Sermons

From time to time I put sermons I give up here. Not because I think they are particularly good, even less that they are model sermons. I can't even guarantee that I agree with everything I said then - I am (of course) learning all the time. But someone may be interested.

You can use the filters below to restrict which sermons you see. Sermons will be sorted newest first, which means that they appear in reverse order from that in which they were delivered.

1 John 4:7-21 Amazing Love

Sun, 23/06/2013 - 10:10 -- James Oakley

1 John chapter 4 is one of the classic passages in the Bible on God’s love.

Verse 8: Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. Verse 16: So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

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1 John 3:19-4:6 Genuine Trust in Genuine Teaching

Sun, 16/06/2013 - 10:10 -- James Oakley

If you’ve been with us on our journey through 1 John, you’ll know that John wrote to some insecure Christians. Am I really a Christian? They’d recently had a split in their church. A group had broken away and started their own thing. They looked down their noses at the ordinary Christians. Am I somehow second class? Where do I stand with God?

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1 John 3:4-18 Reassurance: Living and Loving

Sun, 09/06/2013 - 10:10 -- James Oakley

We all need reassuring that God loves us. Even the most confident person can start to wonder. Am I really in God’s family? What does God think of me?

Sometimes other people make these doubts bigger in our heads. If you meet Christians who are more mature than you. More knowledgeable than you. They don’t mean to make you doubt. But you somehow suspect they must be looking down their noses at you

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1 John 2:28-3:3 Back to the Future

Sun, 26/05/2013 - 10:30 -- James Oakley

One film I’ve enjoyed is Back to the Future. If only you could go back in time. Then you’d know when and where lightening would strike. You’d know who is going to get shot by terrorists in the future. You could warn them. If you came from the future, you’d know the future. And if you knew the future, you’d make the most of the present.

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1 John 2:18-27 Church Splits: Not Falling Down the Hole

Sun, 19/05/2013 - 10:30 -- James Oakley

Today we’re going to be thinking about how to avoid falling down a hole.

Here’s what I mean. One of the things that puts many people off Christianity are the tragic splits in the history of the church. The East split from the West in the 11th Century. The Protestant reformation was in the 16th, the Episcopal Presbyterian split in the 17th century, and the Methodist-Anglican one in the 18th century. And there have been many more besides.

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1 John 2:15-17 The World's Love

Sun, 12/05/2013 - 10:30 -- James Oakley

Our culture is all about enjoying the good things in life. And holding out before us things we don’t have so that we wish we had them. Showing us how beautiful that beach resort is, how shiny that car is, how snazzy that new phone is. Do you remember the queues at the Apple Store in London when they launched their first iPhone?

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1 John 2:7-14 An Old New Command

Sun, 28/04/2013 - 10:30 -- James Oakley

The world we live in can be a very dark place to be. One of the things that makes it so is when people are selfish. Think only of themselves. When someone scratches your car in a car park, but doesn’t bother to leave a phone number. When you’re queuing to buy 6 items at the checkout with twins in tow, and someone else races to get to the belt first with their £200 trolley-full. Selfishness. Lovelessness.

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1 John 1:5-2:6 Do my mistakes affect my relationship with God

Sun, 21/04/2013 - 10:30 -- James Oakley

I don’t know about you, but I have one nagging doubt about God. Do the wrong things that I’ve done during the course of my life mean that God does not love me in the way he would otherwise? In short – are my past mistakes really forgiven? Does God really love me? Or have I blotted my copybook with an indelible splodge or fifty?

Of course we want the answer to be “no”, don’t we? Does God love me less because of my mistakes? No.

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1 John 1:1-14 Life that can be touched

Sun, 14/04/2013 - 10:30 -- James Oakley

As a Christian, do you ever find yourself wondering if you’ve backed the right horse? I do.

We’re so aware these days of all the world’s religions. Are we Christians by an accident of our birth, brought up in a Christian country or in a Christian home? Is the Christian faith better than any of the alternatives? Does it actually put us into contact with the real God? Or is it a phoney – a bit like a dodgy spiritualist who makes us feel better by pressing the right buttons but it’s all one big con? Does following Jesus actually do us any good at all?

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Genesis 4 Can you really believe what the Bible says about ... evil?

Sun, 17/03/2013 - 10:30 -- James Oakley

“It’s not fair”.

That’s how it feels so often.

So many of the difficulties in life are not problems of our own making. Character traits, habits, situations that we’ve inherited from our upbringing, from our parents, from the neighbours we just happen to have, from our employers, from the general economic downturn. All kinds of difficulties happen to us, and it’s left to us to cope with the situation we’ve inherited.

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