Seven Deadly Sins – Greed Part 1
One of the audiobooks I listened to last year was the book Affluenza How overconsumption is killing us and how to fight back. Here is how one reviewer summarizes the problem being addressed in this book, ‘When was the last time you bought something? Probably today, or at least in the last couple of days. But here’s a better question: when was the last time you bought something you didn’t really need? Let’s face it, most of us buy non-essential items fairly regularly. In fact, the average American spends about $18,000 a year on nonessentials. Ouch. Why do we...
Read More
Jeremiah 2:1-3:25 Sin and Forgiveness
We live in the age of deconstruction, where long understood concepts and ideas are being redefined and overturned. Marriage, justice, a man, a woman, truth, beauty, goodness, these were all once understood. Two of the great truths that have fallen on hard times are the truths of sin and forgiveness. In a world of no absolutes and personalized truth there can be no one definition for sin. Sin which was once an act against God has been trivialized and misappropriated to speak of acts against nature, self, and other things that are not God. With sin redefined human beings...
Read More
Seven Deadly Sins – Drunkenness
1 in every 5 NZ adults has a hazardous drinking pattern. ‘Note: ‘Hazardous drinking’ refers to an established alcohol drinking pattern that carries a risk of harming the drinker’s physical or mental health or having harmful social effects on the drinker or others. It is determined by using the World Health Organization’s AUDIT checklist – a score of 8 or more indicates hazardous drinking.’ 1 1 in 3 between the ages of 18-24 drinking in a dangerous way. 1 in 3 men and 1 in 5 women in this age range will binge drink once a week. This is...
Read More
Colossians 2 20-23
Legalism, one of our best dressed but most dangerous sins. It is one of the two paths to hell, one is antinomianism/law breaking; the other is legalism. Our relationship with law is a very uneasy one. As human beings we are born in Adam, we are born into a covenant of works. Adam was put under probation and under law, by obeying the law of God He could have won for Himself and the human race the right of access to the tree of life and God’s Sabbath Rest. Instead He condemned instead of saving us, and we were...
Read More
Envy- Part 2- Proverbs 24:19-20
The bible often surprises us when it addresses our sin. We often dress it down, underestimate it, and make out that it is a failing of the weak. The Bible exposes each one of us to be a sinner, and of a dark and perverse kind. Take envy, when we think of envy we think it is a manageable and small sin, something that you would find among the immature on the playground or in the nursery where we think of children fighting over a toy. But when the Bible talks about envy it reveals that we all have...
Read More
Luke 22:47-53: Betrayal and Arrest
OUTLINE Judas’s kiss Peter’s zeal Jesus’s rebuke INTRODUCTION We come to the story of the greatest betrayal in history, the betrayal of Judas. Judas’s act was so wicked that his name is now a proverb, when someone betrays us we call them a ‘Judas’. Despite this section describing the worst act a human being has ever done against the Savior, we are not viewing Christ as a victim but as the God appointed Suffering Savior. Someone has asked the question: if Christ only needed to die for our sins, why then did He have to be arrested, tried, tortured...
Read More
Malachi 4:1-6: The Great and Awesome Day of the LORD
OUTLINE The end of all things Living in light of the end The prelude to the end INTRODUCTION If you were writing the Bible, how would you end the OT? What would you want to say right here? The OT ends the same way the NT does looking ahead to the great and awesome day of the Lord. Last week we looked at the faithless accusations of those who expected blessings upon their heartless religion, and who accused God of injustice because the evil prospered while the heartless religious languished. Chapter 3 ended with a promise, v18, ‘Then once...
Read More
Luke 20v9-18 The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Or the Parable of the Murder of the Owner’s Son)
OUTLINE A history of past hard-heartedness A revealing of present priorities A prophecy of future judgement INTRODUCTION We come to the last full parable in Luke’s gospel. There are other parables that are told between now and the crucifixion that the other gospels record like the parable of the virgins and the sheep and the goats. But this is the last parable that Luke tells, and this is for a reason. This parable will be known to us as the parable of the wicked tenants, but I love what one of the commentators calls it: The Parable of the...
