Bethesda Shalom

Nehemiah 9:1-3 In Nehemiah’s day, the children of Israel did something that is seldom is heard today – they confessed their sins to God.  Yet in their confession, they did not attempt to apportion blame to another, but rather, they owned responsibility for their sin and ascribe greatness to God in His chastening hand of judgment!!  The true mark of sincere and genuine confession is the absence of excuses and if the bedrock of confession is faulty, then repentance upon which it rests will also be faulty and no true fruit will follow.  May God help us to get a hold on the heart of true confession, that we might return again to Him in true repentance.

1 Kings 21:1-16 Where the fear of God is absent from among the people of God, there you will find a breeding ground for every wicked sin.  It may begin as a soggy marsh, but it will end in a sewer of running evil!!  “Am I a God at hand, saith the LORD (to the false prophets who bolstered Israel in their sins), and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the LORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD” (Jer. 23:23-24). This sermon is an exhortation for the Body Christ to return again to a healthy fear of God, not least in our treatment of others.  The God who sees, will not hold those guiltless who destroy His people with their evil deeds—He shall exact their mangled bodies at their hands.  May God have mercy in bringing a people to repentance.    

Nehemiah 8:1-12 The word joy appears in some sixty verses in the New Testament of the King James Bible and that’s withstanding the variant occurrences of the same root word such as “joyful”, “joyfully”, “joyfulness” “joying”, “joyous” and “rejoice”.  This simple three-letter word is like buried treasure, everyone searching to find it but their looking in the wrong places!  True biblical joy can be distinguished from happiness in one crucial area, namely, happiness is dependent upon favourable circumstances whereas joy is not!  In this sermon, the exhortation is given for those who name the name of Christ to examine themselves to see if what they have is the joy of the Lord which is our strength.

Genesis 15:1-6 As one dear brother said to me not so long ago, “You can’t have faith on the other side of the fence”, you can only have it on this side of the promise!  Once the promise has materialised into its physical reality, faith has done its work and there’s no longer need for it!  It seems that as we go on in this Christian walk, God takes us up to every increasing cliff heights, and as we stand at the precipice looking down at the sheer drop beneath us, we hear the voice of God saying jump, with the full assurance of faith that as we do, He will bear us up with eagles wings and perform that which He said He would!  In this sermon, we follow the journey of faith in the life of Abraham and take great encouragement for our souls.  What God did for him; he can do for us! 

Hebrews 4:13 When we consider the greatness of the God with whom we have to do; my dear friends, one cannot begin to grasp the magnitude of this colossal task.  In this sermon, we explore some of the glorious attributes of God in order to discover the greatness of the God with whom we have to do.  Having done this, we then look to see the nature of this glorious God.  Where else can such a discovery be made that as one lifts their eyes to Calvary?  It is here that one beholds both the holiness of God and the love of God.  It is this God I commend to you.

James 1:1-4 To the natural mind suffering and tribulation are concepts that run counter opposite to joy.  How possibly can discomfort, pain, and suffering exist in the same sentence as rejoice?  Yet, in a number of places in the New Testament, the child of God is exhorted to rejoice in the midst of their suffering!  How is this possible?  Why is this exhortation given? In this sermon, we seek to provide a biblical answer to the above questions and look intently at the role of tribulation in the proving and perfecting of Christian faith.  

John 6:1-14 When one thinks of the men and women that God has used over the millennia; if one was to look after the outward appearance with the eyes of human wisdom, who would have picked them?  Yet, the great and glorious reality is that God chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and the weak things to confound the mighty.  Is it not true that “…the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner” (1 Pet. 2:7)? In this sermon, we look at the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand and as we do, we come to understand that God does not need our natural gifts and talents in order to work a work in our day.  God simply asks that we give to him the little that we have, the five loaves and two fishes, that He might work a miracle to the blessing of many and to the glory of His mighty name!

2 Timothy 4:1-4 There are some verses of Holy Scripture that by their very nature are weightier than others.  The passage that comes before us in this sermon is surely one such weighty giant and one of the great go-to passages of every preacher.  Worn are its pages through frequent visiting, for it is here where he gets his instructions from the Almighty and the royal commandment to preach the Word! In an age where the Word of God is so seldom preached as it once was, in the power and strength of the Holy Spirit.  The exhortation is given in this sermon of the need again for such anointed preaching that God might in His mercy see fit to visit a people with great stirrings and awakening in this desperate hour of need.

