Bible Verses for Sunday Service December 18, 2022
Matthew 1:31
She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
Romans 15:13
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
Announcements:
Christmas Eve service will be at 5:30PM. Please join us for a time of worshiping and celebrating the coming of the Savior as a baby in Bethlehem. Our short service will include music, scripture and a message from God’s Word. We will close with the traditional candle lighting during the concluding hymn.
If anyone would like to make a nomination for the church offices, put the name of the person you are nominating on the sheet on the foyer bulletin board. Also, if you are presently an officer and would be willing to be on the ballot for next year, please let Pastor Jim know.
Next Sunday is Christmas so we will not have Sunday School. However, we will have a regular worship service at 10:30AM.
Our Deacons will meet on January 5 to set the budget for the coming year, as well as the agenda for the upcoming annual meeting.
Our annual meeting and potluck will be on January 15. Everyone is welcome to join us for the potluck right after church. The annual business meeting will follow. We will be electing officers and voting on the budget for the coming year. A project involving the support of a mission’s training center with ACTS International will be presented.
Be sure to check out the Christmas cards from friends, from both near and far, on our bulletin board.
Specials:
We were blessed to have three specials today. The first featured the children performing “Away in a Manger” with Gaylene organizing. Next, the children did “Oh Come let us Adore Him” as a bell choir. Here is the link, with video embedded below:
Next was a special by the choir singing “Oh Holy Night.” The link to this special is here, with the video embedded below:
Our last special featured a ladies’ trio singing “I am Glad I Know Who Jesus Is” to music provided by Lil. Here is a link to the performance, and the video is embedded below:
We were surely blessed as a congregation to enjoy our many talented members worship the Lord our Savior in song.
Sermon:
In honor of the birth of Our Savior, Pastor continued his series in Luke with “The First Christmas Hymns,” a sermon on the first Christmas worship in Luke 1:39-56. In preaching on this idea of the first Christmas Hymns, Pastor asked us to consider that five hymns are found in the first two chapters of Luke. In today’s sermon, he focused on the first two, Elizabeth and Mary’s hymns before the birth of their children, John the Baptist and Jesus. These first two hymns are praises to God for the gift of our Savior that contain wonderfully comforting theology. Both hymns should help us center Christ in our lives.
Elizabeth’s hymn is a joyful song that points to Christ. To help us get the right context, Pastor asked us to remember she would be an elderly lady, maybe 70 to 80 years old who was pregnant for the first time, a miracle. The first aspect of this song of praise was the Holy Spirit’s influence. Pastor remarked that a good metaphor for this influence is considering the lights under a billboard that illuminate it at night. You don’t see the lights, you see the billboard. So it is with the Holy Spirit, always pointing to Jesus our Savior. So under that influence, Elizabeth spoke the joyous truth about the Messiah, Jesus. Indeed, the influence of the Holy Spirit brought joy to Elizabeth who couldn’t yet see her child or Mary’s child. We should have that same joy even though we cannot presently see Jesus. Lastly, Elizabeth’s hymn was a witness of oneness, it brought people together. She rejoiced in her relative, similarly pregnant who could help her in her pregnancy, help her through in very practical ways. We too experience this same oneness at Christmas in singing hymns, brought together by our shared love and hope in our Savior.
Mary too had a hymn of praise, a joyful song. From her hymn we see that genuine worship requires humility. Pastor observed that it is impossible for a proud person, who is focused on themselves, to worship. Such a person’s focus is always on themselves. Mary was focused on the Savior she was carrying and grateful to the Lord for his blessing to her. She magnified the Lord, she saw herself in terms who God is, not who she was. Genuine worship in her hymn also recognizes mercy. Mary recognized that she had received mercy that enabled her to see her own need for a savior, and acknowledge that need.
So as we enter this Christmas season, let’s keep all of this in mind. Ponder His coming. Our lives are not about us, but all about his joy.
Accessing the Service, Bulletin and Sermon Outline:
Here are the pages from the bulletin, click on the images below to see them full size:
If you would like to have the sermon outline, you can download it here, a pdf file.
If you would like a link to this service you can find it here. Perhaps you would like to share it with your friends. You could also share that link on social media, if you use any of the providers. We use Rumble, a safe alternative to Google’s YouTube.