December 11, 2022 – Sunday Service Live Stream

And cleanse me from that. I know my sin is ever before me.

Purge me with thistle. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from me and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. Please stand for the assurance of pardon. This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts and inscribe them on their minds.

Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us rejoice that our sins have removed from us as far as the East is from the West and that our Father remembers them no more, amen.

Let us now pick up the Trinity hymnal and open to hymn number 195, Joy to the World, hymn number 195. Please take up the insert and look for the Psalm of the Week, Psalm 149. Praise the Lord, hallelujah, Psalm 149.

Please remain standing for the reading of God's word from Jeremiah 43.

Jeremiah 43. Now it happened when Jeremiah had stopped speaking to all the people all the words of the Lord their God for which the Lord their God had sent him to them, all these words, that Azariah, the son of Hoshiah, Johanan, the son of Koriah, and all the proud men spoke saying to Jeremiah, you speak falsely.

The Lord our God has not sent you to say, do not go to Egypt to dwell there. But Baruch, the son of Neriah, has sent you against us to deliver us into the hand of the Chaldeans, that they may put us to death or carry us away captive to Babylon.

So Johanan, the son of Koriah, and all the captains of the forces and all the people would not obey the voice of the Lord to remain in the land of Judah. But Johanan, the son of Koriah, and all the captains of the forces took all the remnant of Judah who had returned to dwell in the land of Judah from all nations where they had been driven.

Men, women, children, the king's daughters, and every person whom Nebuzaddan, the captain of the guard, had left to Gedaliah, the son of Anihichim, the son of Shippan, and Jeremiah the prophet, and Baruch, the son of Neriah.

So they went to the land of Egypt, for they did not obey the voice of the Lord. And they went as far as the Tafanis. Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah and the Tafanis and said, take large stones in your hand and hide them in the sight of the men of Judah, in the clay in the brick courtyard, which is at the entrance to Pharaoh's house, in the Tafanis.

And say to them, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I will send and bring Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and will set his throne above these stones, which I have hidden.

And he will spread his royal pavilion over them. When he comes, he shall strike the land of Egypt and deliver to death those appointed for death, and to captivity, those appointed for captivity, and to the sword, those appointed for the sword.

I will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods of Egypt, and he shall burn them and carry them away captive. And he shall array himself with the land of Egypt as a shepherd puts on his garment, and he shall go out from there in peace.

He shall also break the sacred pillars of Beth Shemesh that are in the land of Egypt, and the houses of the gods of the Egyptians shall burn with fire. This is the word of the Lord.

Let us now confess our common Christian faith in the singing of the Apostles' Creed. Please take up the Trinity Hymnal one more time and open up to hymn number 211, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, hymn 211.

Please turn to hymn 213, What Child Is This, 213. Make preparations for the prayers of the people. After this manner, therefore pray ye. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Pray that we may glorify God in all that we do as we live and work in the creation that displays his power. And be pleased to dispose all things to his own glory. Pray that Satan's kingdom may be destroyed and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced.

Ourselves and others brought into it and kept in it and the kingdom of glory hastened. Pray that God, for Christ's sake, would freely pardon all our sins. And we are encouraged to ask this because by his grace we are able from the heart to forgive others.

Pray that God would either keep us from being tempted to sin or support and deliver us when we are tempted. Our father, taking encouragement and prayer from you alone, in our prayers we praise you, ascribing kingdom, power and glory to you and to testify of our desire and assurance to be heard we say together, amen.

Please stand and take up the insert and open to our Psalm of the month, Psalm 150. Praise the Lord, Psalm 150.

Please turn in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 35. Turn in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 35. This is God's holy and infallible word. Isaiah 35. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.

It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it the excellence, excellency of carnage. And to Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God.

Strengthen ye the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance. Even God with a recompense, he will come and save you.

And the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as in heart. The tongue of the dumb sing, for in the wilderness shall waters break out and streams in the desert.

And the parched ground shall become a pool and the thirsty land springs of water and the habitation of dragons where each lay shall be grass with reeds and rushes. And an highway shall be there and a way and it shall be called the way of holiness.

The unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be for those, the wayfaring men, the fools shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon. It shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there.

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. May the Lord be pleased with our consideration of his most holy word.

