From time to time I like to share one of our worship services from Grace Fellowship Church. In that vein, here is how we worshiped on one summer Sunday morning. This week’s cast of characters included John (a pastoral assistant) as the service leader, Allie as the lead worshiper, Dwight as the elder who prayed and read the sermon text. I preached. The band was comprised of piano, violin, and guitar. The various elements of the service are in bold with the name of the person who led the element in parentheses. Items in quotes represent roughly what the person said to the congregation. Items not in quotes are explanatory. The entire service took approximately 90 minutes.

Welcome and Call to Worship (John)
“Because God is both all-powerful and full of love, the Psalmist calls on us to turn to Him: ‘Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us’ (Psalm 62:8). The Triune God is a refuge to His people. Let’s begin our worship of GOD by calling on Him—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—to help us praise Him as we pour our hearts out to Him.”
Singing (Allie)

“Come Thou Almighty King”

Corporate Reading (John)
“One of the many ways God provides us refuge is by giving us His Word. Our Bibles. Please read out loud with me these words of praise to God for His comforting and consoling and counseling Word.” (Together we read Psalms 119:129-136 from the CSB.)
Singing (Allie)

“How Firm a Foundation”

Complementary Text Reading (John)
“Once a year, Israel’s High Priest was to enter the Holy Place in the temple to make atonement. This day was called Yom Kippur, or Day of Atonement. Listen carefully as I read of this day.” (John read Leviticus 16:29–34)
Prayer of Confession (John)
John used the fact that God decreed an annual Day of Atonement for Israel to lead the congregation in a prayer of confession for their sins.
Word of Assurance (John)
“The Psalmist wrote: ‘For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you’ (Psalm 86:5). If you have called upon the powerful and loving God to forgive you in Christ, be assured he has done it. You are forgiven, because he is so loving.”
Singing (Allie)

“O the Deep Deep Love of Jesus”
“Yet Not I But Through Christ in Me”

Pastoral Prayer (Dwight)
Dwight led the pastoral prayer and prayed for a number of matters pertaining to the life of the church.
Scripture Reading (Dwight)
Dwight read the text for the sermon—Hebrews 4. He prefaced his reading by saying, “This is what holy Scripture says” and ended it by saying, “This is the word of the Lord” to which the church responded with “Thanks be to God.”
Singing (Allie)

“I Know That My Redeemer Lives”

Sermon (Tim)
I preached a sermon titled “The Heart of Christ in our Weaknesses” with the outline “Jesus Knows, Jesus Cares, Jesus Helps.”
Singing (Allie)

“Jesus Strong and Kind”

Commission & Benediction
John called the church to live out the truths we had encountered in the service, then said, “Receive this blessing of the Lord from His Word: ‘The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.’”

Whatever circumstances we may encounter in life, whatever difficulties may befall us, whatever suffering we may have to pass through, we can have the highest confidence that none of it has come apart from the knowledge and the will of God. As the Catechism says, God “watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.” This truth must have been on De Witt Talmage’s mind when he preached these precious words many years ago…

You may ask me a hundred questions I cannot answer, but I shall until the day of my death believe that I am under the unerring care of God.
The heavens may fall and the world may burn and the judgment may thunder and eternal ages may roll, but not a hair shall fall from my head, not a shadow shall drop on my path, not a sorrow shall transfix my heart without being divinely arranged—arranged by a loving, sympathetic Father.
He bottles our tears, he catches our sorrows. To the orphan he will be a father and to the widow he will be a husband and to the outcast he will be a home and to the most miserable wretch who crawls up out of the ditch in his abomination crying for mercy, he will be an all-pardoning God.
The rocks shall turn gray with age and the forests shall be unmoored in the last hurricane, and the sun shall shut its fiery eyelid and the stars shall drop like blasted figs and the continents shall go down like anchors in the deep and the ocean shall heave its last groan and lash itself with expiring agony and the world shall wrap itself in winding sheets of flame and leap on the funeral pyre of the Judgment Day…
…but God’s love shall not die. It will kindle its suns after all other lights have gone out. It will be a billowing sea after the last ocean has wept itself away. It will warm itself by the fire of a consuming world. It will sing while the archangel’s trumpet is pealing forth and the air is filled with the crash of broken sepulchres and the rush of the wings of the rising dead!

Blessings to you today.

ChristianBook.com is having a pre-Christmas sale with lots of good deals including: New Morning Mercies and Come Let Us Adore Him by Paul Tripp, One Faithful Life by John MacArthur, and Hidden Christmas by Tim Keller.
(Yesterday on the blog: There Are Different Kinds of Tired)
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