Tag: sermons

Sermon Audio (recorded at home)

Here is a picture of a young girl who, at the time, was being bullied terribly.  Does anyone know who she is?  It’s the Duchess of Cambridge of course.  Though nobody knew it at the time.

While Kate Middleton was at Downe House school she was bullied.  In fact she was bullied so much that her parents took her out of the school after just two terms.

I wonder what those bullies thought as they saw her kissing her handsome prince on the balcony of Buckingham Palce?

Maybe the last they remember of her was Katy Middleton, Flaky Pimpletongue.  Maybe the last they saw her they had her in tears.  Perhaps they’d told her they wished she was dead and that nothing good would ever happen to her.

How wrong they were!  As those bullies watched this moment they would realise that now, because of her Prince, she’s royalty.  And one day Flaky Pimpletongue will be Queen over those bullies!

I wonder if the bullies have changed their mind about Kate Middleton.  Do you think they have?

Well our passage speaks of an even bigger change of mind.  It happened on a Day called Pentecost.  It was 10 days after Jesus had returned to heaven.  Jerusalem was, if you like, full of bullies.  Jerusalem was full of people who had wanted Jesus dead.  Just seven weeks earlier these people had shouted out to Pontius Pilate “Crucify Jesus! Crucify Him!”

Now 7 weeks later the Apostle Peter has some news for them.  Peter tells them that what they did to Jesus was a million times worse than what Kate Middleton’s bullies did to her.  In Acts 2 verse 36, Peter says “You crucified Jesus.”

...continue reading "Acts 2:36-41 sermon"

Audio here

Have you ever found yourself somewhere you don’t feel you belong?

Emma and I were out walking once and we both really needed the bathroom.  The only place we could go was a very posh restaurant out in the country.  And it was getting towards evening and all the black BMWs were driving in and the beautiful people were getting out to dine.  And Emma and I looked in through the glass doors and saw a snooty maitre d at reception.  So we took a deep breath, I untied the jumper from around my waste and tied it around my shoulders, and I was desperately trying to channel the aura of a Syngen, and Emma was Tiffany.  And we walked in.  Thankfully the maitre d was dealing with some other people so we swanned through, heads held high to the bathroom. Afterwards I was outside in the foyer waiting for Emma.  Can I help you sir?  He said as though the only help he wanted to give me was out the door never to return again.  For the next 5 minutes that man looked me up and down like I was something on his shoe.  And when Emma was done we scuttled out the door, happy to be free of a place we just didn’t fit.

I wonder how much of life feels like that though.  It often feels like we’ve found our way into a millionaires club, and we feel like frauds.  There we are in the millionaires club, dressed like this.  And we don’t fit.  And it probably seems to us like everyone else knows how to look, what to say, how to behave.  But we don’t belong and we know it.  I wonder how you handle blagging your way at the millionaire’s club?

Some of us try to shrink away into the corner and be shy, some of us sit back and try to look mysterious, some of us try to look demure or interesting.  Some of us step forward with bravado and try to be funny, or clever or outlandish.  But we’re all just trying to negotiate the feeling of being a fraud.  The brash person and the shy person both feel like they’re a fraud.  We all walk around planet earth like we’ve found our way into the millionaires club and we’re not sure we belong.

How do you have confidence in life?  I’m not talking about bravado.  I’m not talking about blagging your way through life.  I’m not talking about bragging your way through life.  But also, I’m not talking about shrinking back and closing yourself off from others.  I want to know: How do you walk tall with head held high?  How do you live at peace with God and the world and just walk in the calling that God has placed on your life and just bless people with who God has made you to be?  Wouldn’t that be liberating?  To drop the act, to drop your guard and just be you – confident in life.

Don’t you want that?  How do you get that?

Well the Apostle Paul was someone who had incredible confidence in life.  He was a guy who went out and planted churches all over the Eastern half of the Mediterranean.  He spoke to Emporers, and he spoke to common folk and whoever he was with, he just boldly fulfilled his calling.  Sometimes his opponents stoned him, and he just came back for more.  Sometimes his friends begged him to stay and he knew it was time to leave, so left.  He was not determined by other people’s praise, and he wasn’t determined by other people’s hatred.  He simply did what God called him to do, he planted churches, he preached the gospel, he wrote half the letters of the New Testament, and he just lived with freedom the life God called him to. He was remarkably free of what the bible calls “the fear of men.”

But you know what makes this even more remarkable is to remember his history.  Paul used to kill Christians for a living.  Before he was Christianity’s number one spokesman he was actually Christianity’s number one enemy.  Paul had tried to destroy the church.  He presided over the stoning of Stephen, and as he’s on the road to Damascus to persecute more churches Jesus meets him and confronts him with his terrible crimes.  Paul gets converted and sent out as a preacher to the nations.

Now tell me, have you ever stuffed up publicly?  Have you ever made a major blunder that’s out in the open, and then you have to face everyone?  That might put a dent in your confidence mightn’t it?  Especially if your blunder was, killing Stephen, one of the leading lights of the early church!  How do you bounce back from that and not just crumple into a guilty mass of self-recrimination?

Paul knows what he did.  He knows the horror of murder and of trying to destroy Christ’s church.  Nonetheless he sets about his new life with complete freedom and confidence.  How is that possible?

You know, if we have confidence, it’s usually because we’ve got some good past performances under our belt, Paul didn’t have that.  He only had black marks in his book.  Yet he steps out as a Christian, among Christians, and for Christians and lives with utter freedom and confidence.  How does he do it?

...continue reading "Confidence in Life – Sermon on Romans 1-8"