Please pray with me. Oh Lord, we thank you for the living water from heaven, you Lord Jesus Christ. The barrenness of the creation humbled under sin, the destitution of man created in your image, marred by sin, but you come bringing salvation.

You convey us on the highway of holiness and the end is everlasting joy. Oh Lord, I pray that your people, that their hearts would be filled with joy today. And we ask these things in Jesus name, amen.

Please be seated. The barren desert wilderness is made alive by the living water of Christ. The redeemed have now a conveyance on the holy highway, which leads to everlasting joy. Isaiah 35 is quite the contrast from Isaiah 34.

In Isaiah 34, Edom which was prospering is made desolate. Curse falls on the land. In Isaiah 35, the cursed land receives a deliverance. And that deliverance of course, is the person and work of Jesus Christ.

There is an immediate contextual direction that chapter 35 is referring to. There will be a time of refreshing in the latter days of Hezekiah's reign. The wilderness pictures, not only the barren wilderness land that surrounds Israel, but also the barrenness of souls that exists in the hearts of those men and women and children.

Their hearts were far from God. It also speaks of lands foreign that contain Gentiles. The Gentiles will have their desert lands turn into vibrant streams of flowing water in Christ. The salvation of the Lord is going to the ends of the earth, chapter 35.

The first point I'd like to consider is the desert wilderness. Isaiah is here prophesying about the full consummation and restoration of the church, believe it or not. And this church is composed of both Jews and Gentiles in Christ.

This will come to pass, starting with the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, which we're celebrating in this season, and we'll find its ultimate end on the last day. The coming of Christ is the arrival of everlasting joy.

The incarnation of Jesus Christ is the recovery and restoration of all things, that the process has begun with the arrival of Christ. The church here is described compared to a desert wilderness. If you've been reading in your Bible plans this year, you will recognize just how often Israel finds themselves in a wilderness.

God's people were so well acquainted with the idea of wilderness. When I think of a wilderness, I think of a scene from Rocky Mountain National Park, a place covered in trees with snow-capped mountains and rushing streams.

I imagine deer and elk hopping along, and there's lots of grass, and there's lots of vegetation, and lots of growing things. But the wilderness in this part of the world is very different. This wilderness is dry, it's barren, it has very little water or vegetation.

It's the kind of place where temperatures can approach 100 degrees during the day and drop to near freezing during the night. Can you imagine having a sunburn, then going to bed and freezing with a sunburn?

It's a place where dangerous animals and people roam. Here in our text, the desert wilderness is described as that place where it shall be then a place of rejoicing. The waste ground shall be made glad and flourish as the rose.

It's going to blossom. The barrenness will be replaced with flourishing. It will blossom abundantly, and it will even rejoice with joy and singing. The parched dry land which groans for a life-giving water is set to be transformed.

It's about to undergo a metamorphosis. And of course, this transformation is supernatural. Barren lands are not fruitful. Isaiah uses three regions of beauty and abundance to illustrate the transformation of the desert and this wilderness, and these places are called Lebanon, Carmel, and Sharon.

They are the antithesis of desert. The dry wilderness will come alive when the rare rains would come. The church of God is here displayed. It longs to be revived by the living water from heaven, Jesus Christ.

How bright are the pastels of the desert flowers when the rain comes. Have you ever seen a picture of that? A dry desert land, and suddenly a big rain comes, and all of these green and beautifully colored flowers and things sprout, even for a short time.

The ground is thirsty for the water. It knows what to do with it when it receives it to itself. It becomes productive. It flourishes. How green is the desert vegetation against that brown barrenness. The people were longing for deliverance from captivity.

They're enduring Assyrian captivity, that they're gonna face Babylonian captivity. They're going to have many struggles, but there's a promise, there's a hope for a future where Messiah will come. Even the creation itself is groaning, longing for the revelation of the church of God.

The church here and even the ground respond to God's salvation. Can you imagine the desert rejoicing? We think about this probably primarily in natural terms with the flowering and the vegetation sprouting after a rain.

But what about the barrenness of the hearts of the Jewish people? They are a wilderness. What about the barrenness of souls that comprise the whole world made up of the Gentiles at this time? Surely the world was filled with wilderness, with barrenness, with dryness, but it's about to blossom as a rose.

