For the week of August 17 – 10th Sunday after Pentecost
Morning Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, In this moment, we surrender our hearts to You in worship. We long to adore You with pure hearts and open spirits. May our worship be a fragrant offering, pleasing to Your ears. Transform our hearts into vessels of praise and adoration. Let every note sung, every word spoken, and every thought directed toward You be a testament to our love and reverence. We desire to glorify You in all that we do during this service. Thank You for being the object of our worship, our refuge, and our joy. Amen. (Strength in Worship.COM)
Opening Hymn: #140 Great Is Thy Faithfulness
- Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father; there is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.
Refrain: Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see; all I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!
- Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
sun moon and stars with their courses above join with all nature in manifold witness
to Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love. Refrain:
- Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, blessings all mine,
With ten thousand beside! Refrain:
Psalm 119:33-35, 116-117 (CEB)
33 Lord, teach me what Your statutes are about,
and I will guard every part of them.
34 Help me understand so I can guard Your Instruction
and keep it with all my heart.
35 Lead me on the trail of Your commandments
because that is what I want.
116 Sustain me according to Your word so I can live!
Don’t let me be put to shame because of hope.
117 Support me so I can be saved
and so I can focus constantly on Your statutes.
Back to School Blessing:
God, we ask for Your guidance and wisdom this school year. Grant our children the knowledge they need to excel in their studies and everyday life. Infuse them with understanding so that they can think critically and make wise decisions that are Godly and rooted in Your truth.
Help them discover their talents, interests and abilities; encourage them to use these gifts to reach their goals and go after what You have called them to do. Guide them towards making right choices as they encounter challenging situations. Give us Your wisdom too, so that we may provide support and wisdom to help them grow in Your ways. Thank You, Lord for empowering us with Your divine grace; today, tomorrow and forevermore. In Jesus’ name, Amen. (thinkaboutsuchthings.com)
Prayers of Intercession: Thank You, Lord, for hearing our prayers for those dear to our hearts. We now pray as You have taught us: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us, not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Offering spotlight: One of the biggest events in the area! The Bloomsburg Fair! A lot of fair workers will be in town and the Christian community of churches looks forward to ministering to their physical and spiritual needs. Lightstreet United Methodist Church is collecting gently used men’s and women’s sneakers or work boots in any ADULT sizes.
The full list of needed items is in the bulletin. Help is greatly appreciated.
Offering prayer: Enduring and Gracious God, You have surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses, those who have gone before us and those who walk beside us in faith. As we bring our gifts before You, we offer them in gratitude, knowing that our generosity is part of Your ongoing work in the world. Strengthen us to run with perseverance the race set before us, so that through our giving and through our living, we may reflect the joy of Christ and the love that unites all Your saints. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen. (Discipleship Ministries)
Hymn of Preparation: #600 Wonderful Words of Life
- Sing them over again to me, wonderful words of life; Let me more of their beauty see, wonderful words of life. Words of life and beauty teach me faith and duty.
Refrain: Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life.
Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life.
- Christ, the blessed one, gives to all, wonderful words of life; Sinner, list to the loving call, wonderful words of life. All so freely giving, wooing us to heaven. Refrain:
- Sweetly echo the gospel call, wonderful words of life; Offer pardon and peace to all, wonderful words of life; Jesus, only Savior sanctify forever. Refrain:
Scripture: James 1:19-27 (CEB)
19 Know this, my dear brothers and sisters: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to grow angry. 20 This is because an angry person doesn’t produce God’s righteousness. 21 Therefore, with humility, set aside all moral filth and the growth of wickedness, and welcome the word planted deep inside you—the very word that is able to save you.
22 You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves. 23 Those who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror. 24 They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like. 25 But there are those who study the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continue to do it. They don’t listen and then forget, but they put it into practice in their lives. They will be blessed in whatever they do.
26 If those who claim devotion to God don’t control what they say, they mislead themselves. Their devotion is worthless. 27 True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties and to keep the world from contaminating us.
Affirm your faith by reciting the Apostles’ Creed: I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; He descended to the dead. On the third day He rose again; He ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen. (UM Hymnal #882)
We now come to our third week of answering your submitted questions and our question this week surrounds Holy Scripture. What is it? How do we define it? How we use it in our walk with Jesus.
