First Presbyterian Church
October 31, 2021
10:00 AM
Order of Worship
CALL
TO WORSHIP
When
the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed.
Then
our mouths were filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.
Then
it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us. Let us
rejoice and give thanks!
Let
us worship the Living God.
*Hymn
of Praise: “Lord, Speak to Me”
1.
Lord, speak to me, that I may speak in living echoes of thy tone; as thou has
sought, so let me seek thine erring children lost and lone.
2.
O strengthen me, that while I stand firm on the rock, and strong in thee, I may
stretch out a loving land to wrestlers with the troubled sea.
3.
O teach me, Lord, that I may teach the precious things thou dost impart; and
wing my words, that they may reach the hidden depths of many a heart.
4.
O fill me with thy fullness, Lord, until my very heart o'erflow in kindling
thought and glowing word, thy love to tell, thy praise to show.
5.
O use me, Lord, use even me, just as thou wilt, and when, and where, until thy
blessed face I see, thy rest, thy joy, thy glory share.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION (In Unison)
God of grace and mercy, we often say that we love you with all our
heart, soul, mind and strength, but when we look closely at our lives, we
confess that our hearts are full of concerns that are not your concerns. Our
souls are neglected. You are barely on our minds, and our strength is depleted
by things that do not have anything to do with you. Please forgive us our sin.
Cleanse us. Renew us. Reform us. Make us ever new. We ask this in the name of
the One who died to set us free, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
*SILENT PRAYERS
OF CONFESSION
ASSURANCE OF
PARDON
We may not keep our promises to God, but God’s promises to us never fail.
Friends, let us rejoice that because of God’s great faithfulness, we have been
forgiven. Amen.
*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”
SCRIPTURAL INTRODUCTION
Micah 7: 18-20
Ours is
a relatively short passage from the Prophet Micah. Micah is one of the “Twelve Minor Prophets”
in the Old Testament. It is not that
they are less important than the “Major” prophets, but their works are not as
long. Judgement and the redemption of
God are both strong themes in Micah’s work.
Unlike
Jonah, which has a storyline that is popular from Sunday School on forward
among the Bible’s stories, Micah is more typical of the prophetic book, a
gathering of the words of the prophet spoken in God’s Name. This is the style of most of the prophetic
books, although some have a fair bit of historical narrative (like the prophet
Jeremiah) or at least some historical context (Isaiah contains some of this).
One
thing that Micah is well known for is one of the prophetic underpinnings of
Jesus’ birth, in Micah 5:2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small
among the clans of Judah, out of you will come to me one who will be ruler over
Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” This passage is cited by the scribes when
King Herod is confronted by the Magi who ask where the king of the Jews is to
be born.
Thus,
in Micah can be found prophecies that are used to point directly to Jesus as
well as prophecies, as our passage today, that indicate the plan and the
forgiveness of God made manifest to us by Jesus’ death and resurrection.
LESSONS: Micah 7: 18-20
18 Who is a God like you, pardoning
iniquity
and passing over the transgression
of the remnant of your possession?
He does not retain his anger for ever,
because he delights in showing clemency.
19 He will again have compassion upon us;
he will tread our iniquities under foot.
You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.
20 You will show faithfulness to Jacob
and unswerving loyalty to Abraham,
as you have sworn to our ancestors
from the days of old.
SERMON: “Punishment and Consequence” Rev. Peter Hofstra
In
Jesus Christ, we are forgiven for our sins.
Such is the grace of God extended to us through our Lord Jesus
Christ. Such is the centerpiece of God’s
plan to restore the proper relationship between the creation and Godself. The theology is pretty clear, I hope.
Forgiveness
means that the mercy of the Lord surpasses the justice of the Lord. For the wages of sin is death, according to
Paul. We are punished for our sins, that
is how the system works. In the act of
punishment, the ideal is that we are restored to right relationship with God,
that we return to obedience of our Loving Father.
I
believe that is pretty straight forward, at least I hope it is. This is the joy of Easter morning, new
life. And our passage in Micah
demonstrates for us that, in Jesus, forgiveness was not a new thing, that
somehow God now forgives when God used to punish before. But it does open the question of how
punishment works in God.
Punishment,
when bad things happen, that is a working definition for some, but I believe
things are more complicated than that.
So I want to distinguish between punishment and consequences. To use a current example, a parent warns
their child not to touch the hot stove.
Instructs them NOT to do so. But
the child, being the child, does what?
They touch the hot stove. And
they burn their hand. Let’s work with
that to define consequences. One
activity leads to another activity.
Then, the parent, in their emotional response to the child doing
something they were told not to do, gives them a whack on the backside for ‘not
listening’. That, for the sake of our
definitions, is punishment.
