Sunday service for 24 August 2025
Sunday 24 August 2025
Gourock St. John’s Church of Scotland
Service prepared by Rev. Teri Peterson
Manse: 632143
Email: TPeterson (at) churchofscotland.org.uk
Email Charlene, Parish Assistant: CMitchell (at) churchofscotland.org.uk
Sanctuary Prelude Music (praise band)
Welcome
We Gather As God’s Family (As the Bible is brought in, we stand and sing)
A family gathered in love,
striving for justice and joy,
blessing the broken-hearted,
and sharing the hope of God’s kingdom.
Call to Worship
One: God speaks and new things are created —
All: from the world to a community, God brings life into being.
One: God calls us a treasure —
All: ordinary, everyday people, God’s treasured possession!
One: God shows us how to be his holy people —
All: living life together in ways that reveal God’s presence.
Sanctuary Hymn: O God, Who Gives Us Life (words: Carl P Daw Jr; tune: Noel)
Prayer
You are a holy God,
you save us by your power and you call us to follow you.
You care about each person and each moment,
you treasure us and hold us close,
and your desire is for us to live according to your way,
to reflect your heart and your life in our own lives.
We confess that we have not lived up to your expectations.
We have not even lived up to our own expectations, O God.
We make mistakes…
and sometimes we turn aside on purpose,
because we get distracted,
or we think another way will be easier or happier,
or we just don’t want to try anymore when it feels like there’s no quick reward.
We admit that we find it hard to care about your instructions
when the world seems to be falling apart around us
and nothing we try makes it better.
We don’t have an answer when people ask
why we bother with faithfulness if nothing changes.
Yet we know there is something else,
something beyond us,
something that matters about this strange and wondrous way.
So we come to ask for your help.
For your forgiveness where we have failed to be the community you want us to be,
forgiveness where we have reflected an image other than your own,
forgiveness where we have put our trust in idols instead of you.
You are gracious and merciful,
you are loving beyond our understanding,
you are faithful even when we are not,
and we pray that you would make us more like you.
Make our individual lives a picture of your grace.
Make our community life a picture of your kingdom.
Until all the world can see your glory, reflected in every face.
We ask in the name of Jesus the Christ,
whose obedience opened the way of life for all of us.
Amen.
Online Hymn: O God, Who Gives Us Life (words: Carl P Daw Jr; tune: Noel)
Sanctuary Hymn: Sing Out With Joy (words: Fred Anderson from Psalm 81; tune: 81 Dundee)
Bible Story and reflection: selections from Exodus 19-34
We last left off with the Israelites being fed by God with manna and quail in the wilderness, and God breaking open a rock to provide water for them out there in the desert. They had just come near the area where God spoke to Moses in the burning bush. Today we pick up a couple of weeks later. We are going to hear selections from chapters 19 to 34 today, with some thoughts and questions interspersed along the way.
The people arrived at the foot of Mount Sinai almost 50 days after they had walked through the sea on dry land. Moses went up to the top of the mountain, and God told him that it was time to worship, so the people had to get ready. They washed their clothes and took baths, they were very careful not to get messy or to do anything wrong or hurtful, and they spent their time really trying to focus on getting ready to hear God. Moses reminded the people of all that God had done for them so far, rescuing them from slavery and oppression under the Egyptians, and feeding them in the desert, carrying them all the way from their old life to this new life. He also told them that God said that if they keep God’s covenant, they will be God’s treasured possession. The whole earth is the Lord’s, of course, but out of all the peoples God chose them to be a holy nation and priestly kingdom, the people who reveal God’s word and way of life to others.
And the people said “everything that God has spoken, we will do.”
Have you ever thought of yourself, or thought of us as a church family, as something God treasures? Something valuable and wonderful, something that brings God joy? Out of all the peoples of the earth, out of all the wonders of creation, God chose a community to be the ones who have a relationship with God that makes other people look at it and go “wow.” Sometimes we think words like “treasured” and “holy” and “priestly” mean we are better than others, or that we have to be perfect. Or like we are God’s favourites! But when we treasure something, we hold it close to our hearts, just God holds us close to his heart. And a priest is someone who brings God’s word to people, and also brings people’s prayers to God — a person who helps build a relationship between God and people. Imagine if we thought of ourselves as a community whose job it is to bring people’s prayers to God, and God’s word to people, helping to build a relationship between them? How would we live our lives differently than we do today, if that was our job?
