Bible Verses for Sunday Service February 19, 2023
Luke 1:37
For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
for my hope is from him.
Zephaniah 3:17
The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.
Announcements:
Gideon representatives Danny Ball and John Klier were at service today and Danny gave a report on the Gideon’s work. He spoke of the ministries of Bible distribution in the Billings area, although the Gideons operate world wide. Besides Bible distribution in hotels and hospitals for example, he also reported on the prayer ministry, faithfully praying ever week for the pastors and churches in the area. You can support this ministry by making a donation..
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.
On April 20, LaVie will host 321 Improv, a Christian improv group. Laughter will fill that night, along fun and prizes. Everyone is welcome, but it is geared towards youth ages 11-18. While it is a fundraiser for LaVie, SBC will receive free tickets for their youth groups. Pastor Jim needs to know by Feb 28 how many tickets to request. You can find more information on the church bulletin board.
Special: Gideon Report
As mentioned in the announcements, Danny Ball of the local Billings Gideons gave report today before service. If you would just like to watch this aspect of the service, or listen again to his report, you can watch here, or you can watch online.
Sermon:
In his exposition on the Gospel of Luke, Pastor preached on Luke 5:1-11 today, in a message titled “An Amazing Fish Story.” In this section, Luke describes the second call of the disciples, and relates how Jesus used fish to finally call Peter to himself. Pastor used an exercise he does as part of his physical therapy, the honest fisherman to introduce the idea that there are many fish stories, perhaps many embellished, but this fish story from Luke passes them all. Here Luke relates an amazing and true story of a miraculous catch.
Jesus extends Peter’s boat. Rather than using it to catch fish, Jesus sitting in it on the lake uses it as a kind of natural amphitheater to preach to crowds. In return he provides a miraculous catch. But, first the Lord uses the circumstances to finally bring Peter on board to his team of disciples. Peter had following Jesus off and on. He had a wife to support and followed Jesus but returned to fishing. In the miracle, Jesus challenged Peter’s faith as Jesus instructed Peter to do something worthless under conventional fishing lore, fish in the shallows during the day. Nevertheless, Peter obeyed, and received an unbelievable catch, a catch that could only come from a miracle. Beyond providing a bounty of fish to Peter, the miracle revealed Peter’s sin to him. Peter understood that Jesus could see the fish and control them. He then could see Peter’s sin. This frightened Peter.
In the second part of the sermon, Pastor focused on the Master’s commands. And, what is the first thing Jesus spoke to Peter, “do not be afraid.” After this assurance, Jesus moved on to another message for Peter, that from now on he was to catch people. Pastor remarked that the word in the Gospel refers to both men and women, and refers to them as living. This is important in that Peter was used to catching live fish and converting them to dead fish so that they could become food. Now he would catch live people who would receive the Gospel through him.
Lastly, Pastor reminded us that we are all fishers of men in our lives. So he asked to think about this aspect of being a Christian as we go about our lives this week. We are not full time, paid evangelists. Nevertheless we can fish for souls to win to Christ.
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.