A Christian Church, A Family of Faith

The Presbyterian Church in Canada

St. James’ Presbyterian Church, Beersville

Minister: Rev. Alexander [Sandy] D. Sutherland; B.A., B.Th. M.Div

Organists: Mrs. Marly Sutherland  B.Sc B.Ed

www.pccweb.ca/brpc

August 28^th 2011

 

Welcome & Call to Worship

As a Part of today’s worship there will be

Opening Praise Faith of our Fathers

Faith of our fathers! living still; In spite of dungeon, fire and sword,

O how our hearts beat high with joy, when e’er we hear that glorious Word!

Refrain: Faith of our Fathers! holy faith! We will be true to thee till death!

Our fathers, chained in prisons dark, were still in heart and conscience free;

How sweet would be their children’s fate, if they, like them, could die for Thee! Refrain

Faith of our fathers! We will love, both friend and foe in all our strife;

And preach Thee, too, as love knows how, by kindly word and virtuous life! Refrain

Prayers of Approach & The Lord’s Prayer

Special Music – Bev Dunn, if she remembers.

Recalling our Heritage,

Memorial & Dedication

We remember this year the passing of our dear friend and our neighbour Marion, who shared in song and spirit both faith and life with us in this place. We pray for her family, for her children and for her husband our brother Jack.

 

We come together today in the spirit of remembering all that has carried us in the faith. To recognize the ways that God has sent people into our lives to show us His everlasting love. Today we are glad to celebrate the gifts that God has given us, and the tools and resources that strengthen our shared faith. Today we remember God’s grace through God’s holy word.

You will have noticed the new steeple, and perhaps you were here for its raising.  We are glad to have them and we are thankful for the gifts that make them possible.

The bibles we have been using through the years are, in the Spirit with which they were given and dedicated, will now be used in the evangelical work of this congregation as we reach out with God’s word into our own community, and we offer those bibles to those who do have bibles of their own.

In prayer, let us not together dedicate these bibles to God’s work in this place, and from this place through the inspiration we are given in Christ.

I invite you to turn in your bulletins to the prayer of dedication, and let us now bow our heads and direct these bibles to the great works God will do in this place.

 

Liturgy of Dedication – Prayer

Scripture Reading:   Psalm 30

A psalm. A song. For the dedication of the temple. Of David.

¹ I will exalt you, O LORD,

for you lifted me out of the depths

and did not let my enemies gloat over me.

² O LORD my God, I called to you for help

and you healed me.

³ O LORD, you brought me up from the grave;

you spared me from going down into the pit.

⁴ Sing to the LORD, you saints of his;

praise his holy name.

⁵ For his anger lasts only a moment,

but his favor lasts a lifetime;

weeping may remain for a night,

but rejoicing comes in the morning.

⁶ When I felt secure, I said,

“I will never be shaken.”

⁷ O LORD, when you favored me,

you made my mountain stand firm;

but when you hid your face,

I was dismayed.

⁸ To you, O LORD, I called;

to the Lord I cried for mercy:

⁹ “What gain is there in my destruction,

in my going down into the pit?

Will the dust praise you?

Will it proclaim your faithfulness?

¹⁰ Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me;

O LORD, be my help.”

¹¹ You turned my wailing into dancing;

you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,

¹² that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.

O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever.

1 Kings 6:1-7

¹In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites had come out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the LORD.

²The temple that King Solomon built for the LORD was sixty cubits long, twenty wide and thirty high.

³The portico at the front of the main hall of the temple extended the width of the temple, that is twenty cubits, and projected ten cubits from the front of the temple.

⁴He made narrow clerestory windows in the temple.

⁵Against the walls of the main hall and inner sanctuary he built a structure around the building, in which there were side rooms.

⁶The lowest floor was five cubits wide, the middle floor six cubits and the third floor seven. He made offset ledges around the outside of the temple so that nothing would be inserted into the temple walls.

⁷In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built.

 

Hymn of Illumination Blessed Assurance

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! O, what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.

Refrain: This is my story; this is my song, praising my Saviour all the day long;

This is my story; this is my song, praising my Saviour all the day long.

Perfect submission, perfect delight, visions of rapture now burst on my sight;

Angels descending, bring from above echoes of mercy, whispers of love. Refrain

Perfect submission, all is at rest, I in my Saviour am happy and blest;

Watching and waiting; looking above, filled with his goodness, lost in his love. Refrain

 

Gospel Reading:       Mark 12:41-13:10

^12:41Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. ⁴²But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny.

⁴³Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. ⁴⁴They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”

^13:1As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”

²“Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

³As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, ⁴“Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?”

⁵Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. ⁶Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. ⁷When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ⁸Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.

⁹“You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. ¹⁰And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. ¹¹Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.

