Our Savior Is Ruler Over Everything

1st Sunday After Christmas

This is for His Glory
This is for our Safety

Bible Readings

FIRST LESSON: 1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26

But Samuel was ministering before the Lord—a boy wearing a linen ephod. Each year his mother made him a little robe and took it to him when she went up with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice. Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, saying, “May the Lord give you children by this woman to take the place of the one she prayed for and gave to the Lord.” Then they would go home. And the boy Samuel continued to grow in stature and in favor with the Lord and with people.

SECOND LESSON: Hebrews 2:10-18

In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says, “I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters; in the assembly I will sing your praises.” And again, “I will put my trust in him.” And again he says, “Here am I, and the children God has given me.” Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

VERSE OF THE DAY: 1 Corinthians 1:18

Alleluia. The message of the cross is the power of God to us who are being saved. Alleluia.

GOSPEL: Mark 8:27-35

Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”
Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

SERMON TEXT: Psalm 8

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and
infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work
of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you
care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works
of your hands; you put everything under their feet all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish
in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!