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The Epiphany Of Our Lord

Worship
Isaiah 60:1-6
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12
Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
Epiphany of the Lord - B
Charles And Donna Cammarata
Lectionary Worship Workbook
Series IV, Cycle B
Call To Worship
This Call To Worship is based on Eugene Petersen's translation of Isaiah 60:1-3 in The Message.

Leader: Get out of bed, Jerusalem! Wake up, put your face in the sunlight!
God's bright glory has risen for you!
People: The whole earth is wrapped in darkness. All people sunk in deep darkness.
Leader: But God rises on you, O people of God.
People: His sunrise glory breaks over you.
Leader: Nations will come to your light;
People: Kings to your sunburst brightness.
Leader: Let us bow down before the one whose light fills the earth.
People: Amen!

This prayer is loosely based on the arrival of the Magi in Bethlehem and their worship of the newborn king. This Call To Worship and the following Prayer Of Confession and Assurance Of Pardon are all related.

Leader: Gifts for the newborn King.
People: O God, endow the King with your justice,
Leader: The royal Son with your righteousness.
People: All kings of the earth will bow down to him,
Leader: And all nations will serve him.
People: Noblemen pay tribute,
Leader: With gifts of gold and incense and myrrh.
People: Humble hearts seek him,
Leader: And lay down their treasures before him.
People: King Jesus, you alone are worthy.
Leader: Let us bow down and worship the King.


Prayer Of Confession
Leader: King of righteousness,
People: We tend toward comfort and conformity in the world,
Leader: Rather than taking our place in ways that are right.
People: We act as if the line between right and wrong
Leader: Is insignificant to you.
People: We do not let your righteousness rule in us.
Leader: Ruler of justice,
People: Who sees those who are oppressed
Leader: And hears the cries of the afflicted;
People: We live sheltered and self-centered lives,
Leader: Not seeing or hearing or caring or acting as you do
People: On behalf of those who are hurting or dying.
Leader: Our sense of justice is dulled.
People: We are slow to respond to the call of justice.
Leader: King of righteousness, ruler of justice,
People: Forgive us, change us, reign in us,
Leader: So that our lives will bear evidence to your presence in us
People: To those who need to know you. Amen.


Assurance Of Pardon
Leader: How great is our God!
People: Ever faithful to his promises!
Leader: He will deliver the needy who cry out,
People: The afflicted who have no one to help.
Leader: He will rescue them,
People: He will rescue me,
Leader: For our lives are precious to him.
People: God is our help and salvation.


Prayer For Illumination
Week in and week out we enter into the sanctuary of God, and yet, we do it without pause or attention to the awesome nature of the one into whose presence we come. As we open now the pages of this book, may we be aware of the humbling presence of the one the Magi met long ago. Amen.


Benediction
Ephesians 3:10
God's intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. As we leave this place, let us go forth intent on being revealers of God's wisdom in all we do. Amen.


Hymns

Adoration

As With Gladness Men Of Old

Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light

Fairest Lord Jesus

Go Tell It On The Mountain

If Jesus Goes With Me

O Sing A Song Of Bethlehem

One Small Child

We Three Kings


Contemporary Choruses
Here I Am, Lord (Appears as a hymn in some new hymnals)
UPCOMING WEEKS
In addition to the lectionary resources there are thousands of non-lectionary, scripture based resources...
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* * * * * * * *

SermonStudio

Mariann Edgar Budde
And he said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified." But I said, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God." And now the Lord says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him ...
E. Carver Mcgriff
COMMENTARY ON THE LESSONS