Read More
Malachi 3:6-12: Robbing God
OUTLINE Turning Tithing Testing INTRODUCTION ‘The bible leaves no question about it. God’s people are supposed to be rich…. God’s people are to be rich—financially wealthy and prosperous in every possible way, with plenty of money.’1 That is a quote from Kenneth Copeland. The prosperity gospel is a modern error that abuses many parts of the Bible, the portion before us is one of the most abused portions of the Bible by the prosperity gospel. The teaching on God’s character and grace and our responsibility to repent and to honor Him is overshadowed by a greed that seeks to...
Read More
Malachi 2:17-3:5: Theodicy
OUTLINE The accusation The answer INTRODUCTION Sin creates reversals. Marriage as a relationship where we are to serve each other gets distorted into a relationship where we serve ourselves. God’s gifts in creation which are given to us that we might serve Him with them, get turned into gods that we serve as idols. The anger we are given to reflect God’s own passionate hatred of sin gets weaponized and turned against those we love. Another reversal exists in the text before us, the guilty accused make accusations of injustice against the holy Judge. In other words what we...
Read More
Malachi 2:13-16: Divorce: Part One
Introduction Marriage in NZ is under attack. 2020 saw some of the lowest amounts of marriages in NZ recent history. There were only 16 380 marriages.1 The statisticians add a further 403 same sex marriages and civil unions, but as Christians who have a biblical view of marriage, we cannot admit the same sex unions are marriage, it cannot be a marriage in God’s eyes unless it is between one natural man and one natural woman. Likewise civil unions are legal realities that defy being defined by the Bible, they refuse to define themselves as a marriage and...
Read More
Malachi 2:10-12: Unequally Yoked
OUTLINE The sin in Israel The sin in the Bible The sin in our experience INTRODUCTION Marriage is an institution created by God and as sinners we reject God’s institutions and sin against them just as we sin against God. In the endless creativity of our sinfulness there are many sins against God’s institution of marriage. We sin against marriage when we do not keep sex for marriage, not seeing it as a seal of the covenant bond, a picture of our union with Christ, an expression of committed love, and the means of bringing children into the protected...
Read More
Malachi 1:6-14 The Worship God Hates
OUTLINE Dishonoring worship Minimalistic worship Lukewarm worship Compromised worship INTRODUCTION How much worship does God deserve? How much honor, reverence, fear, awe, love, obedience, and sacrifice? The truth is we can never worship, honor or revere God too much. If I as a finite creature gave every moment of time to give a constant flow of heartfelt praise, it would never be enough. If every person in all of creation worshipped God for all eternity, even this finite choir could not give God’s infinite majesty the glory it is due. Enter sin into that equation where we worship as...
Read More
Luke 18:9-14: The Pharisee and the Tax Collector
INTRODUCTION Jeremiah 17:9 says of our hearts, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?’ Our hearts are self-deceiving, in other words we lie to ourselves. We deceive ourselves about many things but two stand out in our text today. We lie to ourselves about our own goodness; and we lie to ourselves about others sinfulness. We come another famous parable of Christ in Luke 18:9-14, the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. Jesus has been speaking about how we ought to persevere in prayer, this parable too is about prayer....
Read More
Malachi 1:1-5: Doubting the Love of God
INTRODUCTION The Puritan Samuel Rutherford, in a letter to a man who doubted whether he was a Christian wrote this: ‘We being born in atheism, and bairns (children) of the house we are come of, it is no new thing, my dear brother, for us to be under jealousies and mistakes about the love of God.’1 Having atheist hearts that are in disposition contrary to God we call God a liar instead of believing He cannot lie; we believe God vacillates and changes instead of believing that He cannot change; we believe that God is against us when He...
Read More
Luke 15:11-32: The Parable of the Two Lost Sons
The parable of the prodigal son is probably the most famous parable in the gospels. But I think like many that it has been misnamed. Some have thought to call it the parable of the Prodigal Father, this is because the word prodigal means ‘spendthrift’ and the Father who represents God and His restoring grace is so generous. But I think this is a bad title as ‘prodigal’ has many bad connotations. Some have thought to call it the Parable of the Older Brother, this is a good title which is better than the parable of the prodigal son...
Read More