When People Need Freedom l Luke 13:10-17 l Chapel Hill Church Gig Harbor
Welcome to worship at Chapel Hill on this VBS weekend. Isn’t it so encouraging to hear these kids sing their hearts out worshipping God? And I am so encouraged to see all of you out there doing the hand motions! You might feel a little silly doing them, but these motions help our kids remember the songs that they learned this week at VBS. In fact… kids, these songs will be engrained in your brain for the rest of your life. There are so many things that I wish I could remember from college, or high school that are just gone. But all the words and motions to a song called “I walk by faith” have stuck around for 30 years. And something that I’ve learned as a parent, all the songs that my kids have learned at VBS are now etched up here too. There are certainly worse things than having songs about Jesus stuck in our heads, right?
The theme for VBS this week was Stellar. As Paul said, each day the kids learned an important Bible Point. Things like, “When Life Feels Dark….” shine Jesus’ light. “When good things happen?” shine Jesus’ light. When people need help…” shine Jesus’ light. And for each of those bible points they learned a key bible verse and focused on an important bible story. That is what we are going to do today as we continue our journey through the Gospel of Luke. We are going to look at a bible point that teaches us about Jesus and shows us how to shine his light by studying a story in scripture. In fact, that’s what we do every week in our preaching ministry here at Chapel Hill.
Our bible story today is found in Luke 13:10-17. Let’s take a look at it together now.
“One Sabbath day as Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, he saw a woman who had been crippled by an evil spirit. She had been bent double for eighteen years and was unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Dear woman, you are healed of your sickness!” Then he touched her, and instantly she could stand straight. How she praised God! But the leader in charge of the synagogue was indignant that Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. “There are six days of the week for working,” he said to the crowd. “Come on those days to be healed, not on the Sabbath.” But the Lord replied, “You hypocrites! Each of you works on the Sabbath day! Don’t you untie your ox or your donkey from its stall on the Sabbath and lead it out for water? This dear woman, a daughter of Abraham, has been held in bondage by Satan for eighteen years. Isn’t it right that she be released, even on the Sabbath?” This shamed his enemies, but all the people rejoiced at the wonderful things he did.” Luke 13:10-17 (NLT)
Each week, we recognize that these words we hear read from scripture are God’s holy word to us. And that is why we say,
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.