Pastoral Letter 198
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
I hope you had a good start in the New Year, 2024. Already we are halfway through the month of January and soon we will commence the Lent season, starting with Ash Wednesday in early February, which will lead us to Passion week and Easter, when we will celebrate the victorious resurrection of Christ from the death.
Last Sunday we celebrated Epiphany, the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ, commemorating the visit of the Magi and Jesus Christ’s physical manifestation to the Gentiles and to the world. The Magi saw His Star in the East and took the long journey following to it, till they found the baby Jesus lying in a manger. They offered their gifts and treasures, expressing their respect and admiration. They bowed down and worshiped the King of kings and the Lord of Lords.
The Magi story teaches us four lessons: God makes every effort to reach every person who is far from Him, He wants us to diligently seek Him, worship and continue to be open to His Spirit to guide us. God has manifested Himself to the Magi many years ago and now manifests Himself to the church today as a gift and it is a privilege to be taken seriously and, in our turn, pass it on to others.
After our celebration on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the laying the foundation of our Sanctuary and the 121st Anniversary of commencing worship services on the church promises on 10 September 2023, 3 February marks the 100th Anniversary of the official opening of the church building. Hence, we are planning a special Worship Service marking this important milestone in the history of St. Andrew’s Church. The Service will be held on Sunday 4 February 2024 at 9:30 am. We are in the process of sending out the invitations to church leaders, friends and guests. Please plan and make an extra effort to be with us at this Service and let us praise God and thank Him for all the blessings He has provided to us and to our church over the years.
If you are not able to join us tomorrow, please light a candle and join us following the attached Orders of Services.
Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.
Here are some prayer points for this week:
- Pray for the New Year and ask God to be with us in the year as we move forward.
- Pray for the Middle East, as the conflict escalates again between Israel and Palestine.
- Pray for the people Artsakh who are refugees in different parts of Armenia facing many challenges.
- Pray for the poor, the sick, the struggling and the stressed.
- Pray for all those who are affected by the recent floods.
- Pray for our church and our future plans as we seek God’s guidance.
Best Regards
In Christ
Krikor
MESSAGE
God Calls His Servants
1 Samuel 3: 1-10, John 1:43-51
People have the tendency to listen only to what they want to hear. The Bible even tells us that. God’s word informs us that “The heart is deceitful above all things”. (Jer. 17:9)
Why God want us to listen?
What God’s saying is: “I want to bless you. I want to give you what your heart desires in My time. … But I can’t if you won’t listen”.
God wants us to hear His voice, and He wants us to hear His voice because that’s the only way we’ll receive all the blessings He wants to give us. But we struggle with this because people’s hearts are deceitful, that is, they hear only what they want to hear, and they tend to put their priorities above His.
Today we look at two examples when God calls people. Two totally different people; different in age, different in time, different situations and with different expectations.
In today’s first passage we see several clues about the time and the state of the people.
The time was 11th century B.C.. According to our sources we know that Samuel was born sometime between 1100 and 1090 B.C., just before the establishment the Kingdom of Israel and Saul was appointed and anointed to be the king of Jews 1050-1020 B.C.
In this short passage we can detect:
Two sets of four points put in Inverted Parallelism (3:1-3 and 3:7-10a) and in between the “Call” and in 3:10b the “Response”.
a In those days the word of the Lord was rare.
b There were not many visions.
c Eli’s eyes were weak and he was lying down.
d The lamp of God had not yet gone out.
The CALL
d The Lord came and stood there.
c Eli realised that God was calling.
b Samuel did not yet know the Lord.
a The word of the Lord was not yet been revealed.
The Response: “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
Then the Lord spoke to him and told him what He was going to do.
That was God’s timing. In His time, He called His servant.
History repeats itself.
Many years later the situation was still the same in the world. But we know and assured that God loved and loves the world, because He created it, and all was good. Even the ‘man’ was created ‘good’, because he was created in the image of God. He was perfect, clean and pure.
But we know the story. Sin entered in the perfect creation and alienated man from God. And since man was in rebellion though God had revealed Himself in so many ways, yet man decide to ignore and go on in his/her way.
In the second passage that we read today we see a similar trend of thoughts as Jesus called His first disciples and in between the proclamation of Jesus about the one who was invited to follow Him.
John puts it as follows:
a Call to follow the Lord.
b Can anything good come?
c Come and see.
A true Israelite (Nathanael)
c He came and saw Him.
b The Son of God.
a See greater things as a follower of Christ.
Nathanael followed Jesus and became one of his disciples. All he had to do was to trust Him and commit to be a faithful servant to the Lord. And he did!
How about now. I believe nothing has been changed, we see that the Word of God is rare. Not many people read, study, reflect and apply in their daily life. Even though they consider themselves Christians, yet they don’t have the necessary biblical knowledge and as a result of that they have weak faith. And because the Word of God is rare there is no vision, which results in no mission. That’s where we see the church today; on the way of weakening and becoming passive in many areas.
The church is struggling and has shifted to survival mode instead of being active on many levels doing its mission. This is sad and needs to be done something.
But the good news is that God is control, and in His time, He will call and take action. He will prepare people to serve Him faithfully regardless of their shortfalls and weaknesses.
The call of Samuel to be a prophet and the early disciples to follow and obey His commands are good examples. In the two examples it is clear that when He calls people, they respond to Him even after a brief questioning period. In the case of young Samuel, God had to call three times until it is realised that the One who is calling is God Himself.
And in the case of Nathanael, we see an interesting expression that says: Can anything good come from there? Referring to Jesus coming from Nazareth. Then declaring: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel”. What an expression of faith and commitment. We know that those first disciples left everything to follow Him.
Yes, God calls the “man”, us, in His time and the only thing we should do is to follow Him.
He calls His servants. Are we ready to obey and follow.
Amen!