NEWS FROM SANCTUARY –

Attendance: 98 Kids: 6 Offering: $3,028.00

Congratulations to Brian and Bethany Hudson on the occasion of baby Sophia’s Baptism!

Monday Night Football at Goofy’s Bar and Grill: 5:30pm Monday.

Harvest Fest is upon us. To volunteer for this wonderful outreach to Greenwood contact Hayden Smith hsmith@sanctuarycrc.org.

Small Groups are forming. Join in? contact Mark Mohrlang. Mark.morhlang@gmail.com

PRAYERS –

God we thank you for the life of John Fason and that he is now at rest and peace with you after winning his battle with cancer.

Jesus, thank you for our children and we ask you to look out after all expectant mothers.

Holy Spirit, give us strength to live out our faith in the places where we live and work.

Father, bring peace among your warring children everywhere.

Lord, protect Lisa and Rachel Etter as they travel to Kenya and Rwanda for the next several weeks.

Jesus, thank you for Brian and Betsy Turnbull and their new church, THE HOUSE. We praise you for the great start up service last night.

REFLECTIONS – on “God’s Great Pleasure” Col. 1:19-23

Take a minute to think about a time when you were really, really pleased….deeply satisfied…tickled pink…absolutely fulfilled…when something was just perfect….think it…feel it…re-live it…

For me…one of my most well pleased moments took place with Nancy and the kids on our boat. We travelled from Seattle to Nanaimo, then Pender Harbor and on up Jervis Inlet to Princess Louisa Inlet where Young Life’s Malibu Club is located…and we traveled to the end of the inlet to a place called Chatterbox Falls.

I pulled into the mouth of the River outlet at the Falls and anchored to the ancient boulders on the shallow sea floor and was held squarely in place on the hook by the rush of water coming from Chatterbox Falls. We were so close in that sometimes we got a little misted by the spray from the falls, which was nice since it was a smoking hot summer day.

I could tell we were solidly anchored, destined not to swing an inch due to the current from the fresh water rushing into the sea. THEN…I looked ahead and saw the mountains behind Chatterbox Falls…and I heard the roaring water…and I saw the glimmer of the sun on the saltwater around us…and I looked in every direction and saw cliffs…and snowy peaks…and trees…and more water…and tiny waterfalls all over the inlet…and it reduced me to a meditative stupor as I sat on the captains seat on the flybridge deck of the boat.

I hope  you had some image like this in mind. I had trouble making notes about this experience for my message today…because as I touched the keyboard to write…I found myself falling back into the summer experience not too many years ago and wrapped in its serenity.

I wanted to share this story and have you search your memory banks for treasured moments of deep pleasure, because today, our text from the book of Colossians, written the better part of 2000 years ago, is about GOD’S DEEPEST pleasure: HIS CREATION FULLY RESTORED

We will look at just a few short verses this week in Paul’s letter. Colossians 1:19-23

 ¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

²¹ Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of  your evil behavior. ²² But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— ²³ if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

A look at God’s Good Pleasure…

God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things…

I do things like outline sentences when I prepare thoughts for a message. This opening message is very clear in its grammar. God is the Subject. This is all about God and action that God takes because God is God. The Action is described in a verb written in a past perfect tense… WAS PLEASED. And…diagramming the sentence, it is clear that God WAS PLEASED by TWO THINGS: 1) to have all his fullness dwell in Jesus…fullness= pleroma … all that is possible. Epitome. All that is necessary. And, 2) through Jesus to reconcile all things to himself. As surely as God was pleased to have the fullness of his perfection and beauty expressed in the God-Man Jesus, God’s pleasure also had a UTILITY … a function.

The function of God’s pleasure was like the function of the anchor on my boat at Chatterbox Falls. It is beyond good looks and feelings…it’s active and stressed and at work…and an absolute life-saver. God’s good pleasure is expressed in Jesus Christ RECONCILING THE LOST AND BROKEN WORLD TO GOD.

We remember and re-live this action that brings such pleasure to God when we look at the Lord’s Table…Bread and Cup…simple gifts…yet HARSH REMINDERS that God’s ultimate pleasure in RECONCILING YOU AND ME cost Jesus Christ EVERYTHING .. Body and Blood.

Our faith is not a happy, clappy faith. It is not a faith of sentiment. It is a faith embodied in the sacrificed flesh and blood of Jesus on the Christ…and all of the horror and sorrow involved in that. And, our faith is borne out often in suffering as well. We are shaped through sorrow and pain..not around it.

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of ^a your evil behavior.

Paul is very frank in letting us know that our broken instincts point us toward wicked masters. The word used in the New Testament for “alienated” here means to be “sold off”. The imagery here tells us that without God acting on our behalf to purchase us back to himself in JESUS CHRIST, we are “sold off” as slaves to things that kill and destroy us…that separate us from God’s love and bring sorrow to the heart of God.

continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.

God has done it all for us in Jesus Christ…and his work on our behalf is so good it brings deep pleasure to the heart of God. So, what is our role? Simply to continue in faith…to hang in there…to carry on…even when the pleasure part  of things seems far off. How do we pull this off? Well partly through spiritual practices of reading, scripture meditation, prayer, small groups, worship, spiritual conversation, solitude…and by remembering what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

Like Paul, you and I have heard and are hearing THIS GOSPEL. The New Testament Greek word for “proclaimed” here is “keruchthentos” which translated literally means ‘a trumpet call’ loud enough for all Creation to hear. God’s love and pleasure in us as his Creatures…his great work in the Fullness of Jesus Christ to capture us once and for all with his LOVE…is like unto that moment of great and deep pleasure that capture me at Chatterbox Falls on the boat…or that moment you recalled yourself..

Here’s how a wonderful man of God and Biblical scholar named William Barclay responds to this love of God expressed in our text today…I will leave you with his thoughts..

“The fact that a [person] is loved…lays upon [him or her] the greatest obligation in the world, the obligation of being worthy of that love. In one sense the love of God makes things easy, for it takes away our fear of him and assures us that we are no longer criminals at the bar of judgment, certain of nothing but condemnation. But in another sense it makes things agonizingly and almost impossibly difficult, for it lays upon us the ultimate obligation of seeking to be worthy of that love.”

May God grant us all the grace and mercy to participate in God’s great pleasure and live lives worthy of his love.

Amen.

Now then. Go out and make it a GREAT WEEK!!

Much Love,

Dr. Randy L. Rowland

2854 NW 59th Street

Seattle, WA  98107

USA

206.953.0909

www.sanctuarycrc.org