Read the text – Matthew 11:1-19
In this talk, Dave Swan reacquaints us with the gospel of Matthew as a historical and reliable source of knowing Jesus. And we, along with John the Baptist we ask the question: ‘Are you [Jesus] the one who is to come to save us?’
Read the text – 1 John 5:1-21
In this talk we reach the end of this series from 1 John and to the theological and pastoral conclusion of the letter. John has helped the reader to know that the Christ is Jesus and so in this talk Ken Noakes helps us to see the confidence that the believer has to live for Jesus now knowing what he has given for all eternity.
Read the text – 1 John 2:28-3:10
Central to fellowship with God the Father is acknowledging his son and in turn living as a child of God. This talk is about confidence in the Christian faith – confidence that comes from being adopted as a child of God and experienced in the new birth that the Christian person enjoys.
In this talk Ken Noakes describes the process of moving towards a confident faith. And also, the process that person may go through in moving away from a confident faith.
Read the text – 1 John 1:5-2:2
Sin is serious, and even Christians can live as if it isn’t! In this talk, Ken Noakes looks at what the Bible calls sin and helps us to understand more of what sin is and means for our world, our church and our person. Yet to sit right alongside the trauma that is sin, is the wonder that is forgiveness in Jesus. Sin we love yet we should hate. Whereas Forgiveness we want and we all need.
Read the text – 1 John 3:11-24 & 1 John 4:7-21
Love that is Christian, is a love for others that is both pleasing and acceptable to God before it is to the world. This is a huge topic and so contested today. For today, love is often determined by popular opinion or consensus – and as directed by the loudest voices. In this talk, Ken Noakes looks at the importance of understanding Love in the context of truth and obedience. God indeed wants Christians to be loving – love that is truthful, sacrificial, obedient even if different to the way the world looks for love.
Read the text – 1 John 1:5-2:6 & 1 John 2:18-27
The second in this series from the little letter of 1 John – this talk looks at the contrast between truth and un-truth and more particularly the danger of not thinking that truth is important. Truth and knowledge matter when it comes to faith – so does untruth and error.
In this talk Ken Noakes suggests that if we lose sight of the truth of the gospel, then it is impossible to live by the truth of the gospel.
Read the text – 1 John1:1-4 & 1 John 2:12-17
The little letter of 1 John packs a punch. It is rich with ideas we love to debate: truth and error, love and hate, forgiveness and sin, individualism and community, life and death. These ideas are not simple, yet we can be very simplistic in how we think about them for we don’t always consider how one may affect the other. 1 John works hard to draw these ideas and concepts into an integrated Christian worldview. And in the process helps us see the value of having the Word of Life to guide us in how we live.
In this first talk of six, Ken Noakes introduces the Letter of 1 John and its overlapping themes. In doing so he wants to make clear that believers have the Word of Life: Jesus. And life with him looks different to life without. 1 John has a lot to say to help Christians today live confidently for Christ.
God’s official royal announcement, which he entrusted to his chosen representative and slave, Paul, and which is the culmination and fulfillment of everything he has been doing and saying in history, is that Jesus is the promised Messiah and the powerful divine Lord. God’s gospel is not about us, it is about Jesus!
Ken Noakes looks at what Romans 1 teaches us about the Gospel of God, and given this is a graduation address, he challenges those graduating (and listening) to put into practice the knowledge they now have by proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus.
Read the text – 1 Corinthians 15:35-16:24
This is not the age for the self-fulfilment and glory of human beings – there is an eternity for that (we will be changed and given a new resurrection body). This is the age for the work of the LORD – our labour in the Lord, though it looks weak now, is not vain (like the death of Jesus and like our bodies).
In this talk Dave Swan, warns us from the last section in the first letter to the Corinthians, to not be driven by the present age and by what we see. For now is not the time for the work of the gospel to look splendid, it is the time for gospel work and that work will look weak (v58).
Listen to this world, have your life shaped by the resurrection, so that when you do experience death you might also know the wonder of the resurrection.
Read the text – 1 Corinthians 15:12-34
The Corinthians live for the ‘now’ as they deny the resurrection, so they have always focused on looking good now, but the Apostle Paul shows how foolish this is. Paul shows instead that our glory comes through weakness, just as life comes through death, so his ministry is marked by weakness and death. As Paul commands in 1 Corinthians 15:33-34, Christians we must be careful of being led astray by those who would have us focus on living for now.
In this talk Dave Swan, wants to help the listener fix their eyes on eternity. To have a life shaped by the resurrection, so that you don’t live for the now, but for eternity, and so that you can take steps to encourage others to live for eternity as well.
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