You can watch the bible readings and sermon here, or scroll down to read the rest of the Sunday prayers and content, and watch this video at the point it occurs during worship.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF COUNTRY
With flannel flower and wattle, with acacia and blue gum branches we dance our own corroboree as we celebrate life with Christ Jesus our Lord. We welcome him into our lives on Dharawal land, gifted to them by the Creator since time immemorial. We acknowledge their land and their elders past and present joining our voices with theirs in our search for reconciliation and justice making.
YOU ARE WELCOME
All people are made in the image of God. If you know what it is to love and to be loved, you are welcome. If you have spent your whole life searching for such love and acceptance you are also welcome. We are all welcome to this safe place where Jesus is acknowledged as Lord. You are welcome in His name on this day of new beginnings. The Peace of the Lord be with you…
WE LIGHT OUR LENTEN CANDLE
We gather to worship God. We gather so we can turn to Christ.
Whose life gives life to all. We will journey with him to Calvary and beyond.
This is our prayer and our hope. Praise be to God!
CALL TO WORSHIP
A gift, a gift of light, wrapped up in love and grace, has been given to us. Come!
The Son of Man has been lifted up for God so loves us all! Come, let’s worship together.
Come Holy Spirit, we welcome the light, we long to feel your warmth. Come, Holy Spirit.
HYMN
When morning gilds the sky, our hearts awaking cry:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
In all our work and prayer we ask his loving care:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Let earth’s wide circle round in joyful notes resound:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Let air and sea and sky from depth to height reply:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Be this, when day is past of all my thoughts the last:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
The night becomes as day when from the heart we say:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Be this while life is mine Our song of praise divine
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Be this the eternal song through all the ages long:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Anon German early 19th C Public Domain CCLI # Licence 31951
WELCOME & ANNOUNCEMENTS
BIBLE READING Numbers 21: 4 – 9
They travelled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?
There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”
And so the Israelites spat the dummy. Freed from slavery, they complain, not wanting nor willing to trust Moses or God; not willing to put up with some discomfort and uncertainty. Like a child demanding to be fed. Does this sound like you? Too often complaining. Just wanting to ‘go back?’.
Compassionate God, you made us in your image of love yet we run from anything that will help us grow and trust you more deeply, lashing out, while focusing on the hard knot of self-interest that lives within each of us. Help us Lord. Help us to trust so that we can grow to love you and each other and ourselves more deeply, more completely. Forgive our stubborn anger and feed us out of your abundant love for we are hungry, we are always hungry. Amen.
WORDS OF ASSURANCE
God comes to meet us in the rubble of our lives, to heal and forgive, to put the world right again. Every piece of rubble is marked by grace and love. So let God be God and receive the forgiving, reconciling love that God has for you and for me, this day. Thanks be to God.
HYMN
Guide us, O our great Redeemer
Pilgrim through this barren land
We are weak, but You are mighty
Hold us with Your powerful hand:
Bread of heaven, Bread of heaven
Feed me now and ever more
Feed me now and ever more.
Open now the crystal fountain
Whence the living waters flow
Let the fiery, cloudy pillar
Lead me all my journey through:
Strong Deliverer, strong Deliverer
Be Thou still my strength and shield
Be Thou still my strength and shield.
When we tread the verge of Jordan
Bid our anxious fears subside
Death of death, and hell’s destruction
Land us safe on Canaan’s side:
Songs of praises, songs of praises
We will ever give to Thee
We will ever give to Thee.
William Williams 1717 – 1791 Public Domain. CCLI # Licence 31951
BIBLE READING John 3: 14-21
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
MESSAGE It is all about love and trust
HYMN
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE & LORD’S PRAYER
HYMN Fairest Lord Jesus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdNASJDwvAU
OFFERTORY PRAYER & BENEDICTION
Love will be our Lenten calling, love to shake and shatter sin
Waking every closed, cold spirit, stirring new life deep within
Till the quickened heart remembers, what our Easter birth can mean.
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