Speaker Identification

Speaker 1 - Worship Leader / Liturgist: Identified by the opening greeting, confession, assurance, announcements, and pastoral prayer.

Speaker 2 - Ms. Rachel / Children's Message Leader: Identified because she introduces herself as Ms. Rachel and leads the children's message about encouragement.

Speaker 3 - Sermon Speaker / Pastor: Identified by the Scripture reading from 2 Kings 5, the sermon on Naaman and the servant girl, and the closing sermon prayer. The transcript does not clearly state the speaker's name.

Speaker 4 - Congregation and Children: Identified through congregational responses, children's answers, and spoken blessings.

Speaker 5 - Music / Congregational Singing: Used where the automated transcript provides hymn or song fragments that are not fully intelligible.

Speaker 5 - Music / Congregational Singing:
[Opening hymn lyrics are indistinct in the automated transcript and could not be confidently reconstructed.]

Speaker 1 - Worship Leader / Liturgist:
We lift our voices together and sing praises to God. God is present and here with us this morning, and He greets us with these words:

May the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be and abide with you all.

Good morning, and welcome to LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church. Whether you are worshiping with us here in person or through our livestream, we are glad you are here this morning.

We extend a special welcome to anyone who is visiting with us, and we especially welcome our Serve team for this year. Our Serve Week is our annual summer service week, when we welcome youth groups from around North America who have dedicated this week to serving in our community. This year we welcome people from Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan.

You will all have an opportunity to meet some of them after church this morning in our multipurpose room, which is down the hallway and to the right. You are all invited, not for a time of coffee, but for a time of Klondike bars. It is our annual tradition, and we are excited for you, congregation, to meet some of our participants this week. I hope you will be able to join us after the service.

Because of this special opportunity to get to know our Serve team, there will be no district coffee this week. District coffee will resume next week with District Four.

The theme for Serve this year, as you might have noticed by the T-shirts, is "Surprised by God." Yesterday our speaker for the week, Reverend Jen Rosima, asked each of us if we liked surprises. I wonder how you all would answer that question. Do you like surprises?

For some of us, surprises invoke a feeling of joy or excitement. For others, they bring a feeling of dread or worry. So how do we approach this idea of being surprised by God? One way is that we open ourselves up to the Spirit's leading in our lives. We make ourselves available to God to lead and move us in ways that might be unexpected.

Sometimes those unexpected gut feelings from the Spirit bring joy and excitement. Other times, they can be hard and bring a sense of worry. Because we are sinful and broken people, we often harden our hearts toward the Spirit's leading. We trust our own judgment instead of seeking God's guidance. We ignore the call God puts on our hearts to act justly and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We often ignore that stirring in our gut that might be pushing us toward an opportunity we did not anticipate taking or even considering.

As you hear these words from Proverbs 3 this morning, take a moment to confess the times when you have not submitted to God's nudging and will for your life:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight."

Join me now as we say together our prayer of confession.

Speaker 1 and Congregation:
Merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We confess that we have relied on our own thoughts rather than wholeheartedly trusting in You. Correct our lives, and may we delight in Your will and walk in Your ways. Amen.

Speaker 1 - Worship Leader / Liturgist:
Even though we turn away from God, God never turns away from us, and He continues to invite us to walk in step with Him. Hear these words of assurance from Ephesians 2, reminding us of God's love and grace:

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Speaker 5 - Music / Congregational Singing:
[Amen is sung or repeated.]

Speaker 1 - Worship Leader / Liturgist:
One announcement before we go to God in prayer this morning: Mary Koestra had the first part of her deep brain stimulation surgery this past Friday. It went really well, and we will continue to hold Mary and Bob in our prayers.

Let us go to God in prayer.

Dear Lord, take our lives and let them be consecrated, Lord, to Thee. Take our moments, take our days, and let them flow in endless praise.

Lord, we lift up endless praise to You because You are a good God who loves us even when we fall short. We lift up ceaseless praise because of Your gift of grace, and we thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus, to die on the cross and save us from our sins. We lift up never-ending praise to You because You have not left us to walk alone. Instead, You have sent the gift of Your Holy Spirit to lead and guide us, to nudge us toward surprising things, and to breathe new life into us each and every day. You, Lord, are worthy of our praise.

Take our hands, Lord, and let them move at the impulse of Your love.

