Pastoral Letter 130
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
Grace, Peace and Love to you all in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Last Sunday after the Service I headed to the Willoughby Armenian Evangelical Uniting Church to take the Service, covering for Rev. Hagop Sarkissian, who is on his annual leave. I have committed to take five Sundays till 11 September. I am doing this, being the only Armenian speaking minister in the UCA, with your blessing.
The remaining of the items from the Market Morning 2022 are being sorted out. One and a half carload of books were taken to the Lifeline Book Depot in West Linfield during the week. Some packed boxes will be stored for next year’s Market Morning, all the remaining items will go to Vinnies in the next couple of weeks.
Our next Combined Service with Lane Cove Uniting will be here at St. Andrew’s Longueville on Sunday 18 September 9:30 am, followed by Morning Tea, during which we will celebrate Father’s Day and have the Great Outback Fundraiser BBQ. The raised funds plus the plates of the day will be donated to the Frontier Services.
As a follow up to the message that we received last week from Rick Johnson, the Pastor of Lane Cove Uniting Church, in regard to Margaret McCullough’s passing away, we have received the message that her Funeral Service will be held at Macquarie Park, Camellia Chapel, on Thursday 25 August 2022, 10:30 am.
Wendy has confirmed that her mum’s, Nan Matheson’s, Memorial Service will be held here, in our church, on Saturday 24 September 11:00 am, followed by wake refreshments. Please make note of this.
Be safe and well, continue to pray, remembering those who need care, support and love and let us know if any member of the congregation that you know of needs our help and prayers.
If you will not be able to join us at our face-to-face service, you can worship with us at home. Please light a candle and follow the attached Order of Service.
Here are some more prayer points for this week:
- Pray for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the struggling and the stressed.
- Pray for those who are unwell and struggling with different kinds of medical issues.
- Pray for the Matheson and Phelps families as they mourn the loss of their mother, grandmother, and great grandmother Nan Matheson.
- Pray and remember Margaret McCullough that she may rest in peace.
- Pray for the victims of the recent fireworks’ storage explosion that happened in Yerevan, Armenia.
- Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.
- Pray for and with the Sydney Central Coast Presbytery as it charters through challenging times.
- Pray for the hope that God gives.
Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.
Best Regards,
Krikor
MESSAGE
Set Apart for God
Jeremiah 1:4-10
What is or what was our wish for our lives?
What do or what did we wish it to be?
When we are facing death or attend funerals, usually we ask the question:
“What is the meaning of life?”
It truly is a fascinating question. One that I have asked myself many times.
Why are we here?
What is the meaning of life?
Our Father has a purpose for every life. We can read about His purpose all throughout the Scripture. We know He has a plan for His creation. And everything He has created is part of His plan. Our God has a purpose for everything under heaven and He has a purpose for you and me.
Today we look at the call of young Jeremiah, when God called him to be a prophet.
There is a line in that scripture that really sticks out. It speaks about something very precious. It speaks of our Father’s love and power. It is where He states in His call:
“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (vs. 5)
Jeremiah was born into a priestly family. His father and all of his family where priests. Jeremiah was expected to be a priest as well. But God had other plans for his life; instead, he was called to be a prophet. The Priests were loved, respected, and honoured all the days of their lives, but the prophets were not.
Nobody liked prophets. They told the people the things they didn’t want to hear. They told them they were sinners; they had to look after the poor, and if they didn’t turn themselves around and obey God, then they were in for disaster. This is not at all the type of ministry that Jeremiah was looking forward to.
Well, like many of us when God calls us, Jeremiah began to come up with excuses: “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child”. I’m too young, I wouldn’t know what to say.
Jeremiah’s excuses were no different from our excuses; in our modern society, we seem to think that we know better than God. That His word is old fashioned and too restrictive. It seems we don’t fear God and even the church is willing to tell Him that He is wrong.
But God told Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
What an awesome charge. And then, in the following verses, God promised to be with Jeremiah and equip him for the task.
Jeremiah would need those words of assurance. As a prophet, he would be mocked, humiliated, imprisoned, beaten and threatened with death. And yet, Jeremiah never once gave up. He lived to see his prophecies fulfilled and his name vindicated.
But what kept him going?
I believe when Jeremiah was at his lowest point, locked deep in a dungeon, without human contact, abandoned by everyone, he remembered these words: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
He was special, he had a purpose, and he was not alone.
