Sunday Package

June 11, 2023
Upcoming
Events
Community
Opportunities
Conversation
Guide
Questions?
Spring Giving Opportunities
Extended to June 15, 2023!
As announced last Sunday, a Village family has offered a matching gift of up to $30,000 towards our Spring Giving Opportunities. To give you time to respond and be part of this story that God is writing, we have extended our deadline for giving toward the three designated projects to June 15.

These projects make a significant impact on current and future ministries, allowing both our people and facility to have a continued impact on those who come to our campus. Please consider partnering with us above and beyond your normal giving either financially, with your time, or by grabbing a blue bag from the info counter for recycling cans and bottles. Click here to hear more details from Executive Director Ben Spotts and visit our website to commit to a project.
Giving Opportunities
Chapel Refresh Work Day
We’re excited to have met and closed out one of our Spring Giving goals! The Chapel Refresh is fully funded. If you’d like to get your hands dirty and help with this refresh, you can sign up through today’s Sunday Package. Many hands make light work! We will clean surfaces, clear cobwebs, polish windows, and so much more. RSVP via the form below, enter your name and contact info, then check "Chapel Work Day."
RSVP Now
Missionary Visit
June 15, 7:30am | Columbia A
Dr. Paul Sanders is a retired missionary to Lebanon and France. He was supported by Village for many years and will soon visit the Missions Friends breakfast at Village during his short trip to Portland. He will give an update on his and his wife, Agnes', work in Lebanon and Paris and report on the remarkable growth of the evangelical movement in France.

You can join in person or via Zoom link below. All are welcome.
Zoom Link
Jam Along: An Informal Invitation to Worship
June 30, 6pm | Columbia A
Do you like creating a joyful noise with others through worship? Pastors Ananda and Monica invite you to our Jam Along worship event! Come enjoy good fellowship with other music-minded Villagers at this informal gathering. You are encouraged to share songs near and dear to your heart and learn new songs with each other. If you play a portable acoustic instrument (i.e. doesn’t need to be plugged in), please feel free to bring it with you!
RSVP Now
Catechism Breakfast Club: New this July!
Sundays, July 9-30, 9am | Fellowship Hall
For incoming 4th & 5th graders! Join us Sundays in July for a light breakfast and a closer look at what the Bible teaches about God. Registration is required and participants are asked to attend all four Sundays. Register now through June 18.
Register Now
Summer Celebration and 5th Grade Recognition
July 11, 10am | Kids Village
Our Welcome Summer Celebration and 5th Grade Recognition is almost here! K-5th grade will kick off the summer with games, a celebration snack, fun activities and a special gift for outgoing 5th graders. Bring your kids Sunday, June 11 to experience all the fun!
Caregiving Resources for Seniors and Families
July 15, 9am-1pm | Village Church
Save the date! Drop in for this free event to find resources and connect with service providers for seniors and their families who are seeking to prepare for the years ahead. More information to come near the end of June. Feel free to share with your friends, family, and connections!
Hikes & Rambles
July 17, 9am | Cooper Mountain Nature Park
Village Women, come join us to hike at Cooper Mountain Nature Park! The hike will be around three miles with 430 foot of elevation gain. The trails pass through forests, prairies, and oak woodlands. We will enjoy views of the Chehalem Mountains and Tualatin Valley. Please meet us at the trailhead at 9am. There should be plenty of parking space. Contact Lisna Lai if you have any questions and to RSVP.
Webpage

Needed: More Children’s Ministry Volunteers.

July and August!
For Sunday children's programming to continue uninterrupted, we must have more adults serving in ministry to kids this summer. Many of our regular volunteers have extended travel plans this summer resulting in a need for extra help from great people like you! For more information or to volunteer, please contact Pastor Ruth Jordan at [email protected] as she would love to explain our needs and how you can help. Consider volunteering with a friend!
Questions?

Thank you!

Thank you for warmly welcoming our Pacific Islander families last Sunday! The Republic of Marshall Islands’ Minister of Public Health made a special trip to Oregon to meet with Village and request a medical team. To have an international government official personally ask for Village's partnership is a great honor. We are excited to work with our local partners, Living Islands, to plan for a medical team in October. Please pray for this opportunity, for the leadership planning this trip, to have the right medical workers willing to go, and to spread God’s love to the Pacific Island families both locally and internationally.

