Bible Verse for Sunday Service Service June 23, 2024
1 John 4:10-11
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Psalm 113:3
From the rising of the sun to its setting,
the name of the Lord is to be praised!
Announcements:
We appreciate those who have volunteered to help in the Preschool Nursery this summer. You will find the schedule on the foyer bulletin board.
Malachi and Madison thank us for the gift and prayers for their recent mission trip to El Salvador. You can read the letter on the bulletin board.
Sandy Schlosser’s sister, Linda Schmidt’s funeral will take place at the church on July 6 at 2 PM. We’ve been asked to help by providing salads and desserts along with serving lunch for the family and friends of Linda Schmidt. You can sign up on the clipboard circulating, or contact Gaylene is coordinating with the family.
Sermon:
Taking time to honor fathers, Pastor Jim preached on Hebrews 13:1-3 in a sermon he titled “Living up to our Motto.” Introducing this topic, Pastor explained that when his family was in Manitoba they had an experience that indicated Manitobans lived up to their motto, that they were friendly. Our motto, of course, is to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. Pastor explored the practical advice from these verses on how do that.
Start inside the circle of faith advises the author of Hebrews. Pastor provided several of the many verses in scripture that advise us to love our brethren, fellow believers. In this we are loving our family, the family of God. We need to bear in mind as imperfect people in the process of being justified, that love is fragile. We must not ask it to bear too much. But, we can focus our love on our fellows, identifying where it is needed and helping out.
After beginning with our fellow Christians, we must move outside the circle to love others. Hebrews call us to love strangers, reminding us that by extending hospitality the strangers, Biblical characters have entertained angels. And beyond that, we have a Biblical promise of a blessing to us. If can exhaust love to strangers, we can always move on to those imprisoned and oppressed. By admonitioning us to help prisoners, perhaps the author Hebrews wanted us to remember jailed Christians, the victims of persecution because of their faith? Today, no one in the US is so persecuted, but it is a reality in some countries. Our compassion can help us to reach out to those in prison today too for crimes.
Pastor reminded us that the Billings area needs foster parents. Perhaps some of those children in need are so because of their parents being in jail. Could we show compassion on these children by choosing to parent? Otherwise, let’s remember this valuable admonition as we move forward, today, this week and in our lives as Christians.
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.