At the end of three days of preparing their minds and hearts and bodies to worship God, the top of the mountain was covered in fire and smoke and lightning. And everyone was so afraid! The thunder was shaking the mountain, and the people were shaking in terror. Moses spoke to the fire, and there was thunder when God answered. And then God called Moses to come up…and up the mountain he went again, reminding everyone to stay back and not touch the mountain. But they were so afraid they were already backing up every time there was thunder anyway!
Once he got up there, God said “go back down and remind them not to touch…” and Moses said “don’t worry, they won’t.” But God made him go down and check anyway…
And then God spoke from the cloud and gave them these important words —
maybe you’ve heard some of them before, and can help me in remembering the list?
- I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of slavery into freedom. You will not have any other gods more important than me, I will be the top of your priority list.
- Don’t make yourself any idols — no statues or pictures or even thinking something is most important to you in the world… You can’t worship anything else except me. I show love to the thousandth generation, but there are also consequences for a few generations for those who don’t keep these commandments!
- Don’t use my name for things that aren’t me, or aren’t honouring me.
- Remember the sabbath, the seventh day. You already know from gathering manna that you work for six days and then you rest, just the same way I did when I created the world. Even your animals and your servants and your family and your neighbours, even immigrants who come to live among you…everyone takes the seventh day to rest and enjoy my providing.
- Honour your parents, so that you may enjoy the land God gives you.
- Don’t murder! (Hopefully that one is easy)
- Don’t commit adultery — if you or the other person have partners, don’t go looking for someone else.
- Don’t steal.
- Don’t lie about people, or spread gossip about them.
- Don’t wish you had what other people have.
God said these ten things and the people were at the bottom of the mountain, trembling, and they said to Moses: please will you do the speaking? We will listen to you…if we have to listen directly to God’s voice anymore we think we’ll die!
Moses told them: don’t be afraid, it’s only God speaking to you so you’ll know the truth of how powerful God is so you’ll follow his way and not turn aside from it.
And Moses went up the mountain to speak to the Lord while the people stayed at the bottom of the mountain thinking about all that God had said.
While he was up there, God explained to Moses all the laws and rules for building a new kind of society, different to the old ways they had learned in Egypt. God wanted the people to be free to serve God instead of serving Pharaoh, and that meant they had to learn a whole new way of living in community together. And so God elaborated on those ten commandments, explaining to Moses how they apply to all sorts of situations, from organising a household, to what happens if someone does break one — what do you do if someone kills someone else? Or if they have an argument that turns into a fight? What happens if someone is looking after your animals while you are away from home, and something happens to one of them — who is responsible and do they have to pay for it or not? There are even instructions about how to handle it when someone leaves work half-done and someone else gets injured because it wasn’t finished or cleaned up properly. There are rules and instructions for each situation, big and small. God cares about everyday life as well as unusual or difficult moments, because it’s in the way we live our everyday lives that we create the world, and God has chosen this treasured people for the purpose of creating a new way of being together, showing how life is in God’s kingdom on earth.
God explained rules for how things should go when young people fall in love with someone their parents didn’t choose, and rules for lending objects or money when someone is in need — you aren’t allowed to keep someone’s cloak or blanket overnight even if it was the insurance against a loan, because what if they didn’t have anything else to use as a cover? There are many instructions about making sure that immigrants and foreigners in the community are treated well, not oppressed or maligned or abused, because God says “you know what it is like to be a foreigner mistreated by others, so you know how to behave better than that for others.” God even promises that if a foreigner is abused in the Israelite community, God will listen to the foreigner’s cries more than he will to the Israelite excuses.
God explained to Moses instructions for worship festivals, and about how to manage the land in ways that are fair to everyone and also respectful of the earth, and there are many reminders not to gossip, not to work on the seventh day, not to be biased in favour of the rich who have means to argue their case, not to take bribes, and even more reminders about taking care of the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow — people who don’t have anyone to look after them.
There’s even a rule that says that if you see a donkey that belongs to someone you don’t like, and it is stuck somewhere or struggling under a big load, you have to stop and help it, you aren’t supposed to just walk by thinking to yourself that your enemy deserves to lose their donkey and all it is carrying!
God told Moses a LOT of things, and Moses wrote it all down and he went down and told all the people everything that God said. The people said “all that the Lord has spoken we will do. We will be obedient.” And the people offered sacrifices and prayed to God to seal the covenant between them.
