We’ve all got our circularities

I believe the Bible is the word of God because in it God speaks.  This is not an unfortunate circularity.  At the end of the day nothing could convince me it’s God’s word except that God speaks.  You could tell me it’s great history, it’s logically coherent and displays incredible internal consistency as a library [...]

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Come Dine With Me – Jesus, the Sinner and the Pharisee

Sermon: Luke 7:36-50 When we think of Jesus, we expect a Teacher, and we get a Saviour.  We expect a loan-shark and He forgives us freely.  We expect that He’ll burden us, instead He says “This is my body which is given for you… This is my blood which is shed for you.”  We expect [...]

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Happy Friday

Horribly, cringefully, hilarious… Wonderfully, gloriously, beautiful… …and everything you always suspected…

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We all have our creation stories [repost]

Brian Cox – dream-boat physicist, not craggy-faced actor – recently said this:  Our civilization was built on the foundations of reason and rational thinking embodied in the scientific method, and our future depends on the widespread acceptance of science as THE ONLY WAY WE HAVE to meet many, if not all, of the great challenges [...]

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Careful, lest you drift!

Our home group Bible study were finishing off Hebrews last night.  We did a bit of an overview and I asked  what we’d all take away from the book. One person said that the warning passages leapt out at them.  Things like: We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so [...]

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Finally! Someone’s asked me my opinion of blogging…

John Brand at Cutting it Straight asked me the following questions: 1. How did you get into blogging? 2. Why do you blog? What is, if you like your ‘Mission Statement’ as a blogger? 3. What do you see as the strategic benefits of Christian blogging? 4. What are some of the problems and weaknesses you [...]

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Luke 19:1-10 Sermon

Sermon text Sermon audio

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Freedom and the Problem of Evil

In The Good God, Mike Reeves writes briefly on the problem of evil.  A unitarian God would either be threatened by evil or the author of it, but… The triune God… is the sort of God who will make room for another to have real existence. The Father, who delights to have a Son, chooses to create many children [...]

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Happy Friday

     

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CS Lewis on Gender: Men and Women in the Purgatorial Kitchen [a repost]

From a letter to an American woman, 31.7.62 I have a notion that, apart from actual pain, men and women are quite diversely afflicted by illness.  To a woman one of the great evils about it is that she can’t do things.  To a man (or anyway a man like me) the great consolation is [...]

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Means and Ends

So, as we’ve seen, God does not treat the world as a tool to be used.  He’s not in the whole creation-salvation thing for what He can get out of it.  He’s in it in order to pour Himself out.  This is His glory – it is His eternal nature to love the other.  That’s what it [...]

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Mission talks

I spoke at this mission to Plymouth University last week. The students were wonderful. They prayed for 100 hours solid the week before. We saw many answers to prayer. Non-Christians invited. Seed sown.  Christians and non-Christians alike seeing the grace of Jesus afresh.  Please pray for those who are now following up on their interest [...]

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Created for His glory

Jonathan Edwards here speaks of God’s pleasure in creation: “the pleasure God hath in those things which have been mentioned, is rather a pleasure in diffusing and communicating to, than in receiving from, the creature. Surely, it is no argument of indigence [i.e. neediness] in God that he is inclined to communicate of his infinite fullness. It is no [...]

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Aren’t all religions basically the same?

Sermon text Sermon audio Powerpoint slides . “Different paths up the same mountain” is arrogant and ignorant. It’s arrogant because only someone with a God’s eye view could make that judgement It’s ignorant because world religions are saying vastly different things. Only Jesus saves. Only Jesus is a self-giving Lord. Jeremiah 2 – He is [...]

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Why does God allow suffering?

Sermon text Sermon audio Powerpoint slides . John 11 is the problem of suffering in miniature: Jesus could prevent the suffering (v1-6) Instead He allows it It’s more glorious this way. When we turn to darkness, the Lord does not prevent us, He pursues us. Martha doesn’t understand – she’s comforted with doctrine. (v20-27) Mary [...]

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Happy Friday

Say what you see…

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Don’t trust the supralapsarian youth leader

Here’s a thawed out post from two years ago… Last week at youth club it was pandemonium.  We had to ban 3/4 of the kids for this week. So tonight we were expecting small numbers.  But not as small as it turned out.  Only four turned up.  And three of them had actually been banned [...]

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Does God even exist?

Evangelistic sermon on John 1: Sermon text Sermon audio Powerpoint slides

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