I want to share with you two of our doctrinal standards. The first is Article 5 from the Articles of Religion, and the other is from the Confession of the Evangelical United Brethren, Article 4. This is the starting point of what we call our Holy Scriptures.
Article V — Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation
The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical books of the Old and New Testament of whose authority was never any doubt in the church. The names of the canonical books are:
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, The First Book of Samuel, The Second Book of Samuel, The First Book of Kings, The Second Book of Kings, The First Book of Chronicles, The Second Book of Chronicles, The Book of Ezra, The Book of Nehemiah, The Book of Esther, The Book of Job, The Psalms, The Proverbs, Ecclesiastes or the Preacher, Cantica or Songs of Solomon, Four Prophets the Greater, Twelve Prophets the Less.
All the books of the New Testament, as they are commonly received, we do receive and account canonical. (United Methodist Book of Discipline 2024)
Article IV — The Holy Bible
We believe the Holy Bible, Old and New Testaments, reveals the Word of God so far as it is necessary for our salvation. It is to be received through the Holy Spirit as the true rule and guide for faith and practice. Whatever is not revealed in or established by the Holy Scriptures is not to be made an article of faith nor is it to be taught as essential to salvation.
The view of Scripture for the United Methodist Church is that Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation. This was John Wesley's thought. So as we look at Scripture we're talking about the books that we recognize as Canon in the Protestant reform movement.
So we come to the first question submitted: “Where does Methodism fall on the spectrum of biblical interpretation? Is it viewed as flawlessly drafted and intended for literal acceptance at face value, or is there an acknowledgment of human authorship with its limits and scope and translation and adaptation for symbolism?”
We don't have an inerrancy statement within the United Methodist Church, yet we do have a high view of Scripture. Biblical inerrancy is the belief that the Bible in its original form is entirely free from error and completely truthful in all it asserts. Again, John Wesley tells us and instructs us to view Scripture through the lens of the fact that it reveals what is necessary for salvation.
All scripture is received by the Holy Spirit. It's divinely inspired. Now when I say that, I don't want you to think that God whispered in someone's ear and then that person put pen to paper. But what I want you to envision is that in its writing, the person is writing in direct relationship with God through the power of the Holy Spirit and we receive it by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is present as we read it, as we hear it, and as we speak it. There's a relationship we have with the recorded word.
We're encouraged… actually Wesley would be more firm… He would require that there would be a reading from the Old Testament and the New Testament every day, a chapter in each and that not only would we be reading it in private, but that we would read it together. We would study it together so that we would reap the benefit of each other's relationship to the scripture and the Holy Spirit.
Now, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, it doesn't change the truth that translations and interpretations change how we hear and understand scripture. There is always something lost or something gained through interpretation and translation. Try as we might to have the purest text in front of us it will never be so.
In the efforts to make Scripture accessible, connections get lost. The big things don't get lost, like the character of God and the Jesus story. But the symbolism can be lost. If you did the Parable study or the study of The Difficult Words of Jesus, we walked through some of the Jewish connections that completely change how we understand some of Jesus' teachings.
Part of our communion ritual adopted from Jesus' Last Supper contain elements of a Jewish betrothal. The passage in John 14 that we cling to for hope for funerals is also part of that betrothal commitment. Under the watchful eye of the Father, the bridegroom builds a place for his bride. The connection, the symbolism being, that's what Jesus is offering us, is to be united together in a relationship that looks like a marriage.
We can go further and look to the places where we have lost other references because of translation and interpretation. If we go to the book of Habakkuk, Job, Psalms or Isaiah. They each contain references to God destroying other gods. We'll miss it, because Mot, the Canaanite God of death and the underworld has been replaced with the generic death. While knowing the specific god destroyed may not be necessarily information needed for salvation, acknowledging there are other gods helps make the first 3 commandments hit a bit differently. And not having other gods before God is pretty high on that salvation path.
Yet, using the broadness of the statement, the Holy Scriptures reveal what is necessary for salvation doesn't mean we get to toss out the parts we don't like or that sound icky or too hard.
