Sermons

Being Christian and God’s Law

This week at church we finished up a two week series with John Woodhouse, on ‘The Christian and God’s Law’. These two talks were outstanding, have a listen if you want.

Being Christian and God’s Law: Part 1 // Matthew 5:17-20

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (ESV)

Being Christian and God’s Law: Part 2 // Romans 6:15-23

15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (ESV)

Saying goodbye

One of the most difficult things about being at bible college is also being a student minister. Ok, not the actual job of being a student minister, that is great. I’m talking about the reality of moving around a couple of different churches over your time at college.

I am planing on being at college for four years, which means, being at roughly three different churches over that time. The breakdown then ends up being, two churches for one year and one church for two years.

Recently Kirsty and I made the difficult decision to finish up were we have been serving for this year, St Ives Family Church. It was a hard decision. But it is one that brings with it lots of excitement as we think about being able to meet with a new church.

We have just done a whole heap of our ‘last things’. A few weeks ago we had our last bible study leaders lunch, we have both had our last bible studies (me with the mens group, and Kirsty with her mixed bible study) and this coming week we are having our last Sunday morning.

One of the highlights of these last things was the opportunity for me to preach my last sermon, which happened last Sunday. I preached on Love from 1 Corinthians 13. I encouraged them to continue to be a church that continues to, a) Love each other and b) Love their community.

Family church has been a church that has shown so much love to Kirsty and I. We love this church. Leaving is hard.

p.s my sermon is below if you want to listen to it. note: my mic dies around the 6 minute mark, but it gets replaced with a much better one after then. I promise.

p.p.s as of the end of January I will be working as a student minister at the Cammeray site of Naremburn Cammeray Anglican Church. We are really looking forward to it!

1 Timothy 2:1-7 – Edwin Ngubane

Last weekend at church we had the pleasure of having a brother from Africa come and preach. His name is Edwin Ngubane, and he is a bishop in the Anglican Church in South Africa.

He has a truly amazing life story, and an even more amazing story of how he came to believe in Christ. You can learn more about him in this video.

From ancestors to Jesus from Sydneyanglicans.net on Vimeo.

He preached the second sermon in our series on prayer from Paul’s first letter to Timothy, the specific section was chapter 2, verses 1 to 7. He was challenging us to think about how, People in the household of God, should act. I found it to be a really helpful sermon, so I thought I would share it.

He also challenged Kirsty and I to think about going to work with him in ministry to students in South Africa. He told me that Moore really should set up an exchange program with GWC. Cheeky.

Video: Sermon Jam, John Piper style.

I love the work that John Piper has done for the christian community all over the world. His clarity and insight into the scriptures have helped countless generations of Jesus’ followers love and follow Christ more earnestly.

Not to mention his generosity in setting up Desiring God, who give alot of resources away for absolutely nothing. Check them out.

John is coming to speak in Sydney over the next couple of months, and I’m really looking forward to it.

But before he gets here, check out this video.

Jesus’ Crucifixion | Matthew 27:27-44

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been doing a little bit of preaching at our church. Most recently I did a sermon on Matthew 27:27-44 about Jesus’ Crucifixion. I’ve had a few people ask me where they can go to listen to it. Well you can just click below because I’ve worked out how to embed files into my webpage from a program called SoundCloud. Winner. If you don’t want to listen to it I’m not bothered, I wont even be offended.

Introducing – Albert Midlane

For the last 2 weeks I have had the privilege of preaching to the people at our church. I’ve loved doing back to back sermons over two weeks, it has given me a rare opportunity as a student minister to prepare two sermons in short succession. Over the two weeks, I worked through Matthew 27, as part of a wider series on the last 24 hours of Jesus life. A series we are doing specifically in the run up to easter.

Matthew 27 can be summed up pretty well by a poem that I discovered by a dude called Albert Midlane. He lived from 1825 to 1909. He wrote heaps of good stuff over the course of his life. But this short verse caught my attention as I was preparing.

Himself He could not save,
He on the cross must die,
Or mercy cannot come
To ruined sinners nigh;
Yes, Christ the Son of God must bleed,
That sinners might from sin be freed.

My main job in preaching these two weeks was to make sense of what Jesus was going to the cross to do, and why he didn’t just pull out and save himself when the beatings and the verbal abuse got too hard. This poem helped me articulate that well.

One year and Isaiah

Yesterday I had the privilege of preaching for the second time at our church, St Ives Family Church. My text was Isaiah 6. In my preparation I was struck by the picture of how big and mighty God is, and how, even in his mightiness he chose to love us by sending the Lord Jesus to earth to die and rise again.

Yesterday was great for another reason also, Kirsty and I celebrated our first year of marriage. We can’t believe how quickly a year has gone. A year in which I have given up work to study full time, Kirsty has started full time work, we have moved house, twice, and also now changed churches.

Kirsty and I met each other while we were both doing ministry together at a Beach Mission in Kiama, NSW. So it was very cool to be able to minister to others on our wedding anniversary, something that we are both committed too.

Our first year of marriage has been a great one, if this past year has taken us though so many things, we can’t even imagine what the next 50 might look like.

tim stevens