Worship
Service for February 15, 2026
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
P: And also with you.
L: Let us worship God. Clap your hands all you peoples;
P: Shout to God with loud songs of joy.
L: For the Most High is awesome.
P: A great sovereign over all the earth.
L: It is good to give thanks to the Lord.
P: To sing praises to Your name, O Most High.
Opening Hymn – Take My Life #391/597
Prayer of Confession
Mighty and Merciful God, You
have called us to be Your people and claimed us for the service of Jesus
Christ. We confess that we have not
lived up to our calling. We have been timid
and frightened disciples, forgetful of Your powerful presence and the strength
of Your Spirit among us. O God, forgive
our foolish and sinful ways. As You have
chosen us, claimed us in our baptisms, strengthen us anew to choose Christ’s
way in this world. Give us Your Holy
Spirit that each one in ministry may be provided with all the gifts of grace
needed to fulfill our common calling; through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
(Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: The proof of God’s amazing love is this:
while we were sinners Christ died for us.
Believe the good news of the gospel: Christ died in order to redeem us
back to God.
P: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven. AMEN
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
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 Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge
the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins; the
resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Holy God, long ago You
revealed the anointed Messiah to Peter, James, and John on the mountaintop, may
You also be revealed to us; a lamp set on a lampstand. A light that reveals our pathway. Fill us with praise for Your Glory,
overflowing with cheers and mysterious visions of peace and justice for
all. Continue to light our way; direct
our course; and energize us for the journey ahead. For we always have one more mountain to climb
each and every day. This mountain may be
personal – one that we climb alone with You at our side, but it might also be
communal – a mountain that we climb together for the good of the world.
We are thankful for the
opportunities Lord, to represent You on earth, but often we fail to live up to
the world’s expectations of us, let alone Yours. So, in our time of prayer this morning, give
us a moment to breathe deeply of Your strength, breathe deeply of Your love,
breathe deeply of Your grace and mercy, so that we can truly be Your hands and
feet working out Your will each and every day.
We pray for our loved
ones today….We especially lift up to you…
Now hear our concerns,
joys, and sorrows in this moment of silence…
Gathered together, we
say aloud the prayer Your son taught us saying...Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver
us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory, forever.
AMEN.
Hymn – In Christ there is no East or West #439/428
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Psalm
99
Second Scripture Reading – 2
Peter 1:16-21
Sermon
–
Walking Forward
(based
on 2 Peter 1:16-21)
Every
generation faces the same fundamental question: What voice can we trust? Mine, yours, God, the Holy Spirit, a
Grandparent, a well-known theologian, a pop artist who speaks from the heart, a
guru of some sort, a therapist, or a friend.
Our
world is loud with competing claims—news channels, podcasts, influencers,
religious leaders, scholars, activists—all offering interpretations of reality
and insisting that their perspective is the one that truly explains the world. The result isn’t always clarity but rather confusion.
Many people no longer ask the age old
question, “What is truth?” but rather, “Is anything certain, at all?”
However,
this is not new. The early church faced
a very similar moment. False teachers
were rising, offering sophisticated arguments, attractive spiritual shortcuts,
and teachings that made faith easier, but less faithful. And into that confusion, the apostle Peter in
is second letter to the Jewish and Gentile believers who were exiled to the
greater province of Asia Minor, writes with pastoral urgency. Near the end of his life, he wants believers
to stand firm, not because they feel confident, but because their faith rests
on something reliable.
In
this section of 2 Peter 1:16–21, Peter leads us through a progression:
The
gospel, or all the stories of Jesus and the good news about God’s salvation,
healing, and teachings, is grounded in eyewitness testimony.
That
testimony is confirmed by the prophetic Word from the Old Testament.
And
that prophetic Word itself comes through the Spirit of God all the way back to Moses
and Aaron.
And
because of this progression, believers are called to live as people who walk
forward in the steady light of God’s revealed truth. They walk forward, yes – maybe into the
unknown, maybe into a scary space, maybe into new territory that no one has
been before. But they have something
that can guide them – the truth in Christ.
