Bible Verse for Sunday Service September 15, 2024
Jude 1:21
keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life
Announcements:
We had a great opening night in Awana this last Wednesday night with 33 children any youth registering. We are thankful for the 15 leaders who have committed to help this year. We appreciate your prayer for a fruitful ministry to the children and their families.
We have a nursery for young children during the worship service. Schedules for the workers are on the back table.
At the upcoming deacon’s meeting on October 3, they will consider the kitchen remodeling project. If you have an idea about that project, you are invited to submit feedback so we can put together the best proposal. Phil Witschi has put together some drawings that are on the foyer table. Thank you Phil.
Presently, we offer two Sunday School classes, one for the adults and the other for the younger children. We appreciate Jim Rooney and Gaylene teaching these classes. Please be in prayer about a class for the older children and teens.
Every Friday at 9AM, the men meet for a time of coffee, fellowship and prayer.
Shepherd Bible Church Special September 15, 24 “Praise You Always”
We were blessed by Sharon Sutton share how she gets through a tough day at work by singing “Praise you Always.” This song was written by Lindsay Arias of the Blue Jay House worship collective out of Lubbock, TX. We were encouraged and uplifted in Sharon’s beautiful rendition of this song and her sharing what it meant to her in worship of Jesus. You can learn more about Blue Jay House by following the links, and you can watch Sharon sing below or on Rumble.
Sermon:
Pastor Jim spoke to us on Esther 1-2:4 in a sermon he titled “The Problems with Pride.” Pastor introduced us to this portion of scripture with a story about Mohamed Ali, the famous boxer, who had an inordinate amount of pride in his abilities, but that pride lead to his downfall several times. Same here in the story of Esther, the king had a lavish party to set up the invasion of Greece, and nothing but trouble comes out of his prideful, bad decisions. Pastor analyzed these problems under four headings.
Pastor first noted that pride promotes self. In contrast, humility promotes what others have done. In this story, the king is promoting his position as king, lauding it over others. Another aspect of the prideful self, is parading one’s possessions, which, again, the king did here by inviting the residents of the city to a banquet. Moreover, he treated his wife as a possession wishing to parade her for his drunken advisors to see.
Next, we see that pride uses people. Here, our king was planning to use his people and army on a foolish quest to conquer Greece after his father failed to do the same. It is the world’s idea that people serve us, something Jesus commented on about the gentiles, when he contrasted what He wanted from His disciples. Jesus always emphasized serving people.
On a practical note, Pastor remarked that pride causes problems. It certainly caused problems for the King. Pride lead him to be angry and make a foolish decision about the queen. Pride also has a tendency to make people fearful. This will affect us, our position. So, we are fearful of loss. Pastor reminded us that the opposite of fear is perfect love, that for Jesus and God. This enables us to bless others, move ourselves off self to help serve others.
Lastly, Pastor notice how pride cannot overrule God. So although the king here did a lot through foolish and selfish pride, God can use all these bad events to bring the good he wishes out of it. Esther, who we have not met yet in the story, did wonderful work in saving the Jews from annihilation. God is not mocked.
To conclude, Pastor encouraged us to review our own lives for pride, and if we find any, to replace it with humility.
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.