Samson - the cartoon character

Samson is a cartoon character in every sense. His exploits are extraordinary. He can rip lions apart, slay 1,000 men with a donkeys skull, lift a set of city gates and carry them for miles. Oh, and chase after whatever his eyes take a fancy to - mostly women who always caused him trouble. He's comic and tragic. Larger than life and well, just like life.

I've sometimes been half tempted to have a caricature of my face done, but my features are bad enough normal size let alone with emphasis.

Samson is like a caricature of Israel. They are unfaithful. They find satisfaction in anything and everything that leads them away from God. They are led by their eyes instead of seeing things through God's eyes.

But you know what's even more amazing. They cry out to God in their need and he hears them.

That's grace.

If you want to listen to the sermon it is available online here.

Pornography: Very frank but very helpful insights

Click here to read Mark Driscoll's online book

Tim Keller - Introduction to "Reason for God"

Praising God Together (Romans 15:6-13)

We all crave acceptance – from our parents, colleagues or friends. The great thing about the gospel is that Christ accepts us, and because of that the church must be a place of love, acceptance and welcome for all.

At our Sunday morning meeting we looked at Romans 15:6-13.

If you want to listen to the sermon it is available online here.

In Romans 15:7 Paul says accept one another – as Christ has accepted you.

Christ becomes a servant of the Jews to save the nations. He’s not just saving the Jews but fulfilling all the promises of God to the Jews by saving from all nations. The quotes from the Old Testament in verses 9 to 12 show that it’s always been the plan to bless all the nations.

All this is not a history lesson but it means that you as a Christian believer whatever your “way in” can be accepted and should be accepting and welcoming of other believers. How wrong to reject someone accepted by Christ.

Paul continues in verse 7 accept one another – to bring praise to God.

The goal of salvation is the glory and praise of God and the goal of our unity is that God will be praised. So it’s all about God’s glory but the great thing is that it’s also about our blessing. The whole section is about nations joyfully praising God and Paul ends with a prayer that they would know in their experience, peace hope and joy.

Tolerance is a gospel issue (Romans 14)

At our Sunday morning meeting we looked at Romans 14:1-15:6. We learnt from there how we should accept brothers and sisters in Christ even though we may have differences about how we practise our faith. If you want to listen to the sermon it is available online here.

Paul is not talking about compromising over the truth about Christ or the authority of the Bible, or tolerating immorality, as though God doesn’t care about these things. His focus is more on personal behaviour from Christians carefully considering how they should behave in relationship to their Lord.

In the Roman church the majority would have been gentiles (non-Jews), who did not mind what they ate or drank or about special days. The Jews would have grown up being very careful about the food they ate and had sacred days, especially the Sabbath. It would be easy for the Jewish Christians to condemn the gentiles, and for the gentile Christians to despise and look down on the Jews. However, Paul calls them to mutual acceptance and love.

He says first: do not condemn. Recognise that your Christian brother or sister is accepted by God, responsible to Him and that ultimately God will judge their actions, not you. Secondly he says: do not despise. Looking down on your brother and carrying on with your behaviour regardless of their feelings could be a stumbling block causing them distress, or destroying their faith and the witness of the church.

As our example Paul says look at Christ who endured the disdain of men. He saw a higher purpose to his mission and Christians need to look at the cross of Jesus and then work out what that means for serving our brothers and sisters in the church, not having to stand up for our rights.

Finally Paul said: make unity your goal. We need to work and pray for unity, because this is a powerful witness to a watching world.

There are many applications on this in relationships within and between churches. We talked in the sermon about the issue of total abstinence from alcohol and Sunday being thought of as the Sabbath to illustrate the kind of issues that may divide us.

Any comments or questions are most welcome.