Worship Next Sunday
August 21, 2011
Preaching: Nathan Snyder
Sermon text: Ephesians 4:7-16
Sermon title: “Called to Ministry”
Music:
Opening – 19 Thee We Adore, Eternal Lord!
Preparation – White #2 How Marvelous, How Wise, ...
Response – 342 Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation
Closing – 469 How Sweet and Awesome Is the Place
Confession of Faith: Apostles Creed
OT Reading: Psalm 68:1-19
Preparation Guide
Sunday: Review morning sermon (evening service @ 5pm)
Monday: Ephesians 4
Tuesday: 2 Samuel 17:1-14
Wednesday: 2 Samuel 17:15-29
Thursday: Psalm 68
Friday: Exodus 20:13
Saturday: Ephesians 4
Suggested Bible Study and Prayers
(Passages that we will refer to in next Sunday's worship)
2 Samuel 15
Omnipotent God, we seek Your help today, for conspiracy against Your church seems to be everywhere. False rulers captivate the gullible. They steal the hearts of Your people. They plot with evil schemes. We play our parts with no sense of the danger that is ahead of us. Whole churches are attacked from deceitful enemies, and the work of many years is destroyed in a matter of days. These are times of trouble in Your kingdom. Faithful leaders are made to look like weak men who cannot be safely loved. Ruthless men amass great power for themselves and foolish men and women consider the wicked to be the hope of the future. Has Your church lost all sense? Is Christ not among us? How can we listen to lies? People deny the most foundational truths of our faith, and show disrespect for men of holiness and proven sincerity. In such an evil day, grant to us clear thinking. When we hear the plans of deceivers, make us wise in both our speech and our silence. Let us love the truth with a faithful heart, and serve Your Son in the day of a great apostasy all around us.
Psalm 90
Eternal Father, in You we live and move and have our being. We are here for a season and then return to dust, but from the dust You call us back to life. Who can stand before You? You know all our secret sins. We live for our seventy or eighty years, and then we are gone. Have pity on us. Help us to rejoice in You forever, so that we will consider our current troubles a light affliction when compared with the glory that will soon be our life and portion without end.
Acts 7
Our Father, grant that we would rightly appreciate the privilege of suffering for the name of Jesus Christ. Without this true assessment of our trials, we will always shrink away from a forthright statement of Your Word in situations of danger. You have sent one Man who would truly keep Your perfect Law. Through His death and resurrection He became the cornerstone of a new spiritual temple, Your church throughout the world. All of the patriarchs and heroes of the faith in earlier days longed for this day of the Messiah. Now He has actually visited us. This Jesus did all things well. He has poured out Your Holy Spirit upon Your church. We love the Law of Christ. We rejoice in the Temple of the Holy Spirit. We long for the fulfillment of Your promise in the age to come, in the land of Resurrection. We love the Word of the Prophets which has now come in person in the great beauty of our Messiah. He is the perfect Son of David, and He has built a new house for His people in His own world-wide body. We will not resist the Holy Spirit. We will love and serve the Righteous One. Teach us the truth about our sin, that we might more fully and earnestly repent of it and be forgiven. Though men might work together to kill us, Your truth can never be stopped. Grant us such a beauty of holiness and love that we would be willing to forgive those who seek our destruction.