Lord, we thank You for the Serve team this week and for the leaders and participants who are dedicating a week of their summer to being Your hands and feet in this community. Thank You for their willingness to be witnesses of Your love through their acts of service. Bless them and keep them safe as they work to build Your kingdom here on earth.

While our Serve team is helping locally, we think of our missionaries, Daniel and Priscilla Cummings, and their work in Angola. Thank You for their work in health care, and we pray that You bless Priscilla in her upcoming surgical campaign.

Take our will, Lord, and make it Yours, for it shall be no longer ours.

Lord, it is hard to commit our lives to You. We are human, and we like control. And yet, sometimes that need for control holds us back from the things You have in store for us. So we ask that You soften our hearts. Turn them up so that we can sense Your Spirit's leading and trust not in our own understanding, but in Yours.

As an act of trust, Lord, we commit the people we care about into Your hands. We pray for Shahar Jhaustra, Rajrat Shafer, and Ranchumaker as they continue to recover from different surgeries or ailments. We think of Mary Kloestra and pray that You continue to strengthen her after her deep brain surgery. We pray that You give them all swift healing and strength.

We pray for Renee Kuiper, who is scheduled for surgery this coming week. Guide the doctor's hands, and may this surgery, Lord, bring her one step closer to full healing.

We pray for Paul and Trissa Stevenson as their little grandbaby, Oliver, is in the NICU. Lord, help him to continue to gain strength, and be with his parents as they begin this new journey of parenthood earlier than they expected.

Lord, these spoken prayers and those unspoken we commit to You because You are trustworthy and good. In this moment, we offer to You our lives, our hands, and our wills. We ask that You accept them, and we pray that You use them and work through us to build Your kingdom here on earth. In Your name we pray. Amen.

Speaker 5 - Music / Congregational Singing:
[Music follows. Lyrics are indistinct in the automated transcript.]

Speaker 2 - Ms. Rachel / Children's Message Leader:
Hey, children. Come on down for the children's message. I hijacked it from Pastor, and I did not want to give it back. So yay!

Speaker 4 - Children:
You have news. You have news. Can we have a guest at our house?

Speaker 2 - Ms. Rachel / Children's Message Leader:
Cool. Hi, I am Ms. Rachel. It is nice to meet you. Are you Tuss's guest? That is awesome. Well, welcome.

Hi, everybody. How are you today?

Speaker 4 - Children:
Good.

Speaker 2 - Ms. Rachel / Children's Message Leader:
Good, good. All right, raise your hand if you have heard the word "encouragement" before, or "encourage." Yes, awesome.

Encouragement is when you say something or do something that makes someone feel supported. Oh, one more. Perfect. Have you heard "encouragement" before? Maybe? Well, we are learning about it. Thanks for joining.

Encouragement is when you say something or do something that makes someone feel supported, joyful, or happy. Encouragement is going to be really important this week, especially for all of my friends here in the green T-shirts, because they are going to be doing a lot of hard work this week.

They are going to help some of our neighbors pull weeds. They might build some things for people who have a hard time building those things themselves. They might help someone clean their house because it is just too big of a project to do alone. They might even get to serve food to people who are hungry and need some extra food.

They are going to be doing a lot of hard work, and they need encouragement. They need to feel supported so they can keep going. So I thought we could give them some encouragement today.

Can all of you turn and wave to our Serve friends? Can you say, "Hey"?

Speaker 4 - Children:
Hey.

Speaker 2 - Ms. Rachel / Children's Message Leader:
Waving to someone can be a form of encouragement. It makes someone smile. It shows them that you notice them. You might see me wave at you in the hallway sometimes. Waving hi to someone is a form of encouragement.

Another way we can be encouraging is by the things we say to someone. So on the count of three, we are going to say, "You can do it" to our Serve friends. All right? One, two, three.

Speaker 4 - Children:
You can do it.

Speaker 2 - Ms. Rachel / Children's Message Leader:
Yes. This week they can do it. They are going to do a lot of hard things, and you just encouraged them that they can do it this week. If you meet someone this week who needs a little encouragement, you can use that too.

The last way I am going to tell you about today that we can encourage someone is that we can remind them that they are loved. All of us are loved by Jesus. Each week when the congregation gives their blessing to you, that is their way of reminding you that Jesus loves you. They are encouraging you and reminding you that you are supported and loved here too.

