Bible Verses for Sunday Service February12, 2023
Psalm 62:5
For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
for my hope is from him.
Romans 12:9
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.
Announcements:
Next week a representative from the Gideons will be with us to provide a report on their work of distributing scriptures. We will take an offering to support their work
The Awana kids will be making cars to race on Saturday, March 4. This is a great event that creates a lot of fun and excitement for the kids and their parents. We will be needing some help setting up and running the event, so consider giving a Saturday morning to help. Car kits are available for $5.
On the Friday before the Grand Prix, Pastor is offering time to test and tune the cars to get them ready for the race. As part of the tune, the Grand Prix staff will weigh the cars and help the children add weight. If you wish to take advantage of this tuning, please be there between 4 and 6PM.
A donor provided winter coats for children who may have need. You will find them hanging on the coat rack in the entrance to the fellowship hall.
Lastly, Sandy is cleaning up the church library, we are looking for people who might want Christian material on cassette tape?
Sermon:
Working through the gospel of Luke, Pastor preached on Luke 4:31-44 today, in a message titled “The Certainty of Christ’s Authority.” In this section, Luke describes the first two of the 21 miracles covered in his Gospel. Pastor explained that one way Jesus could demonstrate His authority is control over the natural world by doing miracles that are supernatural or outside of nature. Luke starts to chronicle those miracles, describing first his healing of a demon possessed man in the synagogue, and then healing of Peter’s mother-in-law.
Pastor explained that these miracles show that Jesus is authoritative in His doctrine. He was authoritative in words as He spoke and preached on His own authority, not referring to other rabbis, as the scribes of the day did. Jesus also illustrates the natural authority of his person. He is literally is an author of the Bible in that it contains His words.
In the first miracle Luke documents, Jesus illustrates His authority over demons, by casting them out of a demon possessed person in the synagogue. This casting out illustrated that the demons believe in Him as the Son of God, something that is repeated in scripture, James 2:19. These demons battle us, try to kill us. We have the example in Mark 9:22 were the father reports that the demon possessing his son threw him into the fire regularly. But, in all things, the demons have no choice but to obey Christ. And, they do. Scripture tells us of Christ defeat of Satan and all his workers in Col 2:15.
Besides His authority over demons, Luke’s account contains another example of this authority, authority over disease. Almost immediately after this spiritual healing, Peter requests Jesus to heal his mother-in-law who, Luke tells us, has a high fever. Jesus treats the disease the same way he treats the demons, by rebuke. Now does that mean that disease is a kind of demon infestation? Maybe, but it is also possible to go back and look at the world, the corruption that it experiences from sin. This seems the better understanding. Pastor’s last point remarked on the mother-in-law’s response, to immediately serve, Jesus and the other disciples. As Pastor remarked this is a grateful, serving response. And it models for us what our response should be to the gracious healing of sin we have received in our Savior’s work on the cross.
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.