Lesson 1: Isaiah 49:1-7 (C, E); Isaiah 49:3, 5-6 (RC)
Paul E. Robinson
A man by the name of Kevin Trudeau has marketed a memory course called "Mega-Memory." In the beginning of the course he quizzes the participants about their "teachability quotient." He says it consists of two parts. First, on a scale of one to ten "where would you put your motivation to learn?" Most people would put themselves pretty high, say about nine to ten, he says.
Charles L. Aaron, Jr.
The first chapter of John bears some similarity to the pilot episode of a television series. In that first episode, the writers and director want to introduce all of the main characters. In a television series, what we learn about the main characters in the first episode helps us understand them for the rest of the time the show is on the air and to see how they develop over the course of the series. John's narrative begins after the prologue, a hymn or poem that sets John's theological agenda. Once the narrative begins in verse 19, John focuses on identifying the characters of his gospel.
Dallas A. Brauninger
E-mail
From: KDM
To: God
Subject: Enriched
Message: I could never be a saint, God. Lauds, KDM

The e-mail chats KDM has with God are talks that you or I might likely have with God. Today's e-mail is no exception: I could never be a saint, God. Lauds, KDM. The conversation might continue in the following vein: Just so you know, God, I am very human. Enriched, yes; educated, yes; goal-oriented, yes; high-minded, yes; perfect, no.
Robert A. Beringer
Charles Swindoll in his popular book, Improving Your Serve, tells of how he was at first haunted and then convicted by the Bible's insistence that Jesus came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45)." The more he studied what the Bible says about servanthood, the more convinced Swindoll became that our task in this world, like that of Jesus, is not to be served, not to grab the spotlight, and not to become successful or famous or powerful or idolized.
Wayne H. Keller
Adoration And Praise

Invitation to the Celebration

(In advance, ask five or six people if you can use their names in the call to worship.) Remember the tobacco radio ad, "Call for Phillip Morris!"? Piggyback on this idea from the balcony, rear of the sanctuary, or on a megaphone. "Call for (name each person)." After finishing, offer one minute of silence, after asking, "How many of you received God's call as obviously as that?" (Show of hands.) Now, silently, consider how you did receive God's call. Was it somewhere between the call of Peter and Paul?
B. David Hostetter
CALL TO WORSHIP
Do not keep the goodness of God hidden in your heart: proclaim God's faithfulness and saving power.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION

Emphasis Preaching Journal

William H. Shepherd
"Who's your family?" Southerners know this greeting well, but it is not unheard of above, beside, and around the Mason-Dixon line. Many people value roots -- where you come from, who your people are, what constitutes "home." We speak of those who are "rootless" as unfortunate; those who "wander" are aimless and unfocused. Adopted children search for their birth parents because they want to understand their identity, and to them that means more than how they were raised and what they have accomplished -- heritage counts. Clearly, we place a high value on origins, birth, and descent.
R. Craig Maccreary
One of my favorite British situation comedies is Keeping Up Appearances. It chronicles the attempts of Hyacinth Bucket, pronounced "bouquet" on the show, to appear to have entered the British upper class by maintaining the manners and mores of that social set. The nearby presence of her sisters, Daisy and Rose, serve as a constant reminder that she has not gotten far from her origins in anything but the upper class.

At first I was quite put off by the show's title with an instant dislike for Hyacinth, and a

CSSPlus

Good morning, boys and girls. Do you remember a few weeks ago when we were talking about the meaning of names? (let them answer) Some names mean "beautiful" or "bright as the morning sun." Almost every name has a special meaning.

Good morning! What do I have here? (Show the stuffed animal
or the picture.) Yes, this is a lamb, and the lamb has a very
special meaning to Christians. Who is often called a lamb in the
Bible? (Let them answer.)

Once, when John the Baptist was baptizing people in the
river, he saw Jesus walking toward him and he said, "Here is the
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" Why do you
think he would call Jesus a lamb? (Let them answer.)

To understand why Jesus is called a lamb, we have to go back
Good morning! How many of you are really rich? How many of
you have all the money you could ever want so that you can buy
anything you want? (Let them answer.) I didn't think so. If any
of you were that rich, I was hoping you would consider giving a
generous gift to the church.

Let's just pretend we are rich for a moment. Let's say this
toy car is real and it's worth $50,000. And let's say this toy
boat is real and it's worth $100,000, and this toy airplane is a

Special Occasion

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