(All our songs this morning are from Singing the Faith (StF) & Hymns & Psalms (H&P) numbers will be given where available)
Welcome to our Sunday Service, today shared on paper across our circuit and with the congregation at Christchurch LEP a Local Eccumenical Partnership church with the Church of England and led by Roy Lorrain-Smith one of our Circuit Local Preachers.
Click on the blue links to follow them for bible readings and associated links
Let us worship God!
Song – H&P 500 – Lord God, your love has called us here
Reading: Psalm 98
Comment
We’re not told what great event inspired this Psalm of praise for God’s rescue from danger. It might have been some personal deliverance, and we can use the words as our own prayers, for any rescue we’ve experienced.
Or it could be national, for under God’s covenant, hinted at here by the use of God’s covenant name: Lord (= Yahweh), he had promised to keep Israel safe from the nations round about. And Israel had been ‘chosen’ to show to the nations the glory of life with God.
But whatever the event, it inspired the Psalmist to sing a ‘New Song’ of much wider application. The whole earth is called to sing joyous songs of praise, with strings, horns and trumpets, and harmonising the sea’s roaring, the rivers’ clapping, and the hills’ singing before the Lord (Cf Ps 96).
The poetry expresses what the Psalmist could see: that one day the Lord was going to come and rule the whole earth with righteousness and all peoples with perfect equity!
Would that not be wonderful? Eg, no longer living in a world filled with armed conflict (there are more than 100 currently); nor the ominous threat of sea levels rising; nor rivers swelling in devastating floods; nor hills being such dangerous terrain – but all as wonderful as they were meant to be.
The Psalm promises God’s righteous rule is coming. And later we shall see something of how he will do this, and is doing it. But now, let’s pray.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank you for your enduring love for all creation, so great that you formed a rescue plan to put all things right, and to rule the world with equity. What a glorious prospect that is. And how wonderful that you should give us such hope too – promises to hold onto when things get us down.
Please give us trust in you, and your word when:
- We’re worried, anxious, and upset, and feel alone and helpless.
- Or we’re sick, whether in body, mind, or spirit, and think that no one understands how we feel.
- Or frightened that the appalling problems of the world can’t be sorted out.
- Or out of sorts, and we just don’t know why.
And we’re not just asking for ourselves, feeling like this, but for others we know who are suffering in any of these ways: in our church fellowships…; and in our family circles…, and among our friends…
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayers, which we ask in the name of Jesus our Lord. Amen.
Song – H&P 491 New songs of celebration render
1. New songs of celebration render
to God who has great wonders done;
love sits enthroned in ageless splendour;
come and adore the Mighty One.
God has made known the great salvation
which all the saints with joy confess.
God has revealed to every nation
truth and unending righteousness.
2. Joyfully, heartily resounding,
let every instrument and voice
peal out the praise of grace abounding,
calling the whole world to rejoice.
Trumpets and organs, set in motion
such sounds as make the heavens ring;
all things that live in earth and ocean,
sound forth the song, your praises bring.
3. Rivers and seas and torrents roaring,
honour the Lord with wild acclaim;
mountains and stones, look up adoring,
and find a voice to praise God’s name.
Righteous, commanding, ever glorious,
praises be sung that never cease:
just is our God, whose truth victorious
establishes the world in peace.
Reading: John 15:1-17
Comment
Just how, we may wonder, is God going to bring about world peace and just rule? The Bible’s answer is that he is doing so through Jesus – his chosen Messiah, sent to us as Saviour of the world (John 1:29; 1 John 4:14).
In this passage he addresses his disciples, whom he has been training for three years, on the night before his death. And for ease of understanding he tells them things in picture language.
The disciples are to abide in him like the branches of a vine. And abiding means doing what he tells us, building our lives on his words, and depending on him in prayer.
The expectation is that by abiding in him we shall bear fruit, that is, the fruit he wants: us becoming more like him; loving one another as he did; living like servants in the world as he showed us; accepting his guidance in what we should do, where we should go, and with whom.
And the wonderful thing is that this is not the final product: it’s just the beginning of the great work of God’s rule over all creation that the Psalmist foresaw and was inspired to promise. Jesus is making all things new, beginning with us (Romans 8:19; Revelations 21:5).
Even more, when we are fruitful, the Father God (who is pictured as the vinedresser) will prune us so that we bear even more fruit – and we have to submit willingly to that, even though at the time it hurts, and may even feel wrong. But the reassurance is that always there is more blessed fruit to come.
However, Jesus also gives a sombre warning: unfruitful branches will be treated as dead wood – cut out, left to wither, then gathered and burned! (Being a follower is Jesus is wonderful, joyous, and blessed, but is also to be taken very seriously.)
In a moment we’ll look at how God makes us fruit-bearing, but first let us pray again.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, we praise you with all our hearts for your rescue plan to save the world and take away all its sin through your Son Jesus, our Saviour and Lord – and that the plan includes us: here and now, on this earth and in our lives – making us and all things new and transforming us into your likeness (as we should always have been).
We praise you for your mercy, for we do not deserve your kindness. We glorify you for your majestic love. And please, Lord, may we offer you our lives, and sing your praises along with all creation – indeed, leading the praise like choirmasters.
And may our praise not be just in words, but also in how we live in response to Jesus as our Lord: abiding in him as he abides in us; keeping his words and obeying his commands, willingly and fully; and depending on him as Lord of our lives, in all our daily decisions.
All this we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Song – H&P 48 – Your ceasless, unexhausted love
Reading: Acts 10: 34-48
Comment
Jesus spoke of two-way abiding: abide in me, and I in you (John 15:4). We have seen how he said we were to abide in him, and now here is how he comes to abide in us, giving us the life force for our new way of being ‘in him’, and making it possible to bear the fruit he desires.
When we believe in him as our Saviour and Lord, ie, when we repent of all our own wrong ways, and accept his forgiveness, and resolve to live as he tells us, then he sends his Holy Spirit to be with us and within us always: as our Teacher, Guide, and Helper for his new life – and in practice, not just as a lovely idea (John 14:16-17; 15:26; 16:7-14).
The Spirit may come dramatically, as he did here on Cornelius and his people, and earlier at Pentecost on the gathered disciples (Acts 2:1-4). But more commonly he comes so quietly and gently you may not even notice at first. But if we are believers, he has come. He is within us – trust the promise!
And we can begin to ask him for understanding, guidance and help, whenever we need it, and trust that it will be given. Again, the guidance and help may be given very strongly, or just gently. We may have to listen, and learn to be sensitive to his voice, or his quiet prompts.
Song – StF 382 – Holy Spirit, come, confirm us
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank you for sending us your Holy Spirit, to be with us always, being the presence of Jesus within us.
Please open us to his coming, bend our minds to his teaching, train our wills to his guidance, and discipline us to ask for and accept his help – even when we don’t think we need it.
Indeed, Lord, will you fill us with the Spirit, today and every day, now and always, wherever and however we are. And help us to discern and heed his prompts, however and whenever they may come.
May our awareness of his presence increase each day, and may we glorify you by our daily responses.
All our prayers we offer to you through your Son Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord, who taught us to pray…
Lord’s Prayer
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 trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
Dedication of Offerings
Heavenly Father, please will you accept our offerings, in money and all else, which we give to you with our love; and make of them, and of us, greater things than we can possibly imagine, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.
Song – StF 185 – Sing we the King who is coming to reign
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all. Amen.