So congregation, help me encourage our kids this morning. What is our prayer for these children?

Speaker 4 - Congregation:
Go in peace.

Speaker 2 - Ms. Rachel / Children's Message Leader:
Go in peace. Bye-bye.

Speaker 3 - Sermon Speaker / Pastor:
For some reason, they are a little wilder when Rachel is leading them. I am just putting that out there in a good way.

Our Bible reading this morning is from the book of 2 Kings, chapter 5. I will read verses 1 through 6. That is found on page 572 in your pew Bibles.

Welcome to all you Serve people in your green T-shirts. I chose this text because of you. That does not mean the rest of you are off the hook in terms of listening. It is also directed at all of you as well.

This is only a part of a much longer story. It is the story of Naaman, which I think most of us know. But if you do not, the whole story is that Naaman is this Syrian. He is from Aram, and Aram is sort of modern-day Syria. So he is a Syrian general, he is a foreigner, and he has leprosy.

He ends up going to Israel to get his leprosy cured, and eventually that happens because he runs into Elisha. He is sent to Elisha, who is a prophet of the Lord. Elisha does not actually meet him at first. He only sends out a messenger to talk to him and says, "Go bathe seven times in the Jordan River, and your leprosy will be cured."

At first, Naaman says, "I do not want to do that. This prophet would not even meet with me. The Jordan is a dirty river." But then his servants beg him, remember? Then he says, "Okay, I am going to do it." He bathes seven times in the river, and the text says that when he came out of the water after the seventh time, his flesh was like that of a young boy.

That is the whole story. I want to read just the beginning, which tells us how Naaman ended up in Israel in the first place.

Now Naaman was the commander of the army of the king of Aram, the strongest nation at the time. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.

Now a band of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel. She served Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, "If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria. He would cure him of his leprosy."

Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said.

"By all means, go," the king of Aram replied. "I will send a letter to the king of Israel."

So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver. That is about a million bucks in today's money. I looked it up. He also took 6,000 shekels of gold. That is like nine million dollars in today's money, and ten sets of clothing. I have no idea how much those were worth.

The letter that he took to the king of Israel read, "With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy."

This is the word of the Lord.

Speaker 4 - Congregation:
Amen.

Speaker 3 - Sermon Speaker / Pastor:
If this passage were a painting instead of a piece of literature, if the person who wrote this passage, instead of being someone who worked in words, worked in paint and put it in a frame on a canvas, at the center of this canvas would be Naaman.

There he is. He is in his military dress uniform. He is looking good and standing tall. His chest is out. He has medals all the way across his chest from all his victories. He has a ceremonial sword at his side. It is polished and glittering. He has his hand on the hilt of that sword.

Naaman fills up the frame of the canvas, which is what Naaman always did wherever he went. Naaman is the kind of guy who always fills up the frame. Naaman is one of the most powerful men in the world, and whenever he walks into a room, and you know people like this, he is immediately the man. He is the center of attention. He draws all the eyeballs.

But I do not want you to look at Naaman. I do not want you to look at that person at the center of the frame. I want you to look at a small character off to the side. She is out there in the shadows. She is in a servant's uniform. She has her hair tied back. She has a kerchief on her hair. She looks like she might be 14 years old. She has a broom in her hand. She looks like she might have just finished sweeping the kitchen.

I want you to see this servant girl. I want to bring her out to the foreground because this servant girl has always been one of my absolute favorite biblical characters. I love this little servant girl. I do not even know her name. We do not even know her name, but she is an absolutely wonderful character. I want to bring her out to the foreground and think about her for just a little bit.

We do not know this girl's name. We do not know much about her, but we do know some things. We know that she is an Israelite. She is not from Syria. She is not from Aram. She is an Israelite, which means she grew up learning the stories of God. She grew up trained in the ways of the Lord from her mother's knee. She has heard about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and I certainly hope, given her condition, that she heard about Joseph. She learned to pray. She learned about the commandments. She learned the ways of the Lord. She is an Israelite. That is how she was raised. We know that about her.

We also know that this young girl has been the victim of serious trauma. She has been through real sadness in her life. How do we know that? She was taken from Israel to Aram by raiding parties. That was a terrible but fairly common thing that happened in those days.

