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.”