Worship Service – October 31, 2021

(28) One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

(29) “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. (30) Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ (31) The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

(32) “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. (33) To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

(34) When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

(1) Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord , O my soul.

(2) I will praise the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

(3) Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.

(4) When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.

(5) Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God,

(6) the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them- the Lord , who remains faithful forever.

(7) He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free,

(8) the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous.

(9) The Lord watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

(10) The Lord reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord .

(1) In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. (2) The man’s name was Elimelech, his wife’s name Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.

(3) Now Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. (4) They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, (5) both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.

(6) When she heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, Naomi and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. (7) With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.

(8) Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead and to me. (9) May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud (10) and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”

(11) But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? (12) Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me-even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons- (13) would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord ‘s hand has gone out against me!”

(14) At this they wept again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-by, but Ruth clung to her.

(15) “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”

(16) But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. (17) Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” (18) When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

Our lectionary for this week suggested, these three Scriptures. And as I began to study them, my thoughts turned to the turmoil going on in our world today. So many people on the move in search of a better life. Those crossing the border into the United States and even those within the US moving because of, their financial situation, the Covid mandates , political or social injustice or just a need to be free of oppression from too many laws. So many people today in search of “The ABCs of life”. Acceptance of who they are. Belief in someone or something they can count on. And a relationship worth the Commitment to do whatever it takes to find purpose and peace in this life.

A fellow by the name of Ed Peterman tells a story from his childhood, when he grew up on a farm in Preble County Ohio. His family discovered they had some rats in the barn, so his parents got some traps. One night they baited them with cheese and set them out around the barn. The next morning young Ed went out to see if they had caught anything. The first traps he examined were empty. When he came to the last trap, he saw something strange. The trap had been sprung, and while there was no rat in it, he noticed that it did hold the severed leg of a rat. He ran to tell his parents about this unexpected finding. They followed him back to the barn.

When they got to the trap with the rat’s leg in it, his parents just nodded and smiled knowingly. “What happened?” Ed asked them. “Tell me what happened!” So, they told him. The trap had caught the rat by the leg. The rat knew that its life was at risk, so it chewed off its own leg to escape. “That’s the way rats are,” his father said. “Better to go on living with only three legs, than to die with all four.” Ed just stood there for a while, marveling at the courage it took for the rat to choose to survive by chewing its leg off and leaving it behind.

It makes one wonder whether we would have the courage to do what the rat did. If you were caught in a life-threatening situation one day, would you be able to cut part of yourself off and leave it behind in order to go on living? That’s one of those things we never truly know, unless and until we actually faced that situation. Would I be able to surrender a hand or a leg, a memory or a grudge, an obsession, or a long-held opinion, if my life were at stake? Or would I cling desperately to the futile memory of how things have always been before, and so bringing about my own death?

In our Gospel reading in Mark, the Jewish leaders set a trap. They wanted to arrest Jesus because he exposed their hypocrisy. They believed Jesus was accusing them of being, wicked farmers in a parable he talked about evil farmers to the crowds. (Mark 12:1-12). Then in Mark 12:13 we’re told, “Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodian’s to Jesus to catch him in his words.” but that didn’t work out as they’d hoped. In 12:28 we read; “One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

You see by Jesus’ time; the Jews had accumulated hundreds of laws -613 buy one historian’s count. Some religious leaders tried to distinguish between major and minor laws, and some taught that all laws were equally binding that it was dangerous to make any distinctions. This teacher’s question could have provoked controversy among these groups, but Jesus’ answer summarized all of God‘s laws. He gave them, “The ABCs of Life”, in what most of us know now as, “The Greatest Commandment”. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. “Then he added; (vs.31) The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love the Lord your God with all your heart. That’s, “Acceptance”.

Love the Lord your God with all your soul. That’s, “Belief”.

Love the Lord your God with all your mind and your strength. That’s, “Commitment”.

Love your neighbor as yourself. With. Acceptance, Belief, and Commitment, and you will have purpose and peace in your life.

In our Psalm reading today once again we’re given, the ABCs of life in verses 1 and 2.

Praise the Lord. That’s, “Acceptance”.

Praise the Lord, O my soul. That’s, “Belief”.

I will praise the Lord all my life. That’s, “Commitment”.

I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. With Acceptance, Belief, and Commitment.

Perhaps the religious leaders of Jesus day should have taken a closer look at Psalm 146. In versus 3-8, the psalmist portrays powerful people as inadequate saviors, making false promises they can’t deliver. They kind of sounded like our leaders today.

In our Old Testament reading today from book of Ruth, we read about a family in search of the ABCs of life, and two women who lived continually in search of them.

In the book of Ruth, we find that it’s a love story and if we were to continue to read on, it would probably make most of us blush. It’s full of sex and seduction. It has dead ends and new beginnings. It deals with grief and explores commitment. The story of Ruth takes place during the period of Judges. You can read it in about 15 minutes. I would encourage you to read the rest of the story when you leave here today. But before you do, let me point out a lesson or two about life that is worth thinking about as you read it. The Book of Ruth teaches us, “The ABCs of Life” what we are all searching for in this life. Acceptance, Belief, and Commitment.

