Read the text – Psalm 119.145-176
In the sermon series, ‘Listening to God’, Lower Mountains Anglican Church has explored the ambiguous points of the bible in Christian faith, including the authority of the Word, its historical reliability and its clarity of message. In this final sermon, Ken Noakes will talk on the Bible’s sufficiency in providing us God’s truth and guidance.
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.
What is the value of a promise? For one, a promise can give direction as you look forward to the fulfillment of the promise. And as such it gives purpose to how we conduct ourselves as we move closer to the day that the promise is fulfilled. God’s people Israel acted on the strength of the promise that they would be delivered into a new and good land – a home. Joshua leads them by the hand of God – home. In our Bible talks, we are looking at the extraordinary book of Joshua – a book of promise and purpose. A book that points us forward to the fulfillment of the gospel promise, that in Jesus we will delivered – home. In the meantime, it gives us a clear purpose.
This talk investigates the consequences of even one small act of disobedience. Disobedience effects more than one person – obedience to God is a must. Thankfully, Jesus has taken the consequences of our sin.
Read the text – Joshua 7:1-8:1
We love satire when it comes to political cartoons. Often we see our national leaders’ faults comically exaggerated. But what about satire when it comes to God’s prophets? Jonah is a famed biblical story where we find God’s hero, the prophet Jonah, neglect his responsibility and flee from God. Meanwhile, the city of Nineveh, famed for their evil, turn to God after a surprisingly short sermon!
This is not a story about a giant fish, but rather a God who shows grace and mercy to wicked people, despite his prophet’s rebellion.
This talk will focus on God’s faithfulness in saving Nineveh, despite Jonah’s begrudging obedience. The question remains… are you glad to see God save evil people?
Read the Bible texts – Jonah 3-4; Luke 11:29-32
Love, Truth and Obedience are three Christian values that together define Christian Love. Christian love, is love where truth is valued. Christian truth tells us how to obey. Christian obedience demonstrates true love.
In the previous posts from this series we have looked at each.
What happens if you corrupt any one of those values?
What is love that is pleasing first to God? It has something to do with obedience in the context of truth. We have considered ‘Love’ (Part 3 of this series) and ‘Truth’ (Part 4 of this series), so this time let’s focus on ‘Obedience’.
Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them (1 John 3:21-24)
A love that is pleasing to God is a love that obediently follows his commands.
What does it look like for Christians to love the other? It has something to do with that which is true and something to do with obedience. We considered ‘Love’ last time (Part 3 of this series), so this time let’s focus on ‘Truth’.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. (1 John 3:16-20)
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