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Hey, Caleb.
I would like to welcome you all to Coggins -Vinger Lutheran Church.
Today is.
Ash Wednesday, and a little bit of a note, this is obviously a modified
liturgy, so those of you who are physically present, there's an extra bulletin
that has the Ash Wednesday liturgy with
a litany and other things.
When we finish the litany and the confession of our sins, then if you would like, you can come
forward, and you come forward kind of one at a time, one by one, you just make a line, and
for the imposition of ashes, what I do is I take what's left of our
palm fronds from last Palm Sunday, burn them thoroughly in my barbecue, and then
take the ashes, and using a mortar and pestle, bring them down to dust form, and then put a little bit of olive
oil, and then what I'll do is I'll make the sign of your cross on your forehead, and then say these
words, remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.
This is a very interesting practice, and a good one, remembering our mortality, invoking God's
words, what God spoke to Adam when he punished him after sinning in the garden.
So, all of that being said, I'm going to travel up to.
The altar, and then we will get rolling.
Congregation, please rise.
In the name of.
The Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
I will go to the altar of God.
Our help is in the name of the Lord.
Dear brothers and sisters of our Lord Jesus Christ, on this day, the
church begins a holy season of prayerful and penitential reflection.
Our attention is especially directed to the holy sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
From ancient times, the season of Lent has been kept as a time of special devotion,
self -denial, and humble repentance born of a faithful heart that dwells confidently on His
word and draws from it life and hope.
Throughout this holy season, let us pray that our dear Father in heaven, for the sake of His beloved Son, and in the power
of His Holy Spirit, might richly bless this Lenten tide for us, so that we may come to Easter with
glad hearts and keep the feast in sincerity and truth.
O Lord, have mercy.
O Christ, have mercy.
God the Father in heaven, have mercy.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy.
God the Holy Spirit, have mercy.
Be gracious to us.
By the mystery of your holy incarnation, by your holy nativity, by your baptism, fasting, and
temptation, by your agony and bloody sweat, by your cross and passion,
by your precious death and burial, by your glorious resurrection and ascension, by the
coming of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, in all time of our
tribulation, in all time of our prosperity, in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment,
we poor sinners implore you to prosper the preaching of your word,
to bless our prayer and meditation, to strengthen and preserve us in the true faith, and
to give heart to our sorrow and strength to our repentance,
to draw all to yourself, to bless those who are instructed in the faith, to watch over and
console the poor, the sick, the distressed, the lonely, the forsaken, the abandoned,
and all who stand in need of our prayers, to give abundant blessing to all works of mercy, and
to have mercy on us all, to turn our hearts
to you, to turn the hearts of our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers, and to
graciously hear our prayers.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, we implore you to hear us.
Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
O Christ, O Lord, O Christ, O
Lord, O God, you desire not the death of sinners, but rather that they
turn from their wickedness and live.
We implore you to have compassion on the frailty of our mortal nature, for we acknowledge that we are dust,
and to dust we shall return.
Mercifully pardon our sins, that we may obtain the promises that you have laid up for those who are repentant through
Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Beloved in the Lord, let us draw near with a true heart and confess our sins unto God, our Father, beseeching him in
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to grant us forgiveness.
I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord.
Almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto
you all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended you and justly deserve
your temporal and eternal punishment, but I am heartily sorry for them and sincerely
repent of them, and I pray you of your boundless mercy and for the sake of the holy,
innocent, bitter sufferings and death of your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be
gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful being.
Upon this your confession, I, by virtue of my office as a called and ordained servant of the Word, I announce the grace of
God unto all of you, and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all of your sins in
the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
We continue with the imposition of ashes.
My request is that you come up in a single file line.
Lily, remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.
Remember that you are dust,.
Lift your hair.
There we go.
We'll continue with the Order of Vespers on page 229.
O Lord, open my lips.
Make haste, O God, to deliver me.
Be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy
Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be
forever.
Praise to you, O Christ, Lamb of our salvation.
We will chant Psalm 51 together by half verse using Psalm Tone C.
Psalm 51 is in the front of your hymnal.
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast
love.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
for I know my transgressions.
Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your
sight.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity.
Behold, you delight in truth, in the inward being.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.
Let me hear joy and gladness.
Hide your face from my sins.
Create in me a clean heart, O God.
Cast me not away from your presence.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways.
Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O Lord God, O God of my
salvation.
For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.
Do good to Zion in your good pleasure.
Then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings, in whole burnt
offerings.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and
to the Holy Spirit, as it was in
the beginning, is now, and will be forever.
The opening hymn is 607.
