WEST LIBERTY CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP

“I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death.”  Philippians 3:10

October 2, 2022

THE GOD WE WORSHIP

The Teaching of Jesus in Matthew

 

Message and Scriptures

Clean and Unclean

Matthew 15: 1 - 20

 

 

WLCF VISION STATEMENT – To be a God centered, God loving, Holy Spirit filled, led and empowered Church, having Christ as the Head and we, as His Body, being used to make disciples of Jesus to build His Kingdom.

CHURCH COVENANT:

We covenant together with God and with one another in an ever-increasing relationship with God as follows: Lord God-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit we covenant with you and with each other That we will seek to equip one another to the works of service, and to the building up of one another.

BARUCH ATA YHWH SEBAOTH – Bless You. Praise You. Thank You Beloved LORD GOD.  We are thankful for our Teacher team.

Weekly Dawn Prayer – Wednesday mornings at 7:00am both in person and via Zoom

Daily Time Alone with God – for a daily devotion please follow “Time Alone With God”, found on the website. Please pray TAG every day.

 

Prayer Chain – Call or email Geri Owen 319-627-4858 or westlibertychristianfellowship@gmail.com

 

 

TODAY AT WLCF (On Site and Zoom)

Community Service

9:00 a.m. Adult Sunday school

10:15 a.m. Social/Prayer

10:30 a.m. Worship Service

 

THIS WEEK AT WLCF

 

Bible Studies/Sunday School/Worship

Monday                               6:30 p.m.                                                Youth Bible Study – Luke & Psalms

Tuesday                               7:00 p.m.                                Spanish Bible Study - Lucas – Holy Spirit

Wednesday                      7:00 a.m.                                Dawn Prayer – Prayer for the World/Nation/Community/WLCF

  7:00 p.m.                                Adult Bible Study - Old Testament Pillars

Saturday                             7:30 a.m.                                No Men’s Bible Study - Revelation

Sunday                                 9:00 a.m.                                               Adult Sunday school

                                                                Women: Forgiveness (Downstairs)

                                                                                                Adult: Why Jesus Crossed the Road (Upstairs)

                                                10:15 a.m.                                       Social (Upstairs) Prayer (Downstairs)

                                10:30 a.m.                                       Worship Service – Cami Jones

                               

 

Birthday(s)

Monday Oct 3 – Sandy Green

Wednesday Oct 5 – Ryan McIntosh and Sandra Molina

Saturday Oct 8 – Brynn Cassady

Sunday Oct 9 – Breann Brown and Sandy Cornwall

 

Anniversary(ies)

 

 

 

Meeting(s)

 

 

 

MASKS: Everyone is now welcome to make their own decision regarding wearing masks. There will still be a supply by the entry door, but it is your choice whether you wear a mask.

 

Zoom –You will need to download the app on your phone or computer. The code for ALL videos is 228 893 6865.  The password is 416991. Join us!

 

 

 

UPCOMING EVENTS, SERVICES, AND ACTIVITIES

 

Prayer Monument: We would like to update our WLCF prayer monument.  You can let us know about answered prayers from the last 20+ years by sending an email to the church office or leaving a note on the secretary’s desk.

 

Dave and Claire Leppert will be visiting us on Tuesday, October 18th at 7pm to update us on their ministry in Spain and to pray together. (It will be in both English and Spanish) We will be sharing a Mexican meal from Puebla here at the church. Everyone is welcome.

 

 

ONGOING EVENTS, SERVICES, AND ACTIVITIES

 

 

Baptism – If you are interested in following Jesus in the Waters of Believer’s Baptism please see Pastor Mario.

 

West Liberty Food Pantry – Is open at FCU Saturdays 9:00 – 10:00 a.m. and Thursdays 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Thanks to the men who deliver these items to FCU.  Julie McKillip is our coordinator.

 

Church library – You are invited to check out the books from the library downstairs.

 

Copy of the Message or Bulletin – Visit our website: www.wlcf.org  (an audio version is included) or contact Brad Jenkins.

 

Directory – Copies available on the table in the entryway.

 

Stephen’s Ministry – is available for anyone needing someone to walk beside them or pray with them.  Please contact Kelsey Jenkins 319-936-4891 or Cindy Mays 319-330-4620 for more information.

 

Child Care: Child care is available in the Nursery during worship service.

 

Children’s Sunday school – during the sermon at the 10:30 a.m. worship service.

 

OUR GIVING TO THE LORD’S WORK: Offering Box – back table

Giving in September: $1,450, $4,196, $240.  We are ahead of budget $7181.28.  We need a monthly offering of $8,398 and a weekly offering of $1,938. BARUCH ATA YHWH SEBAOTH for the giving of YOUR people through the years. God loves a cheerful giver. Checks can be mailed to the church or dropped off at the church, in the mailbox at the end of the lane. You are also invited to sign up for Electronic Funds Transfer (ETF). Please see Geri for details.

 

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WLCF YOUTH MINISTRY

WLCF Youth Group for young people in 6th – 12th grades

Ministries

Worship Service:                  Sundays at 10:30 a.m.

