Retooled – Dayspring Presbyterian Church

Worship on the First Sunday of Advent
Elder Induction
10:00 am November 30, 2025
Minister: The Rev. Brad Childs     Music Director: Binu Kapadia
Vocalist: Vivian Houg     Welcoming Elder: Shirley Simpson
Children’s time presenter: Brad     Reader: Tracy Childs

We gather to worship God

Music prelude

Greeting
L: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you
P: and also with you.

Welcome and announcements
Preparation for worship

Call to worship (Nagpal family)
L: The prophet Isaiah announced that people of all nations will come to the mountain of the Lord and learn God’s ways.
P: When we look at this suffering world, we know we need to follow God’s ways.
L: God will settle disputes among the nations. Weapons will be transformed into tools for planting and growth. Nations will live in peace; no more will they prepare for war.
P: We cling to that promise and light this candle of hope, inspired by a vision of a world where children grow into adulthood, and parents live to old age.
(Light the candle of hope)
All: Living God, make us more aware of your presence. We trust yourp promises and wait with hopeful hearts. Come, Lord Jesus.

Opening praise: Hope is a star (vs 1 of 119)

Prayers of approach and confession

God, who sees the weapons and the wreckage in our world, we’re showing up today desperate for your perspective. The news cycles through missiles in Ukraine, rocket fire in the Middle East, and division ripping through our own communities. We’re tired of living scared, scrolling through destruction, and feeling powerless against the violence. We need your voice cutting through the chaos.

Holy Spirit, dismantle our anxiety right now. Remind us you’re bigger than any army, more potent than any weapon, and working purposes we can’t yet see.

Take this moment and make it holy. Open our eyes to see your kingdom breaking in. Help us worship with hope instead of fear. Move in this room. Change us from the inside out.

Let’s get brutally honest with God about what’s breaking our hearts:

God, we’re carrying too much. The missile strikes killing families in Ukraine this week. Hezbollah rockets are terrorizing Israeli communities. Political hatred is poisoning our dinner table conversations. Hurricane survivors are still without power or homes.

We’ve become numb to the body count. Or we’re angry and lashing out at the wrong people. We’ve binge-watched the war coverage instead of crying out to you. We’re hoarding our resources instead of sharing.

Forgive us for our paralysis, our selective outrage, our failure to love through the mess. Break our hearts for what breaks yours.

[20 seconds silence]

Jesus, you faced Roman oppression, religious hypocrisy, and empire violence, too. You didn’t panic. You didn’t curse. You prayed through the night. You served through the suffering. You loved through the lunacy.

That same power lives in us. Our mistakes don’t disqualify us. Our weakness doesn’t stop you. Right now, we receive your forgiveness. Right now, we claim your strength. Right now, we’re stepping into our purpose.

Forgive us for our paralysis, our selective outrage, our failure to love through the mess. Break our hearts for what breaks yours.

Response: I waited, I waited on you, Lord

Assurance of God’s forgiveness

God declares us a peace bigger than the headlines. We’re free to hope again!

Induction of an Elder: Andrea Gartrell
Narration of Steps
Induction Vows
Congregational Response
Declaration
Right Hand of Fellowship

We listen for the voice of God

Song: Jesus loves me (373)

Children’s time and the Lord’s Prayer (535)

Song: God’s name forever shall endure (43)

Scripture readings: Matthew 24:36–44; Isaiah 2:1–5; Psalm 72:1–7 ,18–19

Response: My Lord, he is a comin soon

Message: Retooled
A world drowning in violence, parents in Kyiv whispering goodbyes to children before school, fearing a missile’s shadow; Israeli families clutching each other in bomb shelters as rockets scream overhead; American mothers cradling empty cribs after sons fall to bullets at gas stations. This isn’t ancient history. It’s November 29, 2025, and the headlines scream Isaiah’s nightmare: Judah’s farmers clutching pruning hooks against Assyrian spears, desperate civilians today grasping at straws amid overwhelming firepower. Over 200,000 conflict deaths this year alone; a 20% surge from 2024: shatter lives, orphan futures, and mock our cries for peace. Swords into plowshares? Not yet. But the desperation? Heart-wrenchingly familiar.

November’s Raw Toll according to the UN, The Associated Press, Reuters, and ACLED reports lay bare the week’s horrors:

Ukraine: Russia’s November 25 barrage, 36 missiles, 600 drones ripped through Kharkiv and Kyiv, killing at least 11 civilians. Over 500,000 plunged into winter darkness; Zelenskyy called it a “difficult night” and sabotaged U.S. peace talks. Imagine: sirens wail as kids huddle in metro stations, homework by flashlight, wondering if dawn brings death.

