Sermons from Knightswood UF Church: Recent Episodes
Knightswood UF Church
The people of ancient Nineveh were famous not just for their military might but also for their appalling cruelty to their enemies as they built the first great world empire - and yet God sent Jonah because he wanted them to come back to him. His mercy was big enough to forgive even them… and any of us.
And in one of the Bible’s great surprises, these cruel conquerers were faster to turn to God than the prophet who preached to them had been. God can reach any of us!
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Jonah, who was running away with God, met him where he least expected to; and when he did, when God rescued him, it was an absolutely life-transforming encounter. We, too, can experience this same life-transforming meeting with the God of the Bible.
God cares - enough to pursue us, hunt us down, when we don’t want to be found, and when we are heading away from him because of all our self-destructive tendencies. The prophet Jonah ran from God, only to find God close behind, and doing good to all those around him.
As we come into the new year, it’s a great time to reflect on how you are drawing on the help and instruction and grace that God offers us in reading the Bible.
Paul’s prayer at the start of the letter to the Colossians is a model for us to learn from in our own prayer, but it also tells us how Christians can grow in maturity, through prayer that leads to wisdom that leads to growth that pleases God. It’s a deeply practical and encouraging passage for every Christian who wants to please God more and see real change in their lives.
The beginning of the little letter to the Colossians tells us the key place that hope, the sure and certain hope that Christ offers us in the gospel, has in growing our faith and our love.
What does it mean when God doesn’t answer our prayers when we long for him to do so? In the experience of Martha, Mary, we see how Jesus loved them even as they grieved, deeply, in response to an unanswered prayer and the death of their beloved brother Lazarus.
Jesus, the good shepherd, does not just call his sheep - he keeps them and he cares for them. He is the one - the only one - who can keep us and give us life forever. And he will accept anyone, anyone at all, to become one of those sheep, even those who hate and oppose him.
God’s people - those who have come to him and been forgiven - aren’t just given many good things. They are given a great purpose, and great help in that purpose - the purpose of spreading the news of forgiveness and life that is available even to those who have done great wrong in a world under Judgement.
After the darkness and difficulty of Joel 1-2:18, we come out into the light - God has been leading us, along with the people of Joel’s time, to face up to our sin, so that we can come, finally, to the joyful confidence of a relationship with him that his marked by his forgiveness and blessing. In that relationship, he never stops pouring good out on us.
This recording is of low quality, due to technical issues, but should be audible throughout.
When we really come to know God, we come to realise that we are worse than we ever thought, but more loved than we could ever imagine. Judgement is real, and God will do away with all evil, cruelty and oppression; but mercy is deeper than we can possibly measure, and his forgiveness and love more wonderful than we could dream.
The little book of Joel starts with a terrible natural disaster. Where are we to turn, when everything goes wrong?
Joel shows us that in the darkest moments, we are called to come back to God, and turning away from ourselves and our selfishness, to rediscover peace and hope in him.
All through life, we experience the call of two different ways of life - wisdom, with all its wonderful promise for the future, and folly, which promises us pleasures now, but which, in the long run, brings only grief. Which will we choose?
Even in the hours he was dying on the cross we see Jesus focused on others - full of grief and concern, of longing for those who killed him to be forgiven, and promising to the trusting thief that he would be with him in paradise. His every action, every word, points to his death in the place of others, carrying their guilt and punishment. His death was entirely for us.
In our final look at the Sermon on the Mount, we see Jesus challenging call is an invitation, not just to live in a better way, but to have a real, trusting, relationship of love with God as our heavenly Father.
Jesus calls us to live as he does, to lives that show his goodness; but those lives are to be gracious lives, not judgemental ones. His teaching helps us to avoid becoming self-righteous, and instead makes us more and more like him, welcoming and loving to sinners - even those who hurt us.
Jesus wants us to know the reality of having God as our loving Father - and that reality is one that frees us from the desire for money, since the future we have with him is better and more certain than anything we can heap up on earth; and it frees us, too, from worry - for he cares for us better than we can care for ourselves.
Hypocrisy is a constant danger in religion, in prayer, in giving; we see it in others, and hate it. But it can be hard to see in ourselves, and even harder to escape.
Jesus shows us the secret of escaping hypocrisy - knowing the love of our heavenly father, who sees everything we do and promises to reward us.
Jesus’ standard of goodness is far beyond us - impossible, in fact. Seeing it makes us recognise our need for forgiveness; and then it calls us to aim higher for true goodness than we ever have before. But he, the one who lived this righteousness perfectly for our sake, is there for us with his love, his compassion, and the power of his spirit, to help us become better people than we have ever been before.
Jesus’ teaching about the Christian life, about forgiveness and grace, was so radical that some thought he had come to sweep away God’s law, God’s instructions for living given through Moses. But Jesus tells us that’s not true - instead, his teaching sweeps away all the misunderstandings, the legalism, the way the law is distorted to make it a tool for human pride. He showed how, rightly understood, it is a liberating instruction in true goodness, goodness that comes from the heart and which exists for the sake of our relationships with God and with those around us.
