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Top Ten Puritan Classics

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I’d like to present a list of recommended Puritan works (well, perhaps a couple of them are best considered honorary Puritans).  They’re all available online.  In no particular order of merit:-

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What’s heaven?

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Maria Shriver is an award-winning American journalist and author and she is the wife of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  A practising Roman Catholic, in 2007 she published a book for children called What’s Heaven?

In this book, children are informed that

Heaven is somewhere you believe in…it’s a beautiful place where you can sit on soft clouds and talk to other people who are there.  At night you can sit next to the stars, which are the brightest of anywhere in the universe…If you’re good throughout your life, then you get to go to heaven…when your life is finished here on earth, God sends angels down to take you up to Heaven to be with him…[and Grandma is] alive in me…Most important, she taught me to believe in myself…She’s in a safe place, with the stars, with God and the angels…she is watching over us from up there…

“I want you to know” [says the heroine to her great-Grandma] “that even though you are no longer here, your spirit will always be alive in me.”

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Lk 2:41-52 – ‘In my Father’s house’ – sermon notes

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After the angels went back into heaven, after the shepherds went back to their flocks, after the magi went back to where they had come from, after Mary and Joseph and their their son went back to Nazareth, what happened then? Did Jesus grow up just like any normal child?

In v52 we have nearly 30 years of development summarised in one sentence: ‘Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men.’…

Poor Joseph?

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St Matthew-in-the-City Church in Auckland, New Zealand, has put up a billboard depicting a dejected-looking Joseph beside Mary in bed, beneath the caption, ‘Poor Joseph.  God was a hard act to follow.’

The aim, according to the church’s vicar, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy, is to provoke debate, to ‘challenge stereotypes’ about the birth of Jesus, to lampoon the literal interpretation of the biblical stories of Jesus’ birth.

What we’re trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about. 
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2 Cor 3:7-18 – Out with the old, in with the new – sermon notes

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The church at Corinth was founded by St Paul some 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was a dynamic but deeply dysfunctional church. There was doctrinal errors, with some even denying the resurrection of the body. There were serious moral lapses, including incest. There were divisions, with groups lining up with Paul, others with Peter, still others with Apollos.

Moreover, some had mounted vicious attacks on Paul’s character. ‘He’s fickle’ (keeps changing his mind about his travel plans), ‘he’s exploitative’ (says he doesn’t want any financial support but then pockets the collection), ‘he’s unspiritual’ (lacks mystical experiences and doesn’t do miracles), ‘he’s cowardly’ (a lion in his letters, but a lamb face-to-face).…

John 17 – What if Jesus did not pray? – sermon notes

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A long time ago, a young man finished an evening meal with his friends, spoke to them about various things, then looked up to the sky, and prayed.

I want you to imagine for a moment that it never happened.

I want you to imagine that he did not at this time pray for himself. What would be the point? He had been hated, hounded, and harangued, he had been betrayed into his enemy’s hands, and they were going to kill him the next day.…

1 Tim 6:3-10, 17-19 – Living simply – sermon notes

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Could we be contented with less in order to give away more?

We probably have items – cutlery, crockery, baby equipment, clothing, furniture, toys – that are in good condition but we don’t use or need them. We know that The Besom is able to pass them on to vulnerable people who really do need them.

We could easily identify one area in our everyday lives in which we could practice conservation (water, paper), sharing (books, tools, transport) or recycling (plastic, aluminium).…

Psa 23:3 – He restores my soul – sermon notes

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‘He restores my soul.’

How pleasant, how delightful, is this psalm! And yet what does it have to do with our lives today? David, the shepherd-king, lived in a world of green pastures and still waters; we live in a pulsating world of silicon chips and space travel. David’s world seems a million miles from ours.

And yet – if ever there was a time when we needed to re-discover the glorious truths contained in this psalm, then that time is now.…

Bertrand Russell’s strange collocation

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Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a prominent British philosopher.  He was an outspoken agnostic, and his essay entitled Why I Am Not A Christian (based on a talk given in 1927) remains one of the most celebrated statements of unbelief.

That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of the universe in ruins.

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Top Ten Podcasts

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Here’s a list of ten of my favourite podcasts.  The first five in the list are Christian-based, the second five are not:-

  • Unbelievable? – Premier Radio’s weekly debate on aspects of belief and unbelief
  • Teaching for Today – Lectures from the Christian Institute
  • Veritas Forum – University events that seek to engage students and faculty in discussion of llife’s deepest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ
  • Godpod – Theological discussion from St Paul’s Theological Centre
  • White Horse Inn – Westminster Seminary’s Michael S.
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