Sermon Tone Analysis

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Theme           What is Jesus’ ultimate sign?
Prelude
Welcome
Call to Worship
Leader: All the earth proclaims God’s glory.
\\ \\ People: All the universe and beyond proclaim the vastness of God’s creation.
\\ \\ Leader: All creation praises you, O God. \\ \\ People: Our voices and hearts here this day, proclaim your greatness.
~*Hymn of Praise            # 37              “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”
~*Invocation    (the Lord’s Prayer) Lord God, we seek some guarantee, some sign of your Holy Presence.
As we begin our worship, draw us to you and let us glimpse you at work, not only here in this house, but in the world, as you bring hope and life to all your children.
~*Gloria Patri
Scripture Reading          Exodus 20:1–17
The Ten Commandments are given by God as a necessary way to help the Israelites survive and thrive in the wilderness.
The key to their survival was not allowing themselves to be tempted to worship other gods.
Anthem                                      With My Voice I Cry Out
Our  Offering to God               (same as last week)
~*Doxology
~*Prayer of Dedication     As we gather our gifts on this day, instill in us a spirit of dedication and thanksgiving.
Help us to commit our very lives to you, O God. Give us the grace to see you, to hear you, and to love you.
Give us the strength to walk in the narrow path of your love and to ignore those that would lead us down a different pathway.
Help us recognize your face in the faces of those who are poor, lonely, estranged, or suffering.
Allow us to see your son in the faces of those around us each day.
Empower us, O God, so we might commit our lives to being your faithful servants, not only now, but always, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
~*Hymn of Prayer           insert      Heal Me, Hand of Jesus
Pastoral Prayer 
Patient God, you have given us eyes to see and ears to hear, and yet when we are confronted by your goodness and surrounded by your love, we fail to see you or hear your voice.
More often than not we attend to the voices of the world that create confusion for our spirits and souls, rather than tune in on the power of your word and the gift of your love.
O God, we confess our struggle to hear and see.
We admit that we have failed.
We recognize our desire to be influenced by the voices of this world and the signs of this age.
We realize how easy it is to trust those who would gratify us immediately, and yet leave us to wither and die.
As we worship you today, we humbly confess our shortsightedness and our sin – all the ways in which we have gone away from you.
Forgive us, O God, and restore within us a desire to see you and to listen to your voice.
Almighty and everlasting God, we live in an age of signs and wonders.
Help us to see that these signs and wonders reflect not only the accomplishment of humankind, but also reflect the many ways in which you have blessed this earth.
Help us see in these wonders not our glory, but your glory.
Help us to appreciate and be thankful for what you have done for us.
Help us worship you, our Creator, for we gain our strength only from you.
Help us to be mindful of the most powerful sign you have given to us, the death and resurrection of your son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
For it is in Christ and through Christ that we have been given eternal life with you.
Amen.
*Litany* \\ \\ Leader: We are challenged to become more and more like Jesus Christ, \\ \\ People: in our living, in our loving, in our thinking, in our giving, in our sharing, in our caring, in our homes, at work or at school, in the store, or on the freeway.
\\ \\ Leader: We are to be more and more like Jesus Christ, \\ \\ People: with our parents, with our neighbors, with aunts and uncles, with a best friend and a stranger, too, with our children, and our teachers, with our boss and our assistants, with all! \\ \\ All: May we be more like Christ as we move through these days of Lent, these days of discipleship, these days of Christ like service.
~*Hymn of Praise            # 561     “Day by Day”
 