It's about to respond abundantly with rejoicing, with joy and singing as it comprehends the fruits of God's deliverance. I want to remind you of the people's connection to the wilderness. Deuteronomy 1 says, referring to the Lord's carrying, essentially Israel through the wilderness, as a man does bear his son in all the way that you went until you came to this place.

Essentially the Lord is saying, I have carried you as a father carries his son. Deuteronomy 2 says, during their 40 years in the wilderness the Lord was with Israel and they lacked nothing. It was in the wilderness that the Lord humbled Israel, Deuteronomy 8, and fed them with manna, which they didn't know, neither did their fathers know, that they might make them know that man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.

In Matthew 3, the forerunner, John the Baptist, will go to the wilderness to preach the need of repentance. Of course, you'll remember finally, Matthew chapter four, Jesus and his temptation in the wilderness.

He would often retreat there to the wilderness for solitude and for prayer. The people of God and the entirety of their history, redemptively, are intertwined into the fabric of the wilderness. This is a wilderness that results with rejoicing and singing and blossoming.

It's a wilderness, a desert, that turns into abundance. It represents here much more than a region or topography. It's not just the desert, wilderness, Judea, Galilee, all of Canaan. It becomes an illustration, a vibrant picture of the spiritual provision and life that the Lord brings.

It illustrates life-giving, vivification, vitality in the renewal that God brings, the renewal that he brings in the person and work of Christ. It's interesting that the people in right relationship with God flourish in the desert.

We live really in a barren land at the moment, but we're flourishing. He is prepared for us here even, in the midst of our enemies, a feast. Here we stand, preserved, protected, filled with hearts of rejoicing.

The people of God are going to prosper in a place that is not a place of prosperity. They're going to thrive in a place that doesn't normally allow for thriving. That is often the case in the history and life of the church.

This place will blossom abundantly. Rejoice with joy and singing. Look at verse two again. The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it. Lebanon is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I don't know if you've ever been there or ever seen it.

It's on the Mediterranean coast. And to show you how close these things are in proximity, it's about 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. It's a land of snow-capped mountains, maybe like my original imagery of the wilderness.

The place where the snow melts down into rushing, beautiful mountain streams that water the most beautiful trees on earth. They water those majestic cedar forests. And in fact, they were so prominent in the history of God's people that Solomon made a deal with Hiram of Tyre to use those cedars from Lebanon to construct the temple.

They were trees fit for a king. Or better still, trees fit for the Lord. Strong, beautiful, ornamental, and fragrant. So the people of God, getting this message from Isaiah, they know about Lebanon. Many of them had been there, they'd heard all the stories.

They know about the fruitfulness and the beauty and the natural wonder of Lebanon. Isaiah says, the beauty of Lebanon on the coast, the desert is far from the coast, that coastal vibrancy and life is going to be imported into the desert.

The second city or region is Carmel. This is Mount Carmel, made famous by the prophet Elijah. It also, antithetically, is on the Mediterranean sea coast. It's about 17 miles west of the Sea of Galilee.

It rises out of the beach, out of the ocean. It juts out of the beaches and rises immediately to 1 ,700 feet. When I was studying in Wales, I was utterly amazed with the cliffs. The stone rock mountain went right to the edge of the water.

And I was in Western Wales, and I could see Ireland across the ocean, across the English Channel. Sheer face, water, then mountain. That's the picture of Carmel. It's a place of abundant rain and facilitated year-round growth.

Lots of crops are grown in Carmel. And then there is Sharon. Jesus is referred to the Rose of Sharon. These places on the Mediterranean coast, the Plain of Sharon comes out of Mount Carmel and goes south for about 35 to 40 miles.

And it's known for its fertile ground and naturally growing flowers everywhere. A beautiful, natural wonder in all three places. And this imagery is very powerful. The people know what the wilderness looks like.

They know what Lebanon and Carmel and Sharon look like. And the prophet admonishes them, saying, and exhorts them to believe that God is going to make the desert like Lebanon and Carmel and Sharon. Something wondrous is afoot.

Let me look at the end of chapter two again, these three places of the Mediterranean are far removed from the wilderness. They represent prosperity, abundance, while the wilderness is barren, dry, and foreboding.

The desert is going to be transformed by the mighty arm of God. There is another glory and excellency that the people will see that exceeds the glory of Lebanon. Look at that language again. The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it.

