of the Presbyterian Churches in Fords, in Avenel, in
Woodbridge, if we tried to center ourselves to where our folks live now.
To
add a little more, lets throw in the presumption about how leadership changes
take place. The tradition is that the
pastor who is leaving drops a bomb that is their exit upon the
congregation. The response of the
congregation is then to mourn, overseen by an interim pastor, through the stages
of grief, until they come to accept, at which time they can see ‘clearly’
(without emotional interference), the community around them and what needs to
be done to move forward (community study, mission statement, call process).
In
many cases, there is the ‘writing on the wall’ that a change is coming. Pastors retire, congregations are in
transition, neighborhoods change.
Instead of dealing with it head on, the presumption is that a pastor
leaving is death in a congregation and, as in the advice given to a person who
loses their spouse of many years, do not make any major decisions until you
have had time to work through the grief so we stay static until that all
happens.
But
that is not how Jesus frames it. He was
at the peak of his popularity when the Greeks came to call. He’d just come off the resurrection of
Lazarus, and that miracle fueled a whole lot of the enthusiasm that led to his
Triumphal Entry in Jerusalem. But Jesus
sees the writing on the wall. This very
popularity is going to make him, in the eyes of the Jewish leadership, too
powerful to let live. But Jesus frames
it that his glorification is going to come through this conspiracy that will
kill him, that the Messiah stepping out for the whole world to believe, comes
through this moment of pain and death, because the very power of Christ is that
He overcomes sin and death for all who believe.
So
here we are. We know there is an
endpoint, to the money, to the participation, to the relevance of being an
Anglo church in a LatinX community. What
conversations do we need to have about this?
The church model of transition is essentially ‘do nothing because you
have to mourn’. Jesus did not
mourn. He was troubled, certainly. There was pain and anguish, but his eye was
on the triumph to follow. Are we going
to sing till the last voice is extinguished?
Or do we grab onto the vision that resurrection comes through the pain
and anguish, and we can manage it, transition with it, plan in it, or we can
just let it kill us.
Jesus
says in this passage that those who love their life are going to lose it. This speaks to the people who do evil, who
love the darkness, again from last week’s passage. But if we hate our lives here, if we hate the
sin and evil in the world, if we hate how everything seems to be so horrible
around us, from pollution to COVID to corruption to poverty to terrorism, to us
comes the gift of eternal life.
Where
I strongly disagree with many Christians about when that happens. To many, the notion is ‘junk the world’, get
to the new one, the eternal one. But
they have missed the point of what truly happened with the death and
resurrection of Jesus. Death is no
longer a transition of what is and what is to come. Instead, it is more like a speedbump of the
journey of eternal life that begins now, at the moment of accepting Jesus as
Lord and Savior and Friend. Jesus died
on the earth, Jesus rose on the earth, then Jesus arose once again to
Heaven. His glory was NOT when he was
floating up to the clouds and waving the world “Good Bye”.
His
glory was wading into the worst of the filth of sin and evil and death and
punishment, drowning in it all himself, because then he rose up and out of it
once again. What are we going to do
about that? Are we going to celebrate
Palm Sunday and Easter as the triumph we have received in our own lives because
Jesus died and rose again for each of us?
Or are we going to do more? Are
we going to use Jesus as our model to embrace the pain, embrace the
difficulties that we are facing, true, not knowing the Endgame, but knowing
that the Lord is faithful, that the servants who follow him will be honored by
the Father? To quote Monty Hall, a
prophet unknown to the present generation, I recommend Door Number 2. Amen.
Sermon Sunday, March 14, 2021
March 14, 2021 John
3: 14-21 Rev.
Peter Hofstra
The
defining event of the people of God-the Jews-is the Exodus. The Jews were slaves in Egypt, they were
liberated by the outstretched arm of the power of God, and they arrived in the
Promised Land, the Land flowing with milk and honey, that had been promised to
their founding parents, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekkah. But in between, the people seemed to do
everything in their power to get God to destroy them. While Moses was getting the Ten Commandments
up on Mt. Sinai, they created the golden calf as their ‘god’. Want to know why they wandered for forty
years?