David Watson is a Wesleyan theologian and historian. He summarizes it like this. “Wesley insists on the importance of the entire Bible. ‘Every part thereof is worthy of God altogether are one entire body.’ – John Wesley. In other words, we have to take the parts of the Bible that we don't like along with those we love. The pieces fit together. Scripture helps us to interpret Scripture. It's not the case that every isolated passage constitutes a command that we must obey in order to fulfill the requirements of Christian life. It's that the Bible as a whole gives us a vision of salvation, of what the good life looks like and how we honor God. There's neither defect nor excess in Scripture because we receive its various parts as a whole, and as a whole it teaches us what Christian life is.”
Christian life is the pursuit of becoming Christlike.
The second question is: “Why are there only two books named for women when women played an important part in Jesus' life and in the background supporting His teaching?”
Esther and Ruth are the only two books contained in scripture that are named for women and both are Old Testament. Esther was almost dropped completely because God's not the main character, especially in the Greek version. The inclusion of Esther in our scriptures is the Hebrew version and only because she protects the lineage of the Jewish people. Ruth's story is foundational to the coming Messiah; she's King David's great grandmother. Jesus comes from the line of David.
Then we come to the New Testament and we have some strong women in Jesus' life. His mother Mary and Mary Magdalene come to mind first and foremost. Women seem to be used to challenge Jesus all the while supporting and encouraging others in understanding what Jesus is trying to put out into the world. We look to the Samaritan woman. We looked to the woman who wanted her daughter healed and we wrestle with Mary and Martha.
We also have the stories of the women working with Paul: Priscilla and Junia and Lydia. Yet they're nothing beyond brief glimpses, nothing that would constitute the writing of an entire book of their stories.
There are a few reasons for this. First, women were educated in oral traditions to tell the stories to the children until their sons went to synagogue or to school to learn to read and to write. Second, a woman's testimony on its own wasn't valid. She wasn't to be believed unless her story could be collaborated by men, or at least one man.
While we can't find books in the New Testament written by or about women, we can look to their witness to the world as disciples. We point to Saint Teresa, Dorothy Day, St. Bernadette, Margaret Fell Fox, Sojourner Truth. What would our hymnal be without Fanny Crosby’s Blessed Assurance?
While not included in the book form in the New Testament, women have been vital in the life of the church and had it not been for a woman who then would have reported the resurrection of Jesus?
The last question today is weighty and timely: “Where in the Bible does it say if you don't stand with Israel you will not flourish?” Nowhere. Nowhere in Scripture is it that plain or worded straight forward. Although we can surmise from God's promise to Israel to be their God at the very beginning, before they were even a people. God tells Abraham, I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all the peoples on the earth we blessed through you. In Psalms we hear the cry to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. It's through God's covenant with Israel we receive our Deliverer.
The history of Israel – the people of God and the nation – the land now called Israel aren't interchangeable. To talk about this responsibly and respectfully, honestly, we're going to need a table, some coffee, and probably pie. It isn't simple and it's not clear. Yet if it's something that you'd like to do, I would love to set that time up where we can come together and go through the scriptures. Intentionally open, seeking for what God is calling us to do in response to Israel, both the people and the nation.
Overwhelmingly, the role of Scripture in our lives is to be in a relationship with it. Working under the direction of the Holy Spirit makes this Living Word. It gives us an opportunity to expand our relationship with God on a journey of transformation as we become more and more Christlike.
(Work Cited: Watson, David F. “What do United Methodists believe about the Bible.” davidfwatson.me, 24 February 2018. Accessed 30 July 2025.)
Closing Hymn: #467 Trust and Obey
- When we walk with the Lord in the light of His word, what a glory He sheds on our way!
While we do His good will, He abides with us still, and with all who will trust and obey.
Refrain: Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
- Not a burden we bear, not a sorrow we share, but our toil He doth richly repay;
not a grief or a loss, not a frown or a cross, but is blest if we trust and obey. (Refrain) - But we never can prove the delights of His love until all on the altar we lay;
for the favor He shows, for the joy He bestows, are for them who will trust and obey. (Refrain) - Then in fellowship sweet we will sit at His feet, or we'll walk by His side in the way;
what He says we will do, where He sends we will go; never fear, only trust and obey. (Refrain)
The blessing: May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face shine upon you this week.
