St Jude's Mapperley Archive Blog

Dear all, Sorry I didn't see you all yesterday - Lydia and I had a great week off together. I've heard Dennis did a great job on the sin offering in Leviticus 4:1-5:13, but I didn't hear it myself so I'll have to listen online when it goes up. We are a couple of weeks into Lent now. Lent is traditionally a time when people give things up, but it's easy for it to slip into either being legalistic or depressing. Jesus did not come so that we could be miserable - he came so that we can have life in all its fulness. Nevertheless, it can be a good idea to give things up for Lent, but only so that we can focus on something better - knowing God. Lent should be a time when we take space to look at our priorities, and decide to seek God all the better! Here's a prayer of St Benedict, which I'm trying to pray every day in Lent. O gracious and holy Father, give us wisdom to perceive you, diligence to seek you, patience to wait for you, eyes to behold you, a heart...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! Yesterday there seemed to be a big theme of Harvest, which I hadn't planned but which worked well! In the evening, Richard preached on Psalm 65, and brought out the importance of praising God for all his goodness to us, in creation, in the abundance of this world and above all in rescuing us through Jesus. Philip and Andrew picked up on the theme of gratitude at the morning services, speaking on the Grain Offering in Leviticus 2. B oth of them brought out that the grain offering is based on the hard work of the farmer in sowing, reaping, threshing and grinding the grain. So, when God accepted the offerings of the Israelites, it lifted all of their work into the sphere of worship. There is also the wonderful reminder of the Israelites always making sure that the offerings contained the salt of God's covenant, which reminded me of Colossians 4:6 which we looked at last term. Let you...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! At the 9:15 service yesterday, I was preaching on Luke's genealogy of Jesus, and if I was doing it again I'd use three headings – Jesus our relative, Jesus our Lord and Jesus our brother. Jesus our relative – Luke's genealogy goes all the way back to Adam, which means that Jesus' family tree connects in with all of ours. If we drew out our family trees big enough and in enough detail, Jesus would be in there somewhere! Jesus our Lord – the Roman emperors at the time traced their family trees back to Roman gods to show that they were entitled to rule. Luke does the same for Jesus, going via the great king David and Abraham who received so many promises from God. Jesus is the rightful king. Jesus our brother – the genealogy ends with saying that Jesus is the Son of God, which is picked up just beforehand at Jesus' baptism and just afterwards in the temptations...