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...

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...