Worship Service at Church of the Dawntreader May 15, 2014 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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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.
Almighty God, your Son Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.
Give us grace to love one another, to follow in the way of his commandments,
and to share his risen life with all the world,
for he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen

First Lesson: Acts 7:55-60 (NIV)
55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit,
looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God,
and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
56 “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
 57 At this they covered their ears and,
 yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him,
58 dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.
Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.
 59 While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
60 Then he fell on his knees and cried out,
“Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
When he had said this, he fell asleep.
Here ends the First Lesson

Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16 (NIV) 
1 In you, LORD, I have taken refuge;
   let me never be put to shame;
   deliver me in your righteousness.
2 Turn your ear to me,
   come quickly to my rescue;
be my rock of refuge,
   a strong fortress to save me.
3 Since you are my rock and my fortress,
   for the sake of your name lead and guide me.
4 Keep me free from the trap that is set for me,
   for you are my refuge.
5 Into your hands I commit my spirit;
   deliver me, LORD, my faithful God.
15 My times are in your hands;
   deliver me from the hands of my enemies,
   from those who pursue me.
16 Let your face shine on your servant;
   save me in your unfailing love.
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 Peter 2:2-10 (NIV)
2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk,
 so that by it you may grow up in your salvation,
 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
4 As you come to him, the living Stone —
rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him — 
5 you also, like living stones,
are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood,
offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
6 For in Scripture it says:
   “See, I lay a stone in Zion,
   a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
   will never be put to shame.”
 7 Now to you who believe, this stone is precious.
But to those who do not believe,
   “The stone the builders rejected
   has become the cornerstone,”
 8 and,
   “A stone that causes people to stumble
   and a rock that makes them fall.”
   They stumble because they disobey the message —
which is also what they were destined for.
 9 But you are a chosen people,
a royal priesthood,
a holy nation,
God’s special possession,
that you may declare the praises of him who called you
out of darkness into his wonderful light.
10 Once you were not a people,
but now you are the people of God;
once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy.
Here ends the Second Lesson.

Gospel Lesson: John 14:1-14 (NIV)
 1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled.
You believe in God; believe also in me.
2 My Father’s house has many rooms;
if that were not so,
would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?
3 And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Jesus the Way to the Father
 5 Thomas said to him,
“Lord, we don’t know where you are going,
so how can we know the way?”
 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well.
From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
 8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
 9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip,
even after I have been among you such a long time?
Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.
How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father,
and that the Father is in me?
The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority.
Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.
11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me;
or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.
12 Very truly I tell you,
whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing,
and they will do even greater things than these,
because I am going to the Father.
13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name,
so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
Here end the Readings from Holy Scripture.

