CHRIST SANCTUARY. - 25 AUGUST 2024

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Sloth / to David Attenborough / the sloth it’s a pointy-nosed animal hanging upside down from the branch of a tree / by its two toes the slowest moving mammal / in the rain-forest of South America

But that’s not the sloth / we’re talking about this morning

We’re talking about one of the seven deadly sins
Sloth is a little known sin / probably the least-known of the seven

We see the word “sloth” / we mostly think of laziness
And yes / the Bible does have some strong words about laziness
In fact / it has its own word for a sloth / a rather quaint word
The Bible calls a sloth “a sluggard” / Proverbs 6:6
“Go to the ant / you sluggard / consider its ways and be wise!
And Paul / uses some stern words to warn us about laziness

But the word “sloth” / means more than just laziness

GREED - The Seven Deadly Sins

 

CHRIST SANCTUARY - 7th July 20234

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When you hear the names Jeff Bezos / Mark Zuckerberg / Bill Gates
you hear the sound of money ringing on the till

These are the names of some the riches people on Forbes List

Currently Elon Musk is the top dog sitting on that list at $58 Billion

Now there are almost 200 countries whose Gross National Product
is less than $58 Billion / This means that these rich people
have more money than almost 200 nations / in an entire year

Bill Gates is 68 / If he lives for another 20 years
and he wants to spend all his money before he dies
he would have to spend $2.9 Billion a year
- that’s $7,900,000 every day / or $331,000 per hour

Now / you might not feel so guilty because you think you’re far
from that kind of money but according to the Global Rich List
if you make $70,000 per year you’re in the richest 2.4% of the global population

 

                               CHRIST SANCTUARY    –     9th June 2024            
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If there is one sin / of the Seven we don’t take seriously / it’s gluttony
Conservative Christians make a fuss about homosexuality
but when it comes to gluttony / everyone gets a free pass 
You’ll never see Christians holding up signs saying 
“God Hates Gluttons” / outside all those steakhouses  
It’s true isn’t it / that gluttony has become an acceptable “lifestyle sin”
Ours is a culture of “Supersized” portions 
and we’ve come to accept it as normal 

The Webster’s Dictionary defines a glutton as “one given habitually 
to greedy and voracious / eating and drinking” 
“having a huge appetite / ravenous / insatiable”

 

                                             CHRIST SANCTUARY       21 April 2024

I’ll be preaching seven sermons on the Seven Deadly Sins spread over the year finishing with the last one on the 7th December. If it is true that “sin has a thousand faces” the face of sin  we’re most familiar with are what’s called Seven Deadly Sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride.

These seven made it to the hit-list not because they were  the most gruesome but because they were doorway sins; they were sins through which other sins sneak through. The seven deadly sins were catalogued by Thomas Aquinas  a mediaeval theologian and I will be preaching them in the order Dante has it in his Inferno.

 

                    Jonah 4:1-11 The Idolatrous Prophet 30th May 2021

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If you and I were writing the book of Jonah there wouldn’t be a chapter 4

A million people repented! What more is there to say!

We would have expected the book to have ended at 3:10

Which says “When God saw how they turned from their evil way

God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them

Perhaps, at most, if you must have a Jonah 3:11

– there’s no such verse in the Bible of course but if you must have that

you could have: “And Jonah sailed back to his homeland rejoicing”

But that’s not the case / We do have a Jonah chapter 4

 

                Jonah 3:1-10 – God’s Persistent Grace – 23rd May 2021

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We’ve been following Jonah through chapters 1 and 2

We remember how when the Lord commanded him to go to Nineveh

Jonah fled to the opposite direction

This evening we see him / he’s wet / he’s slime-covered

skin bleached by the gastric juice of the fish / But he’s chastened / he’s repented

And the Lord recommisions him:

 

            Jonah 1:17-2:10 Running Into God – 25th April 2021

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In this short chapter we see the experience of Jonah’s spiritual decline as well as his spiritual

renewal. His spiritual decline began when he turned his heart away deliberately / defiantly away from

the Word of God / Remember when the Word of God came to him / he rose and fled from it /

And as it is always the case his turning away from the Word of God led him to turn away from

the presence of God

 

Jonah 1:1-16 – Running from God – 18th April 2021

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This is a fascinating book that we’re coming to / If you’ve been raised in a Christian family you

would have been familiar with this story since childhood.

Most people are obsessed and fixated on the fish they see little else in the story. Liberals deny

its historicity / Skeptics like Voltaire took special delight in scoffing at its improbability. G.

Campbell Morgan rightly said: “Men have been looking so hard at the great fish that they have

failed to see the great God.”

The Sovereignty of God

                                   Christ Sanctuary - 31st December 2023

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When Dr J.I. Packer was asked which teaching in the Bible Christians are most prone to neglect, he said: “I don’t think enough Christians believe deeply enough in the sovereignty of God. We say we believe it / but we still live our lives as if everything depended on us rather than on him”

Sproul / “Most Christians salute the sovereignty of God but believe in the sovereignty of man”

 

                                            CHRIST SANCTUARY  -     25 September 2022

In His last few hours on earth / our Lord said a few words / that are
of tremendous importance / one of which is His impending glory 

And I want to approach the subject in a different way than I normally do

First / I want for us to try to grasp the concept of glory 

Then I want to explore the reasons why God desires to be praised

Finally I want us to see the glory of Christ / in the light of the cross  

 

                                                   CHRIST SANCTUARY  -  18 JUNE 2023

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Moses / is the writer of this psalm 