Sometimes it feels like religion is all about rules, and all those rules are “don’t”s. Don’t do this and that, don’t have fun, don’t get into trouble, and that they’re rules about stuff that’s either super obvious like “don’t murder” or about such minutiae that they don’t matter, like what colour the church curtains should be. It’s easy to get caught up in the legalistic side of things, and also easy to dismiss it all because some of it feels so silly. But remember what is happening here: the Israelites had left a whole way of life, where their work and family and life was confined by the oppression of slavery and attempted genocide. The laws of Egypt as they applied to Israelites were harsh but clear-cut. Now they were out in the wide open space, where anything goes…and God was trying to show them how to be a community in an entirely new way. A new way where no one would be oppressed, where people looked out for each other, where the way we live together and treat each other is a reflection of our relationship with God. These instructions are like the rules of a game — they tell us how to do something we’ve never done before, how to create a whole new world where things are different than they are in Pharaoh’s world. Creating a whole new world requires instructions that are clear and precise and cover all sorts of possibilities, including the ones we won’t know we need until the situation comes up! And the fact God has thought of them already is a reminder to us that God sees a bigger picture than we see, and that God cares about us in everyday life, not only when we turn up to worship, or when we do things exactly right, or when we get something spectacularly wrong. God is invested in this community and the way we live the kingdom life right now, even when the world around us keeps trying to make us go back to Pharaoh’s ways of greed and power and violence.
Moses and seventy elders went up to see God and they worshipped there, and then the others went down and Moses was to go back up again, this time with his assistant Joshua. And the cloud of God’s glory settled in on the mountain, and God and Moses spoke face to face. This time the conversation was all about the instructions for building a place to worship: what kind of material, and what colour fabric, and what size and shape of bowls and tables and lamps, what the priests would wear and what kind of oil would be in the lamps and what sorts of offerings people would make for all different times and seasons and occasions. God was very detailed — caring about even the smallest things, just like in regular life! It took a long time to explain everything and for Moses and Joshua to write it all down…in fact it took forty days!
As days and then weeks passed and there was no sign of Moses, the people at the bottom of the mountain started to get nervous. Maybe something happened up there? Maybe Moses had been swallowed up by that cloud, or hit by lightning, or died because he got too close to God. What if he was never coming back? The people turned on Aaron and said “what if he’s never coming back? You’re his brother and his co-leader. You make God appear to us!”
Aaron panicked, and said “give me all your gold jewellery.” He took it and melted it down and made a statue that looked like a calf, and he said “here is your god who brought you out of Egypt!” And the people were so relieved, they had a worship festival and made sacrifices and then they had a party.
Up on the mountain, God saw and became angry, and said “Moses you’d better go back down to your people that you brought here, they’re misbehaving.” And Moses said “umm, God? They’re your people, you brought us up out of Egypt…if you destroy them now, what will the other nations say? That you weren’t a good enough God to take care of them?” They talked about it for some time, and eventually God changed his mind about the full disaster he wanted to bring on them, but God still said to go down so Moses went, carrying with him two stone tablets that had God’s commandments chiseled into them.
When Moses got down and saw just what was happening, he threw down the tablets and everyone heard them shatter…Moses was so angry that the people had done something so wrong, in such a short time! He confronted Aaron who tried to explain…but it all sounded like excuses. He ground up the statue into dust and put it in the water and made the people drink it, so they couldn’t even make new jewellery to replace what they had used for this idol. He told them again what God’s commandments were, and that they were in danger of having to make the rest of this journey themselves…and they were very sorry for having gone back on their promise to follow God’s way and do everything God said. To show how sorry they were, they wore their oldest simplest clothes and no jewellery or anything fancy at all, as if they were in mourning.
Moses promised to go speak to God but he couldn’t promise how it would go. The people continued their mourning and apologising, and Moses went back up. God was FUMING! Literally. Moses said “the people know they were wrong, and want to try again.” God said “you can take them, I don’t want anything to do with them anymore.” Moses said “they’re yours! You brought us out of Egypt, cared for us in the wilderness, made a covenant with us. Remember your people Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Remember Joseph, and all these descendants you made a covenant promise with? Remember calling us your treasured possession, your holy nation, a kingdom of priests who show the world your glory?” And God remembered, and said “ok I’ll send my messenger with you but I’m too angry to go with you myself, it’ll be dangerous.”
