• Before Service Songs –
• Ps. 104 Alternate: 1, 6
• Hail, the Day: 1, 4
• *Votum & Salutation
• *Song of Response – Hymn 46: 1-4
• Profession of Faith – Hymn 2
• Prayer
• Reading of Scripture
  • Matthew 7:1-5;
  • Romans 7:14-8:8
• Song of Response – Ps. 116: 1, 4, 9
• Reading of Lord’s Day 2
• Ministry of the Word: What Our Sins and Misery Teach Us. They teach us about:
  1. Difficult people;
     • Everyone has to deal with difficult people at some time.
     • How do we handle dealing with difficult people? Sometimes we can avoid them. But not if it's your sibling or parent or teacher or boss or maybe coworker.
     • Maybe we can talk to them. But if it's someone that is in a position of seniority (teach, parent, boss, etc.) this can be difficult.
     • Efforts to try and reason with someone and change their behavior is often met with hostility. It's very difficult to get people to change.
     • Often times people that are difficult are dealing with difficult situations themselves, or perhaps their behavior is just an expression of thier character.
     • When you have come to the insight of how hard it is to deal with difficult people, you have a tiny picture of what it is like for God to deal with us.
  2. Our miserable selves;
     • Dealing with difficult people and difficult situations can make us miserable.
     • God made us in perfection and created a world for us to explore and learn about. We had a completely satisfying life, and nothing was lacking.
     • But we fell into sin and misery.
     • God gave us freedom of will; he did not want us to be a puppet or a robot. It is only with true freedom that we can truly love God and love one another. Freedom gives us creativity, commitment, and love.
     • God's love for us is unconditional.
     • Now that we have fallen into sin and misery we are incapable of doing anything good on our own.
  3. A wise God
     • God sees everything we do and everything we say and everything we think.
     • We Christians are barely different from everyone around us.
     • We must "take the plank out of our eyes before we can take the splinter out of our brothers eye".
     • We must not hide behind the sins of others to cover our own sins and faults.
     • We are all flawed and lacking in true goodness and compassion.
     • We must see our own sin and misery first.
     • Despite all our sin and misery, God has given us the gift of forgiveness.
• *Song of Response – Ps. 25: 2, 9, 10
• Thanksgiving Prayer
• Offertory – Safe Families
• *Song of Closing – Ps. 4: 2, 3
• *Benediction