Jesus’ disciples, who have been shown God’s grace and know God’s grace, have an immediate impact on the world around them. They are persecuted, but still salt and light; through them, God’s grace has an impact on the world around them, and people come to see their Father’s glory.
Jesus disciples’ are conscious of their need, their need for his undeserved kindness, his grace. That grace, and their awareness of their need, works to change them into people who live out lives of grace - merciful, honest, peacmaking lives that reflect his life.
NOTE THAT THERE WERE MINOR PROBLEMS DURING RECORDING. The message should still be audible, however.
The beginning of the Sermon on the Mount - perhaps Jesus’ most famous teaching - tell us how the good life is found by leaning in to our need and hunger for God and his kingdom.
Jesus’s final words to his disciples gave them a mission - and that mission is our mission, the church’s mission, the mission to make disciples from all nations. It is a mission that comes with a promise, a promise of Jesus’ accompanying authority and presence to the very end of time.
The second half of the letter to Philemon is a powerful message to a man - and a world - that treated so many people as slaves. Even though we may not live in a world where slavery exists, it is still a life-changing message that teaches us to see people the way God sees them, to value them as people, and our fellow Christians as God’s children. And most of all, it calls us to follow Christ in being willing to put ourselves on the line in order to love, forgive, and heal divisions among others, in the way that Paul does for Onesimus, and Jesus did for us all.
The little letter of Philemon gives us a powerful insight into what it means to grow as a Christian by becoming part of the partnership of the church, sharing, serving and loving, in lives focused on others, that nonetheless are the best way for us ourselves to grow.
Note that the recording quality of this sermon is lower, due to technical problems during recording.
Costly redemption leads to hope - that’s the story of Ruth; it’s the origin story, too of the great king David, and ultimately of Jesus. Finally, it is our story, as Jesus buys us back for a future of hope and joy at the cost of his own life.
Ruth gives us a wonderful picture of what it means to trust a redeemer - like Boaz, or much more deeply, like Jesus. That trust, that faith, is an active, a choice to depend on them; all the same, it’s a choice that depends on their proven character and reliable promises; and it’s a confident trust that can look to a certain future.
Even as his enemies tried to arrest him, Jesus put his life on the line to call them and everyone else to find true satisfaction and joy in him.
Ruth and Naomi came to Bethelehm looking for favour, for grace, for help, in a desperate situation. Like us, when we come to God looking for help, they find more than that - they find a redeemer who will look after them in a way that takes care of their deepest needs.
When Jesus speaks, his word sets us free from bias and predjudice, helping us to see the truth and really know it - as he says,
'If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ - John 8:31-32
He was willing to risk his life to speak this teaching even into the lives of those who were willing to kill him, because even they could be set free by it. And when he speaks into our lives, it sets us free.
This beautiful psalm was given to help us when we have done wrong, when we have ruined our own relationship to God with what we have done. God What to do when we ruin our own relationship with God. God is always ready to forgive when we come back to him confessing what we have done.
Sermon by guest preacher Nathan Mackay
The story of Ruth starts with grief, but it is a story of love, and joy, and hope, and how God uses ordinary people to bring good to the world, and above all, it is a story of the unbreakable loving-kindness of the God who loves sinners and failures and brings them back to himself.
Who is Jesus? In the famous words of C.S Lewis,
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
In John 7, Jesus himself makes that clear - he claims to be everything, to be our Lord. Will you stand with him?
Jesus is willing to be very blunt with us - we need him, need him absolutely, need him totally. He is the one who gives true life, and we need to come to him for that life, to rely on him just as we rely on our daily food, to ‘eat and drink’ his body and blood.
The truly ‘blessed’ - or ‘happy’ - life starts with being fully forgiven by God. That is the doorway to contentment and a rich relationship with him.
Jude helps teach us how to keep going - and keep growing - as Christians, even when life is difficult or painful.
We look in so many places for satisfaction, for life, for what we need - but Jesus, the bread of life, offers us what we really need, and what will really satisfy.
Whether we struggle day to day with anxiety and fear, or whether we are confident and easygoing, Jesus offers us the strength to face life even when he calls us to things that are far out of our comfort zone.
The one miracle recorded in all four gospels is the feeding of the 5000 - together, they underline the reality that Jesus is the one, and the only one, who can give us all we need.
John invites you and me to search the evidence about who Jesus is; but as we do, we find our own hearts searched as well. Ultimately, he is inviting us to true life.
As Jesus heals a man at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, we see his life-giving compassion for us all.
Psalm 1 Invites you to discover the way to the truly happy life, as you discover a life fed and refreshed by God’s word.
God loves Christmas, and he took pleasure in coming at Christmas - because through Christmas he is reconciling people to himself.