Worship

In-Person Worship

Registration is no longer required to attend a service. We will keep the 8 a.m. Sunday worship service as a masked service. Everyone who still prefers to wear a mask is invited to attend this service, and we ask that everyone who comes will wear a mask. The 10:30 a.m. Sunday service will follow the new guidance from the CDC. We are excited to have people return to worship, and want to make it accessible to as many people as possible.

Online Worship: He Provides More than We Can Ask or Imagine
January 16

Download the worship folder, fill out your virtual connection card, and participate along with the video. God’s blessings on your worship!

Worship Theme: He Provides More than We Can Ask or Imagine

First Lesson: Isaiah 62:1-5 (NIV)
Second Lesson: Ephesians 3:14-21 (NIV)
Gospel : John 2:1-11 (NIV)
Music:

• CW 229: This Day at Your Creating Word
• CW 110: My Song is Love Unknown - Koine
• CW 355: Take the World, But Give Me Jesus
• Men's Chorus: As with Gladness Men of Old
• CW 385: Chief of Sinners Though I Be - Koine

Message Notes & Growth Group Questions

Watch the livestream beginning at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday. After the livestream is finished, the video will be available to watch at any time.

View Livestream on YouTube

Message: Surprising Truths About Jesus: He Provides More than We Can Ask or Imagine

Pastor Jon Enter

A close friend of mine served as a pastor in the inner city of Milwaukee for over a decade. When he graduated from the seminary and was a shiny new pastor at his first church, he was asked to conduct a wedding for a couple he didn’t know. Everything was pretty normal until at the rehearsal, which is when the bride came up to him and asked, “Where should we put the broom during the service?” “Do you mean the groom?” my friend asked. “No, the broom,” she replied. Have you ever heard of the wedding custom called “jumping the broom”? I hadn’t. My friend hadn’t either. It’s when the bride and groom turn around at the end of the service and jump over a broom on their way out of the church. Sounds romantic.

The custom goes back a long time and not everyone agrees on where it came from. Some believe it started in Scotland. There was something called a “broomstick” marriage back then, which wasn’t good. A broomstick marriage was when a person felt forced or was forced to get married. So, jumping over the broom in your wedding became a symbol that this wasn’t a broomstick marriage. You wanted to get married.

Others take the jumping of the broom back to the days of slavery. Most marriages between slaves weren’t legally recognized. So, slave communities developed their own methods for recognizing a marriage, and jumping the broom became the public way to say this couple was choosing to be as close to married as was legally allowed. In some places, they believe that jumping over the broom determines who runs the household. Whoever jumps highest or lands on the ground first becomes the decision maker in the marriage.

I’ve never officiated a wedding where the bride and groom jump over a broom. I DID HOWEVER once officiate a pirate/mermaid wedding. True story. There are a lot of unusual wedding customs out there. In some places in China, the groom is required to shoot his bride with a bow and arrow before the wedding – three times. The arrows don’t have pointy tips; they have rubber tips. Again, sounds super romantic. In French Polynesia, they don’t jump over a broom; they walk over their relatives. After the ceremony, the relatives of the bride lay side by side in the dirt, face down. The bride and groom leave the ceremony by walking over them. In India, the groom is required to take off his shoes before approaching the altar. As soon as he does, everyone from the bride’s side of the family tries to steal the shoes while everyone on the groom’s side tries to protect them. If the bride’s family succeeds in stealing them, they hold the shoes hostage until the groom’s family pays a ransom. Romantic!

There are a lot of fun wedding customs in the world today, and some that aren’t so fun. In Borneo, the bride and groom have to stay in their house for three consecutive days after the wedding – but they can’t use the bathroom. Not romantic. Some tribes in Africa require the mother of the bride to spend the wedding night with the bride and groom just in case they have any questions. Definitely not romantic! Like I said, there are lots of fun wedding customs but I think one custom you won’t find anywhere is the custom of disappointing your guests. In Jesus’ day, weddings often lasted seven days, which required a lot of planning for a lot of guests who would all be expecting that the wedding would have everything they would need to have a good time. But in the only wedding we hear about Jesus attending, they were in danger of disappointing their guests by running out of the beverage of choice, which was wine.

Now, maybe that’s not a big deal to you because it’s not your wedding. But it is a big deal when something you care about leaves you or the people you love feeling disappointed. It’s a big deal when the doctor gives you bad news you weren’t expecting. It’s a big deal when the doctor gives you bad news you were expecting. It’s a big deal when you’re concerned about your children or your aging parents or your parents’ marriage. It’s a big deal when you can’t sleep at night because you’re worried about something. It’s a big deal when what you’re worried about is something you’re too embarrassed or ashamed about to admit to anyone. It’s a big deal when you lose a parent, or a child, or a friend. Those things matter to you. And not just you.

At a wedding in Cana, one couple in Jesus’ day found a very powerful friend who cared about even the smallest details of a day that mattered so much to them. And at the same wedding, we find the same thing; a Friend, your Friend, your Jesus who knows what matters to you, and who wants you to know that it matters to Him.

In the Congo, if you want to ruin a wedding, you just need someone to tell a funny joke. In order for the marriage to be taken seriously in the Congo the bride and groom are not allowed to smile at all throughout the entire marriage ceremony. Most people don’t know what that’s like not to smile on your wedding day. But this couple in John chapter 2 almost did.

