Bulletin: April 5, 2025

First Lutheran Church                                                                Lent 5
PO Box 153 - 240 Elm Street West                                             April 6, 2025          
Amery, WI   715-268-7135                                                            www.flcamery.org
Our mission is to know Jesus and to make Jesus known. Jn. 17    

WELCOME AND ANNOUNCMENTS

Hymn:  How Deep the Father’s Love

CONFESSION AND FORGIVENESS

GREETING

KYRIE Spoken

PSALM 126 When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy. Then they said among the nations, "The LORD has done great things for them."  The LORD has done great things for us, and we are glad indeed.  Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses of the Negeb.  Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves. 

HYMN: In Christ Alone

PRAYER Creator God, you prepare a new way in the wilderness, and your grace waters our desert. Open our hearts to be transformed by the new thing you are doing, that our lives may proclaim the extravagance of your love given to all through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

Isaiah 43:16-21 Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.

Philippians 3:4b-14  If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

HYMN: My Life Flows on ………………………………..Red 763

John 12:1-8 Judas misunderstands Mary's extravagant act of anointing Jesus' feet with a costly perfume. Jesus recognizes the true significance of her beautiful expression of love and commitment as an anticipation of his burial. Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone.  She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me." 

APOSTLES’ CREED

SERMON

OFFERING:     We thank God for the music by Verle and Ginny.

PRAYERS

CELEBRATION OF LORD'S SUPPER, LORD’S PRAYER
HYMN: Give Me Jesus… Red 770, In the Cross- 104, Music

BENEDICTION

Marked with the cross of Christ, go in peace to love and serve the Lord.  
Thanks be to God!