The Lord’s day is coming tomorrow, so let’s once again prepare our hearts for worship. R. Kent Hughes says this about worshiping on the Lord’s day: “there is something very wonderful about the gathered body of Christ. There is an encouragement that takes place from singing with the people, affirming the same things, saying “amen” to the reading of God’s word, having your Bibles open with all the pages turning at the same time to the text that can’t happen individually. There is nothing like gathered worship.” So, we should be eagerly anticipating worshiping with the people of God on the Lord’s day. If you are not eagerly anticipating the Lord’s day then let’s go to the throne of grace to receive mercy, as Hebrews 4:16 says: “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Let’s go to the throne of grace and ask the Lord to stir up our affections for him. Let’s boldly go to the throne of grace and pray for Ian and for Mark. Let’s pray for Jerry as well who will be leading us in our confession time.

Let’s preach the gospel to ourselves before we come. Matt Boswell says: “We gather together in worship to have our eyes set upon Christ. The hand of the gospel lifts our drooping head to remember that in Christ the acceptance of God has been fixed upon us. The weekly practice of hearing the gospel in song and in sermon clears the hazy effects of sin from our eyes and focuses our hearts on the glory of God. Lifting our gaze brings clarity to us of who God is and who we are as his people.

Allow corporate worship to help renew your hope in God. In the call to worship, call your heart to worship. In the confession of sin, lift your gaze to Christ whose blood has satisfied the wrath of God. In the preaching of God’s word, hear the gospel and allow it to echo through the chambers of your soul.”

Mark will be preaching from Genesis 2 and will be talking about marriage. The ESV text of Genesis 2 is below:

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. ² And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. ³ So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

⁵ When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, ⁶ and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— ⁷ then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. ⁸ And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. ⁹ And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁰ A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. ¹¹ The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.¹² And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. ¹³ The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. ¹⁴ And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” ¹⁹ Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. ²¹ So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. ²² And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. ²³ Then the man said,

²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. ²⁵ And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

Picture from DesiringGod