It
was not because Moses would not stop for directions…
Rather,
the people complained SO MUCH about the trip, about going back to Egypt, about
Moses’ leadership, that God decided that every Israelite over the age of 20 was
going to die in the wilderness and NOT see the Promised Land. Literally an entire generation would pass
away. There were other moments along the
way where more of God’s punishment came down.
This
is one of those moments. The people have
just been told they need to take the long way around. So they complain, about everything. So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the
people, killing a lot of them. Salvation
came when the Lord commanded Moses to make a bronze snake and lift it up on a
pole. This Moses did and those who were
bitten who looked upon the snake lived, cured of the snakebite.
In
our generation, we have Snakes on a Plane, in the time of Jesus, this Snake on
a Pole.
The
bronze serpent was lifted up and the people who looked upon it, who would have
died, had their lives saved.
This
is the lead-in to the most well-known verse in the Bible. The Lead in continues, Just as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man also be lifted up. That is its own gruesome process. The pole of the cross would be laid out on
the ground, the crosspiece, which Jesus was forced to carry out of Jerusalem
until it became too much for him and they drafted another to carry it for him,
that crosspiece would be set into place.
Jesus will be laid out, nailed hands and feet to the cross, and then the
whole thing will be lifted into the air until the pole drops into a hole carved
in the rock. If you go to the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher today in Jerusalem, there is a chapel built with an altar,
and under the altar you can see the bare rock beneath with the pits bored in
where they say Jesus’ cross was lifted up.
As
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so was Jesus lifted up on the
cross. And as the people bitten by the
poisonous snakes were saved from death when they looked at the bronze snakes,
we read verse 15, “that whosoever should believe in him shall have eternal
life.” And then some context, the most
oft quoted verse in the Bible, John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that
he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but
may have eternal life.”
One
of the great powers of sin in the world is apathy, the spirit of “who
cares?” One of the most damaging power
this spirit wields is the power to take words as powerful as John 3:16 and from
sheer overload of repetition, make it as easy to rattle off as our A,B,C’s with
just as much interest and attention paid to the letters we have known since
childhood.
Maybe
that is why Jesus led with this rather obscure but very visceral image from the
Law of Moses. After all, isn’t that why
Snakes on a Plane is so powerful? Well,
the snakes and Samuel L. Jackson and his trademarked potty mouth. But remember the scene in “Raiders of the
Lost Ark”, Indiana Jones surrounded by all those snakes in the Egyptian
temple?
When
I was starting in ministry, I had the privilege of preaching a couple of
summers up at Culver Lake, in Northwest Jersey.
It is a lakeside, seasonal community with a summer chapel. One side of the lake is on the edge of a
state forest. One summer, there was a forest
fire there, and it drove the snakes down from the forest into the community on
the northern shore of the lake. It gives
me the heebeegeebees just to think about it.
Snakes
are why I do not have a grand desire to go to Australia. And serpents have a negative reputation in
Scripture. Cue the serpent with Adam and
Eve.
Remember
the power of the bronze snake? It did
not drive away the poisonous snakes, but it saved the lives of those who were
bitten and would otherwise have died, probably in a most horrible fashion.
Jesus! You had to start with snakes to get my
attention? I can say without fear of
contradiction that, as I wrote my sermon, my attention was got. In fact, as I was preparing this sermon, I
looked up to see what kind of snake it was thought to be in Number 21. Earlier translations into English did not say
‘poisonous snakes’ but ‘fiery serpents’.
Snakes and fire, lets just crank up the fear just a little more. If we want to keep going down this road, one
commentator thought these snakes were some kind of cobra. I do not want to keep going down this road.
The
bronze serpent was raised upon the pole and the people who were going to die
from the punishment God inflicted upon them for their sins had but to look upon
the bronze serpent and they received redemption from their death sentence, that
is the road I wish to travel.
For
this is the gift that every sinner who will die for their sins has received
from Jesus. To look upon the cross, to
believe in Him, and to receive redemption.
The rest of our verses in John lay out exactly that message.
So, John
3:15. “Whoever believes in Him (in
Jesus) will have eternal life.”-BECAUSE Jesus was raised up as the serpent was
raised by Moses. Now John 3: 16 builds
upon it, this comes by God’s love, whoever believes may not perish but
have eternal life. That is the evolution
of the discussion. Jesus goes on to say
that it is NOT Jesus who comes to condemn, but to save. People were condemned already, by their love
for evil things, things they want to keep hidden in the darkness because they
do not want to surrender them. Verse 17,
God DID NOT send his Son to condemn the world.