This passage tells us:
1. We have purpose in life
We are not an accident. We were made and “set apart” for a very important task: to glorify God and reflect His image to others. Our greatest purpose is to give God the Glory He deserves.
Does that mean we have to give up our job and spend all our time in prayer and Bible study? No. Maybe we glorify God through our position as a father, a mother, a teacher, an accountant, etc. Regardless of who we are or what we have, we should be willing to glorify Him.
Someone wrote in to the “Ask Marilyn” column in Parade Magazine (July 30, 2000) and asked her to answer the age-old question: What is the purpose of our life? The questioner included his own opinion that the purpose of each individual’s life is to pursue his or her own happiness and fulfillment, regardless of the means of reaching this goal.
What did Marilyn, who is listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as having the highest recorded IQ in the world, reply?
Fortunately, this brilliant lady was wise enough not to give an answer. Instead, she turned the whole question around. She wrote:
“If there is an intelligent Creator and a plan behind the creation of the universe, then our purpose is decided by our Creator. But if there is no intelligent Creator behind the universe, if it all happened as the Big Bang theory says, then there is no ultimate purpose in life”.
If there is no God, or if we live as if there is no God, then there is no purpose to our life. But, if there is a Creator, then there is a purpose to it all.
That’s good news!
There is a purpose to our lives. We were made to glorify God.
2. We are special
God knows us. God loves us.
“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart.” God really knows us, not just the clean and shiny version of ourselves that we present to the world, but the real us. He knew us long before we even had the consciousness to know ourselves. And He loves us. As someone once said: “God could not love you more, and He will not love you less.” We are special.
It is a challenge for us all to begin each day by saying, I am God’s son or daughter and then live as though we are not. We should view ourselves differently and stop living for ourselves and start living for God.
We should realize God really does love us and, how much we need to glorify Him, not ourselves, in our daily living. Our Father is working His purpose in us this very minute.
3. Jeremiah’s task
God intervenes in our life and set us apart for a task, which we should do for Him. In the case of the prophet Jeremiah, it was something serious and responsible. God told him that He has set him apart to uproot, to tear down, to destroy and to overthrow. This seems harsh and terrifying. How on earth we should explain this, when we know our God is loving, passionate, caring, encouraging, forgiving and patient. So how we can look at this.
We should not only look at the first part of the words that God says. Because the second part is very positive. Jeremiah’s task was not just the negative, the destruction, but his task was to build and plant.
If you remember last week’s passage, “The Song of the Vineyard”, where God says: “I will take away its hedge and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it” (Is. 5:5-6).
Also, the words of Jesus to the people in Luke, which we consider to be harsh and though. “I have come to bring fire on the earth. Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.”
We can see some similarities in these passages. God condemns the sin and brings His judgement.
But God is gracious, forgiving and loving. He promises new life and a fresh start. He promises healing, deliverance and salvation, which He accomplishes through His New Covenant and His Son and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This is the “to build and to plant”. New life and new blessings, which expresses His love and compassion.
So, Jeremiah, this young prophet had been called by God and been given a hard task. All he had to do, was to obey and deliver what is expected from him.
None of us escape our Omniscient (all-knowing) Creator’s notice. More than 2,500 years ago He told the prophet Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5). God knows us more intimately than any person ever could and is able to give our lives purpose and meaning unlike any other. He not only formed us through His wisdom and power, but He also sustains every moment of our existence—including the personal details that occur every moment without our awareness: from the beating of our hearts to the complex functioning of our brains. Reflecting on how our heavenly Father holds together every aspect of our existence, David exclaimed: “How precious to me are your thoughts, God!” (Psalm 139:17).
God is closer to us than our last breath. He made us, knows us, and loves us, and He’s ever worthy of our worship and praise. He has set us apart for certain task or tasks, that we are supposed to perform with His assurance that He is and always will be with us.
Life has meaning and purpose. We are created by God and given certain tasks to do. We are supposed to live a life that brings glory and honour to God, because we are set apart for Him as Jeremiah, all the other prophets and the saints of the Bible, who were called before they were formed in the womb, He knew them, set them apart and appointed them for certain tasks.
Surely God has formed us as well when we were still in the womb to perform certain duties in His name.
Amen!