Sermons / Talks

Recent Sermons

• Sunday, 2 February 2025

  I Believe in the Holy Spirit

  from Bernard Gabbott

  Amongst all the striking things of The Apostles’ Creed is this: when we come to the final ‘I believe’, we are revealing what time we live in. What I mean is this… the nature of God is always present in His word—He is always Trinitarian… but the fullness of the revelation of His nature is only reached once Christ comes in the flesh, and sin is dealt with. At this point, we can look back over the whole word of God, and see the Holy Spirit lurking everywhere. But now, we have the Holy Spirit dwelling with us, and we know that the Spirit is God! And now we experience, across all of God’s mob, what the Spirit does: He enables and equips and assures God’s mob as they carry out God’s work!

• Sunday, 26 January 2025

  Abandoned?

  from Bernard Gabbott

  One of the prevailing views of the world after the Second World War was that God had abandoned the world – look at the death camps, look at the slaughter, look at nuclear weapons, look at what our modern ever-improving humanity had achieved! But that view of God – that He has abandoned what He has made – remains, doesn’t it? We feel it as we wait as God’s people, and wonder about the promise of return and renewal. We speak it as we watch a world groaning under sin, as we feel the pain of loss or disappointment. If we are transparent and honest, we have all felt like God has abandoned us, and this world. The next phrase of The Apostles’ Creed is an emphatic statement that God did not abandon Jesus, and so God has not abandoned all those connected to Jesus.

• Sunday, 19 January 2025

  Accusations

  from Bernard Gabbott

  If Jesus is the Christ (God’s chosen Saviour of the world, who will deal with sin and return God’s mob to rest), God’s only Son (and so the right ruler of the world who gathers God’s mob home), and our Lord, then how is this all achieved? The next phrase of The Apostles’ Creed asserts the historical truth of the actions of Jesus, their means, and by implication, their efficacy and purpose. It is here that we publicly state that the death of Jesus was not a wasted life, but the final sacrifice of the only man who could stand in for sinners like us. In this statement, we believe that Jesus paid for our sins – once and for all.