St Jude's Mapperley Archive Blog

I found this Christmas hymn in an old hymnbook; I can't find a tune that is even vaguely singable for it, but the words are gorgeous and well worth praying through this Christmastime! Come and stand amazed, you people, See how God is reconciled! See his plans of love accomplished, See his gift, this newborn child. See the Mighty, weak and tender, See the Word who now is mute. See the Sovereign without splendour, See the Fullness destitute, The Beloved, whom we covet, In a state of low repute. See how humankind received him; See him wrapped in swaddling bands, Who as Lord of all creation Rules the wind by his commands. See him lying in a manger Without sign of reasoning; Word of God to flesh surrendered, He is wisdom's crown, our King. See how tender our Defender At whose birth the angels sing. O Lord Jesus, God incarnate, Who assumed this humble form, Counsel me and let my wishes To your perfect will conform. Light of life, dispel...

Hi all, Yesterday morning, Philip led us helpfully through thinking about John the Baptist in John 1. I'm not going to repeat what he said, though it's well worth a listen... Instead I'd like to pick up on one thing that jumped out of the passage for me that I thought was interesting. In John 1:19-23, the Jewish leaders send people to ask who John claims to be. They try to fit him into various boxes – Messiah, Elijah, Prophet, and John denies all of them. The odd thing is that Jesus in Matthew 17:10-13 tells the disciples that John was Elijah. The disciples asked him, 'Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?' Jesus replied, 'To be sure, Elijah comes and will restore all things. But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognise him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.' Then the disciples understood that he ...

Good Morning! Yesterday, we finished our mini-series in Matthew 25 by looking at the famous (and controversial) section often entitled The Sheep and the Goats . (You can find it here for easy reference) . One way of looking at it is that the passage works on at least three levels. The first level is as a general encouragement / warning to help those who need it. The writer to the Hebrews says that in welcoming strangers, some people have entertained angels unaware. The second level is by noticing that the specific people Jesus talks about the importance of welcoming are "these brothers and sisters of mine, even the least of them". The only people in Matthew who Jesus ever calls his brothers and sisters are those who follow him (Matt 12:47-50 is a good example). Ditto with those Jesus calls "little" or "least" - it's always those who follow him. Jesus is talking specifically here about the importance of helping...

Good Morning! Yesterday morning, we started a short series in Matthew 25, looking forwards to the day when Jesus comes back. Guy and David both did a great job of helping us to understand the passage and see how it affects us. I'm not going to go over what they said, but it's well worth a listen on the website when the talks are up. Matthew 25 is in the few days before Jesus is killed. Conflict with the religious authorities has escalated through Matthew 21-23. In chapter 24, Jesus talks to his disciples about the future - about the destruction of the temple (which happened in AD 70; Christians got out in time because of Jesus' warning) and Jesus returning as king (which obviously hasn't happened yet). Matthew 25:1-13, which we looked at yesterday, is a story helping us to understand what this waiting is like. Here's the story in a less familiar translation: Jesus: Or picture the kingdom of heaven this way. It will be like ten bridesmaids who each picked up a lante...

Good Morning! Yesterday morning, we finished off our series "In the Wilderness" by looking at the time Jesus went into the wilderness – Matthew 3:13-4:11. Matthew is very clever in the way that he tells Jesus' story. Especially in chapters 1-4, he emphasises the bits that show that Jesus is the True Israel – he is the embodiment of the perfect People of God. Israel failed in the wilderness in Numbers 11-14. The devil tempted them, and they fell. But Jesus didn't. Just like Israel, he came up out of the water having been assured that he was God's Son, and was then led by God's Spirit into the wilderness. Israel survived on their own food for 40 days or so, then complained and accused God of leading them into the wilderness to die (Ex 16). Jesus went without food for 40 days and nights, was within a week or so of starving to death, and yet would not take the devil's temptation of using his powers to turn stones to brea...

With yesterday being Remembrance Sunday and tomorrow being 11th November, I think it only right that I should let poet and evangelist Glen Scrivener take this morning's Monday Mail with his new Remembrance Video. See it here on youtube. Here's the text: If I should die think only this ... A bullet flew by that did not miss... What story of the war is told? Romance bright or horror cold? Triumph's tale or tragic loss, the iron or the wooden cross? Lost lament or victor's boast? Full brass band or lone last post? Heroes, villains, cowards, kings? It's war... it's all these things. It's us unleashed for good and ill, the gallant heart, the savage will. A Kaiser's pride, a nation's fear, a global greed, it's all in here. What causes war, the old book asks? Beyond the history, beneath the masks, There grows a want, becomes a will, demands our way, prepares to kill. The war we mark as long ago, is close to home, it's all we know. What ceases war? ...