Verse 19, people loved darkness rather than light because their deed
were evil. Verse 20, in fact, those who
do evil HATE the light.
When
George Orwell wrote “1984” as a prophecy of totalitarian Communism, the final
curse was the crushing spirit of apathy.
The hero of the story was beaten down and destroyed by the process. I remember him just sitting there, drinking
away, no longer free in his own thoughts.
A chilling, juvenile, current example of that is from, of all things,
“The Lego Movie”. Remember their
song? “Everything is awesome…” At the beginning of the movie it was all
awesome because it was all the same, down to Taco Tuesday. It was NOT awesome, it was frightening, the
image of such an ordered, copycat society, but breaking it down, that is the
movie’s purpose.
You
know why I print the prayers in the bulletin every Sunday? I was raised in churches where the custom was
to print the first couple lines, then … so the pastor could drone on as long as
he wanted, then … Amen. I lost my focus
on the prayer because it was going to be LONG, and monotonous. Have you had preachers who cannot seem to
find the end of their sermon? Now
imagine having your eyes closed for the prayer-leader who cannot seem to find
the “Amen”. Confession time, I have been
that prayer-leader.
As
the defining event of the people of God, the Jews, was the Exodus, the defining
event of the people of God, we Christians, is the death and resurrection of
Jesus. It is our own Exodus, from
slavery to sin to the Promised Land of Everlasting Life. And thank you Jesus that it is no longer
about doing the right thing, but it is all about believing in Your Name! The greatest danger in this day is that
message being drowned by the Spirit of apathy, of ‘who cares’.
So
what then? Do I want you going out of
here thinking about snakes this morning?
May it never be! I surely do not
want you to go out of here thinking about death either! I want you to go out of here thinking about
life, about life given abundantly, about life lived powerfully. Jesus came to save us, to save humanity
already condemned.
Because
what did Jesus do? The Son of God went into
death itself, walked into the mouth of the grave, descended into hell, and
three days later came back. For us. By the power of God. I read in one place that the bronze snake was
obviously some kind of sympathetic magic that cured the people of their snake
bites. No. It was the power of God to save the lives of
God’s people!! Same thing again. It is not about a human sacrifice to save
us. It is about God’s power to save
us. Why did Jesus have to die? Because God knows, in the wisdom of the
divine, that we broken, sinful humans need the death of Jesus to know the life
of Jesus. Why? Because God loved us so much that God sent
God’s only begotten Son to take on our deepest, most intense, darkest fear-even
darker than fearing snakes-and overcome it with love to give us the grace to
live forever.
When
Moses raised the serpent among the Israelites, it was so that those who were
bitten could live to continue their journey to the Promised Land. When Jesus was raised up on the cross, it was
so that those who are condemned to die for their sins (all of us) can continue
our journey to the Promised Land of the New Heaven and the New Earth, a gift
from our God who loved us so much that God sent the Son, that whoever believes
in His name shall not perish but live in that Promised Land for eternity. Amen.
Sunday, March 14, 2021
March 14, 2021 Sermon
March 14, 2021 John
3: 14-21 Rev.
Peter Hofstra
The
defining event of the people of God-the Jews-is the Exodus. The Jews were slaves in Egypt, they were
liberated by the outstretched arm of the power of God, and they arrived in the
Promised Land, the Land flowing with milk and honey, that had been promised to
their founding parents, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekkah. But in between, the people seemed to do
everything in their power to get God to destroy them. While Moses was getting the Ten Commandments
up on Mt. Sinai, they created the golden calf as their ‘god’. Want to know why they wandered for forty
years?
It
was not because Moses would not stop for directions…
Rather,
the people complained SO MUCH about the trip, about going back to Egypt, about
Moses’ leadership, that God decided that every Israelite over the age of 20 was
going to die in the wilderness and NOT see the Promised Land. Literally an entire generation would pass
away. There were other moments along the
way where more of God’s punishment came down.
This
is one of those moments. The people have
just been told they need to take the long way around. So they complain, about everything. So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the
people, killing a lot of them. Salvation
came when the Lord commanded Moses to make a bronze snake and lift it up on a
pole. This Moses did and those who were
bitten who looked upon the snake lived, cured of the snakebite.