In the
Old Testament, consequence and punishment are often brought together. For example, you know the Sunday School song,
“Joshua won the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho…” The reality is that Joshua had very little to
do with it, God won the battle, but that is another sermon. In that victory, God commanded that all the
treasures, all the spoils of war, they all belonged to the Lord. These were the first fruits of their
victories. The rest of the victories,
the rest of the conquests, those spoils went to the people. But the first portion belonged to the Lord.
That
Biblical message has not changed to this day.
God provides us all that we have.
The call for the support of God’s church is the tithe, is the first
portion of what we receive as the blessings of God. How that actually works out in the giving to
the church, that is another matter.
What
happens at Jericho is that some of the spoils of the victory are held
back. Achan looked upon the treasures,
his greed got the better of him, and he took some and hid it. Punishment came from the Lord upon the whole
people of Israel. After Jericho, the
next target for their campaign was the small city of Ai. It was so small, the whole army was not
deployed, only some select battalions.
From God’s point of view and Israel’s point of view, that should have
been enough to conquer them. But the
army of Ai beat back the Israelite attack.
The
consequence of the failed attack is that the army of Israel was defeated. But we come to understand, from the text,
that this was also a punishment against the Israelites because of the treasure
NOT given to God, at God’s command, from Jericho. God made them lose. Consequence and punishment are here blended.
That
mindset is reinforced throughout the Old Testament. God leads to victory in times of obedience,
God punishes with defeat in times of disobedience. The blending of consequence and punishment is
deeply ingrained in our religious psyche.
This
thinking continues to this day.
Christians announced that the Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans
as God’s punishment. 9/11 has been
called God’s judgement on America.
Superstorm Sandy has been called God’s punishment on New York City. Bad things happened because of these
hurricanes, because of the terrorist attack, there are consequences to the loss
of life and the damage done. But is it
proper to call these things ‘punishment’ from God?
So
let’s go to Jesus. The gospel of John,
chapter 9, where Jesus heals the blind man.
The presumption on the part of the disciples is that this man was blind
as a punishment for sin. “Who sinned
that this man is blind? Did he or his
parents?” Jesus’ response is that no one
sinned that resulted in this man’s blindness.
Rather, this man is blind and the power of healing in Jesus is to be
made manifest in him.
That is
a careful piece to interpret. It is one
thing to ask what sinned to cause this man’s blindness. It is something very cynical to suggest that
God struck this man blind for Jesus. The
man is blind. It is the opportunity for
Jesus to heal, for God’s power to be made manifest.
In Luke
13, Jesus speaks of a local tragedy. The
tower of Siloam collapsed, killing 18 people.
Jesus talks about that and punishment for sin. Were those 18 more guilty of sin than
others? The answer is no. The punishment for sin is that ALL will
perish. Eighteen people died, that is a
tragedy. Maybe it was the consequence of
shoddy workmanship, the Bible does not tell us, but Jesus very clearly
delineates between the tragic consequences of this collapse and how God’s
punishment is now carried out.
Through
Jesus, the things that God did in the Old Testament are not ended, but rather,
they are fulfilled. So the pattern of
using external forces, historical forces, to exercise punishment on the people
of Israel, so that consequences and punishment are virtually the same thing,
that has changed as Jesus has changed the very nature of Humanity’s
relationship to God, from God’s Chosen People to All the People.
Punishment
for sin has been universalized. Bad
things are not going to happen to us because God is punishing us. The punishment for sin is permanent death,
eternal separation from God. It is how
we understand hell, a place of torment, a place where we are no longer with our
Creator.
Punishment
is universalized because forgiveness has been universalized. So if New Jersey sins, God is not going to
raise up the armies of Pennsylvania to attack us in punishment. Rather, whomever in New Jersey and
Pennsylvania and wherever else in the world turns against God and rejects the
law of Love toward God and Neighbor, God’s punishment is upon each and every
one.
That
was a shortfall in the punishment of the people at Ai, back in the time of
Joshua. The faithful and the unfaithful
among the Israelites, the obedient and the disobedient, were punished. It was based on the community of believers,
where now it is the individual relationship with Jesus that governs our
punishment and forgiveness.
But
having said all that, consequences remain.
Thousands have died as a result of 9/11, directly and in the
aftermath. Those are the consequences of
the evil deeds perpetrated by those hijackers.
Katrina and Sandy, hurricanes, ‘natural disasters’, if we call those
punishments, why were only New Orleans and New York singled out? Now, we might point to global warming, we
might point to antiquated levy systems and other response systems as reasons
why the consequences were so much worse that they should have been, but that is
something different from saying “God punished them”.
Which
leads to something else so very important in the Christian faith. If God had truly singled out some person or
some group of people for divine punishment, how could we, as Christians, in
good conscience, help them out? If God
were truly punishing New Orleans, how should we dare to defy our God and help
them? And there were Christians who were
saying, essentially, let them drown.
