NO. LIVERMORE — The congregation was welcomed in by Pastor Bonnie Higgins at 9:30 a.m. to begin the service on Oct. 13. The Call to Worship, Invocation/Lord’s Prayer were recited. The hymns that were sung were “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”, “Blessed Assurance”, and “Great is They Faithfulness”. The service ended with “Go Now in Peace”. Linda Lyman is the organist, Janet Diaz is the pianist, and Lew Lyman leads the music for the congregation each week.

The sermon, “God’s Plan in the Midst of Confusion” and scriptures, Genesis 11:1-9. Pastor Bonnie started with God’s plan with the perfect creation was well until Adam and Eve corrupted it all by sin, and because of the evil in the world, God brought on the biggest catastrophe in the flood during Noah’s time. God’s plan for His world and His creations evolved to where no one was listening and following Him. Even after the flood, Noah’s sons and their wives stopped listening to God and wanted to go out on their own.

After the flood stopped and the land was dried, Noah’s family came out of the ark and started again in a world that had been devastated. God told them to scatter to other areas and to begin to populate the world again. The sons decided not to scatter and only move together and build a city and a tower, the Tower of Babel to the heavens. They wanted to build the city and tower for themselves.

They allowed their pride take over. When God saw their disobedience, God decided to bring about His desire for people to inhabit every corner of the earth by confusing their language amongst them. As their language changed amongst themselves, they moved apart from one another to populate other areas of the world so they could speak with each other. When the sons moved away from each other, God’s plan for them to scatter happened.

Even today, people have not learned the lesson from the antics of Noah’s sons concerning the Tower of Babel. The first lesson that we need to learn is that when we seek another way to God, it will not work. Many expressions used by people today are “all roads lead to God,” all religions are pointing the same directions, or even “God is so good, He accepts all people regardless of how they believe”. Unfortunately, all these expressions undermine the basis of Christianity. If these statements were true, why would Jesus have to die for us, for us to have eternal life? The Tower of Babel is not a gateway to God, but a gateway to confusion.

The second lesson to be learned is that we have a false sense of security, believing that it is all about ourselves, that our wealth, power, fame, prestige is because of ourselves and not God. We must remember that everything we are, everything we have is because of God. We must be careful that our focus is on God and that we have given our heart and soul to Jesus to have eternal life, otherwise, we live in a false security of eternity.

The third lesson to be learned is not to use our ambition as self-serving. If our thoughts are “I want what I want” we will get nowhere with it. If we use our ambition that is directed by God, it will be fulfilling and satisfying to not only us, but to God. Lastly, the lesson to be learned is we must remember what God’s intention was for us. God asked Noah’s sons and wives, just like us to be fruitful, dominate the earth and to multiply. God has asked us to scatter around the world to bring His mission to others. We are called to bring the light, Jesus, to a world of darkness.

Announcements:

We will be collecting pie crusts for the Food Pantry in October.

Bible Study Tuesday at 1 p.m.