blog

  • Just a thought... 8 March

    The Bible is clear: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” We see the sad consequences of people not living in fear of the LORD all through history: - In Genesis 20 Abraham recognised the danger he and Sarai were in from people who didn’t fear the LORD. - In Psalm 36 David describes the wicked in graphic terms because they don’t fear the LORD. - Writing to Christians in Rome, Paul describes humanity in general with these words quoted from all over the Old Testament: 14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness...

  • Just a thought... 1 March

    Today is the first day of Spring! Yet the atmosphere is dampened with “Wars and rumours of wars” that are happening just as the Lord Jesus said they would in Matthew Chapter 24 after his disciples stopped to admire the permanence of the architecture. Yet if you read that chapter He tells us first: Don’t be deceived: “For many will come in my name, claiming, `I am the Christ,' and will deceive many.” Matthew 24:5 To our 21st Century educated ears, this sounds rather unlikely, but just stop and think: Have you ever seen Stonehenge...

  • Just a thought... 22 Feb

    It should come as no surprise to us that any service of God attracts challenges and opposition. Rejection of our creator is the defining feature of the sinful human condition and therefore any work for the creator is likely to be scorned. Yet as we saw last Sunday, somehow the opposition to Nehemiah and his colleagues seemed to grow fast and God’s people could easily have been knocked off course or worse by its impact. In the New Testament the apostle Paul reminds the Christians in the deeply idolatrous city of Ephesus, where the opposition comes from: “...

  • Just a thought... 15 Feb

    Across the world religious people worship all kinds of gods that are not gods at all. These man-made religions involve followers somehow ‘working’ to pacify the god they believe they are serving. People sincerely follow procedures and ceremonies, work their way through daily rituals, give enormous amounts of money and resources and time, but with no assurance of anything. They ‘do’ religion to try and ‘be’ good enough. We saw last Sunday morning the contrast to this that Nehemiah and his colleagues demonstrated as they worshipped the LORD and it involved grace. Their desire to serve...

  • Just a thought... 8 Feb

    The idea of being loved is deeply appealing! All of us want to be loved. Yet if we’re honest we know very well that we are at times not very loveable. That’s what makes the way the Lord Jesus loves us all the more amazing. As we saw the apostle Paul describe it on Sunday morning from Galatians “The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal 2:20) As sinners in rebellion against the King of Kings we...

  • Just a thought... 1 Feb

    We’re under pressure from all sorts of things, aren’t we? Stresses of work and family, house maintenance, neighbourhood challenges, national events, international issues – not to mention our own inner selves and health challenges. So often it feels like if it’s not one thing then it’s another – and any pause is just a lull in between storms! Thankfully the Bible, which really is our handbook for life, is all ready to tell us how to respond. The Lord Jesus put such worries in context in the sermon on the mount in Matthew 6:31-34...

  • Just a thought... 25 Jan

    When something matters to us enough, we can find ourselves thinking about it all the time. It’s not necessarily that it’s the only thing we think about, but it’s the issue that burdens our souls and fills our quiet moments such that it’s somehow always on our minds and in our hearts. That seems to have been what was happening with Nehemiah and his burden for God’s people and God’s honour that we saw from Nehemiah chapter 1 this last Sunday morning. In vs 4 we’re told “For some days I mourned...

  • Just a thought... 18 Jan

    The idea of mourning and weeping for sin as we saw Ezra do on Sunday morning from Ezra ch 10 may sound strange to us. Yet Ezra understood that peoples’ behaviour had created an offence against God for which the consequences would prove catastrophic. We see something similar elsewhere in scripture: David’s great psalm of repentance in Psalm 51 after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba is a deeply humbling confession that summarises what he had done with the words in vs 4 “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight...

  • Just a Thought ... 11 Jan

    The Bible is an amazing book (actually 66 books!) of the LORD’s revelation of Himself, and what we are like too! It’s much too easy to read that complexity casually and totally misunderstand what’s being said. For example, we saw on Sunday morning from Ezra ch 9 that a casual reader could believe that scripture rails against ethnically mixed-marriage – yet read in its proper context the concern is not racism but syncretism: the mixing of religions. All of us are prone to follow the desires of our hearts and play to the dominant audience in...

  • Just a thought... 4 Jan

    Don’t be deceived by the headlines: “More than 400 churches have been shut down in less than a decade.” It may be that 400 church buildings have closed – but the ‘churches’ (gathering of God’s people) that met in them must have ceased to function as ‘churches’ many years before that. Such news should not lead us to believe that the Gospel is in decline: in most cases, Gospel-preaching Bible teaching churches are growing. The Lord Jesus promised in Matthew ch 16 “I will build my church and the gates of Hell...