The excellency of Carmel and Sharon. There's a greater glory that's coming. These three regions reflect imperfectly the glory and the majesty of the one who created them. If the wilderness will become glorious, it's only because the Lord imposes his glory upon it.

You and I have salvation because God gloriously and graciously imposes his grace upon us. He brings salvation to us in Christ. The whole of God's people scattered throughout the whole world. Even those in the desert will see the glory and excellency of God.

Let's consider verse three. What happens to a people, you'll remember in our study of Zechariah, when people are in captivity or under heavy bondage, they become discouraged. The prophet and every faithful minister of the gospel is called, verse three, to strengthen the weak hands and to make firm the feeble knees.

The people of God must have hope. When hope is restored, as Mark was praying this, I was thinking along with my message, when hope is restored, they will find stores of strength to draw from. When there's hope, I can go through anything.

You can go through anything if there's hope. The prophet says, you need to strengthen your weak hands. You need to stand tall and stabilize those feeble and weak knees. Tell those, verse four, that are fearful, be strong, fear not.

Behold, your God will come with vengeance. Even God with a recompense. He will come and he will save you. God is with them. And in fact, God's going to raise up Cyrus of Persia to defeat Babylon in some years.

He's going to allow the captives in exile to return to Jerusalem. We're studying this in our Zechariah series. The deliverance out of exile points to the worldwide deliverance Christ ushers in at his incarnation in ministry.

In Christ, the captives of sin and death are set free. The desert lands are made lush and green. Jesus is coming, Isaiah says. Salvation is coming to Israel. And we'll learn later in Isaiah, very strongly, this salvation is coming to the nations.

Be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance. Even the desert can't resist the living water of Christ. Let's consider verse five. This salvation is miraculous. The eyes of the blind will be opened.

The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. The lame man is going to leap like a deer. And the tongue of the dumb, the mute man, is going to see. There is an outbreak of deliverance. You see, there is a chiastic structure here to this, and we should consider this.

There is a description of the restoration of the created order and the transformation of it. The wilderness is transformed. We can think about this, like I said, related to that physical wilderness, but also the barrenness of the nations.

They are going to be people who are far away from this region who are going to praise the Lord, and we're numbered with them. The desert is going to yield beautiful fruit. But this salvation comes miraculously.

It also speaks to the restoration of the physical world in human form. The eyes of the blind are going to be opened. The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Does this sound familiar to you at all about the life and ministry of Jesus?

Then shall the lame man leap as a deer. The man who is unable to speak with his mouth, his tongue is going to be loosed. Right connected to that in verse six, it all says, for in the wilderness shall the waters break out and streams in the desert.

Just as God transforms the wilderness into a paradise, so too he transforms those with great disability. He brings the wholeness of the shalom to the whole person in need, and he does this throughout history to declare his excellency, to authenticate his gospel proclamation.

He heals and he saves. The language of our text is fulfilled by the person of Christ who brings in and is the cause of this joy. You'll remember when John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask Jesus, this is after his imprisonment, about his messiahship, he tells them, his disciples to ask Jesus this question about are you the Christ?

And this is what Jesus says to him in response from Matthew 11. Go and tell John the things which you hear and see. The blind receive their sight.

The lame walk.

The lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised. And the poor have good news preached to them. Matthew 11 comes on the heels of a number of these healings that Jesus performs and is recorded by Matthew in chapters eight and nine.

Particularly interesting, this description of the lame man in verse six. Find that again in your Bible. The lame man leaping like a heart. It sounds very much like Acts chapter three, verse eight. This is literally fulfilled when the apostle Peter heals a man lame from birth.

Luke records in that instance that the man jumped up and began to walk, walking, leaping, and praising God. Creation is being renewed and transformed. Man is being transformed. In this case, the illustration is his body is being healed.

God's salvation, verse four, is come in Christ. The enemies of God are crushed under his heel at the cross. God's coming with recompense. He's bringing salvation in Christ. And now we return in this chiastic structure to the creation.

The end of verse six again. The wilderness shall have the waters break out. There's going to be streams in the desert. The parched ground shall become like a pool. The thirsty land will be teeming with springs of water.

