Category Archives: Sermon Notes

Philemon – 2nd Sermon

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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.’…

Philemon – 1st Sermon

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[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.…

2 Tim 4:1-8 – Keep faithful to the word – sermon notes

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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.…

Eph 4:1-6 – Christian unity: God’s part and ours – sermon notes

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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

  • Principles to practice
  • Belief to behaviour
  • Doctrine to duty
  • Exposition to exhortation
  • Credenda to agenda
  • Indicative to imperative
  • What God has done to what we must do

And yet the two halves of this letter are inseparably connected.…

Eph 3:1-13 – The unsearchable riches of Christ – sermon notes

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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…’.…

Luke 22:7-20 – The Last Supper – sermon notes

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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.…

Neh 13 – Needed: constant renewal – sermon notes

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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.…

Neh 11-12 – Happily ever after? – sermon notes

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It has been a long, long wait. 1500 years before, the Lord God had promised to Abraham that he would make his descendants into a great nation, and that through him all the peoples of the earth would be blessed.

Over the years, the fulfilment of this promise had sometimes seemed very near. Think of the Exodus, and the conquest of the promised land and the golden age when David was king. At other times, it seemed very remote indeed.…

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

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Which of the following is the odd one out? Faith, doctrine, Scripture, gospel, salvation, money.  Answer: none of them!

Money is a spiritual issue.  Martin Luther observed that “there are three conversions necessary: the conversion of the heart, of the mind and of the purse.”

Consider the story of Zacchaeus, Luke 19. As a chief tax collector, Zacchaeus would have been very wealthy indeed. When he encounters Jesus, his response is, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”…

1 Chron 29:1-20 – The grace of giving – sermon notes

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Text: 1 Chron 29:1-20; 2 Corinthians 8:1-10

This sermon was not prepared for a special Sunday devoted to the church’s finances, but for an ordinary Sunday when our text happened to be all about giving.

How many people are like me? They’ve had it on their minds for some time to review their giving to the work of God, but not quite got round to it.

Here are two very different situations. In the first, King David, right at the end of his earthly life, is passing on the responsibility for building the temple to Solomon, and is holding a fund-raising day.…