You may be seated.
The
Old
Testament reading for Ash Wednesday is taken from the prophet Joel chapter 2.
Yet, even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all of your heart, with fasting, with
weeping, and with mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and
abounding in steadfast love, and he relents over disaster.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering,
for the Lord your God.
Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the people,
consecrate the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, even the nursing infants,
let the bridegroom leave his room in the bride or chamber.
Between the vestibule and the altar, let the priests and the ministers of the Lord weep, and say, spare your
people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples, where is their God?
Then the Lord became jealous for his land and had pity on his people.
And the Lord answered and said to his people, Behold, I am sending to you grain, wine, and
oil, and you will be satisfied, and I will no more make you a reproach among
the nations.
O Lord, have mercy on us.
Our epistle is taken from 2 Peter 1.
May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the
knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his
precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and
knowledge with self -control, and self -control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with
godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.
For if these qualities are yours and increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his
former sins.
Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these
qualities you will never fall, for in this way there will be richly provided for you an interest into the
eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Please rise for the gospel.
The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, the sixth chapter.
And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces
so that their fasting may be seen by others.
Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you fast, anoint your head, wash your face, so that your fasting may not be seen by others, but
your Father who is in secret and your Father who sees in secret, he will reward you.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and
steal.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Remain standing for the response.
Deliver me, O Lord, my God, for you are the God of my
In you, O Lord, do I put my trust.
Leave me not, O Lord, my God.
In the name of Jesus.
Disaster.
That's a terrible word to say.
We all know a thing or two about disasters.
We talk about natural disasters.
We talk about family disasters and disasters of all different kinds, right?
But you're going to note here, how has sin worked out for all of y 'all?
Hasn't that been a complete disaster?
And what it has done to our lives?
And you'll note that y 'all have ashes on your foreheads, which reminds you of what?
Of the words of God that he spoke to Adam in the garden.
You are dust, and to dust you shall return.
You'll note that the wages of sin is death, and death has been a disaster.
Sin has been a disaster.
How many of you have ever met your great, great, great grandparents?
Do you even know their names?
I couldn't even know.
I don't even know some of their names without having to look at Ancestry .com, and there are names that are
missing in my family tree.
Probably in yours too.
You'll note that it takes a lot of vigilant work to figure out who you're related to and who your ancestors are,
and sometimes we're only able to get details going back on one or two branches,
not much farther back.
Isn't that a disaster if you think about it?
People that you are flesh and blood relatives of, people you have descended from, whose
stories you don't even know because you don't even know their names or where they're from
or anybody that can remember them or any accounts written about them.
It's a complete disaster.
When you think about what happens to us when we die, let me just put this
bluntly.
I know how the procedure goes.
I've gone through the procedure a few times here at Kongsvinger.
You know what's going to happen?
You're going to get sick.
We're going to pray for you.
You're going to get worse, and then finally we're going to sit down with you, either
in your home or in hospice, and we're going to walk you through the prayers of those, the
commendation of the dying, and then what's going to happen is you're going to die.
Your family will mourn.
Your friends will mourn, and those here at church will mourn for you.
They will write an obituary.
It will be roughly a paragraph and a half, two paragraphs long, and then we're going to take your corpse, and we're going
to put you in the yard out there, and you know what's going to happen?
The only thing that's going to be on there is your name and two dates, when you were born and when you died,
and all the people that know you will follow you.
They'll be put into the yard as well, and eventually memories of when Pastor
Rosebro was pastor of Kongsvinger Lutheran Church will be long in the past, and nobody will be talking
about any of us.
In fact, you might even be lucky enough to have your stone get moved or knocked over or whatever, and somebody,
you know, get out one of those mower things and go, oh, wow, what's this?
Who's Marilyn Mathson, right?
That's the kind of things we're talking about.
It's a complete disaster, sin has been, but you'll note that God does not threaten
us merely with the disaster of death.
I mean, that would be bad enough, but the real disaster that we've all faced is because of our sin,
and that is the second death.
Have you read the details on second death?
You remember the movie like The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Rings?
You know, those hobbits, they had breakfast, and then second breakfast, and elevensies and stuff like this.
There's death, and then there's second death.
Yeah, there's a second death, and the details of it are terrifying, and we've all earned second death,
and second death is an eternity in hell, being punished for our sins.
And so you'll note that when we come around to a penitential season, this follows a
pattern from the Old Testament.
As they were getting close to the Day of Atonement, God required the children of Israel to not come into his
presence for the Day of Atonement, the Holy Convocation, without first
afflicting themselves prayer and fasting and lament over their own sins.