In the haunts of the jackals, where they used to lay, there's going to be grass with wreaths and rushes. It's very interesting, the land described. Time doesn't really permit to read the whole chapter, but in chapter 34, the land is described as a haunt of jackals.

It's a place where people can't live. And now it's a place that is so full of vegetation and water, it even has a life-giving swamp that flows water out into these areas, providing food and water for the plants and the animals.

What a transformation is described here. The physical ground, the deaf man, the blind man, all experiencing the transformation, salvation from the Lord. The desert wilderness posed a challenge to life and survival.

The parched ground becomes a pool. The thirsty land will be transformed. The living water of Christ will give life to the barren. Isaiah pictures a picture here, paints a picture here of a desert where waters gush and flow, where rocky places turn into a swamp.

The curse has been reversed. The rocky jackal haunt has turned into a pleasant streaming pasture of grace. This is what the Lord does. He takes the barren and the dead, and he makes them alive, and that's what happens to us in the gospel.

We were deserts, dry and dusty, and he's made us alive. I think there's also an undercurrent here, a picture of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, often associated with water. The coming and inauguration of Christ and his kingdom also means the ushering in of the powerful outworking of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit goes out from Jerusalem, and he touches the nations. The deserts are turned into pastures. The dead ones are made alive. The lame are walking and jumping. The deaf hear. The one who can't talk, he now sings the praises of God.

And there's something else. There's a holy highway. Consider verse eight. And a highway shall be there. In chapter 34, it was an impassable place, the implication being like, once you're stuck there, you can't get out of there.

And there's going to be a highway in this desert, the King's Highway. It's the place, it's the way of holiness. And the unclean will never pass over it. The unclean would never want to be there. They don't love holy things.

They don't love the Lord. They don't want to be drawn into his presence. They will stay far away from the way of holiness. But the path, the way of salvation and eternal everlasting joy is the way, the truth, and the life, the Lord Jesus Christ.

No one will pass through that land, it says in 34 .10. And now it says, the unclean cannot pass over it. But Christ has made the unclean clean. The wilderness was a very dangerous place. This is the places where people would be attacked by lions.

This is where David would be with his sheep and have to kill bears and lions from attacking his sheep. There was constant danger in the wilderness. But this holy highway provides a safe passage. No lion, no ravenous beast, no robber is going to harass or harangue the people of God who are in Christ.

Of course, this is pushing us into that eternal state, that last day, that everlasting hope we have with the consummation of all things. Look at verse nine. No lion's going to be there. No ravenous beast shall go up thereon.

It shall not be found there but the redeemed. This is gonna be the place where they walk. The highway of holiness is the path of the redeemed. This is the place, this is the way, this is where the people who put their trust, they traverse.

This is where they go. They come out from the world separate. They're different, they're holy. They love Christ and they love holy things. It's a big challenge for us, isn't it? Awash in worldliness. It pours over us like a mighty waterfall, worldliness day in and day out.

Are we going to be the people who are covered up by the waterfall world? Are we going to traverse the King's holy highway? Which direction are you going to go today, you and your family? Are you going to walk the path of faith and obedience or of unbelief and disobedience?

And now, a dramatic conclusion. The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. You and I, though living in a desert, should have a crown of joy on our heads.

The whole world should see the joy of our salvation. It should come out of our lips. It should come out of our manner of life, our conversation. They should see us and have hope in the Lord because we're so filled with joy.

This idea of ransomed of the Lord speaks to a price that has to be paid. Our salvation is so costly that it requires the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity. Our salvation is so costly, it requires him to lead a sinless life.

Our salvation is so costly that he has to die as a cursed man on a tree. Our salvation is so costly that we have to be washed.

In his blood, but he's done it.

And what is the fruit of it? They come to Mount Zion in the city of the living God. They come with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. If we're not a joyful people, we lie about the salvation we enjoy.

Joy should be coming out of us, all of our pores, from our mouth, from our work. Everything we do should be a reflection of our understanding of what God has done in Christ to deliver us. When the rains come upon the desert, the desert roses bloom.

They have no choice. When salvation comes upon the people of God, their hearts should be filled with joy and dancing and singing and praising. There's another final thing to consider. Verse 10. We're going to obtain joy and gladness, but one day there will be no more tears.

