St Jude's Mapperley Archive Blog

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 ...