Greetings! Yesterday, we finished our series in Exodus and Numbers, looking at the people's journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. We saw the people reach the Promised Land in Numbers 13 & 14, and how they failed to enter it. It started well, with the people reaching the edge of the land and Moses sending scouts out to explore it, but it all went horribly wrong. We saw 5 stages in the disaster that unfolded as the scouts reported back in Numbers 13:24-33 . 1. They ignored God – they didn't see the land as the land that God was giving them or the Promised Land – it was just the land Moses had told them to look at. 2. They looked at the opposition instead of God. They saw lots of people, and fortified cities. 3. They were afraid. 4. They let their fear distort the facts. By v31-33, they are contradicting themselves with the land eating its inhabitants, but the inhabitants being giants. 5. They let their fear affect their sense of self-wort...

Good morning! Yesterday, we finished working through Numbers 11. In some ways the end of Numbers 11 is quite a difficult passage – we are (rightly) uncomfortable with passages about God's judgement on groups of people. After all, we understand that God is love and relates to his people with love. So this morning, I thought I'd offer three quick perspectives to help us see what the God of Love is doing in judgement passages like Numbers 11. 1. God judges the worst offenders to give the rest of the people a chance When we read stories like Numbers 11, it's important to remember their place in the bigger story of God and Israel, and in the bigger story still of God and the whole human race. In the story of God and Israel, God is leading Israel through the desert towards the Promised Land, and they're probably only a month away by this stage – they reach the edge of the Promised Land in chapter 13. Before they get there, they need to learn to trust ...

Good Morning! Yesterday, we continued our series "In the Wilderness". One of the things that has really encouraged so far in the series has been hearing stories of people deciding not to grumble because of what God has been saying to all of us through his Word. I know it can be difficult – this last week I spent a fair bit of time on a conference which gave me plenty of opportunities. But I decided beforehand not to grumble, and I didn't grumble as much as I usually do on those things, instead trying to encourage others. I think it's important, though, to draw a few helpful distinctions between grumbling, lament and asking for prayer or help. Lament is what a lot of the Psalms do – it's bringing our sorrow into the open before God, being honest with him about it and letting him speak into it. It can be a very powerful thing. Some laments are individual, some are corporate – sometimes it's helpful to bring another person in on our la...

Good morning! Yesterday was one of those unusual Sundays when I was working but not preaching, so I thought I'd share a few quick thoughts on how to respond to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, which has obviously been in the news a lot recently with the execution murder of Alan Henning. 1. Remember God's Justice Lots of the Psalms can appear quite bleak at first reading. But actually, they were written precisely to help God's people respond to difficult situations like the rise of the Islamic State. Here's Psalm 10:7-15, for example. 7 His mouth is full of lies and threats; trouble and evil are under his tongue. 8 He lies in wait near the villages; from ambush he murders the innocent. His eyes watch in secret for his victims; 9 like a lion in cover he lies in wait. He lies in wait to catch the helpless; he catches the helpless and drags them off in his net. 10 His victims are crushed, they collapse; they fall under his strength. 11 He ...

Yesterday, we continued our series In the Wilderness. Last time we looked at the Israelites complaining in Numbers 11:1-9 ; this time we looked at the effect on Moses in v10-17 . These verses are a crisis for Moses, and in some ways he never really recovers. In the previous year, he has saved the nation three times by praying for them (Exodus 17, Exodus 33, Numbers 11:2). He never does that again. Instead we keep on getting challenges to Moses' leadership. Moses' biggest problem in this passage is the weight of unrealistic expectations. The people are acting like little children, and expecting him to carry them. They are asking him to provide the whole nation with meat. Both of those are things that God had done earlier in their wanderings. God provided them with quail in Exodus 16 and said in Exodus 19 that he had carried the nation "on eagle's wings". But Moses forgets that. He listens to the people's unreasonable expectations of him and...

Good Morning! Yesterday, we continued with our series "In the Wilderness", following Israel's journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. We skipped the giving of the Law, the priesthood and the Tabernacle at Mount Sinai, and resumed in Numbers 11, roughly a year after Exodus 17 but only slightly further on the journey. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that so little has changed. The people have been fed by God every day for a year (except Saturdays!), they have heard God speaking the 10 Commandments, they have been given the Law, sacrifices so that they can be forgiven, and a way to access God by the priesthood and the Tabernacle. But they are still complaining. Complaining is a big problem, but is far too ignored in modern Christian culture. I know it's been a problem for me, and I talked a lot more about that in my sermon yesterday. I've only got space here for a few thoughts on what the start of Numbers 11 shows us about complaining. Complain...

