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Begin your time this morning reading Psalm 100
Psalm 100
A psalm. For giving grateful praise.
1 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Worship the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
5 For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.
We can do the things the Psalmist calls us to do today.
God made us and we are the sheep of his pasture belonging to him.
We can "enter his gates with thanksgiving." It’s the image of coming into his presence, into his temple.
And we can do that without a physical temple building because of Jesus. He is the place where we meet with God. He is the true temple, the place where God’s mercy and justice meet. He is the place where we find God’s enduring, faithful love that forgives sin and puts us right with him.
So because of this we praise God. We can say and sing with the Psalmist:
"The Lord is good and his love endures forever;
His faithfulness continues through all generations."
Amen
Sing Together
All People that on Earth Do Dwell
Confession and Assurance
Psalm 100 reminds us that we’re God’s people. We belong to him. We know that faith in Christ Jesus, trusting in his sacrifice for sin at the cross, puts us right with God. We’re sure of where we stand before him always.
However we still sin, everyday. Our heart's desires stray from what God wants for us. Our ongoing sin affects our "communion" with God and our relationships with one another. We need to confess our sin, not presuming upon God’s mercy.
As John writes:
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8)
Here is a prayer of confession to use this morning. Perhaps if you're looking at this with others, get someone to pray it out loud.
Almighty God, our heavenly Father,
we have gone our own way,
not loving you as we ought,
nor loving our neighbours as ourselves.
We have sinned against you
in thought, word and deed
and in what we have failed to do.
We deserve your condemnation.
Father, forgive us.
Help us to love you and our neighbours,
and to live for your honour and glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Hear again the Good News. Psalm 103 says
The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Prayer of thanks and intercession
Jeff will pray in thanks for God's goodness and provision, and also for a range of needs. (Lord's prayer below)
Our Father in heaven
Hallowed be Your name
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the Kingdom, the power, and the glory are Yours
Now and forever. Amen.
Bible Reading
Revelation 12
The Woman and the Dragon
12 A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. 4 Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.”[a] And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.
7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
11 They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short.”
13 When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach. 15 Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. 16 But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. 17 Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.
Footnotes
Revelation 12:5 Psalm 2:9
Sermon
Revelation 12-14: Know your enemy
Sing Together
Hymn of the Saviour
News and other bits & pieces
GROW Chats 2020 - Tune in now to ‘GROW Chats 2020’ — short interviews with local Christian women. You’ll hear chats about a chapter of the Bible (Hebrews Chapters 1-4), prayer, songs, books and life in Christ. GROW Chats 2020 is for all women everywhere. Listen while you walk, work or rest. Then chat to someone at home, church or next door about what you hear. Podcasts released each Saturday from May 23rd - September 5th. Subscribe to our podcast channel - search for ‘GROW Chats 2020’ in your favourite podcast app
Visit our website https://qcca.org.au/grow
Church Directory - If you're on our database, you'll have received the regular email linking to this service material, and in that email you would have noticed the link to an electronic version of our Church Directory. We were hoping to distribute the paper booklet version a few weeks back but restricted gatherings have made that a little hard. We're also conscious that trying to keep in touch without phone numbers or email addresses is a bit tough. Please use the details in the booklet to reach out to people you haven't seen in a while and haven't been able to call... If you're having trouble accessing the directory via that link please email info@mlpc.org.au and we'll sort something out.
All Kids Catechism videos
If you would like to go back through any of the Kids Catechism Videos, all the videos we have released are also available in one place on this site: