Series: The King is Here Broome 2015
Sermon preached at Broome Anglican Church on 13 December 2015
Bible Readings: Joshua 2.1-16; Matthew 1.1-17
Call him Jesus – but who is he?
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Call him Jesus – but who is he?
Joseph must have woken up from his dream with a spinning head. His fiancée was going to have a baby – he already knew that, and he knew he was not the father. In his dream an angel told him that the child was from the Holy Spirit.
Matthew tells us that this was to fulfill the scripture that referred to a child called Immanuel. But this child was not going to be called Immanuel – he was to be called Jesus (or Joshua). But in some way he was Immanuel.
Was he really God with us? And does that mean he was also God? Luke also tells us that it was the Holy Spirit who caused Mary to become pregnant. He says the child will be called the Son of God.
But in what sense?
What about the Ancestors? Matthew 1.1-17
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- Category: Christmas and Epiphany
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What about the Ancestors? Matthew 1.1-17
Who do you believe?
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Who do you believe?
I still remember the first and only time I saw Santa Claus and his sleigh. I was lying in my grandparents bed after sunset as the sky was changing from red to dark red. I could see out of the window the tops of the shop buildings half a mile away when the sleigh slowly came in to land on the top of the shops. I don't remember anything after that as I must have fallen asleep.
I have not told this story to many people. I did tell it to a close relative this week who, to be honest, didn't believe me. She had a variety of rational explanations for me: I was dreaming; imagining it; reconstructed memory; wishful thinking ... etc.
14B. Killing off the Gospel Acts 12.1-24
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{podcast id=315}
Killing off the Gospel Acts 12.1-24
Series: A Mission without Leaders or Plans Acts 8-12 Broome 2015
Sermon preached at Broome Anglican Church on 6 December 2015
Bible Readings: Acts 12.1-24
Did Herod stop the gospel? What did the church believe about its prayer? Why did God release Peter? So what?
Sometimes adultery seems easier
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Sometimes adultery seems easier
Does adultery seem like a good idea at times? The Tuesday Bible study group got on to the topic this week. Not ordinary adultery, you will be relieved to know, but adultery of a different kind.
We ran into the passage that described the followers of Jesus as “those who did not defile themselves with women, for they remained virgins.” (Rev 14.4). Quite a puzzling statement at first sight since nowhere does the bible encourage everyone to stay unmarried (multiplying and filling the earth would be quite difficult if that was the case, quite apart from what appear to be various sexist and gender assumptions).
One passage that sheds light on it is Ezekiel 23. A pretty gross and explicit portrayal of unfaithfulness.
13B. Talking to foreigners Acts 11.19-26
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- Category: Acts
{podcast id=314}
Talking to foreigners Acts 11.19-26
Series: A Mission without Leaders or Plans Acts 8-12 Broome 2015
Sermon preached at Broome Anglican Church on 29 November 2015
Bible Readings: Isaiah 55.1-13; Acts 11.19-26
The Evangelists; The Encourager; The Mentor. What God did. What the disciples did. What the gospel did.
Catholic?
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Catholic?
Early in the 4th century a dispute arose in Alexandria because of a teacher called Arius. He tried to state a Christian doctrine of God in a way that Platonists could understand. He started with the idea that the supreme God is one and that therefore Christ could not be eternal in the same way as God. Christ was not equal to the Father and had been created by the Father out of nothing, even though he was the highest of all God’s creatures.
The dispute spread until the Emperor Constantine called a Council of the church at which he would preside – at Nicea, near his headquarters in Nicomedia.
At the Council in Nicea in 325 Constantine (probably at the suggestion of Bishop Hosius of Cordova) proposed the clause, that the Son was “of one substance” (homoousios) with the Father.
Unfortunately the debate did not go away and a new Emperor, Theodosius, who did not agree with the Arians, called a Council in Constantinople in 381.
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