At this wedding, the wedding party wasn’t worried about running out of wine since that was already happening. They were worried about what might happen if the guests found out. In Jesus’ day, running out of wine wasn’t just embarrassing. The bride and groom could actually be sued by certain guests for letting it happen. And, of course, they didn’t know whether or not anyone would actually sue them. They didn’t know if the guests would all leave and take their presents with them. They didn’t know if anything bad was going to come from this situation. They were just worried that something would.

According to psychologists, 40% of the things we worry about never happen. Ever. 30% of the things we worry about happened in the past and can’t be changed. 12% of our worry comes from what other people say about us, whether it’s true or not. 10% comes from worrying about our health, which gets worse the more we worry. That leaves only 8%; 8% of the things we worry about are even worth thinking about. Worry isn’t so much a fear of what’s going on in your life right now. It’s a fear that what’s going on in your life isn’t going to end well. And a lot of people know that feeling. How many people do we know struggling with cancer? They found a tumor in your stomach, pancreas, throat, breast or brain. It’s growing. The doctors can’t even tell you what’s going to happen. You’re getting older. You already can’t do so many of the things you promised yourself you’d never stop doing. Satan knows exactly where you’re vulnerable. He is so good at getting fear to sear into your mind.

You’ve had that sick feeling in your gut when your hard work doesn’t seem to be accomplishing anything. And you’re not the only one. How do you think those servants felt when Mary told them to listen to a man they had never met before, and when his solution to the problem with the wine was to pour some water on it?

First of all, it was hard work filling those six jars with water. Each held up to 30 gallons. But filling them with water would be a tough task. 20-30 gallons each. Let’s go with 25 gallons on average. Times 6. That’s 150 gallons of water they’d have to carry. A gallon of water weighs 8 pounds. That’s 1,200 pounds of water to carry. We don’t know how many servants there were. We don’t know how big the water carrying containers were but they weren’t lightweight plastic, we know that! So maybe they could at max carry 4 gallons/32 pounds of water each trip. And we don’t know how far they had to walk to get a spring/a well. That’s 37 trips they’d have to take at the back breaking weight of 32 pounds of sloshing around water. That’s plenty of time for them to wonder, “Why are we doing this?” They knew … that water isn’t wine. It’s water. They could see it with their own eyes. And, never before in the history of the world had anyone taken a drink of water and mistaken it for wine, which meant that going to the one man who could fire them and trying to convince him that the water was wine probably made them think twice. What Jesus was telling them to do included a lot of work, a lot of personal risk, and not a lot of hope that it would ever work. And yet they still listened. They still did exactly what Jesus commanded.

What do you do when you get some really bad news? What do you do when life isn’t going well for you? What do you do when trying to overcome a personal sin is harder than you ever imagined? What do you do when you don’t see anything good happening, or when what you’re trying just doesn’t seem to be working? Do you “not worry” like Jesus tells us? Do you listen when he says, “Do not be discouraged,” “Do not give up,” “Do not be afraid,” and “Do not be anxious about anything”?

It’s hard not to be anxious sometimes. Alex and Jemma were getting married. Alex proposed to Jemma, and they were going to get married in April. They were getting anxious because they found out that Jemma had ovarian cancer. But they still loved each other, so they were still going to get married. But in March, about a month before the wedding, the cancer had spread so quickly into her liver and lungs, and Jemma was getting so sick, that they decided to move the wedding up – to the next day, March 17th. People say your wedding is supposed to be the happiest day of your life. But for Alex, his wedding day is the day he was forever separated from his bride. Jemma died 90 minutes before the ceremony. That’s not supposed to happen on the day of a wedding. Just like you’re not supposed to run out of wine. But they still did.

And it wasn’t Jesus’ fault. He’s not the one who got them into this mess. Just like it’s not his fault that you worry so much. It’s not his fault that you get so discouraged. It’s not his fault that you don’t always trust him. It’s not his fault that a young couple in Cana found themselves in a potentially embarrassing situation.

But he still fixed it, as if nothing else mattered to him and that was his top priority. Just like it wasn’t his body that was so sick with sin. But he still became its weak, pale victim. He wasn’t the one who committed a crime. But he was still whipped within an inch of his life. He’s not the one who questions what God is doing with our lives. But he was still crucified. He’s not the one afraid of being forgotten. And yet, he was – on a cross – forsaken by his own Father - so that you could be forgiven and forever loved.

Your worries, your doubts, your greatest fears didn’t have to concern Jesus. But they did. They do. You matter to him, which is why Mary told the servants it’ll be ok as long as you “do whatever he tells you.” And you will too, as long as you do the same thing; as long as you listen when he tells you to “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” Like the hymn says, “What a friend we have in Jesus – all our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to him in prayer.” And what a privilege to know he will answer. The only thing we don’t know is when.

After Jesus said, “My time has not yet come,” he created the wine in just a couple of minutes. But after hearing an angel promise her, as a virgin, she would have a child who would do great things, Mary waited 30 years to get to this moment, his first miracle, the first time he fulfilled that promise.

30 years. I don’t know how long you’ve had to wait for good news, for relief, for an answer to a prayer, for someone you’re working with to wise up, grow up, get up, or to hold a child in your arms you know you’ll never want to give up. But even if your relief never comes from the mouth of your boss or a doctor; even if your eyes have had to wait 30 years or more to see exactly what you’re looking for – don’t worry. It just means that Jesus is still preparing a wine that is much better. Everyone else brings the choice wine out first, but Jesus saves his best for the end so he can be sure to fully and finally satisfy every thirst. Amen.

TV Services

Our full weekend worship service is broadcast on Valley Access - Channel 18 on Wednesdays at 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. and on Thursdays at 4:30 a.m. and 11 a.m.

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