In
our generation, we have Snakes on a Plane, in the time of Jesus, this Snake on
a Pole.
The
bronze serpent was lifted up and the people who looked upon it, who would have
died, had their lives saved.
This
is the lead-in to the most well-known verse in the Bible. The Lead in continues, Just as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man also be lifted up. That is its own gruesome process. The pole of the cross would be laid out on
the ground, the crosspiece, which Jesus was forced to carry out of Jerusalem
until it became too much for him and they drafted another to carry it for him,
that crosspiece would be set into place.
Jesus will be laid out, nailed hands and feet to the cross, and then the
whole thing will be lifted into the air until the pole drops into a hole carved
in the rock. If you go to the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher today in Jerusalem, there is a chapel built with an altar,
and under the altar you can see the bare rock beneath with the pits bored in
where they say Jesus’ cross was lifted up.
As
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so was Jesus lifted up on the
cross. And as the people bitten by the
poisonous snakes were saved from death when they looked at the bronze snakes,
we read verse 15, “that whosoever should believe in him shall have eternal
life.” And then some context, the most
oft quoted verse in the Bible, John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that
he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but
may have eternal life.”
One
of the great powers of sin in the world is apathy, the spirit of “who
cares?” One of the most damaging power
this spirit wields is the power to take words as powerful as John 3:16 and from
sheer overload of repetition, make it as easy to rattle off as our A,B,C’s with
just as much interest and attention paid to the letters we have known since
childhood.
Maybe
that is why Jesus led with this rather obscure but very visceral image from the
Law of Moses. After all, isn’t that why
Snakes on a Plane is so powerful? Well,
the snakes and Samuel L. Jackson and his trademarked potty mouth. But remember the scene in “Raiders of the
Lost Ark”, Indiana Jones surrounded by all those snakes in the Egyptian
temple?
When
I was starting in ministry, I had the privilege of preaching a couple of
summers up at Culver Lake, in Northwest Jersey.
It is a lakeside, seasonal community with a summer chapel. One side of the lake is on the edge of a
state forest. One summer, there was a forest
fire there, and it drove the snakes down from the forest into the community on
the northern shore of the lake. It gives
me the heebeegeebees just to think about it.
Snakes
are why I do not have a grand desire to go to Australia. And serpents have a negative reputation in
Scripture. Cue the serpent with Adam and
Eve.
Remember
the power of the bronze snake? It did
not drive away the poisonous snakes, but it saved the lives of those who were
bitten and would otherwise have died, probably in a most horrible fashion.
Jesus! You had to start with snakes to get my
attention? I can say without fear of
contradiction that, as I wrote my sermon, my attention was got. In fact, as I was preparing this sermon, I
looked up to see what kind of snake it was thought to be in Number 21. Earlier translations into English did not say
‘poisonous snakes’ but ‘fiery serpents’.
Snakes and fire, lets just crank up the fear just a little more. If we want to keep going down this road, one
commentator thought these snakes were some kind of cobra. I do not want to keep going down this road.
The
bronze serpent was raised upon the pole and the people who were going to die
from the punishment God inflicted upon them for their sins had but to look upon
the bronze serpent and they received redemption from their death sentence, that
is the road I wish to travel.
For
this is the gift that every sinner who will die for their sins has received
from Jesus. To look upon the cross, to
believe in Him, and to receive redemption.
The rest of our verses in John lay out exactly that message.
So, John
3:15. “Whoever believes in Him (in
Jesus) will have eternal life.”-BECAUSE Jesus was raised up as the serpent was
raised by Moses. Now John 3: 16 builds
upon it, this comes by God’s love, whoever believes may not perish but
have eternal life. That is the evolution
of the discussion. Jesus goes on to say
that it is NOT Jesus who comes to condemn, but to save. People were condemned already, by their love
for evil things, things they want to keep hidden in the darkness because they
do not want to surrender them. Verse 17,
God DID NOT send his Son to condemn the world.
Verse 19, people loved darkness rather than light because their deed
were evil. Verse 20, in fact, those who
do evil HATE the light.
When
George Orwell wrote “1984” as a prophecy of totalitarian Communism, the final
curse was the crushing spirit of apathy.
