St Jude's Mapperley Archive Blog

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning (well, ok then, good afternoon....) Yesterday morning at St Jude's, we started our series on Leviticus. I'm quite excited about it – I don't think I've ever heard (or preached!) a series on the first chunk of Leviticus before, and people have been very kind about my first effort. When you stop to think about it, it is mind-blowing that God loves to meet his people, and that he has paid the price that is needed so that we can be forgiven and can come into his presence through Jesus. There are a lot of lovely hymns written about the cross (and I thought the band's decision to go with "When I survey" was spot on yesterday). One of my favourites is the much less known O Perfect Love, O Perfect Sacrifice. Here are the words: O perfect love, o perfect sacrifice, Fountain of life poured out for me, What heights and depths of heaven's mercy The faithf...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! I know quite a few of you haven't been able to make it out for the last few weeks – we're looking forwards to seeing you back once it has cleared! Yesterday morning, I spoke on 2 Corinthians 8:9 " For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. " I reminded us that there is a pattern we see time and again in the Bible – that we are poor / lonely / sinners / dead / cut off from God / excluded, and that God is rich / in perfect community / righteous / alive, but that Jesus became poor for us, so that through his poverty we might become rich. Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2 that by nature we were without hope and without God in the world, but now because of Jesus we have been seated with him in the heavenly realms. But we don't see that just yet, ...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool." Isaiah 1:18 I like the snow. I know it causes all sorts of travel inconvenience, especially for the elderly among us, but I love the way it makes the landscape clean and white. God uses snow as a picture of the forgiveness that he gives to us – that even when we've messed up horribly, he can and will wash us as clean as fresh snow when we turn back to him. Yesterday morning we were thinking about John the Baptist and Jesus' baptism. There's loads that can be said about it, but the key is that Jesus in his baptism becomes one with us so that we can become one with him and hear God the Father's voice to us saying that we are his beloved children. Glen Scriviner explains it really well in this video – well worth a wat...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning and Happy New Year! Yesterday was Epiphany, which is the time when we remember the three Magi coming to worship Jesus. It's especially striking, because so much of the focus in Matthew is on Jesus coming to the Jews as the True Israel, and yet right at the start God brings some Gentile stargazers to worship Jesus, and then at the end Jesus sends his disciples out into the world to make disciples of all the Gentiles. It's a really helpful reminder to us, as Christmas and 2012 fades into memory and as we get used to the busy-ness of "real life" that we may move on from Christmas but we don't move on from worshipping Jesus, from laying down our lives in worship to him. There's lots of stuff coming up that it's worth me mentioning. This Thursday, at 8pm at Church, we've got our monthly Church Prayer meeting. Do please come along and pray for our li...

There are a few areas where the Bible doesn't seem to speak with a single voice on a topic. Examples are the nature of hell, remarriage after divorce and the order of events at the end of the world. It isn't so much that what the Bible says is unclear – but that it seems to clearly say different things in different places. When that happens, we get to choose how we respond. The non-Christian response is to say that the Bible just contradicts itself and ignore it. Some Christians try that response, but I don't think it's helpful or productive. Neither do I think Christians should try it, unless they've tried the other options and found them wanting. The response of the busy Christian is to accept that there is probably an answer out there somewhere, but that it isn't particularly relevant to my life now, and so ignore it. That's what I did for many years on the question of the role of the Jews after the time of Jesus. It wasn't relevant to what I wa...