Donations Needed - Migrant Camps

We are currently collecting much needed items to bless our new, neighboring migrant workers arriving soon. Consider donating any of the following items by dropping them off at the Front Office during normal business hours.
  1. Male and female work clothes

  2. Male and female day clothes

  3. Towels

  4. Pillows

  5. Body soap

  6. Shampoo

  7. Lotion

  8. Other toiletries

Questions?

Missionary Housing Needed

A non-Village missionary family of 5 serving in Cambodia is looking for housing from mid-September through January. They are family members of a Villager. If you know of possible housing or can offer suggestions, please contact the missions office below.
Questions?

Upcoming Concert

We are pleased to host the Beaverton Community Band for their concert “The Masters of Film Music.” Tickets are available for sale on their website for the June 18 event.
Visit Their Website

Giving

Your faithful support is always appreciated. We encourage our community to participate in worship this way: "give something, give regularly". It's quick and secure to give online through Pushpay. If you prefer to mail a check, send it to us at 330 SW Murray Blvd, Beaverton, OR 97005. For gifts of stocks, IRAs, or other creative methods, please contact Patty, Finance Manager.
Give Through Pushpay

Weekly Newsletter

Our all-church weekly newsletter hits your inbox Wednesday evening. Sign up below to receive announcements on upcoming events, connection opportunities, needs, and much more. You'll have the choice to sign up for the weekly Youth newsletter and monthly Seniors newsletter as well if you participate in those ministries.
Newsletter sign up
God’s Everlasting Love
Romans 8:28-39
Summary

This week’s passage – the last 12 verses of Romans 8 – is extraordinary, like a stunning mountain range, “the biblical Himalayas” – with Romans 8:32 as the “Mount Everest” of the book. It will take your breath away with its beautiful reassurance of God’s love.  

But those wonderful words of reassurance are preceded by Paul’s straightforward acknowledgement that many of us are contending with very tough times.  For now, says Paul in verse 18, we are suffering.  But then he goes on to say that “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

This week’s passage, beginning in verse 28, continues to elaborate on our confidence in the present, given God’s promise of future glory:  “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love  him, who have been called according to his purpose.”  The first two words are key:  “We know.”  Life is full of uncertainties and mysteries.  But we can know this with certainty:  God is working out His good purposes for us.  Life throws all manner of things at us:  good, bad, and ugly.  The Bible does not say “all things are good”, but that God works in all things for the good.  What is “the good” that God has for us?  It is not our comfort, or even what we might deem good.  The good God has in view is that we “be conformed to the image of his Son.” (Romans 8:29b) 

No matter what the circumstances we are contending with, and even when we ourselves fall into sin, God is determined to make something of the mess!  The Bible is full of examples – from Joseph’s being sold into slavery, but eventually effecting the salvation of all of God’s people (Gen. 50:20) to Jeremiah’s assuring God’s people that the exile was not the end of the story for Israel (Jer. 29:11), to the way God used Jesus’ murder to effect the salvation of the world (Acts 2:23).

In verses 29-30, Paul describes how God goes about making us like Christ:  “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the  image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he  predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” (Rom. 8:29-30)  

Verses 29-30 have been likened to a golden chain, forged by God, a chain of five links. Each link is connected to the next to form an unbreakable chain.  Let’s look at each of those links:

  1. God foreknew.  That God knew beforehand cannot mean that God sees who will believe and that is the basis of their election.  If so, our salvation would be based on our merit rather than on His mercy.  Not at all!  Paul’s whole emphasis is on God’s free initiating grace.  Instead, he’s reaching back to the Old Testament word verb “to know” which means to love intimately, in a deeply personal relationship of love and care.  It describes the love that moves God to make covenants with His people.  In Amos 3:2, for example, God tells Israel, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth…”  The NIV sometimes translates this verb (“to know”) “to care”.  In Psalm 144:3, for example, the Psalmist asks:  “Lord, what are human beings that you care for them, mere mortals that  you think of them?”  This foreknowing is synonymous with fore-loving, looking forward to a relationship with you even before you were born!
  2. God predestined.  The word for “predestined” means “to decide upon beforehand.”  Not only did God feel affectionate toward you, but God resolved to act on that love.   Ephesians 1:4-5 says:  “He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship…”
  3. God called.  This calling is not just an invitation. It is what theologians refer to as an effective call; it produces results!  It is the sort of calling that raises the dead to new life, as when Jesus called Lazarus:  “Lazarus, come out of that tomb!”  
  4. God justified.  As soon as we come to faith, God finds us “not guilty.”  We are on good terms with him.
  5. God glorifies.  The first four links in this chain are forged as soon as we come to faith, but the fifth and last link is in the future:  God glorifies.  But Paul chooses to emphasize the certainty of God’s finishing this what He’s begun in our lives by using the past tense to refer to this last step, our glorification.  So certain is Paul that our final destiny is new bodies in a new resurrected world, he states it as if it’s already happened