You would have mercenary soldiers in a place like Aram, and in order to make a buck, because this was a money proposition, they would get some of their buddies together, go into the neighboring country, raid a village, take slaves, and take cattle so they could make a little bit of money. It would have been absolutely brutal. They would go into this village, probably kill all the adult men, probably kill the older male children, and then take all the women, the rest of the children, and the cattle. They would sell them back in Aram to a rich person like Naaman.

So here is what this young girl has been through. One day, when she is probably about nine years old, she is out in the field doing chores with her family, and all of a sudden there are cries and screams. These strange men on horseback come whipping in. She sees her father get killed. She sees her brothers get killed. She is grabbed. She is put on a cart. She is taken to this foreign country with her mother and her sister. She is probably separated from them, and she is sent off to work for this strange Syrian general who speaks a language she does not know.

I know that some of you probably have challenges in your life. I do not know anything about those challenges. I know that many of you have challenges in your life, and I do know something about those challenges. But I would venture to say that none of us has been through anything worse than what this 14-year-old girl has already experienced.

So given that she is a foreigner, given that she is only 14 years old, and given that she has been through so much trauma, what would you expect from her in terms of strength? How much difference could someone who has been through all that, someone so broken, possibly make in the world?

So much difference.

In this passage, the Holy Spirit shows us that this young girl had so much strength. I want to lift up for you just two aspects of the strength that we see in her in this passage.

First, there is her faith. There would be all kinds of reasons, if you were a 14-year-old girl and this happened to you, for you to give up on faith. One is obvious. You have been through this trauma. You have seen most of your family killed. You have been dragged away and made a slave. You could say, "If God let this happen to me, I am done with God." Lots of people do that. This suffering in my life, this pain, it is too much. If a God is going to allow this to happen to me, I am not interested. It is like Job's wife: curse God and walk away.

She does not do that.

She could also have given up on faith because of her new surroundings. She is in a foreign land. They worship different gods. They have different customs. They speak a different language. It would be much more convenient for her simply to adapt to the culture, to get along, to worship the Syrian gods, and to follow the Syrian customs. It would be so much simpler for her. Continuing to be an Israelite and worship God would be extremely inconvenient in that situation.

And yet, apparently, she keeps holding on to her hope in God. We know that because when she hears that her master has leprosy, what does she do? She says, "I know a God who can cure you. I know a prophet of a God who can help you. His name is Elisha."

This girl's faith is deeply impressive. She is deeply impressive. So half of what impresses me is her strength. The other half of what impresses me is her love.

She has faith, but she does not just keep this faith inside. She is not one of these people who is just sort of hanging on to belief by her fingernails. Her faith goes out. Her faith moves out into the world in love, which is also incredibly remarkable.

If your family had been killed by Syrians, imagine that what happened to her happened to you. If your whole family had been killed by Syrians and you had been taken to a new country, how would you feel about the people who had done this to you? How would you feel about the general who represented the soldiers who came in and killed your family?

If it were me, I would not feel warmly toward them. I would hate them. If I had to serve them, I would do it with clenched teeth. If I found out that my master had leprosy, I would say, "Good. I hope his arm falls off." I mean, right?

But this young girl does not do that. She has compassion on her master when she hears his need. She reaches out to him. She loves her enemy. So her action sort of looks forward to what Jesus says. Remember, Jesus says, "Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you." What she does foreshadows the command that Jesus will give later.

In fact, if you are looking for a picture of what it looks like to love your enemy, the best picture is clearly Jesus on the cross. Jesus looks at the people who have just nailed Him up there and says, "Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing." That is loving your enemy. But if you are looking for another story, it might be this one: this little girl bringing words of hope to the very people who caused her so much pain.

The actions of this young girl, then, foreshadow the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross has not happened yet. What she does in this moment is an Old Testament pointing toward what Jesus will do for all of us on the cross. She is not looking for vengeance. She is not looking to get even. She is giving grace, mercy, and love.

And how strong is this act of love? How strong is this thing that she does? I already told you that Naaman will go to Israel and that he will be cured, and his leprosy will be washed away. But do you all remember what happens immediately after he is cured of his leprosy, when he comes up out of the water?

He says to Elisha, "Now I know that there is no God in all the world except the God of Israel." So it is not just that his body gets cured of leprosy. His soul is changed. His heart is changed. This little girl's action changes the heart of one of the most powerful men in the world.