We do the same.
We are getting ready to get to the season of our great Day of Atonement, the day that Christ
was crucified for your sins and mine on the cross.
And should we not, in memory and commemoration of that sacrifice, should we
not anew consider our own sin?
Consider the sin that still so closely clings to us, that tangles us up in our
course as Christians, that sin that you've, well, maybe you've just become
somewhat comfortable with.
You know, it says in Scripture, the words, to mortify our sinful flesh, but have you ever noticed that continual
hostilities with your sinful flesh oftentimes are just exhausting?
Who can go an entire lifetime in warfare against their own sinful
flesh?
I've got to admit, there's been times when I've wanted to just wave the white flag,
and that's not what we're called to do.
And so we consider then our Old Testament text, and I also, I always like to throw in that alternate Old Testament text
because it's so wonderful.
Because here's the thing, when in the daily struggle against sin, against death, against Satan,
against the world, against all these forces of darkness that would lead us into
death, you'll note that we all have that icky, creepy
feeling, that feeling of foreboding that tells us what?
You know, I'm really not somebody who's got my act together.
I still struggle with sin, and one has to wonder at times, is God going
to really let me into heaven because I really haven't figured this Christianity
thing out very well?
If by well, I mean totally mortifying my sinful flesh and living in victory
over the temptations that hit me every day.
That's not my lot.
You'll note the Apostle Paul, that wasn't his either, the Apostle Paul lamented, he said, the things I want to do, I don't do.
The things I don't want to do, I keep on doing.
Who will deliver me from this body of death?
That sounds like something I could have written.
Probably something you could have as well.
But you'll note our Old Testament text says this,.
Yet even now, declares Yahweh, return to me with all your
heart, with fasting, with weeping, with mourning.
Rend your hearts, not your garments.
That's right.
You'll note that oftentimes there's displays of repentance in the Old Testament where people have taken their clothes and torn them in half.
It's like God's saying, keep your clothes on.
You paid good money for those things.
I had to supply you with the ability to put on those clothes.
Don't rip them up.
Instead, rend your heart.
Recognize that God's holy law demands perfection of you and you haven't
lived up to it.
And as a result of it, you have earned for yourself God's wrath.
Oh, that's what it says at the close of the commandments.
Read your catechism.
But God says to us, return to the Lord your God.
Why?
He's gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and,
oh, best words ever, he relents over disaster.
You know, the disaster of death.
The disaster of the second death that impends all of us.
You'll note that every account in the scriptures of people repenting upon hearing the word of God,
they stand as examples to us, calling us to do the same, to repent.
And, oh, it's the story of the Ninevites that just stands out here.
Over and again, it cracks me up when you read the prophet Jonah.
This is a fellow who was told by God to go preach repentance to
Nineveh, a bunch of Assyrian war criminals, the best way to think about it.
Assyrians were so cruel in warfare that they make Hamas, they make the Nazis
look like a bunch of amateur schoolgirls at best when it comes to warfare.
The Ninevites, these are people who, when they attacked a city and they finally overthrew that city,
you know what they did?
When they overthrew that city, they gathered up all the men who fought against them, and then what they did
is they put their bodies on a pike and then hauled their carcasses up in the air to
basically stand as a warning.
You oppose us, you fight against us, this is what happens to people like that.
You'll note that the Geneva Convention wasn't around back then, and I can legitimately say taking
captured soldiers and killing them and putting them up on a spike, that that is against the
Geneva Convention.
That's cruelty that's not permitted in warfare.
Ninevites didn't care.
They were violent, bloodthirsty, awful, terrible people.
If there was ever a group of people that deserved to go to hell, a whole lot of them
deserve that.
But I would note they're not that much different than Minnesotans, okay?
Or North Dakotans.
You guys are transplants now, right?
Yeah, we've all earned God's wrath.
So what does Jonah do when told by God to go and preach to the Ninevites?
He says, no way, Jose.
That's not actually what he said.
I don't think he spoke Spanish.
Maybe internally he said,.
No, no, no, no good.
Off he went to Tarshish, right?
And of course we know how the story goes.
There was a storm.
They cast lots, asked what was going on.
He explained to them he was running away from Yahweh.
They recognized the storm was because of him.
And so they fed Jonah to the sea, tossed him into the sea as a sacrifice.
And a big fish came and swallowed him up.
I always think this is God's sense of humor because what an uncomfortable, miserable
three days that had to have been.
You know, how was he able to breathe?
He has some kind of an air pocket.
And let me tell you, the air pocket inside of a fish's gut cannot possibly smell good,
right?
This is where you pray for nose blindness to kick in quick.
