(Click HERE to see the FBLive video feed of this service - due to a medical emergency we got a late start - 32:30, sermon starts at 36:30)

(Click HERE to donate to Lidgerwood Church's mission and ministries)

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 Mark Wheeler

Ezekiel 36:22-23                                                                                                     

Fourth Sunday in Lent, 03/27/2022

 "How Does Your Faith Smell?"                                                                               

Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church 

2   (This is how the service was planned - due to a medical emergency, this is not how it all came down) Be blessed with both.

Create in Me a Clean Heart . . .

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Hello everyone! Welcome to worship at Lidgerwood!!

Psalm 51 – a biblical prayer of confession! When we gather for worship it is super appropriate that we gather as a people of contrition! – Especially in this Season of Lent as we prepare ourselves, our minds, hearts, and spirits, to experience the Gospel Good News of God's love and power in the Resurrection of Easter!

Welcome! We are glad you are here with us today!

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  • We have - New COVID Guidelines – mask-wearing is totally optional – wear one of it feels safer, and be respectful of distance-keeping when we are not wearing a mask.

"Masks are optional, and respect is required!"

We truly want that no one should feel judged, and everyone should feel safe, so continue to be gentle with each other. Still listening to the Philippians 2:4 passage:

" in humility, each counting others better than himself; each of you not just looking to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others."  Philippians 2:4

We are gathered in our church sanctuary – a holy place – and it's also a safe place – where the divine and the human connect together. Welcome to this holy sacred and safe place today.

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Let's take a second to welcome each other, and those in the room, look at the camera and say HI to your friends who are at home. Tell your loved ones, whoever you can see , "The Lord is with you – and also with you!!"

Welcome to this "gathering" in God's name. We are assembled in NorthEast Spokane, WA, along with people from all over the world. We are very glad you are "here" with us.

Be filled with God's Holy Spirit presence and power, in your homes, through your phones and computers, in this building here, and in your lives. Pray with us … and hear and be transformed by God's Word.

Join is as Pastor Kathy leads us in our Call to Worship:

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Our opening song of praise and devotion –– #532 – Be Thou My Vision – led by Donna Stone!!Please stand and join her in this prayer of our faith!

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Jesus came as the incarnate Son of God, bridging the gap between us and You, O God.  We sing the carols of Christmas.  Christ lived to teach us how to live and to demonstrate Your love and mercy to us.  As we approach the real work of Christ, shine Your light so brightly on us that we will be unable to find any darkness in which to hide.  Help us to deny ourselves this sober season so that we might even offer a sample of Heaven, right here on earth … through Christ or Lord, Amen.

How many mothers do we have here in this room this morning?  When you send your kids off to school, or when you used to, whom among you invests some thought into what your children eat for lunch?  I know my mom made and packed my lunch nearly every school day for 12 years.  In High School she would write me little notes all over my brown paper bag, notes about how much she loved me (as a 17-year young buck, this was at least a little embarrassing until I turned it into bragging rights and passed my lunch bag around for others to read and laugh at, and I think be just a little envious of).
We all know that kids who bring their own lunches sometimes trade apples for Twinkies® and bologna sandwiches for peanut butter, and the like.  And some kids – today it's way easier than when we went to school – some kids hide their lunch and get a cafeteria lunch (for which the parents get a bill at the end of the semester!).
I heard a story awhile back about a high school in Germany.  The music room had had an odor in it for a number of years.  The custodial crew came in and cleaned, and it still stunk.  The administration finally just told the teacher to open the window and air it out.  The room stunk!  Everyone knew they were getting close to the music room, at any time of day or night, by how strong the odor was.  Then, there was some repair that needed to happen on their radiant heating system, and guess what they found when they took the radiator out of the music room … a covered cavity in the wall behind the radiator filled with sandwiches dating back 40 years or more! – and because that was in Germany, not just bologna but bratwurst …!  And the aroma was finally fixed!
Some smells are good smells.  On Thanksgiving morning, the smell of turkey roasting in the oven can make the mouths of even the fullest of bellies water.  The smell of fresh baked bread – hardly anything beats it.  Realtors sometimes tell their home-sellers to light cinnamon scented candles; they make the buyers want to live there.  In Disneyland®, as you walk down Main Street, they blow vanilla scent onto the sidewalks as a way of encouraging guests to spend money on sweets.
When you walk into your family home and you smell pizza, mmmmm, while it's really hard to describe, everyone knows it when they smell it.
When we have guests over, be honest, what room is the most popular room?  The Kitchen!  A fork stabs at a piece of meat; a finger dips into the cookie dough, a spoon samples a taste of soup.  We've all seen it.  We've all done it!  Nobody's hunger is satisfied by this slightly stolen segment of supper, but it's enough to reassure us that we really are going to get what we're waiting for.  That little taste is not the complete meal, but it provides a sample, a foretaste, of the real thing ahead.
One way that a Church Discerns God's Vision for the Church is with the biblical understanding of the Church as Sign, Foretaste, and Instrument of the Kingdom of God.  We have already looked at ways the Church is a Sign pointing to the Kingdom of God; we will look at how we are to be an Instrument of God's Kingdom on earth; today we consider how we are a Foretaste.