We’re almost to the summit of these biblical Himalayas!  Paul invites us to pause to catch our breath, to reflect on what he has said, by asking a rhetorical question:  What, then, shall we say in response to these things? (Romans 8:31)  Then he pushes on to conclude with five rhetorical questions:

 

Question #1 (Rom. 8:31):  “If God is for us, who can be against us?”   Paul knows even better than we that we have to contend with enemies – from the world, the flesh, and the devil to those Paul himself referred to in 1 Cor. 16:9 when he observed “many oppose us.”  But his point in asking this rhetorical question is that none of those enemies can compare to the greatness of our God.  He will not be thwarted in working out his good purposes.

Question #2:  (Rom. 8:32)  “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”  God the Father, and Jesus Himself, were willing to pay any price to effect our salvation.  There is no good thing He will withhold from us as His beloved children.  In Gal. 2:20, Paul describes the way this truth shaped his life:  “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Questions #3 and #4 (Rom. 8:33,34):  “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns?  No one.  Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and  is also interceding for us.”  Sometimes it is the Evil One who accuses us; other times it is a judgmental person pointing a finger; and sometimes it is our own conscience accusing us.  But God will not entertain any such accusations – because he has declared us “not guilty” in Christ.

Question #5:  Paul’s final question (Rom. 8:35a):  “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”  Keep in mind the terrible persecution that Paul’s first-century readers faced.  He describes some of those fearsome dangers in the latter part of the verse:  “Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?” (Rom. 8:35b).  Paul answers his question in verse 37:  “In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who  loved us.”  Paul coins a new phrase, to be “super-victorious!”  There are winners and losers, but then there are more than conquerors!

 

Paul concludes with his unqualified assurance of God’s love:  “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor  demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor  anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”  (Rom. 8:38,39).

So what can separate us from God's everlasting love?

  • Nothing in the human experience — neither death nor life 
  • Nothing in the spiritual realm — neither angels nor demons 
  • Nothing in time — nothing present or future 
  • Nothing that opposes God’s people — no powers 
  • Nothing in space — neither height nor depth 
  • Nothing in the world — nothing in all creation 
  • There is nothing that can separate you from His love!  In fact, there is nothing you can do that would make him love you more – and nothing you can do that would make him love you less!

 

How do these wonderful truths bear on our lives – individually, and as a church?  How can taking these truths to heart make Village a more harmonious, missional, outward-looking church? 

  • This passage gives us assurance, not arrogance.
  • It makes us humble, not proud.
  • It makes us eager to share the Good News, not complacent.

The Apostle Paul has been our guide in an ascent to the glorious heights of God’s love.  Let’s allow that vista to shape our hearts and lives – and our life as a church!

Questions
  1. Have you experienced God’s using difficult or painful times to effect your being “conformed to the likeness of his Son” – i.e., to make you more like Jesus?  (It might be a past experience or a current experience.)
  2. Pastor Pete explained that God’s foreknowing us is best understood to be God’s fore-loving us.  God was looking forward to a relationship with you even before you were born!  How does it feel to know that you are the object of God’s love – not only in the present, but even long before you were born?
  3. Pastor Pete suggested several ways in which being convinced of the depth of God’s love might impact us – personally, and as a church.  How do you see the truths of this passage impacting your life, and our life as a church?

Responsive Worship

As we collectively reflect on Sunday's message, use this space as a safe place to respond to God's calling and share your reflection on the preaching. All submissions are anonymous.
Responsive Worship

Guide Archive

Looking for a past discussion guide? All Conversation Guides can be found on the Village Beaverton app. Visit the Experience Village page to download the app and stay connected.
Experience Village

Contact

330 SW Murray Blvd 
Beaverton, OR 97005
Phone: 503-643-6511

Front Office

Mon-Thurs 9am-4pm
Fri-Sun closed
(until Labor Day)

Worship Center

Mon-Tues 8am-4pm
Wed 8am-7:30pm
Thurs-Fri 8am-4pm
Sat closed
Sun 8am-1:30pm

Village Café

Mon-Fri 8am-2pm
Sat-Sun closed