June 11, 2023   

Prelude
Entry of the Bible 

Lighting the Christ Candle

 

Welcome and Announcements 

Called to Worship: 
Deep inside us all there is a place of faith
A place of trust and hope and love
Hear then, O people of God, come and worship as the children of God
We come with unlimited hope and a trust that makes us vulnerable.  We worship together with a love that is quick to trust, and faith that longs to flourish 

 

Hymn:  466  Praise the Lord with the sound trumpet

Prayer of Adoration 

God of all who seek you, we ask your presence with us on the journey through life.  As we walk help us to remain faithful to your ways of love and grace.  Shield us from despair when we don’t see your hand in what we are doing.  Remind us that your promise is true and will never be revoked.  Grant us your courage that we might walk this road together and never lose sight of your guiding hand.  Amen 

 

Unison Prayer of Confession:
God our creator, we offer our prayer as people who often feel a lack of faith.  We know how difficult it is to follow your way.
God our Sustainer, we offer our prayer as people who often feel a lack of hope. There is an incompleteness to our faith when we fail to trust in your calling.  Forgive us and strengthen us, and call us again to whole-hearted devotion.  In Jesus name, Amen 

Assurance of Pardon 

With calming words,  with a peaceful Spirit, with overflowing love and hope, our God forgives us and fills us with faith.
Our God turns our  brokenness into wholeness,  our despair into joy and makes sure that our lives are filled with hope and faith.  Rejoice!.   In Jesus we are forgiven.   

 

The Peace 
Passing the Peace 

 

Hymn:  677 

 

Scripture Lessons: 

Psalm 33:  1-12  page 870
Romans 4:  13-25 page 1752 

Sermon:  The promise comes by faith 

Henri Nouwen writes, “While optimism makes us live as if someday soon things will get better for us, hope frees us from the need to predict the future and allows us to live in the present with deep trust that God will never leave us alone.”  

Throughout the readings today we have been reminded that we are called to be people of hope and faith.  We are reminded that we are simply to live with the trust that God will never abandon us. 

Even if our life circumstances never change, God is still constant.   

For many people, and even us sometimes, we live as if hope is in short supply.  We can try, in our own effort, to look at the future with optimism, after all things have to get better, right?  The “light at the end of the tunnel” optimism can lead to us being very disappointed in life and in God, when the light is an oncoming train. 

When we look around us, we can see that the 21 C people feel that hope is in short supply.  In some of the people we see that despair is more and more often a common state of heart. 

We are beginning to encounter, what our parent’s generation knew as a part of life.  They lived through wars, and plagues and were in many ways better equipped to face the pandemic than we were.  They were better equipped because they knew that even if everything around them crumbled, God remained. 

I was reading in Habakkuk a few days ago and encountered this truth.  He wrote, “Though the cherry trees don’t blossom
    and the strawberries don’t ripen,
Though the apples are worm-eaten
    and the wheat fields stunted,
Though the sheep pens are sheepless
    and the cattle barns empty,
I’m singing joyful praise to God.
    I’m turning cartwheels of joy to my Savior God.
Counting on God’s Rule to prevail,
    I take heart and gain strength.
I run like a deer.
    I feel like I’m king of the mountain!”  Habakkuk 3: 19  MSG 

He is so confident, because even though what he sees could be a cause for despair, he chooses to see it as an opportunity to trust God. 

This is about more than just saying, everything will be fine.  Optimism is not what is needed in these situations.  What we need is God, and more specifically, God’s rule, which will prevail.   

What we need in this post-pandemic, inflationary times when the world is on fire all around us, is hope.  More specifically, Christian hope that is fed by the faith given by God. 

Christian Lasch writes:  “hope is not the naïve thought that tomorrow will be better.  Hope has braced itself, and is thus prepared to cope if tomorrow is not better.  It may take some time.”   He adds, “and hope doesn’t depend on you and me getting our act together and fixing things, like optimism does.”  

To live in hope requires faith.  A faith that says with certainty, “God’s rule will prevail.”  

Even if it takes decades for God’s word to prevail. 

Paul provides us with the story of Abraham.  He didn’t just wish for a better tomorrow and from the way his life unfolded he certainly had no reason for hope.   

In fact, at a moment of despair, he tried to make the promise of a child happen through his own power and fathered a child with Hagar.   

What was it that Paul said about Abraham and the promise of God?   

Oh yeah, Abraham received the promise through faith.   

And yet, he tried in his own power to make the promise true.  Which is it, was he a man of faith, or a man who didn’t trust that God would keep his word? 

I think for all of us, that lapse of faith on Abraham’s part, is the best part of the story.  He made mistakes along the way.  He didn’t always trust.  He didn’t always have hope.   And yet he was counted as a man of faith and God’s promise was fulfilled for him and for Sarah. 

Even if we falter.  Even if we stumble.  Even if we fall down.  Even if we completely demonstrate our lack of hope in God, God will never change and his promise is always before us. 

Abraham recognized the folly of his actions.  He repented.  Once again, he again put his trust in God.   

Now that must have been quite a feat.  Abraham had to face the fact that his body was as good ad dead—and yet he and Sarah had been promised a child.   

In a visit from the angel of God, that promise was reaffirmed, and Sarah listening from the tent door laughed.  She had good reason to scoff, how could a post-menopausal woman bear a child? 

And yet she did and the child was named “Isaac” which means laughter.   