Let's go to the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel and get a whiff of what this means.  This passage of scripture comes as a part of a well-known section in which Ezekiel looks ahead to the renewal of God's chosen people.  The history of Israel proves this out, but the promises Ezekiel makes are not fully realized by the Judeans who lived at his time.  It took a few hundred more years before a wandering Jew from Nazareth … brought in the meal of which Ezekiel gave them a foretaste.  Let's hear God's Word from Ezekiel 36:22-23  (and I'm gonna take us through verse 28) …. ----

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22 "Therefore, say to the house of Israel, 'This is what the Lord God says: It is not for your sake that I will act, house of Israel, but for my holy name, which you profaned among the nations where you went. 23 I will honor the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations—the name you have profaned among them. The nations will know that I am the Lord—this is the declaration of the Lord God—when I demonstrate my holiness through you in their sight.

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24 "'For I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries, and will bring you into your own land. 25 I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone[a] and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances. 28 You will live in the land that I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.

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"Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I show myself holy through you…."
 
Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one knows the pain of that final Good-bye.  When it comes with no warning, we're kind of left empty. The Stones, the Lockwoods, Jennifer's extended family, just in the last couple weeks all know this shock and aw-ful-ness. Most of us have been here sometime in our lives.
Our Call to Worship this morning was a collection of biblical declarations of ways Jesus promises to provide for His disciples, giving us advance notice that He will be here for us; His words are like "foretastes" of His coming victory – but only after His coming death!  Saying Good-bye is never easy; NOT saying Good-bye can be almost unbearable.
 
But there is a way to lighten that burden.  I do not mean to make light of anybody's pain or loss or fear.  If you've lost a loved one without warning … know that I know that this is an unrelenting ache in your chest.  But there is a way to lighten that burden, because this is a clear reminder of our call, as Christians and as a corporate collection of Christians, a Church, to offer our faith as a foretaste, an aroma, a whiff, of the joy and peace and hope and love of God's Kingdom. 
 
People say, "We have only one 1st impression – so make that 1st impression count."  I have found that sometimes a good clue as to who a person is, is not to talk to their "references" – former bosses, friends, family members, neighbors, church members, etc. – but to listen to their outgoing message on their answering machine or voice mail.  This is no guarantee of what kind of person this is, but it can give some strong hints.  It's a foretaste of the person's real self; a smell that invites us in or drives us away.
For example, listen to this real outgoing message:
"I can't come to the phone now, so if, well, actually, I CAN come to the phone now, I mean, like, I'm at the phone NOW, recording this message, but I'm doing this NOW, while you're listening to it LATER, except for you I guess it's NOW, like, when you're listening to it... I mean, like, wait, gosh. This is so confusing."
What might that tell you about the owner of that answering machine?
(Game show-announcer voice:) "Hello, and welcome to Phone Tag! (Cheers in background.) If you'd like to join the game, please leave your name and number at the beep, and we'll try to reach you when you're not around. And thanks once again for playing Phone Tag!"
Who owns that phone?
 

