Call To Worship
We confess the supremacy of God in Christ through both responsive reading and song.
Our Spoken Call to Worship
From Isaiah 6:1-4 (ESV)
In the year that King Uzziah died
I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne,
high and lifted up;
and the train of his robe filled the temple.
Above him stood the seraphim.
Each had six wings:
with two he covered his face,
and with two he covered his feet,
and with two he flew.
And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”
And the foundations of the thresholds
shook at the voice of him who called,
and the house was filled with smoke.
Our Sung Call to Worship
Holy, Holy, Holy
Confession
We confess our need for mercy through both responsive reading and song.
Our Spoken Confession
Based on Isaiah 5-6:5 (ESV)
Lord, we confess that, like Israel in Isaiah’s day,
in our flesh we have gone astray.
You looked for justice,
but we produced bloodshed.
You looked for righteousness,
but we produced an outcry.
We expanded our houses and property,
while the weak and poor went without.
We rose up early in the morning
and tarried late into the evening,
pursuing our own pleasure
without regard to your deeds.
We justified our sin with cynicism.
We called evil good and good evil.
We were wise in our own eyes
and boastful of our self-indulgence.
We acquitted the guilty, condemned the innocent,
for the sake of a little profit.
“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips,
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
TIME OF SILENT CONFESSION
Our Sung Confession
I Am Ashamed
Assurance and Peace
We profess our assurance of salvation and peace in Christ through both responsive reading and song.
Remember the Gospel
From 1 Corinthians 15:1-6 (ESV)
and Apostle’s Creed
“Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preached to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand and by which you are being saved, if you hold to the message I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he
appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.”
We believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
Born of the virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, dead and buried.
On the third day, He rose again from the dead.
He ascended to heaven,
And sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.
We believe in the Holy Spirit,
The holy universal church,
The communion of saints,
The forgiveness of sins,
The resurrection of the body,
And the life everlasting.
Amen.
Our Sung Profession of Assurance
How Deep The Father’s Love For Us
Thanksgiving and Petition
We Give Thanks in Prayer and Offer Petitions to God
We express our gratitude to God our Father for Christ’s work on the cross for us and bring our requests before him. In bringing our requests, we confess that we believe God truly is a good father, who cares about our needs and gives us what he knows is best.
We Give Thanks by Giving
We give financial offerings to support the work of the church because of our gratitude to God. By giving we confess we are trusting in God’s provision for us as well.
On the first Sunday of each month we have two offerings—one for the general fund and a second one for the benevolence ministry of our church.
We Give Thanks in Song
I Stand Amazed
Scripture Reading
Luke 1:57-80 (ESV)
57 Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son.58 And her neighbors and
relatives heard that the Lord had shown great
mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. 59 And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child. And they would have called him Zechariah after his father, 60 but his mother answered, “No; he shall be called John.” 61 And they said to her, “None of your relatives is called by this name.” 62 And they made signs to his father, inquiring what he wanted him to be called. 63 And he asked for a writing
tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And they all wondered. 64 And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke,
blessing God. 65 And fear came on all their neighbors. And all these things were talked about through all the hill country of Judea, 66 and all who heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, “What then will this child be?” For the hand of the Lord was with him.
67 And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying,
68 “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his people
69 and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David,
70 as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets
from of old,
71 that we should be saved from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us;
72 to show the mercy promised to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant,
73 the oath that he swore to our father Abraham,
to grant us
74 that we, being delivered from the hand of our
enemies, might serve him without fear,
75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our
days.
76 And you, child, will be called the prophet
of the Most High; for you will go before the
Lord to prepare his ways,
77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people
in the forgiveness of their sins,
78 because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high
79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in
the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the
way of peace.”
80 And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God!
Sermon
Luke 1:57-80 – Songs for the King: Benedictus – Allen Reger
Sending
Having heard and confessed the Gospel, we are sent into the world on mission in Christ, which we express in both song and spoken word.
Sending Song
Let The Nations Be Glad
Blessing
From Isaiah 60:1, 3 (ESV)
Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
And nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your rising.