Lebanon-Israel: Hezbollah’s November 26-27 launched over 200 rockets and drones into northern Israel, wounded 7, forcing thousands underground. Israeli reprisals killed 1 Lebanese soldier, injured 18, after Beirut strikes claimed 29. PM Mikati decried a “bloody message” shattering cease-fires. Families in Haifa and Beirut: generations of hate, now a child’s terror in the basement dark.

In Chicago, Thanksgiving’s shadow hid 3 dead, 26 wounded in November 21-24 shootings, a 14-year-old boy dying near the Chicago Theatre amid a “teen takeover,” a 20-year-old neck-shot in an argument, a 25-year-old ambushed at a gas station. Mayor Johnson surged 700 officers, but systemic rot festers—mothers sob.

Iran’s Post-June strikes on Natanz, Tehran vows 2,000 missiles at once to drown Israel’s Iron Dome—enough uranium for 11 warheads hidden, IAEA access blocked. President Pezeshkian stated that his people are “Ready for war.” No November blasts yet, but the sword hangs, igniting dread of nuclear fire.

Hurricane Melissa’s October-November wrath left over 2 million powerless as of November 17; a Washington cyclone added 600,000 more. Families in Florida and Georgia huddle in cars amid debris.

These aren’t threads in a tapestry. They’re knives twisting in the gut of humanity.

In Nigeria Boko Haram November surge targeted 300 some Catholic schoolgirls kidnapped in Niger State (November 21), 2 slain in a church raid; 25 girls seized from Kebbi (November 17), 1 staffer murdered. A Mubi mosque bombing killed another 50. Farmers arm with machetes against ghosts in the night; Christians flee, faith a death sentence.

In the Sudan’s hundreds slaughtered in revenge, 250,000 “killed, died, displaced, or vanished” per Yale. The UN says 3,384 more civilian deaths were added this month.

Famine grips 375,000 more in Darfur, and 25 million face starvation nationwide. Ethnic cleansing on biblical scales, Assyria reborn. Mothers watch children waste to bones; the world averts its eyes.

Andrew Jackson, who later became the president of the United States, originally won fame as a prominent general in the United States Military. In the early part of 1815, a deadly battle began. Many soldiers were wounded and died on both sides, but General Jackson and his brave men fought and won. Countless books would record his story as the leader in the Battle of New Orleans, the last great battle of the War of 1812.

Isaiah was a prophet in Judah. He lived in 740BC. He was married. He had two sons, and at the time of his first writings, he and his wife were pregnant. He was a professional writer and court prophet (a spiritual and political commentator of his day). He also wrote a biography of the life of King Uzziah (the Judean King) and seems to have sat in his court as a permanent fixture. And yet he was a man of contradictions… a life held in tension.

Considering some of the things he said, his name (which means The LORD Saves) may have seemed a bit ironic to his fellow Judeans. Judah, after all, was about to be demolished, and Isaiah (one of the King’s own) was asking the people not to fight (something that wouldn’t have been well received). Isiah’s book of the Bible also contains hidden jabs at political figures and other palace officials. Almost like an ancient comic strip in Isaiah 7:6, Isaiah seems to have replaced a politician’s name with (Ben Taval), which means “Good for Nothing”. The politician’s real name is unknown, but apparently it rhymed with Ben Taval, and this didn’t escape Isaiah’s particular sense of humour. Evidently, though, his message didn’t go over all that well, and as the writer of Hebrews tells us, Isaiah was eventually sentenced to death and was actually sawn in half (Hebrews 11:37).

After King Solomon died, his kingdom was split into two: The northern kingdom called Israel and the southern kingdom called Judah (with Jerusalem as the city’s capital). But being a divided people with two separate kings made things like self-defence and political negotiations a bit difficult.

So by the time Isaiah came around about 250 years later, things weren’t really looking that good. His life was difficult, and he lived in an even more difficult time. But despite all of this, Isaiah wrote not just about judgment but also about redemption. And though he spoke of a coming exile as punishment from God, he also dreamed of a day when the Messiah would come and bring a new kind of peace to the unstable world around him.