The hero of the story was beaten down and destroyed by the process. I remember him just sitting there, drinking
away, no longer free in his own thoughts.
A chilling, juvenile, current example of that is from, of all things,
“The Lego Movie”. Remember their song? “Everything is awesome…” At the beginning of the movie it was all
awesome because it was all the same, down to Taco Tuesday. It was NOT awesome, it was frightening, the
image of such an ordered, copycat society, but breaking it down, that is the movie’s
purpose.
You
know why I print the prayers in the bulletin every Sunday? I was raised in churches where the custom was
to print the first couple lines, then … so the pastor could drone on as long as
he wanted, then … Amen. I lost my focus
on the prayer because it was going to be LONG, and monotonous. Have you had preachers who cannot seem to
find the end of their sermon? Now
imagine having your eyes closed for the prayer-leader who cannot seem to find
the “Amen”. Confession time, I have been
that prayer-leader.
As
the defining event of the people of God, the Jews, was the Exodus, the defining
event of the people of God, we Christians, is the death and resurrection of
Jesus. It is our own Exodus, from
slavery to sin to the Promised Land of Everlasting Life. And thank you Jesus that it is no longer
about doing the right thing, but it is all about believing in Your Name! The greatest danger in this day is that
message being drowned by the Spirit of apathy, of ‘who cares’.
So
what then? Do I want you going out of
here thinking about snakes this morning?
May it never be! I surely do not
want you to go out of here thinking about death either! I want you to go out of here thinking about
life, about life given abundantly, about life lived powerfully. Jesus came to save us, to save humanity
already condemned.
Because
what did Jesus do? The Son of God went into
death itself, walked into the mouth of the grave, descended into hell, and
three days later came back. For us. By the power of God. I read in one place that the bronze snake was
obviously some kind of sympathetic magic that cured the people of their snake
bites. No. It was the power of God to save the lives of
God’s people!! Same thing again. It is not about a human sacrifice to save
us. It is about God’s power to save
us. Why did Jesus have to die? Because God knows, in the wisdom of the
divine, that we broken, sinful humans need the death of Jesus to know the life
of Jesus. Why? Because God loved us so much that God sent
God’s only begotten Son to take on our deepest, most intense, darkest fear-even
darker than fearing snakes-and overcome it with love to give us the grace to
live forever.
When
Moses raised the serpent among the Israelites, it was so that those who were
bitten could live to continue their journey to the Promised Land. When Jesus was raised up on the cross, it was
so that those who are condemned to die for their sins (all of us) can continue
our journey to the Promised Land of the New Heaven and the New Earth, a gift
from our God who loved us so much that God sent the Son, that whoever believes
in His name shall not perish but live in that Promised Land for eternity. Amen.
March 14, 2021 Order of Worship
First Presbyterian Church
March 14, 2021
10:00 AM
Order of Worship
CALL TO WORSHIP (based on Psalm 107)
O give thanks to the
Lord, for God is good; for God’s steadfast love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the
Lord say so, those God redeemed from trouble.
God gathers us from the
east and from the west, from the north and from the south.
Let us thank the Lord for
God’s steadfast love, for God’s wonderful works to humankind.
Let us worship the Living
God.
Hymn
of Praise: “When I Survey The Wondrous Cross”
1.
When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died; my richest
gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.
2.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, save in the death of Christ, my God; all
the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood.
3.
See, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did
e'er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown.
4.
Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small; love
so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION (In Unison)
O God, you have set before us our greed, our hatred and
self-hatred, our fear and our apathy. You have also shown us the injustice and
tyrannies of our public life. We have succumbed to paralyzing anxiety in
response to injustice. We have resisted the prompting of your Spirit who nudges
us out of self-absorption. Empower us by your Spirit to be attentive and
discerning partners in healing your creation. Amen
*SILENT PRAYERS OF CONFESSION
ASSURANCE OF PARDON
God’s
healing mercy abounds. God’s grace goes before us, after us, through us —
sometimes even unbeknownst to us. Friends, hear the good of the gospel: We are
forgiven and restored to right paths of justice and shalom. Thanks be to God!
*THE GLORIA
PATRI
Glory be to the
Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is
now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen.
INVITATION: “Dear Lord, I
need You, please come into my life today.
