4Th July 2021 Sunday Morning Worship Good Morning. Our Service Is Being Filmed and Broadcast Live from the Church Field. We
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4th July 2021 Sunday Morning Worship Good Morning. Our Service is being filmed and broadcast live from the Church field. We have produced this so you can read the transcripts of the Service. The prayers and the talk. We hope you find this helpful. We are now able to meet in the church field for our services. If you would like to come next week, then please ring the Church office to let us know and we can help you to make sure you have what you need. God Bless, Philip and Katy This is website address if you can access it. www.downtonbaptist.org/Groups/337711/Pastors_Message.aspx Based on Psalm 89. By Katy Let us sing of the Lords great love forever, And share your faithfulness with our families, young and old. Let us shout to the world that your love is the one thing we can trust and stand on. And always has been, even in Heaven. Your promise to your people is so faithful. And extends throughout all time, from the beginning to the end. Let us praise your wonders, Lord. Your faithfulness too, which never leaves us. You, Lord, are mighty, and your faithfulness envelops us. You Lord, Watch over the surging sea and can still the most mountainous of waves The heavens are yours, and so is all the earth; North to south, east to west… Real justice is the foundation of your kingdom; And love and faithfulness lead your way. Let us rejoice in your name every moment of every day. And walk in the light of your presence. Let us call out in praise, ‘You are my Father, my God, the Rock my Saviour.’ The first born will become the King of Kings. And his love will last forever. You Lord appointed your first born, to be the most exalted of the kings of the earth. His faithfulness and promise and purist love. Will be forever in his line and will never fail. Let us rejoice in faithfulness that endure like the sun; It will be established forever like the moon, the faithful witness in the sky. Let us offer our worship to our faithful Lord. Praise be to the Lord forever! Amen and Amen. Amen Hebrews 11: 1-6 11 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for. 3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. 4 By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead. 5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.” For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. by Philip Faith What does that mean to you? Don’t be in too much of a hurry to answer this…It’s a very important question for all of us Your faith has healed you, Jesus said Faith is at the very heart of our relationship with God As the letter to the Ephesians says… For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith Friends… The gift of forgiveness is freely given…But it is received by faith At this stage of the book of Hebrews…the writer is asking us to look up…to the journey ahead of us Lift up your heads and look… See the ones that have gone ahead of us In them we can see what is up ahead In them we can see what we may have to cope with In them we will find encouragement and strength And the one thing we discover that we all need for that journey...is faith The journey will take us to the Kingdom of God The Age to come…The new Jerusalem Where we are called to be amongst that great company of the faithful ones The long list of heroes and heroines that are woven throughout the OT and the Jewish scriptures Hebrews 11 offers us two things… The first is a description of faith itself A description of the one thing that we will need…If we want to receive God’s freely given grace Secondly, it offers us a short history of God’s people The ones who trusted and……albeit falteringly…and often imperfectly… …followed God’s calling Particularly those from the earliest times…and especially Abraham and Moses The long line of faithful people will continue into chapter 12…eventually reaching its pinnacle in Jesus Who is our fully realised and revealed model of faith Who freely received all that his Father gave…So much so that he is one with his Father… And of course, that was his prayer for us We are urged to live this story ourselves To be counted among those who have gone ahead of us Together chapter 11 and 12 tell the story from creation to new creation From covenant to new covenant And all the way through…it is a story of faith So let’s have a careful look… Faith is very closely linked to hope in Hebrews Faith is looking at God and trusting him for everything… …While hope is looking at the future and trusting God for it And so…Hebrews defines faith in relation to hope Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see It is one thing to have hope…but when you have faith within it and beneath it…It gives hope assurance I may hope for a better world I may hope for the Kingdom to come I may hope for resurrection But unless I trust and believe in the one God who raised Jesus from the dead… …My hope may become mere optimism We may have a general sense that there are unseen realities around us…An unseen spiritual world We may even think that there is a personal presence…a personal force for good A personal presence I may be able to have some sort of relationship with But unless I trust and believe in and faith in God…the God we know in Jesus This sense of unseen realities will lack any real conviction…it will change very little Assurance and conviction… …Both of them are to be seen in people of faith Faith in God…This is what the ancient people were commended for It was the one the one thing that Jesus asked of his followers… Do you trust me? Have faith It is the eyes of faith that will see… It is faith…no matter how small that will move mountains Before the writer begins the long list of the faithful… …Hebrews takes us back to the beginning To creation itself God spoke and everything came into existence Nothing existed before he spoke By God’s word creation began…life began By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command… …so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible There are a number of ways of translating this Perhaps it means that the things you can see came into existence out of the things you can’t… …that at creation God was making invisible things visible Or… Perhaps it means that God created everything out of nothing…absolutely nothing at all [Ex Nihlo] Either way… It takes one thing to see this…It takes faith Faith in God the creator This is at the heart of all Abrahamic faith It is also at the root of judgement… There is one creator God…Beginning and end of all things All things belong to him God is the creator, the architect, the builder, the gardener… …and God takes responsibility for putting all things right True justice and perfect judgement And faith in the creator God is also at the root of resurrection… God loves his creation…the physical world and so he intends to remake human beings… …as even more gloriously physical than they are at the moment Let’s take a break from this wonderful Theology for a moment Instead let’s take a look at who now appears on the pages of this letter And let’s try to notice what the writer is doing The first two characters that he brings to our attention… …are Abel the first victim of murder …and then Enoch Enoch was the only person in the Bible…other than Elijah… …Who is taken straight to heaven without experiencing death in the way we would normally expect Genesis 5 tells us that… Seth died…Jared died…Kernan died…Enosh died…Lamech died But Enoch we are told…walked with God, then he was no more, because God took him away Both Enoch and Abel are a little puzzling to begin with… Abel and his brother Cain both brought sacrifices to God Genesis 4:3-4 says that Abel brought some of his most valuable lambs to the Lord It simply says that Cain brought some of the produce from his fields When the offerings were made…It is said that Abel’s offerings were better than Cain’s We assume that they were gifts that were genuinely given with a heart open to God… …And it was Abel’s gift that was accepted by God This as we know caused Cain to become bitter and angry… …and this anger grew and grew until he killed his brother The first murder The point that is being made is that God accepted Abel…by faith By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did.