Service August 13, 2023

Bible Verses for Sunday Service August 13, 2023

Psalm 42:1

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
    so pants my soul for you, O God.

Announcements:

The deacons will meet at the home of Phil and Rosemary Witschi this Thursday @ 7PM.

We have a pavilion reserved for a picnic on Sunday afternoon, August 27. We will meet there right after church and enjoy an afternoon of fellowship and recreation. Food provided by the church includes the meat and buns for barbecue sandwiches. The For the rest, potluck. Please bring a salad, dessert or side dish to share. Besides the fun, we could also have baptisms in the lake if anyone wishes. Please contact Pastor Jim if you want to be baptized.

With the approach of school starting, we need to focus on our children’s ministry that will begin in the fall. Again, we plan groups for preschoolers and elementary age children. In addition, we plan a teen group this year. We trust that all those who have served previously will consider serving again. Anyone who is interested in serving, please let Pastor or Gaylene know. August 30 at 6:30 PM is our organizational meeting, for an opening night of Sept 13.

We need to know who has church keys. If you have one, please put your name on the sheet in the foyer bulletin board, and list which key(s) you have.

Norma is giving away an organ, a Lowrey Magic Genie 88. If you would like it, please let her know.

Sermon:

Today, Pastor encouraged us with a sermon on Luke 10:25-37. He titled his sermon “Being a Good Samaritan.” Pastor started by pointing out how this parable is reflected today in our language with the example of Good Samaritans’ laws. These laws protect people who do something to help. Pastor emphasized this aspect of the Parable. He also addressed how Jesus used this parable to talk about Himself, and what the Law was designed to do. He did this through covering three points.

For the first point, Pastor described the scribe’s question, what must I do to have eternal life as an important question. However, Pastor pointed out as a question from a religious person, the scribe should have known the answer. Jesus answered understanding his audience with his answer from God’s law. On the surface, the answer is a little confusing at first as it sounds like Jesus is commending work’s based righteousness. But, of course Jesus is pointing out how it is impossible for anyone to do the law perfectly. Therefore, Jesus is required as our savior, one did do the law perfectly.

Turning now the parable, Pastor started by pointing out that the example of the parable is unexpected. Jesus chose to make the person who helped the wounded victim a Samaritan, a race despised by the Jews. Moreover, Jesus made the people who passed by the wounded man religious Jews, one a priest, the other a Levite. Pastor observed that the religion practiced by these two Jews was worthless in terms of helping the man. Both passersby used their understanding of religion to avoid helping; I must not get contaminated. Only the Samaritan demonstrated compassion on the robber’s victim by caring for him, using his resources selflessly to help the man.

In his treatment of his third point, Pastor tied it all together by covering enduring principles. He pointed out that compassion is a feeling word, but to be effective, compassion cannot end with a feeling. Love is action, not a feeling. By his actions, the Samaritan helped the man by doing after feeling. In addition by helping, he illustrated his love as sacrificial. He sacrificed his clothes, his money, his donkey, all of his stuff. In this sacrifice, he was just like Christ who gave everything for us due to his love of us. Christ’s love shows our salvation. We cannot perfectly obey the Law, so we need someone who can do it for us, Jesus.

In concluding, Pastor observed that the scribe couldn’t say the name of the one who carried out the Law in this example. This illustrates a common problem with unbelievers, they don’t need more information on their wrong thinking. Instead they need a new heart. Do we need Jesus to help us have compassion on someone in our orbit? Let’s pray that God would help us have the right heart towards others that we would see, and have compassion then do through love.

Accessing the Service, Bulletin and Sermon Outline:

Here are the pages from the bulletin, click on the images below to see them full size:

If you would like to have the sermon outline, you can download it here, a pdf file.

If you would like a link to this service you can find it here. Perhaps you would like to share it with your friends. You could also share that link on social media, if you use any of the providers. We use Rumble, a safe alternative to Google’s YouTube.

Lastly, if you would like to see all the services, you can find them here.

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