And after three days, there's this wonderful prayer where Jonah sounds like he's praying a prayer that
Christ prayed when he was, after he had been crucified and died.
You know, seaweed wrapped around his head.
And God resurrected poor Jonah and caused him to be fish vomit for a day.
And then one has to wonder, how many days or weeks did it take to get the smell out of his
clothes, out of his hair, out of his beard?
Ugh.
But chapter three is our alternative text here.
And here's what it says.
The word of Yahweh came to Jonah the second time, saying, arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out
against it the message that I tell you.
And you'll note that Jonah, second time around, was Johnny on the spot.
He got a bus ticket immediately, right?
Hopped on board that Greyhound and head on down to Nineveh as he was supposed to.
So he went to Nineveh according to the word of Yahweh.
Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breath.
And Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out, yet 40
days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
What a great, interesting message.
Hmm, that number 40 is kind of a big deal if you think about it.
40 days, 40 nights, it rained on the earth and the flood came upon humanity.
The children of Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.
Christ was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days.
And here, 40 days, Nineveh shall be overthrown.
You'll note then, that 40 days makes it so that Jonah's message hits us today.
Because we recognize that at the end of this 40 days, this wilderness time here for us on this
planet, the entire earth will be overthrown.
Have you not read the book of Revelation?
Have you not read Christ's Olivet Discourse?
There is a day coming and it's gonna be at the end of these 40 days that our whole world will
be overthrown because of sin.
Yeah, just look at the world outside.
Watch the news if you want to get depressed and you can see the whole world is lost.
It's ever living mind.
We've gotta be closer to Jesus' return than ever.
Indeed we are.
But 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
And what did these brutal, violent war criminals who murdered
so many men and people and widowed so many women and orphaned so many children,
what did they do with the preaching of Jonah and this message of his?
They believed God.
It just says that.
The thing is is that the scriptures say that we all have the law of God written on our hearts.
Every one of us.
This is the reason why we intuitively know what is good and what is evil.
And with every murdered soldier, with every widow that they
made, every orphan that they created, they knew that they were transgressing God's law that says you will not
murder.
They were even acting against their own conscience in their own violence.
And then hearing the real words of God from a real prophet of God, threatening them with punishment,
they knew they deserved what God was going to give them.
So what did they do?
They called a fast.
They put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them.
And the word itself, the word of God, in the mouth of the prophet Jonah, reached the king of Nineveh,
and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, sat in
ashes, and he issued a proclamation and published it through Nineveh.
By the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor
flock, taste anything.
Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth,
and then let them call out mightily to God.
Let everyone turn from his evil and from the violence in his hands.
Who knows?
God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger
so that we may not perish.
Isn't their story ours?
It's the same.
Whether you be a Minnesotan or a Ninevite,.
It's all the same.
God's word has reached us and called to us and told us that we need to repent of our sins,
to turn from our wicked ways, to cry out to God for mercy.
Maybe God will relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish.
But here's the thing.
This is where the gospel enters in, and we see it so clearly.
You'll note that when it came to Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, who,
although he was by God nature, he did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, he humbled
himself, was born of the Virgin Mary, and he was obedient even to the point of death, even death on the cross.
Because God, his wrath, didn't turn away from Jesus.
God laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all, and Jesus went to the cross and hung
naked, bleeding, dying, having been scourged there in the darkness, hanging from the
cross, struggling to breathe.
With each languishing breath, he experienced the full fury of God's
wrath.
It didn't turn away from Jesus on that day so that it might turn away from
us.
That's the point of the cross.
God's fierce anger didn't turn away from Christ.
He bore your sins and my sins in his body on the tree, and he suffered
for our sins.
In fact, experience God's anger and wrath, God the Father himself turning away
from the Son so that we would not perish.
This is why God is able to relent of the disaster he's threatened for all of us.
And it says this, when God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented
of the disaster that he had said that he would do to them, and he did not do it.
And boy, did that make Jonah mad.
He was really upset.
In fact, Jonah went and had an adult temper tantrum and was legitimately just
scolding God, saying, is this not what I told you?
Is this not why I went to Tarshish and turned away?
Because I knew, what did he know?
He knew that God was gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,
and that God relents over disaster.
Jonah didn't want to have to spend eternity with a bunch of forgiven Ninevites.
Man, even God's prophets need to be forgiven, right?
But that's kind of the point Jesus himself affirms when he condemns the Pharisees and the scribes
and the people of his age who didn't repent at his preaching.
He said that the men of Nineveh would rise up on the day of judgment and condemn Jesus'
generation for not repenting.
