April 30, 2017
This is a weekly blog post with one purpose: to help those coming to Park’s Sunday gathering engage with the teaching and liturgy in a more meaningful way. We use this space to share in advance our Sunday’s liturgy: the scripture we’ll be studying, the songs we’ll be singing, and the prayers we’ll be praying together. We also share a handful of thoughts each week to help you use these things to prepare for the service.
At Park Church this Sunday, we’re in week 29 of The Book Of Acts: You Will Be My Witnesses. As you prepare for service, it may be helpful to read through the text and spend some time with the liturgy. We’ve prepared that for you below!
1. Read through our text, Acts 17:16–34.
In Athens, the culture was such that its people “would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.” What they heard from Paul was indeed “new” to them in some ways, but perhaps the most interesting news was something they already knew by their own writers, that “we are indeed His offspring.”
What does this mean? Image-bearing men and women, created by His hands, “ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.” For as many false gods as there were in Athens, the Divine Himself had come as a man, and we know Him because we are made by Him in His image. What else do we know? This Man, Jesus, comes again to judge mankind in righteousness, a truth firmly assured by His defeat of death; His glorious resurrection.
2. Read, pray and sing through the service in advance:
CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 148:1–6
All Creatures Of Our God And King (William Henry Draper, St. Francis of Assisi)
Beautiful (Phil Wickham)
CONFESSION OF SIN: by Daniel T. Benedict and Taylor Burton-Edwards
Before the heavens, let us confess our sin:
Our hearts are far from You, O God.
The glitter of our culture beguiles us,
the things we can buy fascinate us.
Our cisterns are dry and we are thirsty.
We have forgotten Your mercies,
and failed to rehearse Your mighty deeds.
Our cisterns are dry and we are thirsty.
We have exchanged living in grace
for living in our own strength and wisdom.
We have resisted using the means of grace.
We stumble and grope for what does not satisfy.
Our cisterns are dry and we are thirsty.
Forgive us.
Restore to us the living water
flowing over us, and in us, and through us in our baptism.
Restore to us the joy of Your salvation.
Our cisterns are dry and we are thirsty.
Have mercy on us and renew us, Fountain of Life.
Yet Even Now (Joel Limpic)
Man Of Sorrows (Matt Crocker, Brooke Ligertwood)
ASSURANCE OF PARDON: 1 Corinthians 15:20–22
SERMON & COMMUNION
Forever Reign (Morgan Reuben, Jason Ingram)
King Of My Heart (John Mark McMillan, Sarah McMillan)