“I Kings 10 Verses 1–13 The queen of Sheba came to Solomon to hear his wisdom, thereby to improve her own. Our Saviour mentions her inquiries after God, by Solomon, as showing the stupidity of those who inquire not after God, by our Lord Jesus Christ. By waiting and prayer, by diligently searching the Scriptures, by consulting wise and experienced Christians, and by practising what we have learned, we shall be delivered from difficulties. Solomon’s wisdom made more impression upon the queen of Sheba than all his prosperity and grandeur. There is a spiritual excellence in heavenly things, and in…
Sunday Morning Calls to Worship
Call to Worship February 6 2022
Daniel 9 In every prayer we must make confession, not only of the sins we have been guilty of, but of our faith in God, and dependence upon him, our sorrow for sin, and our resolutions against it. It must be our confession, the language of our convictions. Here is Daniel’s humble, serious, devout address to God; in which he gives glory to him as a God to be feared, and as a God to be trusted. We should, in prayer, look both at God’s greatness and his goodness, his majesty and mercy. Here is a penitent confession of sin,…
Call to Worship January 31 2022
Psalm 11 “[Matthew] Henry: ‘Though honest good people may be run down, and trampled upon, yet God does and will own them, and favor them, and smile upon them, and that is the reason why God will severely reckon with persecutors and oppressors, because those whom they oppress and persecute are dear to him; so that, whosoever touches them, touches’ the apple of his eye,’” v. 7.[1] “[John] Morison closes his comments on this Psalm thus: ‘Impenitent sinner! read this Psalm, and mark your approaching doom! To flatter yourself with the hope of escape is vain. The elements of omnipotent…
Call to Worship January 23 2022
“We never are secure from trials In Hebrew, to tempt, and to try, or to prove, are expressed by the same word. Every trial is indeed a temptation, and tends to show the dispositions of the heart, whether holy or unholy. But God proved Abraham, not to draw him to sin, as Satan tempts. Strong faith is often exercised with strong trials, and put upon hard services. The command to offer up his son, is given in such language as makes the trial more grievous; every word here is a sword. Observe, 1. The person to be offered: Take thy…
Call to Worship January 16 2022
Genesis 19:24-25 “Then, when Lot had got safely into Zoar, then this ruin came; for good men are taken away from the evil to come. Then, when the sun had risen bright and clear, promising a fair day, then this storm arose, to show that it was not from natural causes. Concerning this destruction observe, 1. God was the immediate author of it. It was destruction from the Almighty: The Lord rained–from the Lord (v. 24), that is, God from himself, by his own immediate power, and not in the common course of nature. Or, God the Son from God…
Call to Worship January 9 2022
Ephesians 4:17 “I would remind you that the particular matter here is, that as Christians, we are entirely new men and women, that regeneration is the profoundest change in the world, and that therefore we must always keep this in the forefront of our minds. A Christian is not just a man who has decided to be a little bit more moral than he was, or who has decided to join a church, or who has decided this or that, whatever it may be. What makes a man a Christian is that he has been born again, he has been…
Call to Worship January 2 2022
“As Jesus grew he became increasingly conscious of God’s timetable for his life. He referred to his ministry as a ‘time’ that had been set out in the divine plan. Hence such comments as, ‘My time has not yet come’…even more precisely…his ‘hour’. In John’s Gospel this refers to his passion and crucifixion, which, along with his resurrection, are seen as the foreordained climactic events of his life…There was a definite plan for Jesus. His life was foreordained for him by his heavenly Father. ‘Foreordination’ and ‘predestination’ are sometimes seen by Christians as controversial terms. Certainly we need to handle…
Call to Worship December 19 2021
“In a day not dissimilar to our own the prophet Isaiah announced that Immanuel will come: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14). It is easy for us to lose sight of the fact that ‘Immanuel’, ‘God with us’, was one of the most familiar and important convictions of the Old Testament. It lay at the heart of the promise God gave to Jacob (Gen. 28:15); and was a key to help Moses to understand the significance of God’s name Yahweh – he would be God-with-him (Ex. 3:12). Think of…
Call to Worship December 12 2021
“When I was a child, Christmas seemed to die every year by bedtime on December 25th. The anticipation seemed long; the realization all too brief. I even tried wrapping up my presents again and opening them the following day. But my childhood disappointment could not be relieved. It was gone for another whole year. I know now why that was true for me, as it is for every child. It was because the true meaning of Christmas eluded me. In that sense Christmas never did really ‘happen.’ I was looking in the wrong direction for the wrong things instead of…
Call to Worship December 5 2021
Expository Thoughts on 1 Samuel 31 While David had been rescued by God from joining the Philistines against his people and from the wiles of the Amalekites (Ch. 29&30), Saul was in a battle for his livelihood and life (31:1). When the Philistines were fighting against Israel, they killed Saul’s sons and eventually the king himself. Just as Samuel foretold, Saul’s reign as King of Israel came to an awful end. After the archer’s arrows mortally wounded him, he chose to fall on his sword. His armor bearer had been unable to end what Saul finished for himself. His head…