Bible Verse for Sunday Service March 03, 2024
Isaiah 41:10
fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Announcements:
Today we welcome Larry Auers, a representative of the Gideons. He will share a report on the work of the Gideons in distributing the Scriptures in our community, our country and the world. If you like, you can support this work today. You can either designate the Gideons on your check or offering envelope or Larry will be at the back of the church after service accepting donations.
On March 11, the Church will provide AED/First Aid training for our safety team and ministry leaders who have asked to be included. A schedule has been set up for the training. If you have any questions, please ask Dale.
On March 23, we will once again host the AWANA Grand Prix, which is a fun day of racing cars that the Awana kids make. Beside being fun, it is a great outreach to families, and a good opportunity for involving parents in a project with their children. We run the races in the morning and serve lunch as noon. Please volunteer to help set up the track, run the race, and serve lunch. Let us know if you can help. Car kits are available for $10 each. Any child, attendees at Awana or not, may participate.
We are also hosting a Grand Prix test and tune on the Friday before the Grand Prix between 4 and 6PM. If you plan to race, we encourage you to come in and have your car weighed and “tuned up” for the big race.
Please don’t forget that next Sunday Daylight Savings Time begins. Remember to set you clocks ahead one hour if they don’t automatically account for the time change.
Sermon:
Pastor Jim spoke to us today about Hebrews 11:11-19. He titled his sermon “The God Who Is.” In this sermon, Pastor covered the faith of three patriarchs, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. These three all exhibited faith as a confident expectation. In an explanatory story, Pastor analogized that to a child tying a rope and a tire to a branch on a sapling. Today the child cannot use the swing, but someday in his confident expectation, he knows that he or his children will swing.
In covering Isaac, Pastor remarked that his faith was in the future. Even though he had problems in his life as we do, those problems do not mess up God’s plan. Rachel, his wife, had twins, Jacob and Esau. God saw fit to reverse the normal, cultural role for the eldest and the youngest. Moreover, Jacob and Rachel both hurt their children by having favorites. But, their Biblical story of bad choices did not hurt God’s plan.
Next Pastor reviewed Isaac’s son, Jacob who illustrated faith despite his frailties. Again, this is another flawed person who God can use. Jacob’s reputation was that a deceiver, someone angling to take advantage. God worked with Jacob to bring about a change in him such that he gave him a new name, Israel, representing his new nature and the promise. At the end of his life, he was so frail that he had to lean on his staff to provide a blessing to his son Joseph and his sons.
Lastly Pastor spoke on the faith of Joseph, a faith beyond our finality, our end, death. Joseph was confident in the Lord and could see beyond his own death. He realized that he was the 4th generation to have God’s promise, but had not actually received the promise’s fruits, the land. Yet he had confidence that he would receive it, asking that his bones be preserved to be taken to the promised land.
Christians do well to have this type of faith, faith beyond our lives. Pastor illustrated this in closing in telling of a maritime disaster, that of the Empress of Ireland. That ship was involved in a collision with much loss of life. Many members of the Salvation Army were passengers. These Christians gave their life vests to others safe in the knowledge that they were going home to Jesus, perfectly illustrating Joseph’s faith beyond death. We too can exemplify this kind of faith.
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.
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