Flooding Creek (FCCC)

Intro Two options. Two ways to live. Two Mountains For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. Recipients of a spiritual kingdom For…

Intro Trees grown without wind are weak. Trees without wind collapse under their own weight, Wind causes thicker trunks, core strength, deeper roots and grow talkler. Everything about trees that make them better is caused by the stress of the wind. So if you ahte your tree, keep it out of the wind. It…

Intro End of the Hall of Faith Faith is active - these people lived it out and acted on the basis of God’s Word. But their faith was pointing somewhere - to a Hope that bouyed them along even when they suffered greatly. Have Faith in the midst of Suffering Women received back their dead by resurrection.…

Introduction Let me tell you a story. This is a story that has been pieced together by reading letters from two Russian teenagers in 1960s Soviet Russia. Their names are Maria and Varia The two Russian teenagers had once been schoolmates in a Communist boarding school. Varia, a member of the Communist…

Intro A reminder about the nature of our Christian faith: But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation.…

Intro What kind of faith are we talking about? There are a few figures who tower over the OT, namely Moses & David. We’ve talked about Moses in past weeks, but today we’re looking at David. Confusingly, it’s David before Samuel. As God likes to do, he subverts expectations by working in a through David,…

Intro Hall of Faith - Faith is for the preservation of our souls Faith is assurance - because it is based on the word of God Faith leads to God’s commendation! We have been making our way through many examples of believers expressing faith down through salvation history. Many of these examples are not…

Intro Death is inescapable Most of us start learning this as children. - pets, relatives, etc. Once the dog dies, they never come back. But then as we age it becomes more and more confronting - we notice our parents are staring to look a bit whethered, they’re not as active as they used to be. We start…

Intro We have many heroes of the faith, and many of them are deeply flawed characters, with awful backstories. Time and again the Bible gives us examples of outsiders and exiles and the lowly who are rescued by the Lord and brought into his people. Humanly speaking they’re the kind of people that we…

Intro We’re in the hall of faith - taking note of people from across the Bible who show us what it looks like to live by faith. Today we’re looking at the life of Moses - plus a little extra. Moses life gets a lot of airtime, because he led the peopl of Israel through one of their most important national…

Story of Joseph Jacob desired to marry Rachel, but he was tricked into marrying Rachel’s sister Leah first. As consolation to Leah (being basically an unwanted bride), God gave her a bunch of children before Rachel. There was also a bunch of shinanigans with surrogate mothers that i’m not going to get…

Intro We live in a community of all kinds of different people. And we need all kinds of different people. It starts with the distiction between the sexes - male/female but we extend from there. Our communities need differences - We need farmers, farmers for meats and for plants. We need trademen - carepenters,…

Intro We act on promises for the future: If I do these courses I will receive my certification If I work for you, you will pay me If I marry you, you’ll remain faithful Now sometimes these promises are upheld, but sometimes they are not. Sometimes the school moves the goalposts on you or goes belly up,…

Intro We are not those who shrink back from God and are destroyed, but those who have faith and preserve our souls. So what is faith? What does it look like? Well it’s not blind hope, i can tell you that much straight up. This si not the soppy “just gotta have faith” of a poorly written movie. This is…

Intro Every so often we run into passages that seem to be at odds with something that we read in another part of the Bible. This is one of those passages. The careful reader will have come across several places where we are very clearly told that God’s people, his chosen people, his special people, will…

Intro We have started to make our way through the hall of faith. There’s good stuff in there. But! We missed a bit from where we left off in Hebrews 10 last year. Lets go back! I knew that these two passages required some time and attention, so I put it off till I could do a halfway-decent job of teaching…

Intro What is your natural tendancy when it comes to the Chrristian life? Grace, grace grace, to the exclusion of truth and law? (Antinomian) Work, work, work your way into God’s good books? (legalist) Knowledge, understanding and theology? Jesus is my invisible boyfriend? As we go into the new year…

Intro Comforting sights? The proper response to the incarnation of the messiah is praise & celebration Mary’s Song, Elizabeth’s exaltation Zechariahs Prophesy Angel’s song Magi’s gifts & worship Today: Simeon’s Song and The coming of the messiah was long anticipated, and in God’s plan he had kept a couple…

Intro We looked at Mary’s song, and now we’re looking at the Angel’s song. The angels, Mary, Zechariiah the preist, simeon and anna, they all show us that the proper response to the incarnation of God the Son is to praise and celebration. That’s why Christimas is endorsed, whether or not Jesus was born…

Intro Today’s passage starts, not in Luke 1 as we read but rather much, much earlier. To understand the context, we must go back, back, past the Prophet Malachi, past Isaiah, past king David and even past the budding nation of Israel to two people hanging out in a garden with God. As you well know, these…

Intro Where do you find comfort when the going gets tough? Or more to the point, how do you find comfort when it’s clear that God is directly causing your suffering? We’re entering into a section of Isaiah that does just that, speaking to a people who are going to suffer the punishment of God for their…

