Welcome to our Sunday morning worship. We continue with our series of Face to Face encounters with Jesus. This week Jesus meets a disabled man, paralysed for 38 years. Because some have been struggling to view the video of the talk, I have included an audio version just below it. But first we sing God’s praises:
And now we bring our prayers to God:
Face to Face to face with Jesus – the disabled man. Lucille reads us the story from John chapter 5
John 5:1-18
After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralysed. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
Now that day was the Sabbath. 10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14 Afterwards Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
Jesus Is Equal with God
18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
Talk: 8 things.
Alternatively here is an audio version:
Let’s sing:
Now we bring the church and the world to God in our prayers:
Our closing song is Charles Wesley’s great “Love divine”!
Now let’s say the blessing for each other:
May the love of God be yours.
May the gentleness of Christ be yours.
May the peace of the Spirit be yours.
And may the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, bless you today and always. Amen