SUNDAY PRAISE

 Hello, friends.  Hope you are having a wonderful Sunday.  We had a guest speaker at church today who was so interesting that I didn't even care that he spoke 15 minutes over the time he should have.  When it ended, I turned to Joe and said, "That was for me."  

For today's praise lesson I am going to tell you about The Pool of Bethesda.

THE POOL OF BETHESDA

In Jerusalem there was a very special pool.  Many sick people would wait at the pool.  Some were blind, some were crippled, and some were paralyzed.  Sometimes an angel came and stirred up the water.  The first person to go into the pool was healed.

There was a man lying at the pool who had been sick for 38 years.  When Jesus saw the man, He knew he had been sick for a very long time.  

Jesus asked him, "Do you want to be well?"  

The sick man answered, "Yes, but there is no one to help me get into the pool.  I try to be the first one into the water.  But when I try, someone always gets into the water before me."

Jesus cared for the man.  Jesus told him, "Stand up.  Pick up your mat and walk."  

Immediately the man was well.  He picked up his mat and began to walk.  Jesus had healed the man who had been sick for 38 years.  He didn't even have to get into the pool.  The day all of this happened was a Sabbath day.

When some of the religious Jews saw the man, they were angry.  They were angry that Jesus was healing people on the Sabbath.  Jesus said, "My father never stops working. And so, I work too."  

This made the Jews want to kill Jesus.  They said, "First, Jesus breaks the law about the Sabbath day.  Then He says that God is His own father!  He is making Himself equal with God."

The Pool of Bethesda was a special pool that was said to have healing powers.  People would come from all over to try and be healed.  In John 5:1-15, Jesus healed a man who had been sick for a long time.  The man had been lying by the pool for years.  When Jesus saw the man, He had compassion on him and healed him.  This passage teaches us that Jesus is compassionate and powerful.

From this passage we learn that we should obey Jesus, that Jesus is powerful, and that it is more important to obey God than man.

Jesus commanded the man to pick up his bed and walk.  The man did so.  What commands has Jesus given us to follow?  Are we as quick to do what Jesus asks of us as this man was?  Some commands that Jesus gives us are easier to follow than others.  But they are all for our good.

Jesus is powerful.  He was able to tell the man to walk and he was able to walk.  God is all powerful.

It is more important to obey God than man.  It is sometimes hard to obey God when we want to do what everyone else is doing.  But we must always choose God over man.  Jesus commanded us to love others, but the religious leaders of his time were more worried about rules than loving other people.  It's easy to get caught up in the rules, isn't it?

Rules are important and it's important to keep the rules and respect those in authority over us.  The Sabbath (Sunday for us today) is a special day.  God set aside one day a week for us to rest and recharge.  That is why I try to keep Sunday a day when I don't do any housework, etc.  But the religious leaders added extra (and sometimes ridiculous) rules and made people obey them.  We must always remember it is more important to obey God than man.

That's the lesson for today.  So much to take in and digest.  Hope your Sunday is a great one.

See you soon.

Kathy