12/5/2021 Bulletin

 

WELCOME AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

HYMN: Lost in the Night………………………………..RED 243 

KIDS COME FORWARD

LIGHTING OF THE ADVENT CANDLES  1. Hope  2. Peace  

CONFESSION AND FORGIVENESS

PRAYER OF THE DAY Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son. By his coming give to all the people of the world knowledge of your salvation; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Malachi 3:1-4 The Lord announces a covenant with Israel. A messenger like Malachi (his name means "my messenger") shall prepare a way for the sudden coming of the Lord, who will purify and refine God's people for the offering of pleasing sacrifices.    See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the LORD whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight--indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.

Philippians 1:3-11 Paul exhorts Christians to experience love that grows "richer in knowledge and insight of every kind" until the day of Christ Jesus. On that day, the good work begun in them will be flawless, a "full harvest of righteousness." I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God's grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I long for all

of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

HYMN:  Rejoice, Rejoice……………………………………RED 244

GOSPEL: Luke 3:1-6 Luke takes care to place John in secular history. Yet John's arrival also heralds a new age of salvation. John refers to the words of the prophets, but with a vigorous immediacy: Now is the time to prepare for Christ through a "baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins."     In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.' 'Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.' "

SERMON: We welcome Bishop Laurie Skow-Anderson       

    

OFFERING, CREED, UNITY PRAYER

Luke 1:68-79 Blessed are you, Lord, the God of Israel, you have come to your people and  set them free. You have raised up for us a mighty Savior, born of the house of your servant David.   Through your holy prophets, you promised of old to save us from our enemies, from the hand of  all who hate us,  to show mercy to our forebears, and to remember your holy covenant. This was the oath your swore to our father Abraham: to set us free from the hands of our enemies, free to worship you without fear, holy and righteous before you, all the days of our life.  And you, child, shall be called the prophet of  the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare the way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

CELEBRATION OF OUR LORD’S SUPPER

HYMNS: O Come O Come Emmanuel  Red 257 verses 5-8, Music,

Joy to the World Red 267, Music

BLESSING.             Go in peace. Christ is with you. Thanks be to God.