Intro 2700ish years ago Narratives about events in Judah (southern kingdom) Ch 40 gets back into the classic prophetic literature. Ch 36-39 are this story block in the middle of Isaiah that sets the backdrop for the whole book. These two little stories Sickness, Prayer & Deliverance Around the same time…

Intro Let me tell you a story. A Story that was prophesied. A Story of war and battle, of death and victory. Of danger and deliverance. This is the story of King Hezekiah and Jerusalem facing the Assyrian horde. Harried and oppressed they faced an army of vast proportions, a military threat that had…

Intro Isaiah, ancient book of prophecy 2700 years ago, 700 years before Jesus lived. I’ll explain why that’s important soon. The Desert Rejoices ! A breath of fresh air! Compare with the end of 34 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; Recreation…

Exegetical Purpose: Jesus writes to encourage, chastise and warn his churches as representatives of the Church universal. Homiletic Purpose: To encourage, chastise and warn the church at Flooding Creek. Introduction Have you ever had an employee review? You know, maybe when your probation ends or some…

Intro Laura and I have quite distinct tastes in movies. We fit the stereotype - where she is much more likely to pick a “chick-flick” and I’m going to pick a war movie or other action flick. It so happened that Laura & I were talking about the Trojan war this week, and I convinced Laura to try and watch…

Intro Last “woe” aka “ah!” Zion’s Treasure (v1-6) These 6 woes have all been in the context of a coming Assyrian force. Assyria had taken the 10 tribes of Israel in the north, and then when a new king took the throne, he decided to come back for more. Sennacherib wanted to come down and take Judah by…

Intro How do you think about the future? How do you approach it? Do you have a fundamentally negative view about what may happen? Or do you have high hopes for a better future? Our passage today was to ancient Judah and it gave them a balanced view of what was ahead of them - that there would be judgement…

Intro The spiritual world is real. The best explanation is that it’s probably like another dimension - a higher plane or manner of existing that is hard for our minds to comprehend. But it does exist, and it is real, and there are persons who live there. We are body & spirit, but in our present state…

Intro Alot of Is 30 would be familiar ground if you have been with us through the last couple chapters. You can go listen to them if you want to catch up later. But to give you the brief overview: We’re in the middle of 6 woes Alot of this is judgment announced on God’s people for their rebellion, for…

Intro Australia is vulnerable. I dunno if you know anything about our country’s ability to defend ourselves. I might scare you a bit, but I promise this is relevant. Australia can’t defend ourselves. We don’t have the equipment or the numbers to defend our nation properly. If a large force from the north…

Story: Polycarp Ploycarp of Smyrna was a Disciple of the Apostle John. He was a very holy man, and he lived a long life. He would pray continually and for all people. He was a leader of the Church, and even as an old man, he was considered a threat to Rome. Christians would not sacrtifice to the gods,…

Intro This is your life! This is about you. I’m not going to sit here and moralise you, speaking about the importance of living a good life and being kind to people. That is important, but it’s not the most important thing i could tell you. In a world where there seems to be ever shifting boundaries,…

Intro Isaiah Name means Yahweh is Salvation Prophesied “740 b.c., and he lived long enough to record the death of Sennacherib (37:38), datable to 681”, so he was prophesying while the northern 10 tribes were defeated and dispersed by Assyria. He pronounced the judgement of God against all Israel, warning…

Intro Reminder about Isaiah Yahweh is Salvation Prophesied “740 b.c., and he lived long enough to record the death of Sennacherib (37:38), datable to 681”, so he was prophesying while the northern 10 tribes were defeated and dispersed by Assyria. He pronounced the judgement of God against all Israel,…

Intro Do you know the story of “A Christmas Carol”? Written by Charles Dickens. Its been made into a move and other adaptations. One of the key plot devices is that the main character, sour and miserly Ebeneezer Scrooge, is visited throughout a Christmas Eve and given visions of the past present and…

( Matt 6:7-15 ) Have you ever seen these religious? prayer systems Tibetan Prayer Flags & Prayer wheels –for karma’s sake Introduction “By hanging flags in high places the Lung ta will carry the blessings depicted on the flags to all beings. As wind passes over the surface of the flags, which are sensitive…

Intro The context of new Christians trying to understand how the Old Testament connects with the New. How does the coming of Jesus affect how a faithful Jew was to obey God? Does it mean keeping the food laws? No. Circumsicion? No. What about temple sacrifices? Well our passage today is part of a longer…

Intro There’s no such thing as a free lunch the saying goes. And if you’re not paying, somone else is paying. The is a cost to everything. In religion one of the questions we must deal with is what payments are to be rendered to the gods, People have tried various ways to try and pay the gods, with sacrifices…

Introduction I have one thing to warn you of this morning: Don’t be complacent ! It’s pretty simple. This message from Jeremiah is a warning to us. A reminder. A moment to stop and think about what you’re doing, think about the life you live, think about the things you love, think about the people you…

Intro We don’t do all the smells and bells and incense and sacrifices and offerings of the Old Testament. You might read through your Leviticus and other Torah books, and you’ll say “we don’t do any of this stuff when the local church gathers for corporate worship” So what was the point of it? Why was…