Youth Night:                          Mondays at 6:30 pm – Luke & Psalms (Please bring your Bibles). 

 

 

Activities and Events             

 

Organization Youth Team:  Josh and Jacob Zeman    Parent Team: Lynne Zeman

 

COMMUNITY YOUTH GROUP (CYG)

 

If you are interested in serving this ministry in any way, let Pastor Mario know. They need one board member and several cube leaders. The group meets at First Church United (FCU) on Sunday evenings.

 

Sunday, Oct 2        Regular CYG: You Have A Soul (1)                                      5:00 p.m.                                FCU

Sunday, Oct 9        Regular CYG: You Have A Sacred Body (2)                        5:00 p.m.                                FCU

Sunday, Oct 16      Special Speaker: Braking Traffic                                       5:00 p.m.                                FCU

                                Parents and community members are invited to attend this presentation on human trafficking

Sunday, Oct 23      Regular CYG: You Are Desired (3)                                      5:00 p.m.                                FCU

 

Number in () is the chapter from the book: The Good and Beautiful You, by James Bryan Smith

 

Pine Lake Camps

Dates                      Camp                                                      Grades                   Speakers

Oct 14 - 16              Fall Women’s Retreat                                                                        

Feb 17 – 19            Marriage Camp Weekend

There are packets on the back table or go online to PineLakeCamps.org to register.

TIME ALONE WITH GOD (TAG)

 

Sunday readings: October 2, 2022

 

   Jesus Challenges Their Traditions as Unbiblical (15:3-11)  This observation need not denigrate all tradition; some “traditions” are more biblical than others, and some traditions, like many customs in many cultures, are morally neutral.  Among those who accept the Bible as God’s Word and as canon (a measuring stick), the test of a statement’s authority should be its conformity to biblical principles.  Yet many of us, for all our insistence on the authority of Scripture, pay surprisingly little attention to it - little time researching context, background or other factors essential for understanding the Bible…the Pharisees frequently determined morality by extrapolating from tradition. By demanding that we extrapolate morality instead from biblical principles, Jesus takes ethics out of the domain of the academy and courtroom and places it in the daily lives of his followers.  To follow Jesus’ guidelines here, church members need to know more Scripture, not more churchly rules not founded in Scripture.

   Jesus is interested in speaking God’s truth, not in winning influential allies.

 

Craig S Keene., Matthew p. 259-261 (1997)

 

 

 

  This charge gave to Jesus an opportunity for rebuking the Pharisees, and also for showing the difference between ceremonial and real defilement; between that which is spiritual and that which is material; between purity of the soul and the observance of a form; between true religion and false… But the law of God which required one to honor his father and his mother might freely be set aside in order that the tradition of men might be sacredly observed. Jesus declares that this is the very essence of hypocrisy. He reminds the Pharisees that scrupulous observance of religious forms may be accompanied by utter disregard of moral law.  This has been the peril of formalists and ritualists and hypocrites of all ages.

   Peter turns to ask a fuller explanation of the statement which Jesus had made. The Master at first rebukes him for his lack of spiritual perception, but proceeds to explain more clearly that real uncleanness is not a matter of the body, but of the spirit, or only of the body as directed by the spirit. The only actual defilement is that of the soul.

 

Charles R. Erdman.  The Gospel of Matthew, p. 136-138 (1920)

 

 

 

It is hard to exaggerate the significant of ritual purity for the Pharisaic ideology, which the majority of scribes supported, and which became the basis of later rabbinic orthodoxy.

   The purity of God’s people separated them from all others, and the food laws thus became a barrier to social intercourse between Jew and Gentile. It was this that caused the long and painful dispute within the early church when Gentiles began to come in on equal terms with Jews; Peter’s experience at Joppa and in the house of Cornelius (Acts 10:9-48) vividly illustrates the extent of the mental revolution required for a Jew to come to terms with the equal inclusion of “unclean” Gentiles.

   The moral nature of true “Uncleanness” is not made plain. The “Unclean things which come from the heart are not only words…but more broadly matters of behavior. They are introduced, however, by the general category of “bad thoughts” since it is the thoughts entertained by the heart that give rise to the notions and words.

 

 

R.T.France, The Gospel of Matthew p. 576, 586 (2007)

 

 

  Enemy-occupied territory – this is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.

   And what did God do? First of all He left us conscience, the sense of right and wrong: and all through history there have been people trying (some of them very hard) to obey it. None of them ever quite succeeded. Secondly, He sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men.  Thirdly, He selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was – that there was only one of Him and that He cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process.

   Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time.

   I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to use. He did not intend to.

 

C. S. Lewis. Mere Christianity p. 47, 5ff (1952)

 

 

 

VOLUNTEER ASIGNMENTS

Church Cleaning Schedule                 

Oct 9 & Oct 16                     Mireya Franco, Teresa Ortiz, and Mayra Esquivel

Oct 23 & 30                          Mary Maxson

Nov 6 & 13                            Lynn & Scott Harmon

Nov 20 & 27                          Mike & Lynne Zeman