But in
the resurrection of Jesus and the forgiveness it brings to all who call on
Jesus’ name, the love of God is unleashed.
The love of God and the love of neighbor, they are the guiding
principles for all that we do. People
suffering the consequences of natural or manmade events, they are not singled
out as ‘bad’, they are singled out for special attention as we wield God’s love
in the world.
That’s
God’s punishment is no longer directly inflicted upon the world has opened up new
advantages to our faith. There is no one
we cannot reach out to. Where there is a
need, there can the church be, there can we be.
The world calls somebody the bad guys, the immigrants, the foreigners,
the people who look that way or talk that way, such is utter nonsense. All are God’s children! There is nowhere we cannot go in the power of
the Holy Spirit.
When it
comes to sin, how liberating is this for us!
There is no punishment except the permanent death of hell. That means there is no one here that we need
turn our backs on as sinners. Some group
calling themselves Christian tell the world that ‘those’ people are sinners and
therefore need to be shunned? Absolutely
NOT. “Those people” are God’s children
as surely as WE are God’s children.
The
consequence of Jesus’ forgiveness of our sins is that we, in turn, work with
others to receive that same forgiveness that we have received. We DO NOT do so by threatening others with
divine punishment. Believe in Jesus or
else. No, the call for all Christians is
to work against the consequences of sinful behavior to show to the world the
love of our Lord Jesus Christ.
18 Who is a God
like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant
of your possession? He does not retain his anger forever, because he
delights in showing clemency. 19 He will again have compassion
upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all
our sins into the depths of the sea. 20 You will show
faithfulness to Jacob and unswerving loyalty to Abraham, as you have sworn to
our ancestors from the days of old.
God accomplishes God’s clemency,
God expresses compassion, God casts our sins into the depths of the sea through
our Lord Jesus Christ. We are saved, all
of us who accept the love of Christ.
Judgement is given to Jesus, punishment is given to Jesus, but that
choice is ours, not His. He did not die
to kill us. He did not rise again so
that we would stay dead. Even in the
worst consequences of what happens in creation, Jesus is right there with
us. Christ is our example to be right
there with our fellow human beings.
In Jesus, we are forgiven for our
sins. Hallelujah and Amen.
AFFIRMATION OF FAITH (The Apostle’s Creed)
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth;
And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord; who was conceived by
the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was
crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose from
the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the
Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the
communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and
the life everlasting. Amen.
PASSING OF THE
PEACE
THE OFFERING OF
OUR TITHES & GIFTS
Trusting in the generosity of God, let
us now give generously to the work and ministry of the church of Jesus Christ
in the world
*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
and generous God, please accept these gifts that we have brought. May these
offerings serve to draw others to love, honor, and serve you. Multiply these
tithes and offerings, Holy One, and use them for the edification of your people
all around the world. All for love’s sake, amen.
JOYS
AND CONCERNS
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
Reforming God, our world
needs you. We have wandered so far from your ways and turned away from your
commands. War, violence, hatred and greed prevail, so we ask that you grant us peace,
hope, love and courage so that we can be the people you created us to be in
this world. Our nation needs you. Politics and fear divide us and drive us to
our separate corners even though we are called to love our enemies and do good
to those who curse us and despise us. Lord of love, we ask that you remind and
empower us to be people of hope and reconciliation who stand up for
righteousness, justice and peace. Our church, your church, needs you. We don’t
know your word well enough to teach it to our children. We don’t read your word
enough to draw on it during our time of need, so we ask that you prompt us to
imbibe in the Bread of Life and Living Water that are found in your word and in
you. Remind us that you are the source of all that we need, and then send us to
be your church in the world, all the time, everywhere. We need you; each of us
needs you. Please remind us that you hear our prayers and you answer them.
Invite us again and again to draw near to you as you draw near to us. And hear
us as we pray the prayer Jesus 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: “For the
Beauty of the Earth”
1. For
the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, for the love which from
our birth over and around us lies; Lord of all, to thee we raise this our hymn
of grateful praise.
2. For
the beauty of each hour of the day and of the night, hill and vale, and tree
and flower, sun and moon, and stars of light; Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.
3. For
the joy of ear and eye, for the heart and mind's delight, for the mystic
harmony, linking sense to sound and sight; Lord of all, to thee we raise this
our hymn of grateful praise.
4. For thy church, that evermore lifteth holy
hands above, offering upon every shore her pure sacrifice of love; Lord of all,
to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.
5. For
thyself, best Gift Divine, to the world so freely given, for that great, great
love of thine, peace on earth, and joy in heaven: Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.
*BENEDICTION
*THREE FOLD AMEN
Elements of Order of Worship Liturgy written by Gail
Henderson-Belsito courtesy of the Presbyterian Outlook
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