Sermon Archive
Welcome to our sermon archive, we hope you enjoy reading through our past sermons and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us.
Renew Mission Life – 1. From Obligation to Participation
We begin a sermon/study series that comes from Renewing Churches. We can often feel a lot of shoulds and oughts and musts in church life, and this is especially so for evangelism. This is a response based on law.
Thankfully God so Gospels us in Jesus, that we are invited into the circle of the Trinity, and invited into partnership with God, into God’s mission for the life of the world. Worship is part of the gracing and the sending out to people already loved by God, even if they don’t know it. And the Holy Spirit gives divine appointments, where we can grow in relational sharing with others, hearing their stories, and having opportunity to share ours. Good listening to others is very important, and really shows that we care.
I believe in the nudging by the Holy Spirit, that God will make openings for us to share Jesus’ love in word and action.
Anonymous Women in the Bible: Huldah the prophet, almost anonymous
Though the brief story of Huldah appears twice in the Bible, from my field testing she is virtually unknown, even though she is one of three named women prophets in the Old Testament, along with Miriam and Deborah.
Huldah is a prophet in the time of King Josiah in Judah, when a book of the law (very dusty) was discovered in a temple renovation. And the king is very troubled and repentant from what he reads, and sends officials to inquire of the Lord. And they go straight to Huldah to check what God is saying. Huldah prophesies, tells forth God’s word into that situation; words about the future of Judah and its king.
It’s risky being a prophet, but she does not hold back. Her words are taken seriously, leading on to wide ranging reforms in Judah. Huldah is celebrated in Judaism. Who would you say is a prophet of God these days?
Anonymous Women in the Bible – A woman who evangelised her whole village
What thoughts come to your mind when you hear; ‘Woman at the Well’ or ‘The Samaritan Woman?’ She has often been thought of as an immoral woman whom Jesus redeems. I think all we can say is she has had a lot of pain in her life, and Jesus knows this, and she knows that Jesus knows this, and Jesus continues to engage with her, and leads her into discipleship and mission. With an urgency, she leaves her water jar and heads to her village when she quickly gets an audience and says to them; “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done? He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”
This is a great evangelism strategy, raising much curiosity. Many head to see Jesus. And many in that outcast village come to see for themselves that Jesus truly is the Messiah, the source of living water springing up to eternal life. Like last week, a woman disciple is lifted up as a model disciple. (Jesus’ male disciples are anxious about being in that Samaritan village, wondering why Jesus is talking with a woman alone, no doubt wondering if the food is clean. They have not been telling anyone there that Jesus is the one to put ultimate trust in.) What can we learn from this scripture, where the dialogue with the woman is the longest recorded dialogue that Jesus has with another person?
Anonymous Women in the Bible – The Understanding Disciple
The Gospel according to Mark has been described as “a passion narrative with an extended introduction.” Everything in the story points towards the cross – even though the twelve disciples don’t see it coming, and Peter tells Jesus off for saying he must die (8:32). Mark shows us more followers of Jesus than just the twelve though, and on the night before the last supper he introduces Jesus’ betrayal with the story of a woman disciple anointing Jesus.
As Mark tells the story, Jesus’ enemies are the only ones who ever call him king. The crowds welcome the kingdom on Palm Sunday, but don’t call Jesus king (11:9-10). We might think that this woman is anointing Jesus to be crowned king. But that’s not what Jesus says – he says “she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial” (14:8). One of the twelve will betray Jesus. Another will deny him. The rest will flee. But this woman understands the hour that is at hand. She understands what Jesus’ mission is really all about and honours him with a costly, shameful act of service. Of all the characters in Mark, it is this woman who really shows us how to hear and obey Jesus.
Anonymous Women in the Bible – The Valiant Woman of Proverbs 31
The book of Proverbs is a book of life advice which would have been taught to young Hebrew men coming of age 2500-3000 years ago. It contains sayings and stories to form the young man in righteousness, and help him understand that there is no wisdom apart from a relationship with God.
At the completion of the book, we find a curious thing. An acrostic poem in praise of a valiant woman. For the Hebrew readers, an acrostic signifies completion (we find this same thing in some Pslams). We might have expected Proverbs to be completed with a poem in praise of a wise man: one who “understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path” (2:20). After all, the book of Proverbs is written for young men, and don’t all young men want to see an example to follow?
Instead, we discover that the wisdom God gives is not complete until we honour the valiant woman “for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate” (31:31). We discover that God values people who we might not notice, and calls us to see them, learn from them, and praise them. So we learn the true wisdom of God, who draws us outside our own experience to value others for their own sake.
Anonymous women in the Bible – A sermon series
There are many anonymous women in the Bible. In today’s Gospel reading there is the ‘woman with the constant bleeding’ or better; ‘the woman healed by Jesus from constant bleeding.’ And there is the 12-year-old girl raised from the dead. We know the name of her father Jairus, but not her name. Jesus knows each one, and shares his wholeness/holiness with them. And we are assured in John 10, that Jesus knows all the sheep by name, you too. He knows all the people who others may not want to know.
We will continue the sermon series; July 4 – the woman of Proverbs 31; July 11 – the unnamed woman in Mark who anoints Jesus; July 18 – the ‘Samaritan woman at the well’ or ‘woman who evangelised a Samaritan town’ in John 4; July 25 – about a woman with a name – Huldah – but whose story is hardly known, from 2 Kings 22:14-20. She is an Old Testament prophet, and very much revered in Judaism.
I believe this will be a life-giving series. God works powerfully with women, just as God does with men. We are together partners in Jesus’ kingdom. God bless you in your kingdom work this week.