Moses decided not to push it just then…he went down and reported to the people what happened, and he built a tent out beyond the edge of the camp where he would go to meet with God. And he said to God, “if you won’t go with us, then send someone else because I can’t do this without you. I know we are hard hearted and stiff necked and hard to deal with but you are a God who merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” And God relented from his anger and decided to show himself to Moses — early in the morning Moses went into a cave on the side of the mountain, and God passed by and allowed Moses to see his back. And afterwards God called Moses to come up again and re-write the tablets…and this time during the 40 days God was reiterating the whole set of instructions and rules and laws for Moses to write down, the people behaved themselves at the foot of the mountain.
Whenever Moses came back from speaking with God, whether at the tent of meeting or up on the mountain, his face was shining, glowing with holy light. It made people nervous though, so when he finished telling them what God said today and reminding them of the commandments they had promised to obey, he would put on a veil so the light wouldn’t scare them. He would wear it when he was going about his regular day, and then take it off to speak to God and to share God’s word with the people.
This is a hard part of the story, where God is so angry that he wants to break the covenant that was only made a few weeks ago. But it is a really important part of the story, because it is the first time that we see God’s forgiveness instead of a disaster that leads to starting over. God has made a choice: that it is more important to continue the relationship between God and people than it is for the people to get everything exactly right all the time. God recognises that we are going to mess up, we’re going to look for something more concrete to hold onto, we’re going to get scared and our trust will falter sometimes, and God chooses to stick with us anyway, and to try again. This is the moment that God becomes the God of second, and third, and millionth, chances. And that reality, that a relationship with God does not depend on our being good enough, is at the core of the new world that all these instructions have been about. It isn’t the first time that God did something without regard for whether the people deserved it — after all, God set the people free from slavery without requiring anything of them first — but it is the first time that God explicitly forgives and moves on with the whole community. Not the last, though! God has decided that we will never be able to earn our way in, we will never be able to keep our side of the covenant perfectly, and yet God will keep his side no matter what. We will never be abandoned in the wilderness, because whatever happens, God still holds us close to his heart, and still wants us to keep trying to be that holy and priestly nation that shows the world what it means to live in God’s kingdom here and now.
For the word of God in Scripture
For the word of God among us
For the word of God within us
Thanks be to God.
Hymn GWA199: Oh How Good It Is (praise band)
Sanctuary Offering and Response 809 (tune: Old Hundredth)
Praise God, the Source of life and birth;
praise God the Word, who came to earth;
praise God the Spirit, holy flame:
all glory, honour to God’s name.
Amen
Concerns of the Church
Youth Groups
Bible Study
Session Meeting 28th
Bowl & Blether 1st
Muriel 4th
Prayer Groups
Prayer and Lord’s Prayer (Graham B) (notes only)
As we listen to the story of how you set your people free
Instructions for a new world
Taking away the old rules and barriers to living the life that you had planed for them. How your people struggled to free themselves from them
As the traveled the wilderness
And only finally accessing the promised land when they could except this new life.
Lord as we look around at the world today help us challenge
Old rules
Old certainties
Powerful people try to recreate old borders through force and fear
Impassive and uncaring about the suffering and devastation that their wars cause just desperately craving more power and authority
They disregard the cries of the hunger in Gaza
The frightened people in Ukraine who just want to live a normal life in freedom to live like us
The poor and neglected all round the world who are left to die even though the medical and technical knowledge is there to save them because it will not make the rich richer
We look at the companies who try to keep the old ways of burning fossil fuels alive despite it warming the planet and choking or children. Just because that’s the way they have always made profit and these new instructions for the planet might not be as easy for them to turn to profit.
The politicians who stick to the old script blame refugees for all ills regather then admitting bad decisions and mismanagement that they oversaw and we voted for.
Let us be open to your Instructions for a new world
Let us welcome the new be it people or ideas let us pray for the injustice we see overseas but let us also look inward closer to home where it is us that cling to the old ways of doing things because it is comfortable for us.
Let us be aware and open when people are here in our midst that we can help let us have the courage to be open to new instructions new ways of doing things.
When there is a need Lord please remove the plank from our eyes and let us not be the ones who come up with the old excuses
It’s someone else’s responsibility
If They go back home, we’ll help them there.
We need to be sure that our help will be used properly before we can act in case they don’t deserve it.