 - Sermon -

Some of the most beautiful words of our Lord
appear in our Gospel lesson for this week.
Unfortunately, they are also some of most misused.
To begin with, we hear the comforting words,
"Let not your hearts be troubled."
Those who have believed in God,
Who sent our Lord to live, die and rise again among us,
can also believe in the One He has sent, Jesus Christ our Lord.
"You believe in God;
Believe also in Me," He said.
Then He made a glorious promise:
He would go ahead of His disciples -
ahead of all of us -
and prepare a place for us,
so that where He is, we may be also.
In the face of life, death, and life after life,
nothing could be more comforting
than to know that the One we love most
will bring us to be with Himself.
It's no wonder that these very words are often read
at Memorial and Funeral services,
when those of us who are left behind need assurance
for our loved ones
and for ourselves as well
that we will all be together again
in the presence of our Lord and Savior Who has gone ahead of us
to prepare a place for us in our Father's house.
He is truly the way and the truth and the life.
He is truly the one and only way to get from here to there,
the one connection between God and humanity,
so that no one comes to the Father but through Him.
He is the bridge over troubled waters,
the only way to get from earth to Heaven.
Even those words are deeply comforting,
for the One who gave His life to bring us back to God
is also the only way for us to reach God.
This is meant to be an open door,
an open road,
a way available to everyone to get home to Heaven.
We who have heard these words all too often misuse them
to describe the ones who cannot reach the Father through Christ,
but that cannot be the truest and deepest meaning.
Jesus did not say that no one reaches God but by His church
or by any church.
He did not say that no one reaches God but by some doctrine concerning Himself.
He said that no one reaches God but by means of Himself.
Jesus is the way the truth and the life.
No doctrine about Him is the way the truth or the life,
and neither is any church.
No religion can replace Him in this regard, either.
So the only way to God is Christ,
but not any kind of human restriction we would put on reaching God through Christ.
The way is open, the truth is universal, and the life, including eternal life,
is for everyone.
It is God's intention to share this reality, the reality of Heaven, with everyone.
The way the world is now, God does not always get what God wants,
but ultimately, God will indeed get what He wants.
He will work it out.
We may not know how,
but God's will is going to be done.
God wants us all to get to Heaven,
and by God and by His grace, it will be so.
How this will happen is a mystery,
and it is one of the paradoxes of the whole Bible.
On the one hand, it is clear that God wants the whole world to be saved.
On the other hand, we are all free to choose right or wrong,
God's will or our own will,
Heaven or Hell.
Those two truths are held in tension,
but that tension will be resolved.
My point for today is to say that Christ is the way, the truth and the life.
My point is not to say that one has to believe certain doctrines about Christ
in order to reach God through Him.
My point is not to say that one must belong to a particular church
in order to reach God through Christ.
People have said this in many ways and at many times,
and a lot of people still say it.
What it amounts to is really good advertising.
When you say that you have to belong to X church in order to come to Christ,
it makes X church seem really attractive,
especially to people who are gullible.
In our beautifully pluralistic society,
you can see a wide variety of churches,
most of which are claiming that they alone are the true way.
It becomes very obvious that they can't all be right,
and a lot of people are coming to realize
that maybe none of them is right.
They have simply latched on to a good gimmick,
and they are trying to exploit it to get more people to join their particular church.
Listen to those who put their emphasis on Christ,
not on their own church or its doctrines.
Listen to those who understand the power of prayer
without treating it as some sort of personal magic.
Jesus promised to grant those requests that are offered in His name,
but that is not an incantation or formula
to guarantee that our prayers are heard or answered.
We may be sure that our loving God
is aware of our every thought,
so there is no prayer that goes unheard.
When Jesus calls upon us to pray in His name,
He is not requiring us to use His name as an incantation for every prayer.
Christians often - in many cases, always -
speak the name of Jesus in every prayer,
but that serves us as a reminder of the One Who is
the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
It is not a requirement in order to get our prayers through some kind of Heavenly filter.
Some years ago, an evangelical Christian leader made an incredibly stupid statement:
"Almighty God does not hear the prayers of a Jew," he said,
based on the invocation of the name of Jesus by Christians in prayer,
something Jewish people generally would not do.
As a reminder of who we are and Whose we are,
a brilliant newspaper cartoon showed Jesus in prayer
with the evangelical leader telling him,
"Sorry, kid, but God won't hear your prayer since you are a Jew."
Praying in the name of Jesus means praying in His Spirit,
according to the will of God,
Whose will Jesus Himself submitted to in His life, death and resurrection on Earth.
Very few people truly pray in full submission to the will of God,
and so we all do well to say in our prayers,
"Thy will be done,"
as Jesus Himself has taught us.
We can all pray for God's will to be done
in the fullest of confidence,
for God loves us and wants only the best possible good
for every one of us.
God wants us all to be with Him in eternal bliss in Heaven,
and for every one of us human children of His,
Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
A lovely simple hymn is deeply devoted to our Lord Jesus Christ,
and it brings our attention to the deeply personal relationship
we all can have with Him.
It has a simple tune, so feel free to sing it with me.

1. You are the way; to you alone from sin and death we flee;
All those who search for God, you find, and by your grace set free.

2. You are the truth; your word alone true wisdom can impart;
You only can inform the mind and purify the heart.

3. You are the life; the rending tomb proclaims your conquering arm;
And those that put their trust in you not death nor hell shall harm.

4. You are the way, the truth, the life; grant us that way to know,
That truth to keep, that life to win, whose joys eternal flow.

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 +