Kevin Makins - Setting the Table: Advent V - Away in a Manger

Luke 1-2

The thirteenth sermon of our 23 week series “Setting the Table” - exploring the narrative of Scripture.

An Angel appears, a virgin is pregnant, no room at the inn, swaddling clothes, manger, star, shepherds, wisemen. 

We all know the Christmas story. And yet sometimes we can hear it so much that we cease to hear it. Sometimes it can become so familiar that it loses it’s teeth. 

The incarnation was anything but cute.

Kevin Makins - Setting the Table: Advent IV - Home

1 Kings 8, Ezra 6, Nehemiah 9, Haggai 2

The twelfth sermon of our 23 week series “Setting the Table” - exploring the narrative of Scripture.

The Israelites had been taken into slavery. Their world was sent into chaos, their boxes smashed; everything they had ever known changed in a moment - and then they are allowed to return to their land. They go back, they build up the city walls, they restore the temple; but it’s just not the same anymore.

Sometimes we return home, only to realize that it’s not really home anymore.

Kevin Makins - Setting the Table: By the Rivers of Babylon

Psalm 137 & 2 Kings 25

The eighth sermon of our 23 week series “Setting the Table” - exploring the narrative of Scripture.

Tragedy strikes, the walls fall down, Babylon comes, and we find ourselves at the rivers side; sitting, mourning, and wondering ‘where is God?' 

We ask the question 'how can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?' 

Sometimes suffering takes us into exile.

Bill Webb - Holy War and the Christian Conscience

Judges 5 & Deuteronomy 21

The seventh sermon of our 23 week series “Setting the Table” - exploring the narrative of Scripture.

God has rescued Israel, revealed to them how they ought to live, and now has … sent them into war? 

Within the Old Testament there are descriptions of warfare that trouble the soul. 

And they should! There are bloody, brutal, and barbaric texts within our Bible! How can we read these texts? How can we answer question’s about these verses? How can we follow a God who commands such violent acts?

Perhaps the first step is to look at the world in which the Israelites lived, to examine what war looked like then, and to see what God is doing in the midst of a particular time and a particular place.

Is it possible that these troubling texts are actually good news?

Kevin Makins - Setting the Table: Law, or, Put Flesh And Blood On It

Exodus 19-20, Matthew 5 & Galatians 3

The sixth sermon of our 23 week series “Setting the Table” - exploring the narrative of Scripture.

Rescued from slavery, God’s chosen people are led to a mountain where they receive a law they are to live by. 

The idea of “the law” tends to bring to mind lists of rules and regulations; ways we can do “good things” to earn God’s acceptance, and avoid the “bad things” that would make him angry.

But what if this totally misses the point? What if the law is actually far more good and true and beautiful than we think? 

What does the law tell us about humanity, and perhaps more importantly, the God who created us?

Kevin Makins - Setting the Table: Garden/Field/Tower

Genesis 3-11

The third sermon of our 23 week series “Setting the Table” - exploring the narrative of Scripture.

The garden was a place where all was good and in it’s right place; but it is quickly corrupted.

Sin is on the move: twisting God’s good world into something less than good.

This force moves from a garden, to a field, to a tower. It cheapens, perverts, and destroys everything along the way. 

What does this mean for us? Can we fight back? Can things be set right again?

Kevin Makins - Setting the Table: Creation

Genesis 1 and 2

The second sermon of our 23 week series Setting the Table - exploring the narrative of Scripture.

This week we move backwards, from Exodus to the creation account.

Which begs the question; “What IS Genesis 1 and 2 all about?”

At the heart of the creation account we find an invitation to a world that is strange and beautiful and filled with life! We are introduced to a God whose goodness brings order to the chaos, and who invites us into the ongoing cultivation and organization of all he has made.

And we find that no matter how marred and damaged it may seem at times, all that God has made is, indeed, very good.

Richard Saunders - Setting the Table: Exodus

Exodus; Matthew 13

The first sermon in our 23 week series Setting the Table - exploring the narrative of Scripture.

Our first week: Exodus.

Exodus? The first book?

Well, yes, and no. No; because there are stories to tell that pre-date the exodus, but yes; because in many ways this is where the story really starts.

The story begins with a people in slavery, a whole nation of people being treated as machines. The story begins with a people who have lost all hope, who are desperately crying out for rescue; the story begins in Egypt.

But Egypt isn’t the whole story, because when all seems lost, when it seems most hopeless; God enters the story. And everything changes.

God declares: “I have heard the cry” - a God who hears the cry of the oppressed. 

Kevin Makins - Fear

Exodus 20: 18-20

A sermon from the week Kevin announced the planting of Eucharist Church to FreeChurch. It’s a sermon about the fear that comes with anything that will stretch and grow us, and asks the question: how do we, as God’s people, respond to that fear?