A Fellowship of the Christian Church

The Bass River Pastoral Charge

The Presbyterian Church in Canada

St. Mark’s, Bass River; St. James, Beersville; St. Andrew’s, Clairville & Zion, West Branch

Organists: Heather Morton, Marly Sutherland, Rodney Girvan, Dolly MacDonald, Shanece Wilson

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

Manse #: 506-785-4383 Cell #: 506-521-0705 Email: thebrpc@gmail.com Twitter: thebrpc

Bulletin Announcements:  Cathy Little @ Fillmore Trucking #785-1083

www.pccweb.ca/brpc

ORDER OF SERVICE

The Twelfth Sunday of Pentecost

August 28^th 2011

Welcome & Announcements

Memorial Services:

TODAY! August 28th at 2:30 pm – St. James’ Presbyterian Church, Beersville

 

Call to Worship You are my all in all

 

Prayer of Approach & Confession & The Lord’s Prayer (NBoP 831; BoP 605)

 

Opening Praise: songs 112 Blessed Assurance

 

Responsive Reading  – Psalm 25 [BoP 626]

 

Children’s story –

Children’s Hymn: BoP 437 Take time to be holy

 

Scripture Readings:

OT – Exodus 3:1-15

P___ P___

¹Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ²There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. ³So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

⁴When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

⁵“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” ⁶Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

⁷The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. ⁸So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. ⁹And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. ¹⁰So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

¹¹But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

¹²And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”

¹³Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

¹⁴God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

¹⁵God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.

NIV

Epistle – Romans 12:9-21

P___ P___

⁹Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. ¹⁰Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. ¹¹Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. ¹²Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. ¹³Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

¹⁴Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. ¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. ¹⁶Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

¹⁷Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. ¹⁸If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. ¹⁹Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. ²⁰On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;

if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

²¹Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

NIV

 

Hymn of Illumination: NBoP 774 God forgave my sin [Freely, Freely]

Scripture Readings:

Gospel – Matthew 16:21-28

P___ P___

²¹From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

²²Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”

²³Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

²⁴Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ²⁵For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. ²⁶What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? ²⁷For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. ²⁸I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

NIV

 

Sermon: The Denial of Christianity

Who are you?

Most people only ever have the chance to ask that question to someone they are just meeting, or – if the memory slips – they’re meeting a second time and will hopefully remember them.

Who are you?

It is the kind of question that it is really important to have an answer for. It is something we teach our children to be able to answer at a pretty early stage. It is something we rehearse before important events. It is something that gets thrown back at us so we had better have a good defense for who we are as well.

Who are you?

This is sadly a question we don’t often ask ourselves. We might think about who we were  and we might consider who we want to be, but rarely do we really think about who we are.

Who are you?

You can look in the mirror day after day, week after week, year after year, and still come up with the same answer that you or I would get from most people if we stopped them in the street and asked them ‘Who are you?’

What’s that answer? Really there are two common answers but they almost amount to the same. “I don’t know” is the first one, and it is the most common because it is easy and it is the most common because it is a quick and easy defense.

The second one like it is this: “God only knows.” And the only thing that makes this answer better than the first is that this at least allows for the possibility that God at least is in on the BIG secret of who we are, and will perhaps reveal it at the proper time.

And if you are or were tempted to give either answer, and you feel you do not know who you are, or if you can think of someone who fits the bill, then I want you to listen very closely to this next piece of advice. Follow Christ, because God does know who you are and God does know who you are supposed to be. And Following Jesus Christ is the way, is the truth is the life you are supposed to have from God you creator. Jesus is not simply the way and the truth in and onto himself, but on our behalf, and as an example to us. Be how do we respond to the this amazing provision from God. We respond like sullen teenagers. We act as though God does not know us, cannot see us, and does not understand us.

What are your presumptions? How do you feel things should be?

A lot of people are of the opinion that church-goers think that they are better people than the people who do not go to church. That is the way we are depicted in popular media, in the movies, on TV. Take a look and think about what the world around you says about going to church and being a Christian.

We get fixed on those stereotypes, even the ones about us. Do we really think we are better people because we go to church? Is that the way we portray ourselves to the world around us? Is that how the youth, and the young adults who chose not to be here are seeing us? Is that how we let them see us?

