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:: Download the 5.17.2015 Sermon Audio
image :: Man Reading, Monhegan, Jamie Wyeth (1974, American)
Preparation for Worship :: Thus Says The LORD
“I am the Lord. I have spoken; it shall come to pass; I will do it. I will not go back.” (Ezekiel 24:14)
“In a world of created changeable things, Christ and His Word alone remain unshaken…Let me know that He is dear to me by His Word; I am one with Him by the Word on His part, and by faith on mine; If I oppose the Word I oppose my Lord when He is most near; If I receive the Word I receive my Lord wherein He is nigh…Form my heart according to the Word, according to the image of Thy Son, so shall Christ the Word, and His Word, be my strength and comfort.” (Puritan Prayer)
Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs for Sunday May 17 include ::
:: Doxology (Thomas Ken, 1709) CHART [bandcamp track=2257784892 bgcol=FFFFFF linkcol=4285BB size=short]:: O Love That Will Not Let Me Go (George Matheson, 1882) CHART [bandcamp track=3803477124 bgcol=FFFFFF linkcol=4285BB size=short]:: All Who Are Thirsty (Brown & Robertson, 1998) CHART [bandcamp track=379205746 bgcol=FFFFFF linkcol=4285BB size=short]:: Jesus, I Am Resting (Jean S. Pigott, 1876) CHART [bandcamp track=104008922 bgcol=FFFFFF linkcol=4285BB size=short]:: I Asked The Lord (John Newton, 1779) CHART [bandcamp track=1751705126 bgcol=FFFFFF linkcol=4285BB size=short]:: In Christ Alone (Getty & Townend, 2002) CHART [bandcamp track=676321818 bgcol=FFFFFF linkcol=4285BB size=short]
Call to Worship :: Psalm 29:2
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.
Prayer of Confession
Father in heaven, We confess that we have sinned against You in our thoughts, words and deeds. You have spoken definitively by Your Son: forgive us for living as if You never act, never hear, never speak. We have broken Your Law. Forgive us for trying to take matters into our own hands and so denying You, our Sovereign Lord . Forgive us for living as if You do not care for us. Forgive us and cleanse us. Fill us with Your Spirit, that we may delight in Your will and walk in Your ways, to the glory of Your Name. Amen
Words of Encouragement :: I Peter 2:9-10
You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Gospel Reading :: John 5:19-24
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
Sermon :: II Kings 6:24-7:2
24 Afterward Ben-hadad king of Syria mustered his entire army and went up and besieged Samaria. 25 And there was a great famine in Samaria, as they besieged it, until a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver. 26 Now as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, “Help, my lord, O king!” 27 And he said, “If the Lord will not help you, how shall I help you? From the threshing floor, or from the winepress?” 28 And the king asked her, “What is your trouble?” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ 29 So we boiled my son and ate him. And on the next day I said to her, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him.’ But she has hidden her son.” 30 When the king heard the words of the woman, he tore his clothes—now he was passing by on the wall—and the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth beneath on his body— 31 and he said, “May God do so to me and more also, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today.”
32 Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. Now the king had dispatched a man from his presence, but before the messenger arrived Elisha said to the elders, “Do you see how this murderer has sent to take off my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold the door fast against him. Is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him?” 33 And while he was still speaking with them, the messenger came down to him and said, “This trouble is from the Lord! Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?”
7 But Elisha said, “Hear the word of the Lord: thus says the Lord, Tomorrow about this time a seah of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, at the gate of Samaria.” 2 Then the captain on whose hand the king leaned said to the man of God, “If the Lord himself should make windows in heaven, could this thing be?” But he said, “You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat of it.”