St. Luke's, Ramsgate

This week we look at another song of praise. It is a psalm that focuses on what God is like and what God does. However, we tend to put into practice what we praise and become like those we worship, so as we consider what God does we find ourselves wanting to act like him.

The Psalms are a great collection of songs of the people of God. They include a great variety of expressions of human experience and emotion but conclude with an emphatic call to praise God. Psalm 150 is the ultimate climax which briefly explains why we should praise God, then tells us to do so with a variety of instruments suggesting we should do so corporately and creatively. This has much to show us about the kind of church God is calling us to be.

For the early church their key aim and priority was to spread the Word of God about Jesus. In Acts 6, however, they run into problems and have to reassess their priorities. What can we learn from the attitude and behaviour of the early church that will help us as a church today to open our mouth and share God’s Word?

What is needed to make a church a caring church? Open handedness. That is a generosity that is willing to use your own resources for the good of others. That was the example of the early church as we will see in this talk.

We are often taught that to pray you need to put your hands together and close your eyes. However, the Bible does not teach this. Rather, as we pray, we need to open our eyes to the God we are praying to, to his people, his character, his ways and his mission. This is how we grow in prayer.

John 3:16 says that God ‘loved the world’ and ‘whoever believes in him will … have eternal life.’ Both phrases imply that the gift of God is not exclusive. In chapter 4, John demonstrates this as he tells of Jesus’s encounter with this Samaritan Woman who is the kind of person you would least expect to become a follower of Jesus.

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Many people have made up their minds about who Jesus is and how you gain eternal life. Nicodemus comes to Jesus seemingly open to learn, but he begins by telling Jesus what he has decided about Jesus. He has decided to approach Jesus as a teacher. Jesus responds by telling Nicodemus that he needs to be ‘born again.’ What does Jesus mean?

People often say they don’t believe in organised religion. There are some good reasons for that and at first glance it seems that Jesus is against organised religion when he clears out the temple precincts. On closer inspection we discover Jesus is concerned to reform the Temple and ultimately to replace it with something better.

Many people dismiss Christianity as a root into puritanical joylessness, with lots of rules and regulations designed to stop you having fun. Yet, in John chapter 2, we find Jesus at a wedding celebration turning water into wine. Not only is Jesus keeping the fun going, but this sign points to deeper truths about the eternal joy that God longs to give us.

The first in our series on encounters with Jesus in John's gospel. This sermon preached at the beginning of 2021 looks at the question 'What do you want?' We see Andrew and another (could it be John the writer of the gospel?) encountering Jesus for the first time.