Jesus tells the people a story about a man who thinks like this: Invest. Flip the property. Go again. Buy more. Flip them. Go again…and you’ll be set. Retirement will be early and a time of infinite happiness as you take things easy, drink and be merry. On a cruise, in the south of France, at a billabong in the north of Australia somewhere, whatever…

What’s the trouble with that plan?

The only trouble with this man’s plan for prosperity and the good life was that the plan didn’t include God.

He’d ignored God and he’d ignored his neighbour, the poor. He forgot that he was a mortal creature, whose every breath is a gift.

Jesus invites us into a completely different way of life grounded in ultimate reality - the never ending flow of God's love. 

Helen Gould from Brisbane West Vineyard dropped by and shared her story...

Jesus always sees the person in front of him. Fully. How did he do that? How do we?

Tired? Jesus gets it. And he gets what real rest is. Here's how he says you find it. 

The Christmas story is a story of hope. But it's hope in very unlikely places. What might these stories teach us about where to find hope when despair is the air we breathe in some many places today? Eve is our speaker. 

And then there was us...

Well this could have been a 1.5 hr sermon... and Jesus is so worthy of it, but here we are, beginning the silly season, harried, tired, in need, not of information but encounter... So this week we did something a little different...

As we walk through the biblical story we’ll discover that exile is a recurring feature. The first exile was Adam and Eve banished from the garden, then there’s Abraham called from his homeland and shifted around by famines and violence. And of course there’s the massive exile of the Israelite nation which is the focus of this talk today.

It shouldn’t surprise us that it’s a thread through the biblical story because exile seems to be a thread through most of our lives. I don’t think exile has to be simply migration from a country. It can be growing older and feeling unheard and irrelevant to the culture in which you live. It could be the experience of someone walking out on you. It could be your child estranging you. It could be being fired from your job or simply retrenched. It could be retiring and feeling exiled from the purpose and status of work. It could be declining health that forces you to feel like you’ve been sidelined. It could be feeling rejected by a group of girls at school.

They’re all mini or major exiles.

How do they fit in the loving work of a good God? 

As we follow the story of Scripture we come to kingdom and Saul and David two very different kings, with very different hearts. 

God saving plan gains momentum. At the centre of this chapter of that story is God's decision to reveal himself as I AM. God present and Lord. Then, now, forever.