February 26, 2023 - Sunday Service

Praise to the Lord and the Call to Worship

He is to be feared above all gods, for all the gods, but the Lord made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before him, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Give to the Lord, O families of the people.

Give to the Lord glory and strength. Give to the Lord the glory due his name. Bring an offering and come into his courts. O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Tremble before him all the earth.

Say among the nations, the Lord reigns. The world also is firmly established. It shall not be moved. He shall judge the people righteously. Let the heavens rejoice. Let the earth be glad. Let the sea roar in all its fullness.

Let the field be joyful in all that is in it. Then all the trees of the woods will rejoice before the Lord, for he is coming. For he is coming to judge the earth and he shall judge the world with righteousness and the people with his truth.

Prayer for God’s Presence Through Christ

Almighty God, our heavenly father, who of your tender mercy, our father in heaven, let us pray again. Our father in heaven, we have come to worship and bow down and kneel before you, the Lord our maker.

For you are our God and we are the people of your pasture and the sheep of your hand. We come to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is our advocate with the father.

He is the only mediator between God and man. He always lives to make intercession for us. Through him, we come boldly to your throne of grace. In his name, we earnestly seek you, our Lord, our soul's thirst for you, our flesh yearns for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Bow to heavens and come down. Inhabit the praises of your people. Remember your promise, oh spirit of Christ, to be present in the midst of your worshiping people. When two or more are gathered in your name, condescend to us.

Grant us the joy of your fellowship. Speak to us through your word and be blessed to buy our praise and adoration. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Amen.

Corporate Confession of Sin and Assurance of Pardon

Please kneel for the corporate confession of sin. Let us join together in confessing our sins. Gracious God, we confess that we have longed too much for the comforts of this world.

We have loved the gifts more than the giver.

Please stand for the assurance of pardon. Repent, therefore, and be converted. Let your sins may be blotted out so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. My brothers and sisters in Christ, rejoice.

Your sins are forgiven.

Amen.

Hymns and the Reading of Lamentations 2

Please open the Trinity hymnal and turn to hymn number 535. Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus, hymn 535. Please take the insert and look for Psalm 10. Rise up, O Lord, Psalm 10. I'm gonna ask Alyssa to play through it one time for us, and then we'll join in the second time.

Remain standing for the reading of God's word from Lamentations, chapter 2.

Lamentations, chapter 2. How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion to the cloud in his anger. He cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel and did not remember his footstool in the day of his anger.

The Lord has swallowed up and has not pitied all the dwelling places of Jacob. He has thrown down his wrath, the strongholds of the daughter of Judah. He has brought them down to the ground. He has profaned the kingdom of its princes.

He has cut off in fierce anger every horn of Israel. He has drawn back his right hand from before the enemy. He has blazed against Jacob like a flaming fire, devouring all around. Standing like an enemy, he has bent his bow with his right hand like an adversary.

He has slain all who were pleasing to his eye on the tent of the daughter of Zion. He has poured out his fury like fire. The Lord was like an enemy. He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces.

He has destroyed her strongholds and has increased mourning and lamentation in the daughter of Judah. He has done violence to his tabernacle as if it were a garden. He has destroyed his place of assembly.

The Lord has caused the appointed feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion. In his burning indignation, he has spurned the king and the priest. The Lord has spurned his altar and has abandoned his sanctuary.

He has given up the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy. They have made a noise in the house of the Lord as on the day of a set feast. The Lord has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion.

He has stretched out a line. He has not withdrawn his hand from destroying. Therefore, he has caused the rampart and wall to lament. They languish together. Her gates have sunk into the ground. He has destroyed and broken her bars.

Her king and her princes are among the nations. The law is no more. And her prophets find no vision from the Lord. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground and keep silence. They throw dust on their heads and gird themselves with sackcloth.

The virgins of Jerusalem bow their heads to the ground. My eyes fail with tears. My heart is troubled. My bile is poured on the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people. Because the children and the infants faint in the streets of the city.

They say to their mothers, where is grain and wine? As they swoon like the wounded in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out in their mother's bosom. How shall I console you? To what shall I liken you, O daughter of Jerusalem?

What shall I compare with you that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your ruin is spread wide as the sea. Who can heal you? Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions.

They have not uncovered your iniquity to bring back your captives. But have envisioned for you false prophecies and delusions. All who pass by clap their hands at you. They hiss and shake their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem.

Is this the city that is called the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth? All your enemies have opened their mouth against you. They hiss and gnash their teeth. They say we have swallowed her up.

Surely this is the day we have waited for. We have found it. We have seen it. The Lord has done what he has purposed. He has fulfilled his word which was commanded in the days of old. He has thrown down and not pity.

And he has caused an enemy to rejoice over you. He has exalted the horn of your adversaries. The heart cried out to the Lord. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night.

Give yourself no relief. Give your eyes no rest. Arise, cry out in the night at the beginning of the watches. Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lift your hands toward him for the life of your young children who faint from hunger at the head of every street.

See, O Lord, and consider to whom have you done this. Should the women eat their offspring, the children they have cuddled? Should the priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? Young and old lie on the ground in the streets.

My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of your anger. You have not slaughtered and not pitied. You have slaughtered and not pitied. You have invited as to a feast day the terrors that surround me.

In the day of the Lord's anger, there is no refugee or survivor. Those whom I have born and brought up, my enemies have destroyed. This is the word of the Lord.

The Apostles’ Creed and Closing Hymn

Let's continue our worship by confessing our common Christian faith in the singing of the Apostles' Creed. Please take up the Trinity hymnal once again and turn to hymn number 708, O Love that wilt not let me go, hymn 708.

In this manner, therefore, pray ye.