It seems Isaiah was a dreamer. At the time, the world was dominated by two superpowers: Egypt, and probably the cruellest, most bloodthirsty empire the near east had ever seen: the empire of Assyria. In those days, people would use anything they could get their hands on to fight off Assyrian attacks. Most people were, of course, farmers (primarily of grapes and olives), but unfortunately, pruning hooks probably didn’t fend well against spears. The Assayrian’s had a standing army and amour. It must have seemed ridiculous to the well-trained Assyrian soldiers to see peasant farmers trying to attack them with ordinary farming tools. But that is what happened as waves of army men moved across the land. Israel, of course, wasn’t exactly resting in the safest location either. In fact, it was quite inconveniently located right in between Egypt to the south and Assyria, which was just to the north. Everyone knew it. There was no doubt about it. The day was rapidly approaching when Assyria would come, destroy the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and then come knocking on the door of Jerusalem itself. At this time, war was everywhere; it was constant, and there was no relief in sight.

But Isaiah says that God gave him a vision of a time to come. He says, “In the last days, the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted high above all the hills-”. It must have seemed a bit crazy to his listeners. Mt. Moriah (The Mountain of the Lord), is really just a big hill by Candain standards. The Mount of Olives was just off in the distance, and it’s almost 100 meters higher. Even Cypress Hill, Saskatchewan, has a mountain just outside Medicine Hat that’s almost twice as high as the Temple Mount. But Isaiah says that in the last days the mountain of the Lord will suddenly be raised until it’s the highest mountain on earth. That seems a tad crazy.

But that’s not the only crazy thing that Isaiah says. At a time when farmers defended themselves with mere tools against great weapons of war, Isaiah says that when the Messiah comes, it will be just the opposite. Isaiah envisions a world where weapons are so useless that soldiers begin using them for farming. He says, “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” He says, Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” Again Crazy.

But again, that’s not the only crazy thing that Isaiah says. He also says with beautiful poetry that the nahar (or… a river of people) will flow up the mountain). In short, he says that there will be such peace that it will be like the rivers run backwards up the hill as nations full of people flood to the Holy Temple of God.

Well… wait a minute, this is all to happen when the Messiah comes! That’s now. We live in that time that Isaiah dreamed of. We have seen the Messiah. But I don’t know the mountain of Moriah lifted high above all the other mountains. I don’t see rivers of people flowing up to the Temple of God (it was torn down), and I don’t see nations melting down tanks to make combines.

But Isaiah said it. He said the Messiah would bring peace unlike anything we’ve ever known. Was he wrong?

Just take a glance around CNN or the BBC, and you’d be sure that we’re no nearer to lasting-world-peace than Isaiah was.

But then again, perhaps that’s not precisely what Isaiah meant. And maybe we are. Real peace–lasting peace in fact– is here. I think it’s here now. No, it isn’t a peace that humans negotiate with each other from behind big expensive desks, but the kind of peace that only God can inaugurate. And I think Isaiah was right. I believe God did do that when he sent the Messiah. Peace began with the coming of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. Peace, after all, is what Jesus is all about. Because Jesus, by his coming, ended the oldest, costliest, and most tragic war of all: the battle between man and God. Our sin had us as enemies as we turned against God. Sin was what we were fighting over. Sin is still the cause of violence. Sin is still what confronts true peace. And yet, Jesus took our sin, killed it on the cross, and buried it in his tomb.

For many Americans, Andrew Jackson is a great war hero. He is an example of outstanding leadership, and the story of his last great Battle (The Battle of New Orleans) is fascinating, to say the least. But what’s most interesting about this fight is that when General Andrew Jackson led his troops into battle that day in early January, 1915… the war had already been won. You see, the peace treaty had been signed on December 24^th, 1814. But this was a long time ago, and news travelled so slowly in those days that neither the British troops nor Jackson’s men had received any word of it. In the end, thousands of people were needlessly killed on both sides of a battle that was fought long after the war had already ended. If only he had known that peace had already been declared, what pointless suffering could have been avoided?

