Call To Worship
We confess the supremacy of God in Christ through both responsive reading and song.
Our Spoken Call to Worship
Psalm 123 (ESV)
To you I lift up my eyes,
O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
(M) Behold, as the eyes of the servants
look to the hand of their master,
(W) as the eyes of a maidservant
to the hand of her mistress,
(A) so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
till he has mercy upon us.
Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us,
for we have had more than enough of contempt.
(A) Our soul has had more than enough
of the scorn of those who are at ease,
of the contempt of the proud.
Our Sung Call to Worship
Behold Our God
Confession
We confess our need for mercy through both responsive reading and song.
Our Spoken Confession
From Psalm 38:1-4, 15, 18-22 (NIV)
(A) O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger
or discipline me in your wrath.
(W) For your arrows have pierced me,
and your hand has come down upon me.
(M) Because of your wrath there is no health in my body;
my bones have no soundness because of my sin.
(A) My guilt has overwhelmed me
like a burden too heavy to bear.
(A) I wait for you, O LORD;
you will answer, O Lord my God.
(A) I confess my iniquity;
I am troubled by my sin.
(M) Many are those who are my vigorous enemies;
those who hate me without reason are numerous.
(W) Those who repay my good with evil
slander me when I pursue what is good.
(A) O LORD, do not forsake me;
be not far from me, O my God.
Come quickly to help me,
O Lord my Savior.
TIME OF SILENT CONFESSION
Our Sung Confession
Abide With Me
Assurance and Peace
We profess our assurance of salvation and peace in Christ through both responsive reading and song.
Remember the Gospel
From Romans 8:31-39 (ESV)
What then shall we say to these things?
If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son
but gave him up for us all,
how will he not also with him
graciously give us all things?
Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?
It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?
Christ Jesus is the one who died—
more than that, who was raised—
who is at the right hand of God,
who indeed is interceding for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed
all day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am sure that neither death nor life,
nor angels nor rulers,
nor things present nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Our Sung Profession of Assurance
I’ll Never Forsake You
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.
You may give electronically at gabcames.org/giving/
We Give Thanks in Song
On Jordan’s Stormy Banks
Scripture Reading
Hosea 2:2-15
2 “Plead with your mother, plead—
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband—
that she put away her whoring from her face,
and her adultery from between her breasts;
3 lest I strip her naked
and make her as in the day she was born,
and make her like a wilderness,
and make her like a parched land,
and kill her with thirst.
4 Upon her children also I will have no mercy,
because they are children of whoredom.
5 For their mother has played the whore;
she who conceived them has acted shamefully.
For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
who give me my bread and my water,
my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’
6 Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns,
and I will build a wall against her,
so that she cannot find her paths.
7 She shall pursue her lovers
but not overtake them,
and she shall seek them
but shall not find them.
Then she shall say,
‘I will go and return to my first husband,
for it was better for me then than now.’
8 And she did not know
that it was I who gave her
the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and who lavished on her silver and gold,
which they used for Baal.
9 Therefore I will take back
my grain in its time,
and my wine in its season,
and I will take away my wool and my flax,
which were to cover her nakedness.
10 Now I will uncover her lewdness
in the sight of her lovers,
and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.
11 And I will put an end to all her mirth,
her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths,
and all her appointed feasts.
12 And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,
of which she said,
‘These are my wages,
which my lovers have given me.’
I will make them a forest,
and the beasts of the field shall devour them.
13 And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals
when she burned offerings to them
and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry,
and went after her lovers
and forgot me, declares the LORD.
14 “Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
15 And there I will give her her vineyards
and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God!
Sermon
Hosea 2:2-13 “Yahweh Pursues His Rebellious Bride” – Pastor Michael Felkins
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
Come Behold The Wondrous Mystery
Blessing
Adapted from Numbers 6:24-26
May the Lord bless you and keep you;
may the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
may the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace.