These are the notes of a short talk given at an informal breakfast ‘event’.
The other day, someone I work with was waiting for a bus to take her to work. The bus came on time, but sailed straight past her. So much for that journey. She was abandoned.
A couple of months ago, my wife & I were expecting to attend the wedding of the daughter of one of her friends. The Wednesday before the wedding day, her fiancee called the whole thing off.…
The story of Abraham is the story of a promise. Back in Genesis 12, the Lord had called him from his home in Ur with the promise that he would make of his descendents a great nation, and that all peoples on earth would blessed through him and his descendents.
There’s just one problem: Abraham has no descendents. He and his wife Sarah are both elderly, and she has been childless all her life. But in our passage this morning, the promise is repeated in Sarah’s hearing.…
“If only we’d known how that holiday would turn out,” muttered the Jones family as they returned yesterday wet and muddy from a week of camping in the West Midlands.
“If only we’d known how that marriage would turn out,” reflected Jenny and Brian as they signed their divorce papers.
“If only we’d known how that evening would turn out,” lamented the family of James Oyebola, who was shot in the back after asking some bar customers to stop smoking.…
Onesimus, a slave, had run away from Philemon. He had met Paul in Rome, and there become a believer. Paul sent him back to Colossae with a letter, asking the master to forgive the slave, and to receive him back.
What was Paul’s motivation? Clearly, he had come to love Onesimus as a Christian brother. Clearly, too, he believed that all people are equal in the sight of God. (Gal 3:28) ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’…
[This was the first of a pair of sermons preached on this wonderful little letter of Paul. The aim was to summarise the letter, while encouraging the listener to get into the feelings and experiences of the individuals involved. The main applications came in the second sermon.]
THE MESSAGE OF PHILEMON
I want to take you back in time to a day in the year AD 61. It is early evening, and Philemon and his wife Apphia are looking out from the veranda of their home in Colossae.…
Here we have some of the very last words spoken or written by the apostle Paul. They were probably recorded just weeks, perhaps even days, before his martyrdom (he is believed to have been beheaded on the Ostian Way, near Rome).
The prospect of death, of course, concentrates the mind wonderfully. And there can be no doubt about what Paul is concentrating on in our passage tonight. It is all about faithfulness to ‘the word’, v2.…
We have reached the half-way stage in our exploration of this letter of Paul to the Ephesians. And as we pass from the first into the second half of this great epistle, we immediately notice a change of scenery. There is a shift from
And yet the two halves of this letter are inseparably connected.…
The letter to the Ephesians has been called the ‘Switzerland’ of the New Testament. And with good reason, because here we are among the loftiest peaks and most stunning landscapes of Christian faith and experience.
A map of Switzerland might recommend certain towns and landscapes as being ‘worth a detour’. And here, in chapter 3:1-13 we accompany Paul on a short but thrillingly worthwhile detour.
Our passage begins with the words, ‘For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles…’.…
I wonder how many meals you have eaten in your life? Assuming a rate of 3 meals a day, then by the age of 16 you will already have eaten over 17,000 meals, and by the age of 60 over 65,000.
I wonder how many of these meals you can remember? Some are more memorable than others – a wedding reception, a birthday party, a family picnic, your first communion.
We come this morning to the last in a short series from Luke’s Gospel exploring notable meals that Jesus attended.…
In the previous chapter, God’s people enjoyed a huge celebration.
They had every reason to celebrate. They had been returning from exile in drips and drabs over the previous 100 years or so. But they had been a demoralised people, lacking in leadership and with their holy city, Jerusalem, pretty much in ruins.
Nehemiah was himself a Jew and a senior official in the court of the Persian emperor. He gained permission from his boss to go back to Jerusalem to help sort things out.…