Peter
begins with a clear defense: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths.” Christianity is not a symbolic philosophy
created to inspire moral behavior. It’s
not just a moral code, a system of ethics to follow. It is the proclamation that God acted on
purpose in history through Jesus Christ. Peter insists that the apostles were not
storytellers inventing spiritual legends; they were witnesses describing what
they had seen.
He
recalls the moment when he saw the majesty of Christ revealed and heard the
voice from heaven declaring Jesus to be the beloved Son. That experience, the one that he shared with John
and James on the mountaintop when Jesus was transfigured before them, shaped
everything Peter preached afterward. The
message of Christ’s glory was not a theory for Peter, it was an encounter with
the truth of Christ, the glory of Christ, the wholeness and beauty of God.
This
matters because faith always rests on testimony. Every person lives by trusting someone’s
witness. We trust historians to tell us
what happened before we were born. We
trust scientists to explain processes we cannot observe directly. We trust friends to tell us what they have
experienced.
And
honestly, friends, we are in times exactly like those early Christians were
in. People who twist the truth, who spin
things to meet their own desires. Who
blatantly want tell us that what we know is false, who want to erase what’s
been written by eyewitnesses to the truth, even spinning what we see with our
own eyes. Life itself would be
impossible without relying on credible witnesses, not false ones, but credible
ones.
Our
own Christian faith works in the very same way. We trust the testimony of those who
encountered Christ, whose lives, sacrifices, and consistency across generations
affirm the reliability of their message. The apostles gained no wealth, no status, or
comfort from their testimony; instead, many endured imprisonment, persecution,
and death. People may lie for profit,
but they rarely endure suffering for what they know to be false.
In
a courtroom, eyewitness testimony still carries enormous weight. When multiple
independent witnesses describe the same event with consistency, their testimony
shapes the outcome of the case. The
credibility of the witnesses matters. Peter
is, in effect, saying to the church: You are not hearing rumors, you are
hearing sworn testimony from those who were there, who saw Christ’s glory.
For
us, as modern believers, this means our faith does not depend merely on
emotional experience or personal preference. Those emotional or personal experiences are
important, but our faith also stands on the historical witness of those who
encountered the risen Lord. Christianity
is not sustained by wishful thinking but by the proclamation that God has acted
in the real world, and what’s more that proclamation has stood the test of time
for thousands of years.
After
describing his extraordinary experience, Peter makes a surprising statement:
“We also have the prophetic word more fully confirmed.” Even though he witnessed Christ’s glory
firsthand, Peter directs believers not just to his experience but to the rest
of Scripture, as well.
Spiritual experiences are meaningful,
but they must always be interpreted through and by the Word of God. Experience alone can sometimes mislead. Why?
Because our emotions change, memories fade, and impressions can be
mistaken. But the written Word provides
a steady reference point that does not shift with circumstance and each
individual experience builds on the last.
Peter
describes Scripture as “a lamp shining in a dark place.” Darkness in Scripture
often represents moral confusion, spiritual blindness, and uncertainty about
the future. The world is filled with
brilliance in technology and knowledge, yet many people remain uncertain about
how to live, what truly matters, and what gives life meaning. Scripture does not remove every mystery. In fact, I’m glad it doesn’t. Some
mystery in life is important; it keeps us striving for knowledge and
understanding. But what the Scripture do
is provide sufficient light for faithful living. This image of a lamp, or the admonition that
Christ gave his disciples in last week’s reading, “You are the light of the
world!” suggests something important: the Word, God’s light, our own light, doesn’t
illuminate the entire journey at once. Instead,
it gives enough clarity for the next faithful step. God often guides us progressively rather than
all at once, forming trust as we walk.
Anyone
who has driven at night on an unlit road knows that headlights do not reveal
the entire destination. They illuminate
only a limited distance ahead, yet that limited visibility is just enough to
keep the journey moving safely. If we
insisted on seeing the whole route before driving, we would never begin the
trip. Scripture functions in the same
way, providing the guidance needed for the next step of the journey.
