Talks, Sermons and Reflections

Deuteronomy 26:1-12 listen to ‘Giving for joy’ on Audioboo Today I am going to speak a little bit more about giving The passage we had read is Moses’ instructions to the people of Israel, telling them what they must do when they enter the Promised Land. Now I am rather cautious about basing teaching on giving from the Old Testament. In the Old Testament there are laws about giving. There are instructions about how much you must give, what you must give and when you must give. The most obvious law that we know is the law of tithing. The people were called to give one tenth of what they receive to God – although we are not sure whether that is once every year, or every three years (v12). But as Christian believers we are not under the law. It is significant that when Paul or the other apostles speak of giving, they at no time mention tithing. Tithing may be a good principle, and it is one that Alison and myself, and many people in our church, try to follow, bu...

1 Peter 1:3-9 listen to ‘Hope, power, love,joy’ on Audioboo Peter writes: ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’. He praises God for what God has done. God has taken people who were spiritually dead and has made us spiritually alive. And he goes on in this glorious passage to speak of how, because of this new birth, Christians are new people. We were dead, but now we are alive. 1. We have a new hope.  ‘He has given us new birth into a living hope .. into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you.’ (v4) We cannot separate this hope from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the ground of our hope: because God raised Jesus from the dead, we know that he can raise our bodies. It is the foretaste, the preview, the model of our resurrection. The bible speaks of the resurrected Jesus as a first ...

A significant part of the inspiration for this talk comes from Bob Kauflin’s reflections, Why do we Sing?  (Sovereign Grace Ministries). There are over 500 favourable references in the bible to singing. The longest book of the bible is a book of poems which were set to music. After Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, Moses doesn’t preach a sermon but he sings a song (Exodus 15) In Numbers 21:14, the people sing to make a spring give water In Deuteronomy 31, Moses is commanded to give the people a song to remind them of how God has saved them. After the defeat of the Canaanites by Deborah, the people sing a song (Judges 5) When David is delivered from Saul, he sings a song (2 Samuel 22) The people assigned Levite musicians to sing God’s praises day and night at the Temple as part of Temple worship (1 Chr 9:33; 15:19-22) In the NT there are more than 20 references to music: Jesus and his disciples sing a hymn after the last supper Paul and Silas sing when t...

Psalm 98 listen to ‘Sing for joy’ on Audioboo Psalm 98 commands us to ‘shout for joy’ to the Lord (v4,6) But that is odd. How can you command anyone to do anything with joy. It is one of the great unobeyable commands of the bible - like the command to love or to be at peace. You may think that you have a chance of willing obedience, or of willing service, but you cannot will yourself to love, or be at peace or to have joy. Joy is something that is bigger than us. We can induce temporary happiness: We can do that chemically. What is it that they say: ‘reality is an illusion created by lack of alcohol’?   We can do things that we enjoy. But we cannot create joy. Joy is a gift. We glimpse it in human events. -       Great sporting moments (yes, Murray winning Wimbledon) -       The birth of a child -       Announcement of a long awaited engagement, or a gr...