Recent sermonsMy fun fact calendar tells me today that Hippocrates believed that astrology and birth sign affected one’s physical health. Many Greeks believed in those kinds of signs. Most Jews did not. The knew star gazing was Pagan, Babylonian, to be shunned. And yet Matthew tells of “wise men” from the East who read the signs and came looking for Jesus. Jesus later provided very different kinds of signs for all to see. Many saw and were amazed but not changed. Some saw and listened, even followed. The Pharisees heard and saw and yet convinced themselves all the more that these signs could not signify that Jesus was actually from God. As we get back to Matthew’s Gospel this week we see them asking him for another sign. He told them all they would get would be the sign of Jonah. What was that? Did they see it? Did they understand it? Do we?
In the evening we are getting back to 2 Corinthians. This is just the second sermon from that book. In the first we talked about how Paul viewed comfort. Next, he gives an example of how he came to understand it. In one of the darkest and most difficult times of his life, he found new insight into the real strength of God and the power of prayer. A most encouraging text.
Sunday School classes will be meeting this week. We agreed among the elders to have only one adult class and New Hope will be suspending their series for a few weeks while I finish the book we have been using on 1 Kings. We are on ch 25, considering only the last few verses of 1 Kings 19.
Please remember the schedule as we continue to meet with New Hope. Sunday School is at 9:30. Morning worship is at 10:45 and evening worship will be now at 5:30. There are no youth groups meeting this week but they have been meeting at 6:00. So, we bumped the evening service up a half hour and they agreed to move the youth activities back a half an hour. We didn’t think having them at the same time was a good idea.
So you all know what to expect in worship this week. We will open with a call to worship from the Book of Revelation that we have used several times before. We will move from declaring God’s greatness in that reading to singing his praise led by the New Hope band we heard last week. Following that there will be a time of sharing praise and prayer requests (as we usually do in the evening except they use microphones so we can hear one another). Either Rick Schroeder or I will then lead in prayer. We will then sing a hymn which leads us into the Word section of the service. Here we will hear the Word read from the Old and New Testaments, we will sing the Word (Psalm 69), and hear the Word proclaimed in the sermon. After the sermon we will respond to God’s Word by singing the Doxology, giving tithes and offerings (during which there will be a soloist), singing another hymn and then receiving God’s benediction.
A reminder for those who were not there last week or visitors coming, there are directions to the church building on the New Hope web site It is not difficult to find and when you get close there are, well, signs.
See you Sunday.
Jack
