St Jude's Mapperley Archive Blog

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! We tend to think of commandments as being the opposite of freedom, don't we? But yesterday morning, we were thinking about the Fourth Commandment, and we saw that it is precisely about freedom. For generations, the Israelites had been slaves in Egypt. Their Exodus started when Moses, prompted by God, asked Pharaoh for the people to be able to take time off so that they could worship him in the desert. 10 plagues later, Pharaoh let the people go for good (helped by God, the Red Sea, etc). Now they are at Mt Sinai, finally worshipping God together rather than labouring as slaves in Egypt. And God gives them a commandment that they are to take a day off every week! It's the first law of its kind anywhere in the world; it's also the first law I'm aware of that protects working animals from exploitation by their owners. The two editions of the 10 Commandments...

Dear all, Yesterday in the morning services, we asked what people were grateful for about St Jude's, and we had loads of responses, which should appear on a notice board soon... In the meantime, Joyce has kindly collated the responses and here's a summary of them! Gratitude is a wonderful thing, and as we heard at the evening service last night, it's also an antidote to worry. Paul wrote " Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. " So let's thank God for all that is past, and trust him for all that is to come! In his love and service, John God’s Fruitfulness at St Jude’s Things we’re thankful for at St. Jude’s 2014 God’s love and grace Love for God and enthusiasm Brilliant leadership (x 2) Our vic...

Dear all, It wasn't planned that way, but the 11am and 6:30pm services ended up on the same passage yesterday, and I think it's so good it's worth just repeating here, in a paraphrase version so that familiar words don't just wash over us. Most of all, friends, always rejoice in the Lord! I never tire of saying it: Rejoice! Keep your gentle nature so that all people will know what it looks like to walk in His footsteps. The Lord is ever present with us. Don’t be anxious about things; instead, pray. Pray about everything. He longs to hear your requests, so talk to God about your needs and be thankful. And know that the peace of God (a peace that is beyond any and all of our human understanding) will stand watch over your hearts and minds in Jesus, the Anointed One. Finally, brothers and sisters, fill your minds with beauty and truth. Meditate on whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is good, whatever is virtuous...

I don't know if you've been watching the TV series Bible Hunters . If not, I wouldn't bother. It's another badly done attempt to make Christianity look bad by fudging the evidence around the history of the Bible. But I thought it might be helpful to share something of how the New Testament came to exist. “prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” 2 Pet 1:21 Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead in either AD 30 or 33. By AD 50, the church had grown enough that some of the leaders of the church needed to write to other bits of it (Galatians written in 48, 1 Thessalonians in 51, James maybe even earlier). The churches found these letters so valuable that they made copies of them, and circulated them to other churches as well, and reading them alongside the Old Testament. Even by the time 2 Peter was written (mid-late 60s?), people were evidently reading Paul's letters as Scripture (2 Pet 3:16). Al...

Greetings! Yesterday we continued in our series on the 10 Commandments, and we looked in particular at the second commandment “You shall not make for yourself an idol...” The main point I drew out from the passage was that the essence of idolatry is us deciding for ourselves what God is like. We do that all the time in 21st century Nottingham, don't we? We come up with our ideas about what God should be like, and act like they are true. We pick and choose which bits of God we like, we love DIY religion, and God tells us not to. We saw that DIY religion is stupid. There's no reason at all why our ideas about God should be true, unless they come from the Bible which is how God has told us about himself. Sometimes we need to read the Bible carefully to see what it says – like when we read Exodus 20:5 which talks about God punishing children for the sins of their parents. When we read that, we need to bear in mind Ezekiel 18, where God is very clear that he only ...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Greetings! Yesterday in the liturgical calendar was the festival of the Presentation of Christ at the Temple, which we remembered at the 9:15am service. I love the story of Simeon and Anna in Luke 2 . On one level, both Simeon and Anna had immensely dramatic lives. In terms of name recognition, they're better known today than almost anyone else – certainly better known than any politicians or generals except Augustus Caesar. Simeon's words are still remembered across the world. And yet on another level, both of them lived lives that were almost inconsequential. Both of them are remembered for something that happened near the end of their lives, after decades of waiting. Simeon, we are told, was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and Anna was looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. Both of them were longing for God to come and set his people free, for God to bring his ...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! Yesterday we were looking at John 15:1-17 , and we saw how God calls his people to like fruitful lives and to bear fruit for him. Jesus compares his disciples to the branches of a vine – a plant that is grown entirely for the value of its fruit. He tells us that God has chosen and called us so that we would bear much fruit, and tells us three important factors in us living fruitful lives. 1. Being Pruned by the Father One of the most important factors in growing vines for fruit is that they need to be heavily pruned. Left to themselves, they produce shoots in all kinds of directions, and waste all their energy on shoots rather than on fruit. If you want a fruitful vine, it needs pruning. "To Prune" in Greek is the same as " to clean" - it's the idea of cleaning off all the unnecessary branches. In the same way, pruning is sometimes getting rid of bad things ...