Stress, isolation and uncertainty have led many Christians to pull back from Christian fellowship during the pandemic. In the first century, Jewish Christians faced the temptation because of persecution. This message looks at the reasons they were given to persevere and how they can help us finish the race in our day.
With so much uncertainty in our lives, we long for rest from our cares and anxieties. This message looks at some of the things we worry about too much, some we worry about too little and the Saviour who promises us peace.
Matthew 6:25-34 // [outline]
Different people look to different things to reassure them and give them hope. Some look to a spouse or a parent or grandparent for confidence and strength. Others find hope in their goals and dreams. But what do you do when your symbol of hope dies? This short Christmas Eve message looks at a period in Israel’s history when that happened and helps us find our way forward when we don’t feel like we can go on.
As we prepare for our first Christmas in lockdown, most of us have put our hope in a vaccine or a better year or at least the end of the rising case counts and restrictions we’re facing now. Jerusalem faced a lockdown in its history as the Assyrian army besieged the city. God gave them a Christmas promise that pointed to a greater hope than the end of their isolation. This promise can give us hope, too.
Christmas can be a hard time for many people. It’s hard to be alone when we’re told we’re supposed to be together. It’s hard to face the holidays when there are loved ones we’re still grieving. Expectations, stress and conflict can all hit us at this time of year. But joy can be a reality when we hold the Christmas promises. This message looks at a dark period in Israel’s past where they were given promises of the arrival of Jesus, intended to stir their joy. Those same promises can stir up ours today.
When we think of Christmas, we think of the baby and the wise men and the gifts, but Christmas was the promise of good news. This message looks at the good news as it was promised through the prophet Isaiah hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth.
The songs and movies we hear this time of year tend to equate Christmas with the promise of romance, family, or tradition. The Christmas promises of the Bible are far more enduring. This message looks at the promise of a royal priest and how Jesus can give us hope for the year ahead.
In a world full of violence, injustice, sickness, and death, it can be easy to fall into feelings of hopelessness. Recognizing this, the Apostle John in Revelation 7 described a vision of hope that comforted the persecuted early church and should still comfort us today.
As people in the early church came to faith, they brought attitudes of discrimination and superiority that only the gospel could dismantle. This message looks at the core of the teaching that undid their prejudice and can deal with ours.
As people in the early church came to faith, they brought attitudes of discrimination and superiority that only the gospel could dismantle. This message looks at the core of the teaching that undid their prejudice and can deal with ours.
There’s so much in this world that can discourage us. We long to make a difference but struggle to understand how. This message looks at Philip’s encounter with an Ethiopian eunuch and shows us how God can use you as a force for good in our world today.
The Good Samaritan is one of Jesus’ most famous stories. Despite our familiarity with it, most people hear the moral but miss the point. While confronting our indifference, prejudice and tendency to justify ourselves, Jesus helps us to see what’s needed for us to inherit eternal life.
We imagine ourselves to be rational people who take precautions in responding to warnings, but the Bible makes it clear that there are many things that keep us from the truth. This message looks at the last days before the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem and the reasons people ignored the warnings and the courage one man showed in responding to them.
The injustice in our world stirs us to act. And there is much in the church that we long to see changed. God’s message to Israel in the midst of their history’s greatest reform movement changes how we see reform, however. The prophet, Zephaniah, helps us to see the limits of human reform and the solutions that God provides.
We can read the Old Testament as if it’s only about Jewish people and their concerns, but at the heart of the Old Testament Scriptures is a message of hope for all nations. It wasn’t always fully embraced by God’s people then and neither is it today. We need the message of this psalm now more than ever.
We see the injustice in our world today and wonder what it will take for God to show His mercy. Today’s passage looks at a man named Phinehas who was as jealous for God’s honour as God is. He secured mercy for God’s people and was promised a priestly dynasty as a result. It is significant that this hero of the early priesthood was the son of a Jewish father and African mother and distinguished by his African features.
Miriam challenges Moses because of his marriage to a Cushite woman. She seems to be motivated at least in part by prejudice because he has married a woman of a different skin colour. God responds by giving her a skin disease. God strongly affirms the marriage between one of the Old Testament’s most famous Jews and his African wife.
People misunderstand the distinction between the commands to foreigners and sojourners in the Old Testament and wrongly assume that God was against non-Jewish ethnicities. This message shows God’s heart to reach the nations in the Old Testament.
Church-going slave owners used the curse of Ham to justify their enslavement of Africans, reading their prejudices into the text and ignoring humanity’s creation in the image of God. The church missed its opportunity then. What will it take to get it right this time?
Moral and spiritual failure often leaves us feeling like we’re in the doghouse. We can feel stuck and struggle to find a way forward. This message looks at how God meets us in those times and clears a path to our restoration.
