Front Royal Presbyterian Church
January 12, 2025, 10:30 am
Liturgist – Keith Patman
Minister - Rev. Jaci Smith Patman
Prelude Baptized in Water Trad. Gaelic/Lynn Trapp
Welcome and Announcements
Opening Prayer & Gathering Light for Our Darkness
Light for our darkness, faith for unbelief,
health for mind and body when they languish;
Christ, be among us, listen to our prayer,
lift your weary people from their anguish.
Call to Worship
The voice of God resounds upon the water.
The Spirit of the Lord hovers over the stream.
The Son of God is named, “Beloved.”
And all who worship shout out, “Glory!”
Ascribe to the Lord majesty and strength.
Let us worship God in holy splendor.med you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
Opening Hymn #492 Baptized in Water
(please remain standing through the Sung Response)
Call to Confession
Prayer of Confession (Isaiah 43:4; Luke 3:22)
We are precious in your sight, yet we often forget that we are your beloved. We confess that our love is fickle and inconstant. We follow selfish goals and deny that our way of life harms others and hurts your world. We are sorry and we want to change. Create in us a clean heart, strengthen our resolve, reconcile us one to another, and bless us with your peace. Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
Sung Response #2098 The Baby in a Manger Stall, vs. 6
Glory to God in depth and height!
Alleluia! from dawn through night!
All space and time in Christ rejoice,
in praise to God, a single voice!
Sermon for Faith Builders
Children are invited to go to Children’s Worship with our Children’s Worship Leader, Ms. Marisa. Children will return to their parents during the final hymn.
Cents-Ability
Prayers of the People & Lord's Prayer
Call to Offering
Offertory Borning Cry John Ylvisaker/David Christiansen
Doxology
Prayer of Dedication
Hymn #72 When Jesus Came to Jordan
Scripture Reading: Isaiah 43:1-7
Anthem Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music/JS Bach/Roland E Martin
Come, Thou fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing Thy grace!
Streams of mercy never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! Oh, fix me on it,
mount of God's unchanging love.
Here I find my greatest treasure;
hither by Thy help, I've come;
and I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger
wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
interposed His precious blood.
O, to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to Thee:
prone to wander, Lord I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, oh, take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.
Scripture Reading: Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Sermon: LOOK AND BE AMAZED:
A Glorious Glimpse of God
Affirmation of Faith - [Excerpt from Confession of 1967]
God incarnate, to whom the Holy Spirit bears unique and authoritative witness through the Holy Scriptures, which are received and obeyed as the word of God written. The Scriptures are not a witness among others, but the witness without parallel. The church has received the books of the Old and New Testaments as prophetic and apostolic testimony in which it hears the word of God and by which its faith and obedience are nourished and regulated.
The New Testament is the recorded testimony of apostles to the coming of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, and the sending of the Holy Spirit to the Church. The Old Testament bears witness to God’s faithfulness in his covenant with Israel and points the way to the fulfillment of his purpose in Christ. The Old Testament is indispensable to understanding the New, and is not itself fully understood without the New.
The Bible is to be interpreted in the light of its witness to God’s work of reconciliation in Christ. The Scriptures, given under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are nevertheless the words of [people], conditioned by the language, thought forms, and literary fashions of the places and times at which they were written. They reflect views of life, history, and the cosmos which were then current. The church, therefore, has an obligation to approach the Scriptures with literary and historical understanding. As God has spoken his word in diverse cultural situations, the church is confident that he will continue to speak through the Scriptures in a changing world and in every form of human culture.
God’s word is spoken to his church today where the Scriptures are faithfully preached and attentively read in dependence on the illumination of the Holy Spirit and with readiness to receive their truth and direction.
Closing Hymn #495 We Know that Christ is Raised
Benediction
Postlude Songs of Thankfulness and Praise
Jakob Hintze/Franklin D Ashdown