He was at that time 80 

And by then he had became familiar with the fragility of life

In a span of 40 years he watched 605,550 people die
that translates to about 15,000 people a year

this means that Moses was conducting 41 funerals a day

But this figure applies to men only
When you throw women and children into the mix
Moses was conducting about 87 funerals a day

That’s not the exact number every single day 

On some days / thousands were killed 

because of their rebellion and sin / Num. 16:49; 25:9

OT scholar Daniel Block / for 38 yrs Moses lived in “a walking mortuary”

He says: “The dominant sound as the people walked in the desert

was not the sound of the bleating of the sheep 

or that of crying babies / It was the death wail”

 

                               Christ Sanctuary – 12th November 2023 
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We come now / to what must easily be the most unpopular of attributes
Christians generally shy away from talking about the wrath of God

J.I. Packer in his book Knowing God says:
“The subject of divine wrath has become taboo in modern society
and Christians by and large have accepted the taboo
and conditioned themselves never to raise the matter”

C. H. Dodd / one time professor of Divinity at Cambridge
held the view that the wrath of God is an archaic outdated idea

But why do so many Christians shy away from affirming God’s wrath?
Many do so because they equate the emotion of anger with moral failure

 

The Webster’s dictionary defines the word “righteous” as
“doing that which is right” / “just” / “equitable”
“free from wrong / guilt / or sin”

The thesaurus give you such words as:
blameless / full of integrity / irreproachable / pure-hearted / unbiased
reputable / truehearted / uncorrupted / upright / undeviating
impartial /  unimpeachable

                                         CHRIST SANCTUARY                8th August 2010  

                                    _______________________________________________  

The Trustworthiness of God – Andrew Lim – Psalm 56  –  8 August 2010

Life is hard
None of us is spared / from the hardships of life
We all go through pain

The plain fact is life is not easy
And on a larger scale / we live in a world that’s constantly bombarded
by war / terrorism / earthquakes / famine / racial injustice
– then / there’s the constant threat
of nuclear technology falling into irresponsible hands

      The Mercy of God

                                                    Christ Sanctuary  -  24th September 2023      

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Mercy! / Just exactly what is mercy?

Mercy would be a meaningless idea 

if we weren’t guilty of wrongdoing / and deserving punishment

Mercy is offered only where there is guilt / mercy presupposes guilt

If you didn’t break any law / you wouldn’t need mercy

If you did / mercy might spare you from what justice demands

In the law court / when a trial draws to a close

* the jury returns an unanimous guilty verdict
* the judge makes the conviction

And in a few weeks time / the court meets again
* that is when the sentencing is handed down

Now / it is at the sentencing / that mercy is begged for
The defence advocate says something like
“We would like to throw ourselves on the mercy of the court
Your honour / My client has a wife and five children
This is his first offence / We beg for mercy”

 

                             Christ Sanctuary  13 August 2023 

The holiness of God is one of the most neglected attributes of God         There seems to be a certain measure of hesitation / or reluctance

            to delve deeper / into what the holiness of God means 

But if we don’t understand the holiness of God several problems arise

* we will have a deficient view of Who God is

* we will be desensitized / to the decadence of sin

* we will have little or no motivation for repentance

* we won’t be growing Christlikeness in our life

won’t attain to spiritual maturity

It’s most vital / that we understand God’s holiness

 

                                                        Christ Sanctuary - 1st August 2010

Dr. Bruce Waltke, a Reformed evangelical professor of Old Testament and Hebrew, at one time spoke on the subject / “What Does God Require” which as you know is a text taken from Micah 6:8

It was a very fine exposition and after his talk was over he gave opportunity for questions

One of the questions from the floor / was for an explanation concerned certain particular Hebrew words used in the original text of Micah 6. Soon as he heard the question / Dr. Waltke tipped his head back closed his eyes / and prepared to answer

 

      John 18:33-38   -  15th October 2023       

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We’ve been exploring the attributes of God 

And this morning / we’re looking at the truthfulness of God

In our passage we have an encounter between two men / Jesus and Pilate

We must not miss out on the sobriety / the gravity of this encounter

If you were standing there in the same room you might feel like fainting

You could cut the tension with a knife / Pilate is powerful 

and he is also ruthless / two deadly traits when combined

and our Lord stands on the very edge of His earthly existence 

But / even when his own life hangs on a thread
Jesus treats Pilate as a soul who needs light and truth

        He is more concerned with Pilate’s destiny / than that of His own

 

     The Omnipresence of God

Christ Sanctuary - 23 July 2023

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Psalm 139 expresses a number of the attributes of God but one of the most prominent ones / is the omnipresence of God

        the teaching that God is everywhere present

David / the writer of this psalm / has had numerous first-hand experiences
of the presence of God in his life 

in his many close encounters with danger and possible death

So he’s able to talk about it in a way you and I are not able to naturally

  The Immutability of God 

No one knows who wrote this psalm

It has variously been attributed to Daniel to Jeremiah to Nehemiah
or to some of the other prophets during the time of the captivity

The psalmist is afflicted / he’s pouring out his lament before God

In the first 11 verses / he tells us that he’s been brutally afflicted:

v.3 / his days pass away like smoke / his bones burn like a furnace

v.4 / his heart is struck down / it has withered;

   v.4 / he’s not eating        

v.5 / his bones cling to his flesh

v.8 / his enemies taunt him and he is cursed 

v.9 / he eats ashes like bread

v.10 / he feels like God has taken him up and thrown him down