Matthew 4:13-17 As we look around at the state of a world that is stooped in darkness, and a Church that is fast asleep in this generation, one could be forgiven for thinking that all hope has long faded!  For many of God’s remnant, things are waxing worse and the Lord’s coming is imminent.  Brethren, I don’t disagree!!  We are living right at the end…yet this does not preclude the mercy of God to bring one last awakening and revival in this hour of tremendous need.  In this sermon, we contrast the mercy of God against a mindset that delights in judgment.  We conclude by looking at a brief synopsis of the last 150 years of Judah’s history and in so doing conclude, there’s still hope yet that God might awaken a sleeping Church and bring a lost and dying world unto Himself in great numbers!  O Lord, do it again!!   

Ephesians 4:31-32 So many in the earth begin life as bubbling happy youngsters, not a care in the world, unaware of the big bad world that they’re about to enter!  Yet, by the time they’ve reached their 30’s and 40’s, that youthful optimism has pretty much been blown out of the water and aged cynicism has begun to set in.  Naivety has given way to suspicion and by the time they reach their later years, full-blown pessimism has pretty much taken over every thought. As a Christian, I don’t ever want to become a cynic let alone a pessimist!  Yet, as the years pass so also do the offences committed against us.  The challenge facing every one of us as believers is to not allow our hearts to become hard so as to lose the tenderness.  This sermon digs into the Word of God and presents to the believer, the grace and power that is in Christ which allows us to overcome the sins of resentment, bitterness, and unforgiveness.

Joshua 6:1-2 When I think of the wasted hours spent deliberating and calculating, reasoning and second-guessing how God is going to do what He said He would do; it is of great grief.  When everything has been said and done, what was it for? It was all for nothing!  When God is going to something, He doesn’t need our advice or counsel; He doesn’t come knocking at our door for a plan of action!  He will do what He will do, and the quicker that we settle that matter in our hearts is the more speedily one will come to enjoy the blessed rest that comes from simply trusting!!! We need at times to be reminded of the facts—the world is His and the fulness thereof; the cattle on a thousand hills and every beast of the forest belongs to Him; what have we that He hath need of, or what can we give to Him that He does not already own?  Oh God, forgive me for pigeonholing you into a tiny weeny space when your fulness fills the whole universe!!  It’s not my business dear soul, and nor is it yours, to work out how God is goi

Romans 8:12-13 There are many sermons that I’ve had the privilege of preaching over the years, but none perhaps is more important than the subject matter contained in this one.  I fear that in the day in which we’re living, when one mentions the cross of the Lord Jesus, one’s mind readily runs upon the ornate cross, you know...the 9ct gold one hanging from a chain, replete with diamond studs; rather than a rugged wooden one stained with blood!  It seems that the Church in our day and the world at large, have no stomach for a crucified Saviour, impaled to a bloody cross.  In the first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes; “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness but unto us which are saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).  In what respect, is the preaching of the cross to us who are saved, the power of God?  It is this question that I would like to consider in this sermon and to furnish an answer on two main fronts.  First, the cross of Jesus Christ is the power of God to dea

Mark 6:45-53 There’s a propensity that is common to man; a saying that is often heard, and although we might not necessarily verbalise it with the words of our mouth, we nonetheless declare it loud and clear, by our actions.  You say, what is this saying and what is this propensity common to man?  It is summed up in this one single phrase, “I’ve got it!”  Oh, that we might come to understand in truth that we "Don’t got it", and that the only way to live this Christian life is in utter dependency upon the Saviour as we walk a closer walk with Him!

Jonah 3 Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, and Paul; all shared a common trait that in their day was seldom seen amongst their contemporaries.  Each of these men knew the mercy of God in their generation and as such were intercessors!  Would to God that such men would resurface in the day in which we live.  I am shocked and grieved at the type of remarks I hear being made by professing born-again believers who supposedly belong to the remnant stable when it comes to the talk of revival.  Nothing is sure to get their fangs showing than when one speaks of revival and awakening!!  Ah!  They say...that’s nonsense!  Great Britain has out-sinned its day of mercy!  In the days of Whitfield and Wesley, the sins of Great Britain were grave and shocking; yet, God saw fit to bring a national awakening to this nation.  Oh, that God would do it again! In this sermon, we behold the mercy of God toward a wicked city called Nineveh and the hot displeasure of a prophet by the name Jonah who rather than see God extend mercy, would rath

