Introduction: It is Christmas time again.  Once again the world is handing itself over to carnival preparing to eat, and drink, and holiday and give gifts and be merry.  In the western world there is the constant attempt to remove Christ from Christmas.  But even where Christmas carols are still sung, and Christmas parades are still called so, and ‘Happy Holidays’ does not replace ‘Merry Christmas’, this is no guarantee that the Christ will be honoured.  This is no guarantee that Christians will not be caught up in the materialism that has come to dominate a time of worship.  So it is my duty today to try and remind us of the importance of the incarnation, and our text this morning is Galatians 4:1-7, ‘I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything,2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father.3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.’ Galatia was in the vicinity of modern day Turkey. The Galatians were being harassed by false teachers.  Theses false teachers were of a Jewish nature and were teaching that the only way to be saved is to accept circumcision and the OT laws.  It was...

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Introduction: Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor talks about these times of late modernity we live in as the twilight of the idols and the gods. Contrary to every prognostication and resistant to every attempt faith and religion continue to haunt us. The age of Christendom has come to end and the privileged position of unchallenged supremacy is lost to us. However, contrary to the hopes of the New Atheists religion is still with us. However, we now live in an age where there is no doubt without faith and no faith without doubt. This presents us with a double challenge. On the one hand we have an opportunity to address the mixed Neo Darwinian materialistic and humanistic/New Age/Therapeutic view on things coming to dominate modern society. Apologist Douglas Groothuis reports, ‘Through hundreds of interviews over a period of twenty years, my students in Christian apologetics at Denver Seminary have found that people often hold a smorgasbord of beliefs that do not easily fit into a unified worldview. There may be a dash of Christianity (left over from Sunday School), heaps of New Age spirituality (for personal enrichment), a dose of naturalism (about scientific matters) and, of course substantial seasoning by relativism (which is everywhere).’1 This presents us with a ripe opportunity. But we also have to shore up believers against the growing tirade of critiques, objections, questions, and challenges. Since 9/11 the outspoken vitriol against Christianity in particular has been astounding. Through the ability of instant information where we are seeing books published, debates aired, blogs written, social media disseminating opinion, we are constantly bombarded with the latest opinion and argument against Christianity. Objections which give rise to answers which give rise to counter-objections have amped up the pressure on the believer to give an answer for why they believe what...

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Introduction: How many of you have ever kept a prayer journal? Many have testified to the encouragement of looking back on their early prayers and seeing either God answering the prayers, or changing the prayers into better ones. Every prayer is always answered with a yes or a no or a not yet or in a way better than you expected. Today as we come to Romans we are in a closing section where Paul ends his personal travel plans with a request for prayer, Romans 15:30-33, ‘I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf,31 that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints,32 so that by God’s will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company.33 May the God of peace be with you all. Amen.’ In this section we have 3 of Paul’s prayer requests, and since we also have the book of Acts we get to have a front row seat on how God answered Paul’s prayers. As we look at this section we will be looking at it under two headings, lessons about prayer and answers to prayer.

Introduction: We come to the last message in the life of Solomon and the question that immediately jumps into our mind is: did Solomon go to heaven? If 1 kings 11:1-8 was all we were told then we might say no. However, the book of Ecclesiastes is a memoir of a sort written by Solomon and it is credited to be written by him at the end of his long life. The book describes the futility of the many things Solomon engaged in and how the meaning of life is to love God and keep His commands, Ecc. 12:13-14, ‘The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.14 For God will bring every deed into judgement, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.’ Solomon returned from his backsliding. He began well and the blessing of God fell on him and the nation, but then he sinned, and the chastening of God fell on him and the nation. This final section of Solomon’s reign focuses us on God’s judicial response to Solomon’s sins. This must not be overlooked. Yes Solomon went to heaven, but the suffering and destruction he suffered and caused others to suffer is highlighted by God punishing Israel. As we close the life of Solomon I thought it would be appropriate to think about suffering and its relationship to sin in the life of a believer. Solomon went to heaven, fine, but his sin caused terrible pain for himself and others. As Christians we are not so crass as to think that as long as he got into heaven everything is okay. God is glorified or defamed by the holy or sinful lives of His saints. God is holy and takes sin in...

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Introduction: What is driving you, when you feel tired in the morning and don’t feel like getting up what do you tell yourself to get yourself going? What are you living for? Are you functioning according to a deliberate motivation or a default autopilot? Some are driven by a desire to provide for their families; some are driven by a career goal; some are fixed on their retirements; some have sinful goals, some have godly goals. All of our doing flows out of our wanting. We do what we want. Paul is a man of ambition, he has just told us that in v20. He is a man of deep desires, someone who is not just drifting along, but fixed on his goals, and his whole life reflects it. In fact Paul is driven by what he is living for that he is willing to even die in pursuing it. Where many of us get caught up in the routine of our lives forgetting the war we are in and the purposes God has called us to, Paul is deliberate and constantly planning his course on the basis of his desires. Today we come to another major motivation in Paul’s life, something that is called, ‘the collection’ in Pauline studies. Dominating Paul’s third missionary journey was Paul’s coordination of the Gentile churches to give liberally to the poor Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. This concern is also revealed in his travel plans in Romans 15:25-29, ‘At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints.26 For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem.27 For they were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have come to share in their...

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Introduction: Solomon was a wiser man than you or I and he fell into sin. A terrifying thought when we all know our weakness so well. It is very important for us to study men like Solomon, men and women who are better than us, but also sinners like us to see how it is that sin takes them. We have been observing some of the warning signs that have been setting Solomon up for his fall. We have seen his small compromises in the area of riches and political alliances. But here in 1 Kings 11:1-8 we are confronted with Solomon’s Achilles heel, his great weakness and the opening through which his great fall came. It can all be summarised in the first few words of verse 1, ‘Now King Solomon love many foreign women.’ This section gives details about the many unbelieving wives Solomon had, but not only that it also gives us a biblical view on how sin takes a person. It focuses our attention on Solomon’s heart and how he gave his heart to his sins instead of to God. So in observing this section we want to look at the two issues that are raised, firstly, the notion of being unequally yoked with unbelievers, and secondly, how losing our hearts to sin is the way we all fall.

Introduction: I would like to begin by adapting a well-known illustration relating to missions that John Piper uses in his book Let the Nations Be Glad.1 You along with ten others are on an old school lifeguard boat with oars attending to a sinking ship. You are the captain of this little band of life savers. The ship you are attending is a liner with many people that cannot swim and there are only a few life boats. You and you little team get stuck in and are trying to rescue as many as you can. But suddenly you see about 500m away another boat is sinking, what do you do? What would love do? Perhaps you might reason to yourself, well these souls are just as lost and as valuable as those. You might think to yourself that it would tire the crew to row over to that other boat and souls would inevitably drown in the meantime. You might reason that it would be more efficient to not try and save those on the other boat. If it is about saving as many as you can as effectively as you can you might want to ignore the other boat. Now apply this illustration to the reality of missions. There are those who have a need here in Timaru, in Canterbury, in New Zealand. There are those who have need in the English speaking world. Based on this illustration, as we think about the need of people in the world to be saved doesn’t it sound reasonable and practical to spend all of our efforts on local outreach where we can be more efficient rather than other parts of the world? How do we choose where to put in our efforts? What does the bible say about how we...

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Thanks to Guy McKenzie for preaching today from Romans 10:14-15, regarding the Gospel.

Thanks to Guy McKenzie for preaching today from Romans 10:1-4, on the difference between our self-righteousness and God’s righteousness.