Amen”
LESSON: Numbers 21:4-9
21:4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around
the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. 5 The people spoke against God and against
Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?
For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food." 6 Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among
the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, "We
have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to
take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a
poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look
at it and live." 9 So Moses made a
serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone,
that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
LESSON: John 3:
14-21
14And just as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that
whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16“For God so loved the
world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not
perish but may have eternal life. 17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into
the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved
through him. 18Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who
do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the
name of the only Son of God. 19And this is the judgment, that the light
has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because
their deeds were evil. 20For all who do evil hate the light and do not
come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21But those who
do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their
deeds have been done in God.”
SERMON: “Snakes…Why
Did It Have To Be Snakes?” Rev. Peter Hofstra
AFFIRMATION OF
FAITH (from A Brief Statement of Faith)
We believe
Christ gives us and demands of us personal lives that are centered in God and
open to God’s reality and rule. Christ teaches us to put obedience to God above
the interests of self, family, race, or nation; to offer God joyously our
money, ability, and time. It is part of our daily discipline to observe a day
of worship and rest, setting aside our own working to enjoy God’s work,
celebrating with sisters and brothers the Lord’s goodness.
We need
constantly to search out God’s way in Scripture, not expecting detailed
directions for every decision, but relying on the Word to tell us who God is,
to press God’s present claim on us, and to assure us of God’s grace and
comfort. We are charged to pray for ourselves and others with gratitude,
boldness, and persistence, confident that God hears and answers our prayers in
ways best for us all. Life in God’s presence issues in life for others, for if
we do not love sisters and brothers whom we see, we cannot love God whom we do
not see.
PASSING OF THE
PEACE
THE OFFERING OF
OUR TITHES & GIFTS
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is
in it. God has given to us many good gifts, and calls us to respond. Let us now
give in return.
*DOXOLOGY
Praise God, from
whom all blessings flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise Him
above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
*PRAYER OF
DEDICATION
Gracious
God, accept what we offer today in the hope that it reflects the offering of
our lives as dedicated to you and your service. Bless all that we offer so that
it might serve you in this church and in our world. Amen.
JOYS AND
CONCERNS
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE AND
THE LORD’S PRAYER
God of Lent, help us as we continue our
journey to the cross and resurrection. Help us to discern the crosses that
litter the landscape of our lives and your world. Enable us to see your
resurrecting power always and already at work in the broken places of our lives
and your world. Empower us to step into those places where we can participate
in your work of bringing life out of the death-tending places of our world. And
we pray for the world of nations, especially for those places where violence is
wreaking havoc upon human lives and the life of your creation. We pray for
countries dealing with devastation caused by the pandemic. We pray for those in
our own country who have lost jobs, revenue, healthcare and loved ones during
this relentless pandemic. Help us to serve as agents of your love and care to
those who are suffering. And we pray for wise discernment by our nation’s
leadership as they negotiate ways in which to aid those most afflicted. O God,
you have called us to be church of Jesus Christ in this time and place. Keep us
faithful to that calling. Help us love one another and, by so doing, to be a
witness to our world of what it means to be disciples of Jesus. In polarized
communities, enable us to hear Jesus’ commandment to love even those we
perceive as enemies. Help us to refrain from seeing the other as “evil” and
ourselves as “good.” Empower us by your love to see each other as y our
beloved. Enable us also to see that we are all “sinners and saints” who are
equal recipients of your magnificent love. We pray all these things in the name
of Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray 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 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.
CLOSING HYMN: “To God Be The
Glory”
1. To
God be the glory, great things he hath done! So loved he the world that he gave
us his Son, who yielded his life an atonement for sin, and opened the lifegate
that all may go in.
Refrain: Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the earth hear his voice! Praise
the Lord, praise the Lord, let the people rejoice! O come to the Father thru
Jesus the Son, and give him the glory, great things he hath done!
2. O
perfect redemption, the purchase of blood, to every believer the promise of
God; the vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon
receives. (Refrain)
3. Great
things he hath taught us, great things he hath done, and great our rejoicing
thru Jesus the Son; but purer, and higher, and greater will be our wonder, our
transport, when Jesus we see. (Refrain)
*BENEDICTION
*THREE FOLD AMEN
Elements of Order of Worship drawn from The Presbyterian Outlook,
written by Roger Gench.