Let me take a moment and recap or reading today. Back in the days of the Judges, when chaos ruled the world, a famine in the land of Bethlehem caused a man named Elimelech and his wife, Naomi, along with their two sons, Mahlon and Kilion, to migrate to Moab in hopes of finding food. Isn’t that awful like what’s we see happening at our borders today. I’m certain when they arrived there, things were not quite as they hoped. And I can imagine that somebody told them to cheer up, things could be worse. So, they cheered up and sure enough things got worse for them when they got to Moab. Elimelech died. Then the two sons married two Moabite women against their religious heritage, one named Orpah and another named Ruth. Ten years later both Mahlon and Kilion died. Not long after their passing, Naomi heard that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, so Naomi and her daughters-in-law prepared to return to Naomi’s home, to the land of Judah.

So, with her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.

Thinking better of what she was asking them to do, Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead and to me. I’m sure with tears in her eyes see says,”May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud.

Orpah kisses Naomi goodbye and returns to her family. But Ruth will have nothing to do with it. In Verses 16 and 17 we get the verses everybody knows from the Book of Ruth.

“Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”

Now let me set the record straight. That was spoken by a daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law. I know we don’t usually make such radical commitments to our mother-in-law; we just tell jokes about them.

Like….Two men were talking at a bar. “My mother-in-law is an angel,” says one guy. “You’re lucky,” replies the other. “My mother-in-law is still alive.”

There is no joke here. What Ruth says here, is a radical statement of loyalty and commitment. Ruth commits herself to Naomi, to a new religion, to a new life, to a radically, different way of living.

What would prompt such a thing? What would cause her to chew her own leg off, like the rat in the trap? Only that rare combination of loving qualities that she learned from Naomi, “the ABCs of life, that supposedly are so rare in an in-law – “Acceptance”, “Belief”, and “Commitment”, the ABC’s of building any kind of true relationship.

One more thing should be added. Naomi’s traits should not be thought of as being limited to the making of a good in-law; she also knew the importance and the need of, “The ABC’s of Life”. She lived ”The Greatest Commandment”.

She accepted her situation, believed God was in ultimate control of all life and committed her life to following Him in all circumstances.

She loved the Lord with all her heart. In “Acceptance” of her life’s trials.

She loved the Lord with all her soul. Her “Belief” was in God, above all else.

She loved the Lord with all her mind and her strength. In her “Commitment” to live a life secured by His love.

She loved her neighbors as herself. With Acceptance, Belief, and Commitment.

On this Restoration Sunday doesn’t this story of Naomi and Ruth cause us to say, “Praise be the Lord”, as the women did at the end of Ruth.(Ruth 4:14)

All Christians who have received Christ as their Savior, those who have chosen to chew their leg off, made that same radical statement that Ruth told to Naomi, “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.” should join with me in Praise to God for how He has made available to us, “The ABCs of life.

Praise the Lord. For His ”Acceptance “of us as we are!

Praise the Lord, O my soul. For my ”Belief” in His Son who died for my sin!

I will praise the Lord all my life. In my “Commitment” to Him!

I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. So that my neighbors will have an opportunity to find Peace and Purpose in this life and Eternal life with the Lord!

In His Service,

Pastor Joe

Listen To Audio: Sermon 20211031

Listen To Audio: Service 10312021

Prayer of Confession:    God of Ruth and Naomi, you are so patient with us.  We run away, and you seek us.  We make foolish choices, and you teach us the better way.  We hurt you and others, and instead of hurting us back, you forgive us.  Help us, we pray; help us reveal your glory and goodness in our living, that we will bear the imprint of Christ throughout the world. Amen.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

 

Pastor Joe will be available at the church on Thursday afternoon from 2 to 4.  If you need to speak to him, contact Pastor Joe at570-267-4570 (cell) or Email: joe.s.travis@gmail.com

Loose change goes to Trehab Local Food Bank

Sunday School starts at 8:30am

Choir practice will be on Thursday at 1:00! Please come a join us in singing praises to Jesus! 

Social Hour after church next Sunday, November 7^th.

“Feed-a-friend” mission ends on November 7th.  Monetary gifts only this year due to Covid-19.

PW will meet on November 11th at 11:00 A.M.

Congregational Meeting November 14th right after church.

Session Meeting Tuesday, November 16, at 9am

Men’s Breakfast Wednesday November 17th at 8:00 A.M.

If you know someone in the military and you think they would like some Christmas Cookies please let Bonne know by next Sunday, November 7th, or text her with their address to 570-557-1333.

The PW is selling Franklin Hill Presbyterian Cookbooks called “Recipes From The Hill” at $10.00 each.  All proceeds go to missions.  See Debbie Stalker.

LADIES’ CHRISTMAS TEA at the Montrose Bible Conference, December 7^th 2021.  Christmas music, devotional thoughts with our speaker, a light lunch, assortment of seasonal goodies and teas.  11am to 1 pm—Cost $12 per person.