Good Morning! Yesterday morning, we continued our series In the Wilderness , looking at Israel's wanderings from Egypt to the Promised Land. Specifically, we looked at Exodus 17:1-7, and how the Psalmist applied it in Psalm 95. [Incidentally, Hebrews applies Psalm 95 in chapters 3 and 4, which means that preaching on Hebrews 3 and 4 would be a sermon about a sermon about a sermon about Exodus 17.] We saw that the people of Israel were faced with a choice. Part of the problem was that it didn't look much like a choice to them. To them it looked like they were running out of water (again!), and so they started complaining and accusing Moses of leading them to die in the desert. Their real problem, though, was that they were hard-hearted. They just carried on as normal and hadn't let anything that God had done for them over the last 3 months or so affect their hearts. If they had been soft-hearted towards God, then they would have looked at th...

Good Morning! Yesterday we started a new series at St Jude's - "In the Wilderness". We'll be looking at Israel's journey from Egypt to Sinai, and then from Sinai to the edge of the Promised Land. Homegroups also have material on the same passages! Being in the wilderness is a time of difficulty, a time of now-and-not-yet, a time of testing, and can be a real time of growth. That's my prayer for us this term! We started by looking at Exodus 16. God's people have just come out of Egypt. They have seen the plagues; they have taken part in the Passover, they have crossed the Red Sea. God has provided them with water in the desert, but now it's a month after they left Egypt, and they are running out of food fast. Folk are getting hungry; maybe babies aren't putting on weight properly and the older members of their families are getting frailer. But in their trouble, they don't remember God. He has led them out into the desert, and yet their response ...

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,...

Yesterday morning, we continued our series looking at who we are, and what we're here for. In particular, we were looking at 1 Peter 2:4-12 . What really struck me in the passage was that all of the wonderful descriptions of things we are as Christians – a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, God's house – are things that we can only be together . They are all singular, just like in Romans 12:1, we offer our bodies as one living sacrifice, or in Ephesians 4 we grow up from being many infants to being one mature body. How does this happen? It happens as God builds us together by his Spirit, as we get the rough edges and knobbly bits knocked off and sanded down. It happens as we speak the truth to one another in love, as we move from seeing other people as there to make us feel better to seeing ourselves as there to serve others and help them know, love and serve God better. This coming weekend is the church weekend away, and for...

Yesterday, we started a new series at St Jude's. Recently, the leadership team have been thinking through the question "Who are we?" and we came to the conclusion that the answer can be summed up as follows: We are a church on a hill: Worshipping God and listening to his Word Growing together as the family of God Shining with God's love in our community. With that in mind, we're doing a short series of three sermons in the mornings looking at different aspects of this. We started yesterday looking at Micah 4:1-7 . In the passage, God gives his people a picture of the way things will be in the end. Sometimes if a story is going badly, people flick ahead to the end to see how it all turns out – that's what God does here for his people. As we look at it, we can find confidence for the future, but also see something of God's purposes for us as a church. The picture is that the mountain of God's temple – the hill where God...

Good Morning All! For the Monday Mail this week, I'd like to send a link to Glen Scrivener's new Easter Poem (animation on Youtube). Here's the poem in full: The Israelites in thirsty lands, trod burning sands with desperate craving, no longer slaving for Egyptian masters, now by grace they're free to face this fresh disaster -- starving in a barren place. Until the Bread of Heaven fell like morning dew each day anew, and to these folks complaining, every day the Bread sustaining, to lead them all their journey through. Fast forward 1500 years: a Man appears, stands tall among His peers, And feeds the desert crowds without ado, A supernatural déjà vu. And having won the mob's attention then He makes His bold contention: He IS the Bread of old, the One foretold to feed us and through our wilderness to lead us. Could His claim be true? It's Thursday Night, an upper room, a supper strewn with broken bread, Then Jesus stands, a loaf in hand and says: THIS...

Good Morning! Yesterday morning, we looked at John 12:1-11, which is the story of Mary anointing Jesus' feet with perfume that cost a year's wages. We saw that Mary's grateful, responsive, loving, extravagant, disgraceful love was exactly the right response to Jesus, even though it left her with no money, no provision for the future and her reputation in tatters. In contrast, Judas was shown to be hiding his real sin behind trying to look pious. One of the ways we applied it was by thinking about whether we hold back from worshipping God for fear of what other people think, whether that's when singing at church or when speaking to our friends at work or at the pub, or even whether we're sometimes, like Judas, people who sit on the sidelines and snipe at those who are putting their hearts into worshipping God. We also saw how Mary's action predicts what Jesus is about to do – that she becomes the servant who wash...

Greetings! Yesterday morning, we were looking at one of my favourite prayers in the Bible - Ephesians 3:14-21 . For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. One of the things that Paul asks for is that God wou...