I Am Baptized
For as many of you as were
baptized into Christ have put on Christ. (Gal. 3:27 ESV)
Make the sign of the cross as you say, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
I Believe …
I believe in God, the Father
Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ, His only
Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the
virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He
descended into hell. The third
day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of
God the Father Almighty. From thence He will come to judge
the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the
forgiveness of sins, the
resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
Bible Reading – Psalm 12
To the choirmaster: according to The
Sheminith.[a] A Psalm of David.
12 Save,
O Lord, for the godly one is gone;
for the faithful have vanished from among the children
of man.
2 Everyone utters lies to his neighbor;
with flattering lips and a double heart they
speak.
3 May
the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
the tongue that makes great boasts,
4 those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail,
our lips are with us; who is master over us?”
5 “Because the
poor are plundered, because the needy groan,
I will now arise,” says the Lord;
“I will place him in the safety for which he
longs.”
6 The words of the Lord are pure words,
like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
purified seven times.
7 You,
O Lord, will keep them;
you will guard us[b] from this generation forever.
8 On every side the wicked prowl,
as vileness is exalted among the children of man.[1]
Reading the Psalms, I am impressed with a strong sense of
dichotomy. There are the wicked and the righteous, and they are always in
conflict. There is the side of God’s people who seek God’s will and follow God’s
ways, and those who don’t, and these resist God and oppose his people. As a
theologian once said, “There are only two religions in the world: the true
faith in God through Jesus Christ and everything else.” After all Jesus is the
way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father apart from him (John
14:6) and there is no other name given to us than Jesus’ name which brings us
salvation (Acts 4:12).
When it comes to salvation, the dichotomy is real.
I have found that people carry this stance into their
political opinions, which is not helpful. They see the people’s political views
as righteousness and wickedness. Here in the United States where we have two
primary parties you can pick your side, they’re righteous and the other side is
wicked. But when Psalm 12 speaks of flattering lips and a double heart, I think
of politicians’ promises I have heard over the years.
We tend to confuse life in this world with life in God’s
kingdom. In this world we live as aliens and strangers (1 Peter 2:11) and we
muddle our way through seeking to follow God’s ways, falling short, hindered,
struggling, and always relying of God’s grace to get us through. Our politics
are often not as clearly two sided as we pretend they are, and no party
represents the kingdom of God in government. They may have parts, but none has
the fullness of God’s truth.
This sad state of affairs can leave us praying, “Save, O
LORD!” or “Deliver, O LORD, because the godly one is gone; because faithful
ones have disappeared from among the children of man.” It is a feeling of
hopelessness that David expresses here. It is a sense of being a stranger in a
strange land. So where do we turn when we confront this sense abuse and
deception? We turn to the LORD.
It is, I think, worth noting that the first two words to the
Psalm in Hebrew – the words translated, “Save, O LORD” – are the words that
come together to form the name Jesus, which means, “The LORD saves.” He
delivers us from our own wickedness and sin. He makes us righteous and gives us
a place in God’s kingdom. When we feel lost and lied to by the world, we cling
to Jesus, and trust in God to keep us, guard us, and brings us to the place
where we will finally be safe in God’s presence.
Petitions of the Lord’s Prayer
The
Second Petition: “Thy kingdom come”
O God, everlasting Father, Your
kingdom comes even without our prayer, but, please, let it come to us, too!
Please give us Your Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we may believe Your Word,
and live godly lives here in time and there in eternity. Amen.
Prayer
Pray
for God to help you to understand and believe His Word.
Pray
for increased faith, hope, and love.
Benediction
Now to him who is able to do far
more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work
within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all
generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Eph. 3:20-21 ESV)
[1] English
Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.
ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good
News Publishers.
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