Bible Verses for Sunday Service January 1, 2023
Psalm 65:1
Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion,
and to you shall vows be performed.
Announcements:
After our Christmas break, we will be back to Awana this Wednesday night. This was the last scheduled break until Awards night on April 5, barring any cancellations because of the weather. We plan on the Grand Prix race in March. Car kits will be available soon.
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 like to be on the ballot for next year, let Pastor Jim know.
On Thursday at 7PM at the home of the Witschis, the deacons will meet to set the budget for the coming year, as well as the agenda for upcoming annual meeting.
Our annual meeting and potluck will be on January 15. Everyone is welcome to join us for a potluck right after church. Our annual business meeting will follow. We will be electing officers and voting on the budget for the coming year. We will consider a project involving the support of a missions’ training center with ACTS International.
Be sure to check to see if your information is correct on our preliminary copy of the church directory. The directory is in the foyer on the table. Please make any needed corrections by writing them in.
Lastly, the new greeter schedules for January through April 23 are on the foyer table.
Special:
We blessed by Cole’s trumpet playing during today’s service. It is always uplifting to see father and son play together. Thank you to the Orelups.
Sermon:
In honor of the birth of Our Savior, Pastor continued his series in Luke with “Elderly Examples” the last in a series about the five hymns in Luke 2. This week Pastor covered Simeon and Anna’s hymns in Luke 2:23-39. In this sermon, Pastor continued to draw lessons for us today from this series of hymns. For today, Pastor focused these two older people that Mary and Joseph meet at the temple as they came for Mary’s purification, the lessons we can learn from their lives.
Focusing first on Simeon, Pastor remarked that he is one saw the Lord. Simeon had received a prophecy that he would see the Lord, Israel’s salvation before his death. He immediately recognized the baby Jesus through the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit. His wait had deeply affected his walk with the Lord. As he waited for the fulfillment of the prophecy, he daily went to the temple. In other words, he didn’t sit a home doing nothing. His walk, his focus was on the Lord while he was waiting. Another aspect of this was his sight was on the Savior. Because of his attitude and his location, at the temple, he was grateful for seeing the prophecy fulfilled, and grateful for his sight of the Savior. But, in seeing Jesus he had a sad message for Mary, suffering ahead for her, and for the people of Israel who will choose to reject the Savior’s message.
Besides Simeon, Mary and Joseph met Anna at the temple too, a true servant of the Lord. Pastor asked us to consider her service. It was continual, something we can hope to emulate as we get older. Besides its duration, its qualities where commendable too. For this service was also prayerful. Pastor pointed out that this can be a good transition in our service. Perhaps we start off our service with the 4th grade boys in VBS. At some point, it maybe too much as we get older. But, instead of retiring from service, we could switch to a service of prayer like Anna. We could also be verbal in our service like Anna. She went about telling people of the good news, so an early evangelist.
In conclusion, Pastor asked us to be like Simeon and Anna, keep our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, and endure with service, perhaps changing how we serve to suit our age as we do.
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.