Scripture Reading          Psalm 19
 
Message         Intelligent Design
The knowledge of God comes to us through different channels.
Scientific discovery is one form, natural revelation is another, written revelation yet another.
One God, One Truth.
Recently, a scientist, who is also a leader in his congregation, prepared a devotional for his local church board based upon a reading from Genesis 1.
His comments were prompted by an essay in /The Washington Post/ by Henry Brinton, a Presbyterian pastor, on the debate within his congregation between proponents of Intelligent Design and Evolution.
The scientist began by describing himself as a scientist and a Christian.
He went on to explain the difference between a scientific theory and a hypothesis: The first is proven by a rigorous testing of hypotheses; the second is not provable by a set of repeated tests and thus remains a hypothesis.
Theory is not the same as hypothesis.
\\ Then he stated his own conviction regarding creation.
And I quote “God did it.
The Genesis stories of creation, while different in detail, agree that God did it.
This theme runs throughout the Bible.
That God did it does not suggest /how/ God created us, and I find it somewhere between amusing~/annoying~/irritating~/
maddening that people might have the nerve to insist that God did it in a way that is pleasing to them.
I feel that God has given us the intelligence to explore the world around us and to do our best to understand it.”
End of quote \\ This approach, combining the pursuit of truth through scientific discovery while humbly acknowledging that there are some things known only to God, allows for an embrace of science and faith.
It allows for one to pursue the data that science reveals, including data about the origins of life, while praising God as the magnificent author of all that is.
\\ This, in fact, was the approach of many of the great scientists of history, including Galileo, Kepler and Einstein.
The pursuit of truth is what animated them.
If one believes that God is the author of all truth, then the pursuit of scientific truth is not to be feared but rather pursued with joy and delight in the discoveries that will render the manifold splendor of God’s truth.
Truth is truth, therefore, scientific truth need not be held in opposition to revealed, or religious, truth; They are different aspects of the truth that leads us to a knowledge of God.
\\ Generations of believers have embraced the prayer of Psalm 19 in just this way.
\\ /The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge/ (Psalm 19:1-2).
\\ The psalmist gazes at the beauty of creation and utters praise to God, the sovereign author of it all.
This praise-offering comes from a truth born of faith.
This is not science asserting, it is faith affirming.
Science talks the talk; faith walks the walk.
Science can do no more; faith can do no less.
\\ Science will never be able to tell us — based on empirical evidence — that there’s a God or there isn’t a God.
Only faith can make such a declaration.
\\ /The knowledge of God comes to us through different channels.
Scientific discovery is one form, natural revelation is another, written revelation yet another.
One God, One Truth/.
\\ The psalmist goes on to praise God for the glory of the human person who has a unique place in all creation.
\\ /Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor/ (Psalm 8:5).
\\ Darwin’s theory of evolution has had Christians grinding their teeth for almost 150 years.
It seems to fly in the face of the Genesis account of the origin of life and the natural world.
This is particularly troubling if Genesis is read as a scientific journal rather than a theological document that explores how humans are in relationship with God their Creator.
\\ The latest version of this argument against the theory of evolution comes from proponents of Intelligent Design.
This is not a new proof, or argument, but an old one (see Aquinas) repackaged and significantly more sophisticated than earlier versions of creationism.
ID argues that Darwin’s theory of evolution is adequate to describe the wonderfully complex diversity of creation.
Such complexity (the human eye being the most common example given), demands an unseen Designer an assertion that evolutionary biologists, and other scientists, are unwilling to make.
The evidence might suggest an unseen Designer, especially if you are a person of faith and have certain spiritual pre-sets that make it easier for you to make that leap, but the evidence does not demand an unseen Designer, scientists say, because that would assume that the evidence has been subject to rigorous scientific methodology.
There is no scientific test for the existence of God or the origins of human life that “demands” the answer ID people want.
\\ Still, Intelligent Design is a strong and powerful proof, or argument, even though it is a proof that doesn’t prove.
It is so strong, that most of us, when we stand before a towering mountain, or approach a foaming ocean, or watch the sun rise or set, wonder how anyone in their right minds can refuse to acknowledge the existence of the Creator.
\\ But we can only do so much with ID.
Many scientists, including the one who led the devotions for his church board, see the Intelligent Design movement, however sophisticated it might be packaged, as a distinct undermining of scientific research that has been tested numerous times and a severing of the once peaceful alliance of science and faith, each grounded in the pursuit of truth.
Such a severance would be most unfortunate, and certainly not one anticipated by the historic faith of Christians and Jews.
\\ again: /The knowledge of God comes to us through different channels.
Scientific discovery is one form, natural revelation is another, written revelation yet another.
One God; One Truth./
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