Category Archives: Expository Preaching

Israel’s Fall: God’s Purpose in Election (Romans 9:1-5)


Back in 1967, Nelson Bell, the editor of Christianity Today and father-in-Law of Billy Graham, wrote in an editorial for the journal, 

“For the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews gives a student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.” 

Eleven years on, in 1978, President Jimmy Carter, claimed,

“The establishment of the nation of Israel is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and the very essence of its fulfilment.”[1]

45 years on, that seems increasingly hard to defend when Israel is acknowledged by many human rights organisations to be an ethno-nationalist apartheid state. This week, the US/Canadian denomination, the Disciples of Christ, became the latest to adopt a resolution naming Israeli apartheid, acknowledging that “many of the laws, policies and practices of the State of Israel meet the definition of apartheid as defined in international law.”[2]  

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“More than Conquerors” Freedom from Fear (Romans 8:26-39)

Do you know the most frequent command in the Bible? Do not be afraid. Why is that do you think? Because from the moment of our birth to the moment of our death, our default position is fear. That is why we fit locks on our doors, bars on our windows, security lights, CCTV, why we buy travel insurance, car insurance, indemnity insurance, home insurance, health insurance, life insurance, warranties, guarantees, virus software, backup hard disks, and in some countries more than others, purchase flack jackets, pepper spray, knives, hand guns, shot guns, and semi-automatic weapons.  Fear is our default position.

In our three-part journey though Romans 8, following the Revised Common Lectionary, we have so far discovered three of our freedoms as Christ followers: Freedom from Judgement. Freedom from defeat.  Freedom from discouragement. The fourth freedom? Today we are going to explore freedom from fear. 

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.  And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” (Romans 8:28-30)

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Four Throne Rights of God’s Children (Romans 8:12-25)

Gentle natured Gregory, passed into eternity, aged 69, forgotten and alone in a cell of the women’s jail in Dade County, Miami. Married four times with six children he had once been a celebrity and successful paediatrician. But Gregory succumbed to alcoholism and his license to practice medicine was suspended. Haunted by self-doubt and unable to live in the shadow of his father, he had died known as Gloria in a women’s jail, in high heels, a transvestite. When he was just 19, Gregory’s father blamed him for his mother’s death from cancer and did not speak to him for ten years before killing himself in precisely the same way Gregory’s grandfather had done before him. In 1936, Gregory’s father wrote a short story, ‘The Capital of the World’ about a Spanish father who tried to be reconciled to his son who had run away from home to Madrid. Now remorseful, the father took out an advert in a national newspaper “Paco meet me at Hotel Montana noon Tuesday, all is forgiven, Papa.” Paco is a common name in Spain, and when the father goes to the square he finds eight hundred young men names Paco waiting for their fathers.

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Four Throne Rights of God’s Children (Romans 8:1-11)

After losing a disastrous war with France, impoverishing the country and alienating the church, King John finally succeeded… in inciting his Barons to rebel and take control of London.  Holed up in Windsor Castle, he had little choice but to agree to their demands, And so, on 15th June 1215, by the river Thames at Runnymede, King John signed the Great Charter, acknowledging that even the king would in future be subject to the rule of law. For 800 years, Magna Carta has inspired generations of reformers and radicals, statesmen and lawyers not just in Britain but the world over.  In the 17th Century, it was used to thwart attempts by Charles I to raise taxes without Parliament. 

In the 18th Century the American Founding Fathers found inspiration in drafting their Declaration of Independence and Constitution. In the 19th Century reformers invoked Magna Carta against Parliament in defence of the freedom of expression and independence of the press.

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A Bridge Over Troubled Water (Matthew 11:25-30)

“When you’re weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I’ll dry them all
I’m on your side
Oh, when times get rough
And friends just can’t be found

Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

When you’re down and out
When you’re on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you
I’ll take your part
Oh, when darkness comes
And pain is all around

Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

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How do you Prefer your Venite? Strong or Skinny? (Psalm 95)

Except on Easter Day, “upon which another anthem is appointed’, every single morning of the year, in every parish in England, all God’s people should gather together to encourage one another with the words of the Venite, exultemus Domino– ‘O come, let us sing unto the Lord’.

