Category Archives: sermons

10 benefits of jesus #3 & #4

#3 Victory

Since the very beginning, mankind’s ultimate nemesis has been death. A foe that could not be overthrown. Like an oncoming truck somewhere down the highway of your life, you don’t know when, but you know it will hit you hard. For some people, death casts a huge shadow over their present lives. I know grandparents who won’t visit their grandkids because they are scared of the roads that lead them there. Death holds them hostage, even years out from a visit.

But Jesus overthrows death. 1 Cor 15:

55“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?” 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

#4 Freedom

Mankind has longed for freedom from the beginning. The modern concept of freedom is unlimited options, and unlimited opportunity to pursue them. But the result is chaos. Worse, the Bible tells us the result is slavery. Everyone is hardwired for worship – to ascribe ultimate worth to someone or something, and spend our energies in the pursuit and exhaltation of that thing. The problem is, to worship anything other than the living God is to bind yourself to something that won’t deliver what you hope for, but will keep you pouring your energy in anyway.

But Christ came to set us free from all that. Galations 5:1:

1It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

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Rom 7 wordle

Having seen MJ’s wordle of his thesis on martyrdom, and read then JM’s theory that a sermon should perhaps have ‘Jesus’ as it’s biggest feature in a Wordle map, I thought I would give my last sermon, on Romans 7, a Wordle treatment. Here’s the results (clikc for a larger image):

Hmmmm.

But, I have 2 qualifications:

1. This was taken of my typed transcipt – there were additional hand scrawled notes on the manuscript I actually preached off! (and I’m sure some of those would have mentioned Jesus…)

2. I read lots of the text in my sermon, and, lets face it, out of 25 verses, ‘Jesus’ is only mentioned once. And law is mentioned, well, quite a bit!

At least ‘Christ’ is up there amongst the big boys!

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preaching link added

I’ve just added a link to the sermons page for All Souls, Langham Place.

It has an awesome library of sermons, searchable by text and speaker, to name a few.

It goes back many years, so you can find just about anyone in the who’s who of evangelical preachers from the last 20 years, including Stott, Carson, and even our own Chappo and Paul Barnett.

Highly recommended.

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Farewell Macquarie ::tears::

Well, its over. Its hard to believe, but our 5.5 years at Macquarie Anglican has come to an end. The good people of Macquarie gave us an extrememly generous send off, a very special time that we will never forget.

We have been privileged to share our lives and ministry with many people of different ages, and have found ourselves blessed in many different ways. We will never be the same, and for that, we thank our gracious God.

Many thanks to the Senior Minister, Roger, for all of his leadership, guidance, wisdom and grace over the years. Thanks too for graciously giving me the chance to speak at the weekend away, and also to speak on my final Sunday.

The audio of the final sermon can be downloaded by clicking on this link.

Our prayers will be with the people of Macquarie, and we know they will be praying for us as we rest and recharge, ready to starT at St Paul’s.

[edit – added the ‘T’ to star in the last line – thanks for pointing it out – it was a typo, not hubris!!!]

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Revelation talks now online

Well, its over. The Macquarie Anglican Churches Weekend Away is over.

I had the privilege of opening the Word of God with the faithful people from MAC, from the book of Revelation.

Those talks are now available here for any interested in listening.

1. Wake Up to a Bigger Jesus (Rev 1)

2. Wake Up to the Church Jesus Wants (Rev 2-3)

3. Wake Up to the God in Control (Rev 4-5)

4. Wake Up to Our Glorious Future (Rev 21)

(At the moment, they are wav files, so they may take a while to download. I am working on converting them to mp3’s – stay tuned).

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Audio Sermons Added

Some people have kindly asked to listen again to some of the sermons that I have preached whilst at Macquarie.

MAC is currently working on a system to host all of their library of recorded sermons, which will be a great thing. I’ll let you know when it happens.

Until that day, I’ve managed to find a way to list some of them here.

I’ve just uploaded last Sunday’s sermon on Mark 10.13-16 (see post below). You can finding it by looking below right under ‘Audio Sermons’.

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Feeds Added

I’ve added some feeds to the site.

your.sydneyanglicans.net – breaking news – this gathers up Christian stuff and news of interest to christians from all sorts of sources.

Matthias Media – ‘Couldn’t help noticing’ – a Christian eye cast over all sorts of goings on in the world, and a great source of sermon illustrations!

Cricket Australia – breaking news – I have been a cricket tragic since very early on, and like to keep an eye on the what’s happening.

Hope you find these as interesting as I do.

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Good Friday – ‘It is finished’

My good mate over at The Flying Nerd has been kind enough to upload the audio of the sermon I preached on Good Friday.

It was an attempt to think theologically about Jesus’ last words on the cross, in a way engaging of the twice-a-year visitors who we see on Good Friday.

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