Matthew 25:1-13 When suddenly comes, there’s usually very little time if any, to prepare ourselves for its swift advance.  By very definition, “suddenly” carries with it an air of unexpectedness and yet at the same time, its approach is not without discernable signs for those with eyes to see.  On 25th January 2019, a mining dam that sat above Brumadinho—a large town in southeast Brazil, suddenly collapsed, unleashing a tidal wave of waste and mud that engulfed homes, businesses, and residents in its path.  It killed more than 250 people and has been dubbed one of the deadliest mining accidents in Brazilian history.  Though this disaster ensued suddenly and without warning, experts say that it wasn’t a surprise.  All the elements of a potential catastrophe had been present, and the warning signs overlooked for years!  Amidst the current COVID-19 pandemic, God is speaking to His people and calling them to get ready for His soon return!  This is no time to slumber and no time to give heed to baseless conspiracy

Ephesians 5:14-18 There’s a season under heaven for every opportunity afforded unto man; an open door which for a moment remains open to him, before suddenly it closes.  What was available on Sunday evening may no longer be available come Monday morning.  There’s something about God-ordained moments for which there exists no rewind button and no command to undo.  God happenstances that seem to come so sparsely—perhaps every half a decade or so, where all of heaven appears to go out of its way to assist the Almighty in orchestrating the perfect set-up, placing before us an open door and beckoning us to enter through.  Without a doubt, we are living in unprecedented times of change with Covid-19 in our midst. It is my earnest conviction that we the Church of Jesus Christ find ourselves on the earth for such a time as this.  There has been afforded us in the providence of God, an open door through which to enter which shall not always be open to us.  It’s time for the Church to wake up and to cast off the old ga

1 Chronicles 12:32 This week has been a week like no other I’ve ever witnessed in my forty years alive on planet earth.  Coronavirus touched down and pandemonium struck.  Media hype fueled mass panic buying, where every man and his family headed towards the supermarkets in an effort to stock their cupboards to overflowing.  Stock markets across the world continue to be hammered with losses amounting to billions being slashed off the value of some of the world's most prestigious companies.  Thursday saw the biggest one-day decline in the FTSE 100 since 1987 and Wednesday witnessed the pound plunge to its lowest level in 30 years!  Every day has seen escalating measures being announced by the UK government as it has tried desperately to stem the growth of this virus which has now claimed the lives of more than 200 British citizens and more than 10,000 globally.  On Tuesday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a whopping £350 billion bailout and by Friday, he’d effectively put the whole British economy on

J.C. Ryle said; "We may love money without having it, just as we may have money without loving it."  Paul the apostle said; “…godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Tim. 6:6).  In a world that is ever pushing for greater material gain and status, as believers in Christ, we are warned not to make these things our pursuit.  Paul bore record of those who beginning well in the faith, later erred from the faith, piercing themselves through with many sorrows on account of coveting after money. This sermon is an encouragement, but also a word of warning.  Let us be content in the circumstances which God has placed us.  Let us not desire things which God has not apportioned for us.  May we be able to learn the secret of contentment that we can say with Paul, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4:13).    

Knowing the Bible for Yourself (Pt. 2) It will never do to be hearers of the word only and not doers of it; James makes this very clear (Jms 1:22).  Yet at the same time, to be a doer of the word without first hearing what is being asked is to walk in ignorance.  How many, armed with good intentions and loaded with zeal have gone out of the starting blocks with pace, only to be later disqualified because they were in breach of the rules.  You cannot compete in a race without obeying the rules and you cannot obey the rules unless you first know what those rules are.  Thus, it is incumbent upon us as students of the Word of God, to rightly divide (Grk. to cut straight) the word of truth that we might not be ashamed (2 Tim. 2:15).     If the Bible was a single book, composed by a single contemporary author, that would be one thing.  If we had any questions or doubts about the meaning of what is written, we could simply ask the author.  What happens when you have a book written by upwards of forty different autho

2 Chronicles 18:31 When we speak of the grace of God - that kind and favourable disposition towards the undeserving to them good - is it any wonder that our minds run back so readily with ease, to the blood-stained cross of Calvary?  There we beheld a demonstration of God’s love that forever shall resound!  Yet, with that said, the grace of God cannot be relegated to 2000 years ago but MUST be brought into the here and now.  When we speak of God’s grace, we’re speaking about an attribute that belongs to God — this is who He is!! In this sermon, we offer a number of golden keys to answered prayer before asking the question; on what grounds does God answer prayer?  In the final analysis, we are brought to the conclusion that it by HIS GRACE that He sees fit to grant the petition of our hearts!  Oh, that we might come to God with this understanding, apart from human merit.