Friday, April 29, 2016

Eutychus (Who???): There is Life in You!


When the uproar had ended, Paul sent for the disciples and, after encouraging them, said goodbye and set out for Macedonia. He travelled through that area, speaking many words of encouragement to the people, and finally arrived in Greece, where he stayed three months. Because some Jews had plotted against him just as he was about to sail for Syria, he decided to go back through Macedonia.

Just how long Paul stayed in Macedonia we do not know. Luke's words seem to suggest a fairly prolonged period. One activity that especially concerned Paul at this time was collecting money for the relief of impoverished believers at Jerusalem. He instructed the churches in Galatia, Asia, Macedonia, and Achaia about this. The collection was an act of love like that undertaken by the church at Syrian Antioch earlier. More than that, Paul viewed it as a symbol of unity that would help his Gentile converts realize their debt to the mother church in Jerusalem and give Jewish Christians

Friday, April 22, 2016

Nature of God: Fatherhood

Luke 15:11-32
(read previous sermons in Nature of God series here)

In today’s language, this parable would be the story of the two siblings, boys or girls, or one of each, living in a small rural village where their widowed father owns half the town and most of the farms around it.  From a young age the older child has been groomed to take over the family business and the younger has been a bit of a rebel from little, although the father deeply, deeply loves them both. The more responsible one just gets more responsibility.  The younger one eventually says: “Dad, I want to get out of here and make a life for myself in the city – I've got to get out of this place.  Can I have my part of the inheritance, and, you know I didn't go to uni like my big sister, so I actually saved you thousands of pounds in fees and residence costs, so it's only fair you give me that as well.”

Friday, April 15, 2016

The Way of Christlike Disturbance

About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. 


We are still in Ephesus, an important centre for early Christianity from the AD 50's. From AD 52–54, the apostle Paul lived there, working with the congregation and apparently organizing missionary activity into the rest of Asia. Initially, Paul attended the Jewish synagogue in Ephesus, but after three months he became frustrated with the stubbornness or hardness of heart of some of the Jews, and moved his base to the school of Tyrannus. We have seen how Paul introduced about twelve men to the 'baptism with the Holy Spirit' who had previously only experienced the baptism of John the

Friday, April 8, 2016

Grace



Grace: what a huge subject ... HUGE!

Tim Keller, speaking about the gospel, says that if you think you really, really understand the gospel ... you don't. If you really think that you haven't even begun to understand the gospel ... you do. What he is getting at is that there has to be a lifelong process of more and more deeply realising the wonder of the gospel. This week it has occurred to me that the same applies to grace. If I

Friday, April 1, 2016

There is Power in the Name of Jesus


We continue our journey through the Acts of the Apostles, which by now you've realised is really the acts of 2 apostles, Peter and Paul, and, from ch 9 to 28 deals only with Paul. So, one wouldn't be far off the mark by saying that Acts is about the ministry of Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. It is of course, a Divinely inspired history of the early missionary church as it spread from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, as Jesus had prophesied (Acts 1:8).