Well, at least that was what Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformers intended, which makes this psalm – Psalm 95 the most frequently and most widely recited hymn in the world.[1] 

Indeed, Psalm 95 has been used in daily worship for at least 1,600 years and probably for much longer.  Around 320 AD, Athanasius wrote: “Before the beginning of their prayers, the Christians invite and exhort one another in the words of the 95th Psalm.” Not surprising therefore, Peter Toon observes, at the beginning of the English Reformation, this “Invitatory Psalm” is described in the Primer (1543) of Henry VIII as “A Song stirring to the Praise of God.” And what a stirring summons it is!  In the Booke of The Common Prayer (1549), Psalm 95 is very near the beginning of “’An Ordre for Mattyns dayly through the Year’. From then onwards Psalm 95 was a required part of Morning Prayer or Matins.”[2]

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The True Cost of Discipleship (Matthew 10)

In 1948, a young 21-year-old Wheaton College student named James wrote in his journal, “I seek not a long life, but a full one, like You, Lord Jesus.” A year later, against all advice, he became convinced that God was calling him as a missionary to Ecuador. That year he wrote in his diary, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.’ Jim spent most of 1952 in Quito, Ecuador, learning Spanish and orientating to a new culture… Since college days he had been fascinated by a remote Stone Age tribe known as the Aucas. Jim knew that they had a deserved reputation for killing anyone, Indian or white, who dared to intrude into their land. Nevertheless, he began praying for them and was determined to reach out to them. In September 1955 a pilot with the Mission Aviation Fellowship, Nate Saint, spotted from the air a small Aucas settlement. On Sunday morning January 8th 1956 Nate went up alone and spotted a group of Auca men walking towards their camp. He flew back to the beach with the good news and radioed their wives. “A commission of ten is coming. Pray for us This is the day.” Together they all sung the hymn:

“We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender,
Thine is the battle, Thine shall be the praise.
When passing through the gates of pearly splendour.
Victors, we rest with Thee through endless days.“

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The Clash of Two Kingdoms (Matthew 10)

A while back I experienced one of the most restful weeks of my life. We spent a few peaceful days by the shores of Loch Ness. The area is very isolated with slow, windy, single track roads. Not a problem because we saw very few cars. The house used to be hotel and I can see why it ceased trading. It was two miles off the single track B road that runs along the shore between Inverness and Fort Augustus. Nestled by a small loch and surrounded by hills, there was no TV reception and my mobile phone didn’t work either. We saw very few people but lots of sheep and goats. The nearest shops were miles away and going to buy a newspaper or supplies was a treat. It felt very isolated. 

Time seemed to slow down. Everything revolved around day light, eating, sleeping, feeding the animals and the weather, and there was a lot of that. I am sure I could have got used to it with more time – it was tempting – but every time I opened my mouth, it was obvious that I wasn’t a local. Rich in history, the road and forts along the geological fault line that created Loch Ness – Fort William, Fort Augustus, Fort Urquhart, Fort Gorge, remind us of the attempts by the English to tame the wild Celts. On the 16th April 1746, the last battle on British soil took place nearby at Culloden Moor.  

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Who is Jesus and Why did Jesus come? (Matthew 9)

The song popularized by Louis Armstrong ‘What a Wonderful World’ is a beautiful song that celebrates nature: Trees of green, red roses too, they bloom for me and you; Skies of blue, clouds of white, bright blessed day and dark sacred nights. Nature is marveled at and I’m sure you have experienced that and felt the same wonder. It’s a song that also celebrates friendship, and above all it celebrates falling in love: Friends shake hands saying, ‘How do you do?’ What they are really saying is, ‘I love you.’ It’s a great song about the fantastic gifts of life: creation; friendship; falling in love. But as we saw from the pictures, there is something wrong with our world.

But in Mitch Markowitz’s film Good Morning Vietnam while the song says one thing the pictures say another. As we are told ‘the roses bloom for me and for you’, we see a bomb going off. As we hear the words ‘the colours of the rainbow so pretty in the sky’, we see protesters being beaten. And, most poignant of all, the chorus of ‘I say to myself, what a wonderful world’ is accompanied by images of the little child’s sandal. That’s the world we live in.  It should be so good and yet there is something desperately wrong. The film’s artistry is very clever because it shows us that the world is not the place it ought to be. It should be a wonderful world, but all too often it is spoilt by people. The film is summed up by the Vietnamese girl with whom Robin Williams has fallen in love. 

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The Great Commission: Our Ultimate Purpose in Life (Matthew 28)

“What have you achieved? What have you achieved? You lost your chance, me old son. You contributed absolutely nothing to this life. A waste of time you being here at all. No place for you in Westminster Abbey. The best you can expect is a few daffodils in a jam jar, a rough-hewn stone bearing the legend ‘He came and he went’ and in between – nothing! Nobody will even notice you’re not here. After about a year afterwards somebody might say down the pub ‘Where’s old Hancock? I haven’t seen him around lately.’ ‘Oh, he’s dead y’know.’ ‘Oh, is he?’ A right raison d’etre that is. Nobody will ever know I existed. Nothing to leave behind. Nothing to pass on. Nobody to mourn me. That’s the bitterest blow of all.” That is how Tony Hancock ended his last TV monologue appearance in 1964. When he died four years later from an overdose few people realized it wasn’t an act or a script, but how he actually felt. 

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