Let us take on your new Instructions for a new world
And simply say
Let me help you
What can I do for you
And trust you the 1 God to set both us and them free from the old rules to be 1 people together united in the freedom and fellowship that your new Jerusalem promises
It is in that spirit that we join together on this
The 24th day of the month and pray for:
*For the nurseries and parent-toddler groups in our area — for the children, the staff, and the young families served. We ask for your blessing and guidance as children grow and learn and make friends, for your strength and protection from harm, and for your patience and grace for those who teach and nurture.
*For the music ministry of St John’s: for the choir, the praise band, the organist, and all who enable our worship and prayer through music.
*For the land, people, and governments of the nations of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Aruba, and Curaçao.
And as we think of all the peoples in need near and far from us we call out to you in the words your son taught us:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen.
Sanctuary Hymn 529: Forth in Thy Name (tune: Truro)
Sending
Even here and now, God is creating a new world through us — through our community that lives God’s kingdom way. Go to let this time of worship flow out into a new way of living as God’s treasured and holy and priestly people.
And as you go, may the Spirit of God go above you to watch over you…and may the Spirit of God go beside you to be your companion…may the Spirit of God go before you to show you the way, and behind you to push you into places you might not go if you thought you were alone. And may the Spirit of God go within you, to remind you that you are loved more deeply than you can possibly imagine. May the fire of God’s love burn brightly in you, and through you into the world. Go in peace. Amen.
Sung Benediction Response (John L Bell, tune Gourock St John’s)
Now may the Lord of all be blessed,
Now may Christ’s gospel be confessed,
Now may the Spirit when we meet
Bless sanctuary and street.
Sanctuary Postlude Music
Announcements
* We worship in the sanctuary on Sundays at 11am, and Sunday worship is also online. If you are able, please enter by the front door in Bath street, and only those who need step-free access should use the back door. If you feel unwell, please worship online, to protect both yourself and others in our community.
* The first Sunday of the month at 11am is an all-age service, with different ways of encountering God’s word without a traditional sermon. All people — young and old, different personalities and learning styles, are welcome! You’ll find a more informal service with a variety of music, a Bible story, prayer, and some more interactive elements. The online service for the first Sunday will therefore also be different — there will still be a reading, prayers, and music, but usually not a sermon.
* Starter Packs are in need of Bathroom/Kitchen Cleaner, Washing up Liquid, Cleaning Cloths and Hand Wash.
The FoodBank are running low on diluting juice, tinned mince & onions, tinned stew, tinned ravioli, tinned macaroni, tinned fruit, and pasta sauce.
You can bring donations to the church and place them into the boxes in the vestibule. Thank you!
* The Kirk Session will meet on Thursday 28 August at 7pm.
* The next Bowl & Blether is on Monday 1 September. Doors open at 11:30, and soup & toasties are served from 12 noon – 1:30pm. All are welcome! If you’d like to volunteer we have three shifts available: 9:45-12 for preparation and set-up; 11:30-1:30 for serving; or 12:45-2pm for clean up. Speak to Teri, Graham Bolster, or Charlene!
* We look forward to welcoming Church of Scotland mission worker the Rev. Muriel Pearson to speak on Thursday the 4th of September at 7pm in the sanctuary. Muriel will talk about her life and work experiences in Israel and Palestine over the past four years, the current situation there, our Church partners and work on the ground, and what we can do. She will also answer some audience questions. All are welcome!
* Did you know that the ministry we do at St John’s costs about £3000 per week and we are currently running about £500 short? Everything we do is funded by your generous giving — all our support for young people, older people, bereavement care, community outreach, worship, study, spiritual growth, and community work is because of your offering. If you would like to set up a standing order in order to facilitate your spiritual discipline of giving, or if you would like to make an extra gift to support the ministry St. John’s does in our parish, you can give online by clicking here. If you would like to set up a standing order, please contact Teri and she can give you the treasurer’s details. You can also send your envelopes to the church or the manse by post and we will ensure they are received. It is also possible to donate to the work of the parish assistant, speak to Anne Love about how to go about directing new donations to that item in the budget.
* Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Youtube, and to sign up for our email newsletter! Midweek you can watch Wine and the Word on Youtube, pray with video devotions on Facebook, and consider a new angle on something with a devotional email.
* Wednesday Evening Bible Study is at 7:30pm in the Manse and we are reading Luke!
* Free period products are available in the church toilets for anyone who might need them, thanks to Hey Girls and Inverclyde Council.