‘Cause they’d be wrong about us, would they. We can be absolutely terrible. We sin. So often we sin in pride, or in ignorance, or never doing anything to grow in our faith. Take a look at your scriptures and see which kinds of sin God gets the most upset over. God caused sores to fall on the children of Israel who engaged in wicked behaviour, and God wiped from existence those who became unfaithful.

We are here, not because we are sinless, but because we know we sin, and we rejoice that forgiveness is possible, and we seek only to grow in our faith, that we might know and celebrate the gift of grace that God has given to us more fully.

Paul’s letter to the church in Rome tells the church to get out of its showiness and become authentic. First verse in today’s reading says, “Let love be sincere.” ‘Let love be genuine! Let it be your truth.

Is your truth loving your neighbour? loving one another? loving your enemy? loving the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind your soul?

But we presume God’s part, don’t we? Just like the apostle Peter we declare God with one breath and deny God with the next. We fell God moving in our lives and suddenly everything we have ever thought will happen should fall into place. So many new Christians go through a quick cool down after they have made that declaration of faith.

I don’t know how many of you had to come up to the front of this church, or another church, and declare your faith, and what it meant to you at that time. I ask you to revisit that moment today. I will revisit that moment with you because I, like you, flaked and flailed in my faith after that profession of faith.

Here I am now, almost twenty years after joining the church and Have had to struggle each and every day with my faith, asking the hard question, “Who are you?” in the mirror each day.

And some days I do not liking what I see.

And some days I know that I am not what God would have me be.

And some days I see that I am not living my life in love,

And I struggle to pick up the word of God,

And I find it hard to love as God would have me love,

And forgive as God would have me forgive,

And there are days still when I wake up and I don’t act as though I need God’s forgiveness.

But I thank God for those days when I deny myself.

I thank God for those moments when I deny my ideas, and embrace the Holy Spirit’s inspiration.

Who are you?

Are you the one who answer Christ’s call? Are you one of those people who knows that Christ came and died for you to set you free from your sins? Because if that is who you are, then you have entered into Christian denial.

In Christ we set aside presumptions and we face our own reality. In Christ we don’t deserve, we celebrate the grace that is ours even though it is God’s gift. In Christ we set down our pride, our fears, our doubts, and it does mean we have to embrace wonder, and it does mean that we have to look at somethings, perhaps all things in our lives in a whole new way, and for some of us that is harder than it is for others.

Look how hard it was for Christ own disciples Peter, who walked beside Jesus on the water, and who was the first to call him Lord. Peter is called Satan, deceived and deceiver, for not being willing to take Christ Jesus at his word.

I ask you one last time today. Who are you? And I hope the answer you are discovering that is in yourself, has Christ at the forefront. If your answer that is echoing around in your heart sounds like our next prayer, you have a strong beginning in faith, if your answer says something else, then listen closely, to hear the still small voice of God calling you to become yourself and be more fulfilled in your life than you have ever been. Let us pray

 

Prayer of Thanksgiving and Intercession

O Lord our God,

What an awesome wonder it is to be here  in your presence today. And we thank you that we are gathered in with others who know you, and see to discover themselves through your love. Lord, we ask this day that you will help us to discover ourselves again. To learn more about You, but in that Lord, to discover our way to go, our truth, our life in Jesus Christ.

Lord we pray for our own souls, and we ask you to help us not to be held back from being ourselves because the presumptions the world teaches us to have.

Lord, we pray for people who call themselves Christians, who believe in their own way instead of believing in your own way. We pray for the people they have hurt with their false faith, or their lack of faith.

Lord we pray for our church, here in this community and throughout this region. Help us all discover who we are as congregations and as churches working together for the growth of faith.

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God’s Tithes and our gifts

Doxology (NBoP 830; BoP 603)

Offertory Prayer

Commissioning Hymn: BoP 277 Holy, Holy, Holy

Benediction

Dismissal: Holy Spirit on Us Fall [overhead]

 

These bulletins for August are dedicated in loving memory of Earle, Laura and Marion by their family