So let us go back to the beginning. Let us go back to that picture I tried to draw for you at the beginning of that frame: Naaman, big in the middle with his sword and his dress uniform and all his money, and a little girl with the broom in the corner.

I hope you can all see that these two figures represent two different kinds of power. These two figures look for two different ways of being in the world. Naaman represents the way of strength and influence and money, that kind of power. This little girl represents faith, hope, and love.

Which of these two powers is stronger? In the context of this story, which of these two powers is stronger? In the context of this whole book, which of those two powers is stronger? It is the power of the little girl with the broom, which is the same power as the man on the cross.

By now, you have probably figured out why I would choose a text like this for Serve Sunday, because most of you are more like that 14-year-old girl than you are like Naaman. There may even be a 14-year-old girl sitting here in front of me today. But even if there is not, you are all much more like her than you are like Naaman.

Your situation this week will not be so different either. You are going to go out there and serve, and you have probably seen it already. In this immediate neighborhood, you are going to see some of the hardest things that society deals with. You are going to see addiction. You are going to see homelessness. You are going to see mental illness. These problems are going to fill up the frame of your canvas.

And you, I mean, who are you guys? Are you a bunch of teenagers from Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan? What power do you have? Frankly, honestly, you are trying just to hold yourselves together most of the time, right? Being a human being is hard. Being a person is hard. It is hard to figure things out. A lot of days you are just trying to keep going, putting one foot in front of the other.

What difference can you possibly make, you with your broom, with your shovel, with your paintbrush?

You have the same power as this little girl in the story: the power of the crucified God, the power of the risen Lord. If you can go out into whatever you face this week and do some small thing with great love, if you can do it with deeds, but even better, if it is deeds and words together, if you can represent Jesus in some small act of kindness out there in the darkness, trust me when I say there is nothing that the power of evil can do against those things.

It will not seem like a big and flashy thing. It might seem small in the moment, but it will be beautiful, and it will be strong with the power of the cross of Jesus Christ.

That is a beautiful thing about love and the power of love that this girl shows. We know that the Holy Spirit gives gifts to all His people. The Holy Spirit sends gifts upon congregations. We hear about that in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12, and it includes things like the gift of healing, the gift of prophecy, or the gift of speaking in tongues. Those are great gifts.

Most of those gifts do not apply to everybody. Not everybody can speak in tongues. Not everybody has the gift of healing. The Bible also says, Paul says, that there is one gift that is stronger and better than all of those. Which gift is that?

That is the gift of love. It is the most excellent way, it says. Love is a gift that anyone can use. We all have it. Everyone has this gift. It is not selected. The strongest of the gifts that God offers is available to every single person.

A two-year-old toddler coming toward his grandmother and giving her a hug to welcome her has the power of this gift. A 90-year-old resident of a nursing home who has even a little bit of his faculties left has the power of this gift. A 14-year-old girl who has been sold into slavery has the power of this gift. And all of you, as you go out this week into what you will see out there, have the power of this gift.

So young people, enjoy your week of service. Go out there knowing that He who is within you is stronger than he who is in the world.

And all of you slightly older Serve kids, enjoy your week of service, because it is Serve Week for you too. Every week is Serve Week. I mean, you are not going to have someone to make your meals for you, sorry, and you are not going to get a nifty T-shirt, but every week is Serve Week.

So enjoy your week. Be strong in the Spirit, and know that when you do small things with great love, the power of the risen Lord is in you. Amen.

Let us pray.

Lord, we thank You for the people You show us in Scripture. Even though, Lord, this young girl lived 3,000 years ago, we can look at her life and we can look at what You did through her, and it can give us encouragement as we go about our lives today.

Lord, we pray that You would make us strong in hope and strong in love. I pray that You would do that not by our power, but by the power of Your Holy Spirit, so that whether we are young people serving in this neighborhood this week or regular congregation members serving out there in the world, people may see Your gospel embodied in us.

In Christ's name we pray it. Amen.

Speaker 5 - Music / Congregational Singing:
[Congregational singing follows. The automated transcript contains repeated, garbled lyric fragments and does not provide a reliable reconstruction of the hymn.]

Speaker 3 - Sermon Speaker / Pastor:
As we all go out to serve the Lord this week, receive His blessing:

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be and abide with you all. Amen.

Speaker 5 - Music / Congregational Singing:
[Amen is sung or repeated.]