Throughout the unveiling of the many layers in God’s promises we see these kinds of stories play out again and again. The promise comes in Ruth and Laban and eventually David, and after David wronged Bathsheba, in their second child Solomon.  And from that lineage down to Jesus who was born to a virgin. 

All of this took a great amount of faith, which grounded all these people in hope.   All of them were counted as people of God, and counted as such in spite of their failures and occasional lapses of faith. 

So here, we see Abraham in whom the promise of a child and eventually the Messiah would be fulfilled.  He had no reason to be optimistic that he and Sarah would have a child, and yet they did. 

God has promised.  Abraham’s faith, faltering though it was, was more than good enough to earn God’s favour.  And we see that promise fulfilled when against all human hope Abraham anchored his hope in the living God.   

From the reading in Romans, we learn what Paul is explaining about the hope of God’s people.  In that hope, Abraham did not waver.  He anchored his hope in God’s promise.  

What does that hope look like?  Probably something different for each one of us, but we can see the clues in the people we know. 

A friend of mine prayed fervently for her daughter to change her life and come to God.  One day she caught herself praying that she needed to see that day.  It brought her up short, and she immediately repented, saying, “God I don’t need to see it.  I have your promise and it is enough for me.” 

Does that kind of hope look strange to the world? 

That kind of hope, requires trust; trust brings a new perspective.   

And that perspective teaches us that what humans mean when they express hope and what God intends when he gives it are often very different things.   

We see that, as Paul explores Christian hope in this letter.  Paul points out that Abraham did not waver.  He and Sarah were going to have a baby.  It didn’t matter that the people he knew scoffed.  It didn’t matter that Sarah laughed.  It didn’t matter that Abraham tried to circumvent God’s methods.   

And if it was happening in this day and age, it would not matter what countless gynecologists or psychiatrist would have to say. 

God’s promise is firm.  Abraham believed because God promised him a son, and God would keep his promise.   

This is a lesson intended for all of us.  When we place our trust in God, then we will be given the gift of faith from God and that faith will fill us with hope.  God does not promise lightly.  God intends to keep his promise.  God wills to keep his promise.  God does what God promises to do.  ALWAYS. 

Beuchner writes that the anchor of Christian hope is faith.  Last week we learned that he also taught that God’s grace gives us the faith to believe. 

When Paul writes that we are counted as people of faith, that means the people who live in the gift of faith that God has given us. 

We don’t have to do anything in our own power.  It all comes from God.  Katherine Patterson writes that the faith that leads to hope is a yearning, rooted in reality, that pulls us toward the radical Biblical vision of a world where truth and justice and peace do prevail, in spite of what we see.  This is a world in which God’s rule will prevail. 

Paul reminds us that the story of Abraham’s faith points out that all of it is God’s initiative and all of it is fulfilled by God keeping his promise.  God wants to bring people into relationship with him, God is always working with that intent.  The only appropriate human response is to take the faith that God gives to us.   

One of the failings in the Christian community is all the advice we give each other in difficult times.   

Hang on to your faith.  Keep faith.  Have faith. 

As if any of it is in our control. 

What we need to say to each other is, God is holding you up in his faith no matter what the future brings.   

Let us remember what Habakkuk teaches us: 

Though the cherry trees don’t blossom
    and the strawberries don’t ripen,
Though the apples are worm-eaten
    and the wheat fields stunted,
Though the sheep pens are sheepless
    and the cattle barns empty,
I’m singing joyful praise to God.
    I’m turning cartwheels of joy to my Savior God.
Counting on God’s Rule to prevail,
    I take heart and gain strength.
I run like a deer.
    I feel like I’m king of the mountain! 

God’s rule will prevail. 

Amen 

 

Hymn:  674  In the bulb there is a flower

 

 

Offering and Offertory
Doxology 830

Offertory Prayer 

Almighty God, 

giver of every good and perfect gift, 

teach us to give to you all that we have and all that we are, 

that we may praise you not with our words only, 

but with our whole lives. AMEN 

 

Gathering Prayer Requests
Prayers of the People and the Lord’s Prayer 

Lord God, in this world where hopes are so often dashed and dreams so often broken, we remember today the faith in the future you brought to so many.  We recall your promise given again and again, and how you always brought it to fruition, and we give you thanks.  We remember your presence with us in the difficult days of our journey, and how  you filled us with hope and faith and confidence and we give you thanks. 

And now with the faith and hope we have placed in you, we bring your our prayers for all those whom you love and the world you have created.   

Thanks 

Concerns 

Fires 

All those who struggle with faith and believing. 

Loving God, as we pray for the concerns we have, we also pray for healing and hope to reign in this world. Where there is conflict and war, let there be peace. Where there is hunger and poverty, let there be abundance. Where there is distress and despair, let there be light, warm and unquenchable.  Most of all, when we pray may we recall your promises to us, and in gratitude and trust leave all in your capeable hands.   We ask these things in Jesus 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 your debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever.  Amen 

 

Hymn:  683 I know not why such wondrous grace 

 

 

Charge and Benediction 

As you go from here into the coming week, may God open your mind to His presence, so that you may truly come to know Him; may He open the eyes of your heart so that you can experience the hope he offers to all who follow Him; and may you come to understand the full extent of God’s power at work in your life—God’s Rule will prevail. 

May the grace of God, the love of Jesus, and the glory of the Spirit be with us all, now and forever.  Amen 

 

Sung Blessing  

575 Lead me Lord

Lead me Lord, lead me in your righteousness
Make your way plain before my face
for it is you, and you, God only
who makes me to dwell in safety

3-Fold Amen