OK, now comes the hard part: what do people smell when they are around us? … you? … me?  Do they get a whiff of the coming Kingdom of God?  Or do they smell the world in which we all live?

Are we offering a foretaste of heaven? Or are we just offering a different variety of what everyone else offers?

You see what I'm asking.  When people meet us, are they aware that we love the Lord Jesus with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength and all our mind?  Or do they think we love Gonzaga basketball, or Mariners baseball, or gardening, or working on cars or in the kitchen or under a blue sky?  That's not to say we can't love those things … but it is to ask, what takes 1st place?

God told the Israelites, "Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I show myself holy through you…."  
I think God says the same thing to His Church today.  "Then [Spokane] will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I show myself holy through [Lidgerwood]…."
 
Are we an accurate foretaste of the Kingdom of God?  How does our faith smell?  Inviting?  Joyful?  Peaceful?  Hopeful?  Loving?  God bless LPC when we do!

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LPC's calling for 2022 and our 2nd hundred years of worship and prayer and praise from this Upper Room will mean we need to reach a new culture of people with the Christian message of salvation in Jesus Christ.  We need to Smell in such a way that our friends will ask us what makes the difference … and then we can say, "Come to Church with me, and see."

Great God of Creation, we worship You in spirit and in truth.

Lead us into our 2nd hundred years of worship and pray from this sanctuary.

Prepare us for Your coming Kingdom and everything You would have us do and be here at LPC.  Give us an inviting scent in our rancid world!

Confirm Your direction with joy and hope.

In Jesus' authority.  Amen.

16-18    Let's come to the Lord in prayer –

  • what are some praises, thanksgivings, adorations we want to offer?
  • Is there a person or a situation you want to lift to our Lord for His answers and grace?

19   We pray this in the name of Jesus, who taught us to pray:   [The Lord's Prayer]

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Like the earliest Christians, we are here in this place because of the commitment and faith and generosity of others who shared the Good News of the Gospel in their time.

So we turn now, in our time, and share our faith and our commitment through generous giving to support the ministry of this church in Christ's name. Let us gather our gifts together and offer them to God in gratitude and praise.

Abundant and renewing God,
Guide us in the endeavors of this next century of prayer and praise from this building, that we might serve You to bring about the redemption of Your world and the healing of Your children. That we might enrich the outreach and ministry of this larger community with our resources. And that we might praise You with our lives, so that all may know that we are Your disciples. Amen.

– Offering (4449 N Nevada St, Spokane, 99207 ; or click HERE, or text 833-976-1333, code "Lidgerwood")

Expedition Song #551 –  Give Me Jesus  –!  – Scott Lockwood!  We began today with confession of sin, and we close with a confession of faith! – join the Scott in that confession!

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We continue with this benediction:     May we Grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Be filled with God's Holy Spirit.
And give glory to God, today, and forever! Amen.

And as we do that:  "May the Lord bless you and protect you;
may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;
may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace."

26-27   Announcements      

Resources: 

Dietterich, Inagrace T.; Sign; Foretaste; Instrument; Center for Parish Development; Pp. 9-11.

Dyck, Paul; The Lenten Candles; Contemporary Drama Service; CO Springs, CO; 1993; P. 5-6.

Piper, John; The Blazing Center: The Soul-Satisfying Supremacy of God in All Things; Multnomah Press; Sisters, OR; 2006.

Wheeler, Mark; "How Does your Faith Smell?"; Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church; 03/18/2007.

#686 – For the Sake of His Holy Name (Ezekiel 36:22–23)

https://thepastorsworkshop.com/opening-prayers-prayers-of-adoration-on-lent/