St Jude's Mapperley Archive Blog

Good Morning! Yesterday, all three services in different ways pointed to the way that we can trust God to provide for us. In both morning services, we were looking at the feeding of the 5000. Jesus is exhausted and wanting to grieve after the murder of his friend and cousin; his disciples are tired out after having just been on a mission trip, and the crowd are hungry and tired having been following Jesus all day and found themselves in the wilderness late in the day. In all three cases, they give what they have to God and seek to serve him even when tired, and he provides more than abundantly for them. That's also similar to what we saw in Psalm 11 last night. David was facing an uncertain situation, with secret plots against him, and his friends were "encouraging" him to run for the hills. When we are in difficult situations, we always face a choice between faith and fear. Faith for David meant looking to God, remembering that God is on...

Hi folks, Slightly delayed today.... Yesterday we continued our series on the Sermon on the Mount with Matthew 6:19-34 and Jesus instruction not to worry. But he does a lot more than just tell us not to worry – as ever, his words examine the thoughts and motives of our hearts to expose why we worry and to provide some solutions. Here then are Jesus' three reasons why we worry: We're storing treasure in the wrong place (v19-21). Jesus tells us that our hearts follow where we store our treasure. If what we really value is in the stock market, that's what we'll worry about. If it's other people's opinions of us, that's what we'll worry about. Storing up treasure on earth is dangerous – it wears out, breaks and is stolen. But it's also silly – we can store up treasure in heaven instead by following Jesus and setting our hearts on the things of God. We're looking at the wrong things (v22-23). What we look at affects wh...

Yesterday, in our morning services, we continued in the Sermon on the Mount by looking at Matthew 6:1-18 . If I was picking a summary sentence for the whole sermon, I'd pick the opening one "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." It's thinking through what it looks like for us to be "poor in spirit". What does it mean for us to recognise that we can't earn God's favour, that we can never be good enough for him, and yet to live as those he has adopted into his family? In Matthew 6, Jesus turns to what we might call "religious acts" - things like giving, prayer and fasting. We see straight off that there is a wrong way to do them, and a right way to do them. The wrong way is to do them like those who have something to prove to ourselves or to others. That's the path of those who try to show off by flaunting their generosity or asking for their name to be associated with their gift. It...

Morning all! Yesterday, we continued with our series in the Sermon on the Mount with Matthew 5:33-48 . As we saw last time, this section is Jesus showing that trying to live by rules, even rules based on God's Law, doesn't work. The Pharisees made lots of rules (and were good at keeping them), but Jesus says they fall a long way short of what is needed for God's kingdom. Here are some problems with living by rules: If you keep the rules, you end up proud. Being proud is bad, because as we saw in Matthew 5:3, it's the "poor in spirit" - those who recognise that we're spiritually bankrupt – who inherit God's kingdom. Keeping rules leads to pride, not to poverty of spirit. If we keep the rules, we think we've done enough. That was never how the Old Testament Law was meant to be used – it was always meant to reveal what God is like and show God's people some of what it meant to respond to him. Tha...

Good Morning! Yesterday, we continued with our series on the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus started the sermon by declaring who is living life right – that it's the people who are spiritually bankrupt and who hunger and thirst for righteousness. But that raises the huge question of how it fits in with the Old Testament Law. After all, plenty of people at Jesus' time would think that the people who are living life well are the ones who keep all the rules. It's still a popular idea in the Church today – lots of people think that living well is about keeping rules. But what Jesus says next blows that idea out of the water. He doesn't do it by ditching the Law. After all, it had been given by God himself. He does it by showing that the Law itself was never about keeping the rules. When God says "Do not murder", he's not just inventing a rule about murder; the way the OT uses it shows that it's actually about valuing other pe...

​ Yesterday morning, we started a new series in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus begins the sermon with a dramatic statement of what the "good life" looks like. Who is living well? Who has got life sorted? Here's what Jesus said from some less-familiar translations: Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor; the Kingdom of heaven belongs to them! Congratulations to those who are mourning; they shall be consoled. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are to be envied, because they will be filled. Congratulations to the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Happy are the pure in heart – because they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom. Congratulations to you when they reproach you and...

Shining with God's Love in Our Community Yesterday morning, we looked at Matthew 5:14-16. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. We saw that we should shine because of who we are . A town on a hill does not get a choice about whether it is visible or not. Because it is on a hill, and because it is a town, people can see it for a great distance (even hundreds of miles away if there are no streetlights and it's a cloudy night). We shine because God has put his Spirit in us. Jesus the light of the world lives in our hearts by his Spirit and makes us, his people, into the light of the world. We don't get a choice about it. If we try not to shine,...