Sermon Untrustworthy Stones

I said last Sunday that I have a project that I get to in the back yard of the manse. In the little wooded area I have a shaded garden, with stone paths and a few small garden walls around the flower beds.

The hardest part in building such a garden is in the limitation to use the resources on hand. I only take what stones the old rock-pile back there provides. While I am surprised at all I have been able to do with that one pile, I cannot say that the pathways are as smooth, even or straight as say a path made with quarried and chipped-to-form stone. Sometimes I am forced to move and replace rocks and stones that have sat in a place for quite some time, and every spring I have had to rebuild something the harshness of winter has brought crumbling down.

I can’t trust those stones, and I don’t trust that they will stay on top of each other to make an long-lasting wall.

Some of us consider ourselves to be craftsmen, or craftswomen by all means, but I hope that all of us realize that the things we build will not last forever. The people who built this church building knew that just like the buildings that had gone before it, this building too can, by fire, weather, or the years, come crashing down.

But Jesus’ disciples wondered at the beauty and majesty of the temple and it buildings. They were awed by the great stones, of similar size to the great blocks used to build the pyramids, or surround the circle at Stone Henge, these massive blocks fitted to form foundation and structure at a wonder in their day and age.

How impervious these buildings must have seemed and how wondrous their construction must have been to this group of fishermen and tax collectors. One of them is particularly moved and celebrates the buildings before Jesus.

And here we need to pause, because in this moment we have the stumbling block for so many people’s faith. We come together for worship services, here and in other houses of worship, but how much of our behaviour looks like building worship and how much of what we do is God worship.

When this building was built it was built and dedicated to the glory of God and to God’s worship. And so when we come together to worship, especially during a special service like this, we need to be very careful that we do not make a mistake in our worship.

Because we cannot be caught putting our trust in stones, or in beams of wood or plaster, or pains of glass. Our ancestors warned of this when the reformation took place in Europe and the Western Church out of Rome was fractured into the denominations we have today. The statues in church buildings, the stained glass windows, even the stain on woods was broken, buffed and white-washed, so that nothing could distract from the worship of God, or the reading and hearing of God’s Holy Scriptures. Many look back at their actions and grieve at how extreme they were, but they were necessary.

Sometimes we need to be forced to let go of these stones we have come to call precious in order to realize that they are not precious, but God is precious. The Jews, the priest and the scribes had lost their way and their purpose, and the people of God no longer came to the temple to worship God, but as the disciple’s words show, people were worshiping the temple, and were giving gifts to the temple; but what was being given to God?

Jesus says to his disciple that the beautiful buildings are unimportant. “They will be thrown down, and not one of these will be left on top of another.” Within a generation that is exactly what took place. The temple was bulldozed and turned into the first century version of a parking lot.

The whole world of faith was about to be turned on its head, and over the next ten generations a faith that had never existed before would come to rule the known world and spread to over half the globe. Not only would the temple be torn down and never be rebuilt, but the from the nation known as ‘God’s people’ a deeper truth about life, it meaning and our purpose together would emerge.

Not even the pillars of faith that the Jews clung to would stand any longer because of Jesus the Christ. For the people of God had been given a new vessel in which to worship, far greater and more beautiful than any temple or church that has ever been built, for we are now the kingdom of God, and as God’s people we are built one life on another, together bound by God’s love and the strength of God’s spirit moving around us, to be God’s Holy Church.

These walls are too untrustworthy, and there is not a timber, a stone, or a stained glass window that can equal what you are in the kingdom of God. There is nothing about this building or the stones and markers that surround it that equal the strength that you bring into the fellowship of this church in the worship of God that goes on in this place.

Today we remember, and we rejoice as we remember. We remember those who have been foundations stones for us, in securing us in faith, we remember those who have formed us and placed us in God’s work not only in this community, but in all places where God’s will has taken us.

Look at the beauty of God’s church, and see the beauty not in walls, wood, stone, glass or plaster, but in each other. Rejoice, for in your joy and in the love you share you lay the surest foundation for the generations yet come. A foundation of faith, the foundation of God’s love.

Hymn of Response Thine Eyes Have Seen the Glory

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet;
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free;
[originally …let us die to make men free]
While God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! While God is marching on.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honour to the brave;
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.

Offering

Prayers of Thanksgiving

Commissioning Praise Rock of Ages

Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee; let the water and the blood, from thy riven side which flowed, be of sin the double cure; cleanse me from its guilt and power.

Not the labours of my hands can fulfill thy law’s demands; could my zeal no respite know, could my tears for ever flow, all for sin could not atone; thou must save, and thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring; simply to thy cross I cling; naked, come to thee for dress; helpless, look to thee for grace; foul, I to the fountain fly; wash me, Saviour, or I die.

While I draw this fleeting breath, when my eyelids close in death, when I soar through tracts unknown, see thee on thy judgment throne; rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.

Blessing and Benediction