Many
believers become discouraged because they want God to reveal every detail of
the future before they act. Peter
reminds us that God’s promise is not unlimited advance knowledge but reliable
present guidance. The lamp shines, and
we walk forward – maybe just one step at a time, but we walk forward.
Peter
then explains why the prophetic Word can be trusted: it did not originate in
human initiative alone. Yes, humans and
our each person’s perspective were important to the telling of the story, but prophecy,
he says, never came by the will of human beings alone; rather, they spoke from
God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Like a ship moved by the wind, the writers of
Scripture were guided by the Spirit so that what they wrote communicated God’s
intention.
This
doesn’t mean the writers became passive instruments without personality. Like God directing their hand as they
wrote. No, each biblical book reflects
the language, background, and perspective of its author who experienced God or
Christ in a unique way. Through those
human voices, the Spirit ensured that God’s truth was faithfully communicated. The result is a Word that is both fully human
in expression and fully trustworthy in origin.
They beauty of it all, is that it wasn’t just in the writing of it, but
also in the gathering and the decision-making process of it all that took
hundreds of years to collect and create.
The
same Spirit who inspired the Bible, the written Word, also works through it to
transform hearts. Scripture is not
merely information to be studied but revelation that reshapes how we think,
choose, and live.
Consider
how a navigation system depends on a signal from beyond the device itself. The map may be stored internally, but accurate
positioning requires connection to satellites that guide the system’s
direction. Without that signal, the
device may still display roads, but it cannot reliably guide the traveler. In the same way, Scripture is not simply a
collection of ancient religious reflections; it is truth breathed by the Spirit
of God, providing direction that human insight alone cannot supply.
When
we neglect the reading and study of Scripture, we can often find ourselves
spiritually disoriented—not necessarily because we lack intelligence or
understanding, but because we have disconnected from the source that provides accurate
and true direction.
Peter
present these truths not merely to win an argument against false teachers; he
presents them to shape how we live. If
the gospel rests on trustworthy witness, if Scripture provides a steady light,
and if the Spirit stands behind its message, then the appropriate response is
to order our lives around that Word.
To
“pay attention” to Scripture, as Peter urges, means more than occasional
reading. It means allowing the Word to
set priorities, shape decisions, correct assumptions, and cultivate hope. Many people consult Scripture only when facing
crisis, but Peter calls believers to live daily under its illumination.
That
is the point of today’s sermon at this time of year. This week we enter into Lent with Ash
Wednesday. Lent is often seen as a time
for giving up something. But, I want to
challenge you to set more time aside to read, reflect, and pray. God’s Word doesn’t exist to confirm our
preferences, to confirm only what we believe; it exists to transform them.
We
do not yet see everything clearly, but we walk in confident expectation of the
coming day when God’s purposes will be fully revealed. As we read, study, reflect, and pray; the
light of Christ makes our way forward clearer.
The
lamp imagery reminds us that God’s promises are already guiding us. Faith is sustained in us not only by
remembering what God has done but also by anticipating what God will complete. In a world crowded with persuasive voices, we
are called to anchor our confidence in three realities:
The
gospel rests on credible witness.
Scripture
provides steady illumination.
The
Spirit guarantees the divine origin and power of God’s Word.
So
the invitation of this passage is simple and demanding:
Return
again to God’s Word. Listen carefully to
its light. Shape your decisions around
its truth. And keep walking forward,
confident that the lamp that guides us now will one day give way to the full
brightness of God’s eternal morning.
Thanks
be to God. AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
God of both mountain tops and plains, giver of
all good gifts. We ask that You bless
these gifts brought to You today. May
they honor our commitment to further Your work of love and justice in the
world. In Your name we pray. Amen.
Closing
Hymn – O Jesus I Have Promised
#388/676
Benediction –
Friends, walk in the
light and in truth. See the light of
Christ in every face. Be the light of
Christ to all you meet. AMEN.
Postlude
