Thank you for joining us for our morning worship.

It has been recorded at the chapel during the week as we are not meeting in the building until 21st March.

Rev Stephen Haward is leading and the theme is When Freedom Comes.

The hymns are all available on YouTube.

HYMN Mission Praise 293 ‘I sing the almighty power of God’
Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

Welcome and Call to Worship, Prayer and Bible Reading – Genesis 8:13-22

If you prefer something child-friendly
HYMN ‘Thank you Lord for this fine day’

Or if you prefer something adult-friendly
HYMN Mission Praise 525 ‘O Thou who camest from above’
Charles Wesley 1707-88

Church News, Reading – Luke 18:9-14           

HYMN ‘Empty, broken here I stand’
Nick and Anita Haigh, Words and Music: © 2000 Break of Day Music, CCL 53960

Sermon, Prayers, Lord’s Prayer (contemporary), Act of Dedication and Blessing

HYMN Mission Praise 449 ‘Love divine, all loves excelling’
Charles Wesley 1707-88

Genesis 8: 13 to 22

¹³ By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. ¹⁴ By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.
¹⁵ Then God said to Noah, ¹⁶ ‘Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. ¹⁷ Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you – the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground – so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.’
¹⁸ So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. ¹⁹ All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds – everything that moves on land – came out of the ark, one kind after another.
²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. ²¹ The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
²² ‘As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.’

Luke 18:9-14

The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector
⁹ To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: ¹⁰ ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”
¹³ ‘But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
¹⁴ ‘I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

The Lord’s Prayer (contemporary)

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen.