Sermon

Enjoy life without fear | Ecclesiastes 9:1-12 Sermon

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A sermon on Ecclesiastes 9:1-12, part of a sermon series on Ecclesiastes preached at our church.

Death, according to The Teacher in Ecclesiastes, can make us mad. This madness can show itself in one of two ways:

  • We want to build empires, gain possessions, squeeze everything we can from this life – to distract ourselves from the reality of death;
  • We try to do all that we can to avoid death, fearing it, and trying to be as safe as we can.

Ecclesiastes says that both of these approaches are wrong. Ecclesiastes teaches us that we should accept life as a gift and live it gratefully and joyfully. Find out more in this sermon on Ecclesiastes 9:1-12.

Read the passage online via Bible Gateway.

You can see the previous sermon on Ecclesiastes here. All content from Understand the Bible about Ecclesiastes can be found under the Ecclesiastes tag.

The limitations of wisdom | Ecclesiastes 7:1-25 Sermon

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A sermon on Ecclesiastes 7:1-25, part of a sermon series on Ecclesiastes preached at our church.

Death, according to Ecclesiastes, should teach us wisdom. But here, The Teacher says we should know the limitations of wisdom. Wisdom can do many things, but it doesn’t promise an easy life, or solve every problem. Here we are challenged to think about true Christian wisdom, which does not shy away from the challenges of living in a fallen world.

Read the passage online via Bible Gateway.

You can see the previous sermon on Ecclesiastes here.

When church is meaningless | Ecclesiastes 5:1-7 Sermon

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A sermon on Ecclesiastes 5:1-7, part of a sermon series on Ecclesiastes preached at our church.

In the first few chapters of Ecclesiastes we’ve thought about how life is meaningless without God. But can that even apply to church? How can we “do” church so that it’s not meaningless?

This is one of the passages in Ecclesiastes where the writer throws us a curveball, so to speak: he helps us to understand that the worship of God is not a tickbox exercise but must be from the heart to be useful.

Read the passage online via Bible Gateway.

You can see the previous sermon on Ecclesiastes here.

No Sacred-Secular Divide | Psalm 65 Sermon

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A sermon on Psalm 65 from one of our Harvest services. In this sermon I look at the idea of the sacred-secular divide. We find from Psalm 65 that there is no such thing – everything is spiritual.

A lot of people have two boxes: a “sacred” box, where they put things like prayer, Bible reading, church, etc. Then they have a “secular” box, where they put everything else – work, school, friends, family, etc. What Psalm 65 helps us to see is that we shouldn’t have such a distinction: everything in life is spiritual.

Read the passage online here.

If you’re looking for more content on the Psalms, check out the Thought for the Week – I have recently started working my way through the Psalms, doing a short (10-minute) reflection, with a prayer, each week.

People, not stuff | Ecclesiastes 4:1-16 Sermon

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A sermon on Ecclesiastes 4:1-16, part of a sermon series on Ecclesiastes preached at our church.

What makes us happy in the end? Is it more and more stuff? In this passage from Ecclesiastes, we hear about how we need to prioritise relationships over things.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong between us in the world – whether that’s something overt like oppression or even something like envy. How can we seek to get our priorities right to enjoy our lives the way God wants us to?

Read the passage online via Bible Gateway.

You can see last week’s sermon on the blog as well.

How to make sense of life | Eccl 3:1-22 | Sermon

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A sermon on Ecclesiastes 3:1-22. This is the sermon which inspired my post yesterday about how death teaches us the meaning of life.

How do we make sense of the world when it seems so confusing? Why do bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people? How do make sense of the chaos that seems to happen to all of us?

Ecclesiastes is a book which does not dodge the big questions – in fact, it takes them square on.

Read the passage online here.

See the previous one in the series here.

How to find satisfaction? | Eccl 1:12-2:26 | Sermon

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Ecclesiastes is a book which thinks hard about where we find meaning in our lives. Where do you look for meaning in your life? Family or friends? Job? Money? Projects? Things?

The Teacher here looks at all the different things people look to for satisfaction, and concludes that there is only one real place to find satisfaction.

Read the passage online here.

See the first one in the series here.

How death should teach us to live | Eccl 1:1-11 | Sermon

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We live in a society that doesn’t want to talk about death. And yet, death should actually be our teacher. This is what the book of Ecclesiastes is all about.

This is the first part of a new series on the book of Ecclesiastes. I’ve basically followed the pattern from Living Life Backwards. We’ll be looking at it over the coming weeks up until Christmas. It’s a fascinating book which I think many Christians don’t spend very much time studying – so I hope we’ll all learn something new.

Grace vs Religion | Titus 3 | Sermon

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What’s the difference between Christianity and other religions? At the end of the day it comes down to grace. This is an absolutely fundamental thing to grasp about Christianity, and Titus 3 is all about grace.

In this sermon, instead of working our way through Titus chapter three a verse at a time, instead we look at how it contrasts religion and grace. The two things are not compatible and they lead to very different results. This is the same whether the religion in question is a secular religion, like the current cultural “woke” phenomenon, or whether it’s an actual religion. Sadly you find it in churches as well, where it is called Pharisaism.

Read the passage online via Bible Gateway.

If you like this, you might like other posts about Titus or other sermons.