Today, the same is true. The Temple building is no more, and the hill it stood on was never meant to be the highest mountain in the world. Isaiah meant something else. Isaiah never thought that pile of dirt would somehow grow. The Temple is you, and I, and I believe that it is the highest mountain in the world. It is that thing that people look to when they want to meet our God. And today the Temple doesn’t just stand on a high hill… it covers the entire world and reaches out to every nation on earth for all to see (because Christians now exist as the Temple of God in every land th roughout the world). And while things may not be perfect just yet, we do have peace. Like a communion service we have a tiny taste of what is good. We have peace between God and man, we have the kind of peace that makes us want to forgive our neighbours and melt down our weapons. We have the kind of peace inside that only God can bring, and amazingly, when we live that peace – when we can really and truly live that peace – we can be the Temple we were called to be… the rivers will really flow backwards. People will really flood to His new Holy Temple to ask us, “What gives you hope?” Because when we accept that it’s our job to be the body of Christ and live that peace, people will want what we have, and when they do, they will meet the Prince of Peace as He shines through us. Because even though senseless violence still goes on, peace has already been declared; the war is over. When everyone knows it, we will have a lot more combines and a lot fewer bombs. Amen.

Song: Come, thou long-expected Jesus (110)

We respond to serve God

Our time of giving

Prayer of gratitude, and for others and ourselves

God, transform these dollars into plowshares for Ukraine, rebuilding tools for hurricane victims, hope for traumatized communities.

God who dismantles empires and repurposes weapons, we bring today’s breaking news to your throne:

UKRAINE (47 killed this week) Lord, the missiles falling on Kharkiv, the families sleeping in metro stations, the children learning math by flashlight – you see every tear, every crater, every prayer. Retool this destruction. Turn bomb shelters into places of worship. Raise leaders from the rubble. Protect the vulnerable. Strengthen the church. [10 seconds silence]

MIDDLE EAST (200+ rockets) God of Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael, the missiles flying between Lebanon and Israel, the hostages still waiting, the soldiers on both sides carrying impossible burdens – you alone can retool this generational hatred. Raise peacemakers from both communities. Protect civilians on every side. Soften hardened hearts. Bring unexpected alliances. [10 seconds silence]

UNITED STATES DIVISION Holy Spirit, our political weapons are aimed at each other. Families are divided at Thanksgiving tables. Neighbours are posting hate instead of help. Leaders are weaponizing every issue. Retool our rhetoric into a relationship. Turn cable news addicts into community servants. Raise up bridge-builders in every city. Heal our national soul. [10 seconds silence]

HURRICANE SURVIVORS For the 2 million still without power, families sleeping in cars, businesses destroyed in Florida, Georgia, Carolinas – you specialize in post-storm restoration. Retool the debris into determination. Turn FEMA frustration into church mobilization. Raise neighbours helping neighbours. Provide miraculous provision. [10 seconds silence]

ECONOMIC WEAPONS Inflation weaponizing grocery trips, housing costs weaponizing the American dream, layoffs weaponizing family stability – you’re the God who provides. Retool our scarcity mindset into generosity—open unexpected doors of provision. Raise creative problem-solvers in every workplace. Multiply resources through your people. [10 seconds silence]

GLOBAL REFUGEES 10 million displaced by war, families walking hundreds of miles, children growing up in camps instead of classrooms – you led Israel through the wilderness. Retool hostile borders into welcome centers. Turn aid workers’ exhaustion into a renewed calling. Raise sponsor families worldwide. Provide safety, shelter, schooling, and hope. [10 seconds silence]

OUR PERSONAL BATTLES [20 seconds silence for individual prayer]

God, you see every weapon aimed at us personally. The medical reports, the fractured relationships, the hidden addictions, the secret fears. We declare today: these weapons have expiration dates. Retool our stories for your glory. Make us plowshares that feed your kingdom. Amen.

Song: Who’s goin’ to tell the story (761)

Sending out with God’s blessing

Go with the confidence that every weapon has an expiration date. Walk knowing God is master of every tool against you. Live expecting Him to retool your greatest pain into your greatest purpose.

May the God who breaks bows and shatters spears strengthen you with supernatural resilience. May the God who turns swords into plowshares transform your story into testimony. May the God who rules over empires and economies fill you with unshakable peace.

The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord repurpose every attack for your good, the Lord give you peace that transcends understanding. Amen!

Response: Sing Amen

Music postlude

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Numbers in brackets after a song/hymn indicate that it is from the 1997 Book of Praise of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Those and other songs are being used in accordance with the specifications of Dayspring’s licensing with One License (3095377) and CLC (A735555).

The Rev. Brad Childs retains the copyright (© 2025) on all original material in this service. As far as Brad Childs is aware, all of the material that has not been attributed to others is his own creation or is in the public domain. Unacknowledged use of copyrighted material is unintentional and will be corrected immediately upon notification being received.

Video recordings of the Sunday Worship messages can be found here on our YouTube Channel.