Worship Service at Church of the Dawntreader Thursday February 28, 2013 10:00 a.m. SLT
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
    Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™
    Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
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"New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989,
Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
Used by permission. All rights reserved." Designated by the initials, (NRSV).

Invocation:
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen
Confession and Absolution
We come before you, our Loving Father, Mother God, confessing most of all our need of you.
We confess that we have not always acknowledged just how much we depend on you.
We confess that we have not always loved you with all our heart, soul and mind.
We have not always loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We ask that you will forgive us and grant us your strength to conform more fully to your loving will for us.
We pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Amen.
In obedience to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is my privilege to declare to you and to myself, the entire
forgiveness of all our sins.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen

Prayer of the Day
Let us pray.
Eternal God, your kingdom has broken into our troubled world through the life, death, and resurrection of your Son.
Help us to hear your word and obey it, and bring your saving love to fruition in our lives,
through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen

First Lesson: Exodus 3: 1 - 15 (NRSV)
1 Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jeth'ro, the priest of Mid'ian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness,
and came to Ho'reb, the mountain of God.
2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing,
yet it was not consumed.
3 Then Moses said, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up."
4 When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am."
5 Then he said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."
6 He said further, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."
And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
7 Then the LORD said, "I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters.
Indeed, I know their sufferings,
8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land,
a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Ca'naanites, the Hit'tites, the Am'orites, the Per'izzites, the Hi'vites,
and the Jeb'usites.
9 The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them.
10 So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."
11 But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"
12 He said, "I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you:
when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain."
13 But Moses said to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, "The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me,
"What is his name?' what shall I say to them?"
14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM."
 He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, "I AM has sent me to you.'"
15 God also said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, "The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you':
This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.
Here ends the First Lesson

Psalm 103: 1 - 4, 6 - 8, 11 (NRSV)
1 Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name.
2 Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and do not forget all his benefits--
3 who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the Pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

6 The LORD works vindication
and justice for all who are oppressed.
7 He made known his ways to Moses,
his acts to the people of Israel.
8 The LORD is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

11 For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Second Lesson: 1 Corinthians 10: 1 - 13 (NRSV)
1 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea,
2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,
3 and all ate the same spiritual food,
4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.
5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.
6 Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did.
7 Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play."
8 We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day.
9 We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents.
10 And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.
11 These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.
12 So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.
13 No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength,
but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.
Here ends the Second Lesson.

Gospel Lesson: Luke 13: 1 - 9 (NRSV)
1 At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
2 He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?
3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.
4 Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Silo'am fell on them-
-do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?
5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."
6 Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none.
7 So he said to the gardener, "See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none.
Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?'
8 He replied, "Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.
9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"
Here end the Readings from Holy Scripture.

 - Sermon -

God provides the way out.
That is the promise we can see in our lessons for this week.
Sometimes the only way out is through,
and then God provides the safe path on which we can travel.
You have probably heard it said
that God will never allow us to have more hard times than we can bear.
In fact, that is not exactly the case.
I have seen many people burdened with more than they can carry,
experiencing things that they absolutely could not stand.
The promise is in our second lesson:
"God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength,
but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it."
Do you hear the difference?
Along with the testing, God will also provide the way out.
In the ultimate sense, Jesus is the way out.
From the beginning, God has provided His children the way out of evil and suffering.
The way of escape will not last forever,
but God will never give up on us,
and so in some sense it is never too late.
Yet the day of grace will come to an end.
The most universal feeling of God's people of the New Covenant is a sense of urgency.
The Lord Jesus is coming again soon,
so we want to proclaim to the world of the opportunities of escape that He has brought
He is bringing
and He will bring yet again.
Our first lesson provides a view of the way out at the very beginning of the Old Covenant.
The Old is like the New in more ways than we often realize.
Moses was a prophet of God
who told the people that another prophet like himself would arise someday.
The prophet like Moses grew into the expectation of the Messiah,
and all the strands of tradition about the One who was to come
converged in Jesus
and received a whole new meaning.
God revealed Himself to Moses and through Jesus in an absolutely unique way.
He showed Himself as He is
in the glory and light of absolute and eternal love.
Even the commandments of the Law begin with a reminder of God's love:
"I am the Lord your God," He said, "Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage."
Therefore...
because of what I have already done for you...
"You shall have no other gods before me."
Our first lesson is the story of the burning bush,
where God showed love and mercy to Moses
and through Moses to the whole people of the Hebrews.
God provided them a way out,
over and over again,
and so He showed such love to them and for them
that they became His people from that day forward and forever.
God revealed His most personal, holy and sacred name to Moses,
and and through Moses to all the world.
His name is YHWH,
often pronounced Yahweh.
The Hebrew and Arabic languages have extremely complex systems of verbs.
Clearly YHWH is a form of the Hebrew verb "to be."
This particular form refers to the cause of the verb's action.
So God revealed His name to be Who He is:
the One who causes being.
God is the source of being,
the creator and cause of all that is, ever was or ever will be.
God alone can have this name,
the ground of all being,
and so the faithful of the Old Covenant, the Jews, to this day,
will often refuse to pronounce the sacred name,
even writing the word God as G-d
and referring to the Creator as HaShem, the Name, the One.
In our Gospel lesson a parable gives us yet another example of the way out.
A fig tree is about to be cut down and burned because of its failure to bear fruit.
The gardener provided a way out:
He dug around the tree and fertilized it and gave it tender, loving care
in the hope that in another season, it would bear fruit.
So is the loving care of our Savior for us.
He gives us the opportunity to bear fruit for Him
over and over again
with infinite patience.
Yes, the day of reckoning will come for us all.
We will face judgment,
and we will all fall short.
Our Savior will be there for us.
He will be the judge,
and He will also be our defender.
He already stood in our place in time,
giving us the way out of our sin,
and how much better our lives are
if we take the way out now
instead of waiting for the day of judgment.
But He will be there for us then,
no matter what,
and He will be
as He has always been
the way of our escape
when we are tested
when we are judged
and whenever we are threatened by despair.
Jesus rescues us from the ocean of despair that sometimes threatens to overwhelm us in this life.
We can be confident that He will be there for us then, too, on the other side of death
to bring us safely home.
Amen.

Prayer of the People
Please type your spontaneous petitions in chat.
Each prepared petition is intended to remind us of the things we need to pray about,
so a brief pause will be provided for us to pray our own petitions,
either sharing them in the chat window
or praying them in our own hearts.

Loving God, we pray for each other, for those who depend upon us for prayer, and for all people according to their needs.
We ask that your healing power may prevail in our lives.
We pray that those in positions of public trust may be worthy of that trust as they act as stewards of power and wealth
for the benefit of all.
We pray that conflicts may be resolved in the context of relationships,
so that violence of thought word and deed may be diminished all through our world.
We ask your blessing for all who bear witness to the Gospel, so that relationships with you may be deepened for all people.
All these things, and whatever else you see that we need, we ask that you will grant for the sake of your Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ, in Whose name we pray.
Amen.
Our 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 sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever and ever,
Amen.
Benediction
May the Lord bless us and keep us.
May the Lord make His face to shine upon us and be gracious to us.
May the Lord lift up His countenance upon us, and give us peace.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
Amen +