Christ affirms that these Ninevites are saved,
and that he not only relented of the disaster of overturning Nineveh at that time, he relented of
the disaster of the second death for these Ninevites.
So, brothers and sisters, though your sins be as scarlet, Christ has bled and
died for you, and he clothes you and makes you white as snow.
God is gracious, he is merciful, he is slow to anger, he is abounding in steadfast love,
and he relents over disaster for us because that disaster fell on Christ
so that you and I can be forgiven and pardoned.
So listen to the end of our Old Testament text.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a
drink offering.
I can't hear those words without hearing about the Lord's Supper.
Ah, Christ has bled and died for our sins, God has relented of the disaster, and he has left us
bread and wine, his body and blood given and shed for the forgiveness of our sins.
So blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the people, that's what
we've done here tonight, this Ash Wednesday, we've called a solemn assembly, and do you know what, we have even little ones here, and that's
the way it should be.
Love the fact that we have small kids here on an Ash Wednesday service, yes.
Gather the children, even the infants, let the bridegroom leave his room, the bride her chamber, between the vestibule and
the altar, let the priests and the ministers of the Lord weep and say, spare your people, oh Lord,
and make not your heritage a reproach and a byword among the nations.
And of course, having seen his people repent, turn
from their wickedness, cry out to him for mercy, what is God's response when that happens?
It's not the same as my mother's, thank God.
Yeah, when I go and apologize to my mother, I'm sorry, Mom, I was wrong.
You bet you were wrong.
That's not the right response, by the way.
No, you don't get a scolding after you confess.
What does God do?
The Lord became jealous for his land, and he had people, pity on his people, and that's
God for us.
He definitely is jealous for us now.
He's had pity on us, so the Lord answered and said, behold, I am sending you grain, wine, and oil.
You will be satisfied, and I will no more make you a reproach among the nations.
Brothers and sisters, Lent is so precious.
Repentance is the daily life of us as Christians.
So as we draw near to Christ's crucifixion on Good Friday,
let us embrace this Lenten tide.
Let us embrace fasting and praying and devotion and self -denial.
These are good things as we reflect upon our sin, and let us, again, by the power of the Holy
Spirit, cry out to God to have mercy on us and trust
confidently in his forgiveness and kindness because it is absolutely true.
God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, pardoning iniquity, and all of
those things because that's what Christ, and that's what God is really like.
And let us cast aside our sin, which so easily entangles us and mars our course,
and let us press forward into the eternity that God has laid out for us and
given us as a gift in Christ.
That's what the Lenten season is about.
I have nothing more to say about it.
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Congregation, please rise for the canticle.
Let my prayer rise before you as incense.
Our
Father,
who
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 trespasses as we forgive those who
trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.
The Lord be with you.
Let us pray.
Let us pray for the whole Church of God in Christ Jesus and for all people according to their needs.
Have mercy on us, O God, according to your steadfast love.
In your abundant mercy, blot out our transgressions for the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, who was
crucified for our sins and raised for our justification.
Preserve the proclamation of his cross among us and guard your church from any false teaching that
might delight our desires, but leave us lost in our iniquity.
Lord, in your mercy, look graciously on your church and preserve the
gospel among us.
Renew us in this penitential season to strive against the desires of the flesh, to grow in the
joy of your salvation and to look in love and service toward our neighbors, especially those of the household of
faith.
Lord, in your mercy, look graciously on the families of our congregation, defend
your holy estate of marriage against every enemy that would divide, strengthen parents for their duties,
especially bringing up their children in the fear and instruction of the Lord, and preserve us all faithful to the
end.
Lord, in your mercy, remember in mercy all who bear office in our land, give them
wisdom, protect them from danger, and help them serve our people according to your gracious will.
Help us to become a people that guards the rights of the weakest and most vulnerable, especially the unborn.
Lord, in your mercy, behold in mercy all who are sick, who suffer and who rejoice.
Be with all expectant mothers, all whose work is dangerous, the unemployed, those near death, and
those who mourn.
Comfort us who are dust and must return to dust with a promise that a broken and contrite heart you will
not despise.
Lord, in your mercy.
Bless us, Heavenly Father, on this holy day of repentance.
As we enter the season of Lent, let us hold fast to your word.
Teach us to die to self and serve you faithfully throughout this mortal life until at last you bring us
with the blessed saints into your presence forevermore.
Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
O God, from whom come all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works.
Give to us, your servants, that peace which the world cannot give, that our hearts may be set to obey your
commandments, and also that we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may live in peace and quietness.
Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now
and forever.
Let us bless the Lord,
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the
communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.