Sorrow and sighing shall flee away. The ransom price has been paid to free the captives. The Lord himself, and this is an amazing picture, and it makes me think that we need to know more about our agrarian heritage, because Isaiah points the people to places they can see with their own eyes, to the very dirt that they're familiar with.

You and I need to be more cognizant and pay closer attention to the land that we might properly instruct our children in the ways of righteousness. I have a question for you. What really makes you joyful?

What really makes you happy? Is it earthy, carnal things? We have to be honest about our condition. Is it your circumstance, your comfort? Is that what really makes you feel joyful when things go according to plan?

Or today, is your heart filled with joy because your barren soul has been watered with living water from heaven? Your growling belly has been fed with the true bread from heaven? Your sin, your death has been laid upon Christ.

Is this what makes you joyful? We have a lot of reason to rejoice today, don't we? I don't want you to play it, but I want us to sing joy to the world again a cappella. Can you take up the Trinity Hymnal?

And I want you to pay a little bit closer attention.

To the words, it's 195.

Let's stand together and let's sing this again. This salvation brings joy and peace, and this peace is shalom, is entire wholeness. God is not only rescuing our souls from hell, he's rescuing as we so wonderfully spoke of this morning in Sunday school, he's rescuing his creation.

The capstone achievement being the heir of creation, man being redeemed. Let's think about that as we sing joy to the world. 195, let's begin. Our Lord has watered the deserts of this world and made them alive in Christ.

Please pray with me. Oh Lord Jesus, we thank you for your innumerable blessings. We thank you for the hope that you give to people who are in captivity. Oh Lord, I pray today that you would deliver us from any bondage that holds sway over us, that we would have more joy in Christ than all of the festivities could offer.

And in fact, all of our festive action would now flow out of our love of Christ. Lord, there is often barrenness in a temporal sense in the life of your people. We ask today that if there be any barrenness in us, that you would pour out your Holy Spirit on us.

And may rivers of living, flowing water proceed from us, that the nations may know that Jesus Christ is Lord and King. May we ask all these things in his name. Let's continue our worship with the presentation of tithes.

Please stand and let's pray together. Oh Lord, we thank you for the gift of work and stewardship and household and our own economy, Lord. I pray that our work life, our giving life would be reflective of an obedient life.

Lord, we ask that you would take these tithes and offerings and that you would use them for the advance of your kingdom. We ask this in Jesus name, amen. Please stand and let us give glory to God in the singing of the Gloria Patri.

Be with you, lift up your hearts. Let us give thanks to the Lord. It is right and a good and joyful thing that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to you, oh Holy Lord, Father almighty everlasting God.

Because you sent your beloved son to redeem us from sin and death and to make us heirs in him of everlasting life, that when he shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world, we may without shame or fear, rejoice to behold his appearing.

Therefore with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we praise and magnify your glorious name, evermore praising you and singing. And I ask you to pray with me. Oh Lord, we thank you for your acknowledgement, your condescension, your recognition of our creatureliness.

We thank you that you give us things like the waters of baptism, the bread and wine of communion to teach us eternal realities. And we ask, oh Lord, that you would nourish your church today, that they would feed upon Christ.

We thank you that we can taste bread and it touches our senses and our tongues and it goes into our bellies and we see our need to be one with Christ. And we drink wine, a living active liquid, knowing that we need the blood of Christ to save us.

And oh Lord, I thank you that you have provided creaturely things for creatures that we might understand and discern heavenly things. And we ask that you would press into us how Christ has so united himself to us that we would be united to him and that we would be united to all who are in him.

And we ask these things in Jesus' name. With great humility and expectancy, let's pray together.

We do not presume to come together up the crumbs.

Under your table, but you are the same Lord.

Who always shows mercy through his blood.

That our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood and that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us, amen. Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us.

The gifts of God for the people of God. It's a privilege to be numbered among God's people. Let's earnestly and sincerely make this commitment together. Almighty and ever-living God, we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food of the most precious body and blood of your son, our savior Jesus Christ.

And for assuring us in these holy mysteries we are living members of the body of your son, heirs of your eternal kingdom. And oh Lord, grant us this other benefit. Ever allow us to get these things. But having them imprinted on our hearts, may we grow and increase daily in the faith which is at work in every good deed.

Now Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do. To love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord. To him, to you, the honor and glory now and forever, amen.

Please stand, receive the blessing.

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace, amen.