Some online sermon links

I must confess to being something of a sermonoholic, and most weeks I will listen to several sermons. I love listening to the Word of God preached, and have a huge collection of sermon MP3s (and even still a big box of sermon tapes even though I have nothing to play them on).

I thought I would post a few links here to some of the preachers I listen to. I could probably list hundreds, but I’ll keep this brief, and encourage you to add your suggestions in the comments.

I’ll start with an number of preachers who are known personally to me. These good friends may not be famous, but I always enjoy listening to them:

  • Steve Chick – Hope Church Winchester Steve used to be one of the pastors at the church I attend, and he has a knack for finding good illustrations for all his talks. Also worth checking out are the sermons from John Groves.
  • John Symons – Lighthouse John was my pastor while at university, and having spent some time in Africa, is now back in Southampton and helping out an international church. He is a wonderfully gracious man, with a real pastoral heart.
  • Andrew Fountain – New Life I first made contact with Andrew through the internet and since he has strong family links with Southampton have been able to meet him a number of times. He is an excellent Bible teacher, with a superb grasp of theology but a very accessible teaching style. He is leading a church in Toronto.
  • Mark Mould – Junction 13 Mark has been a good friend for many years, and helped me to run several “Saturday Morning Theology” courses at KCC. Now he has joined the Junction 13 church plant in Eastleigh, where he often preaches. He is an avid reader of theology, has a great love for the Puritans, is a clear communicator, and always brings fresh insights out of the passages he teaches from.
  • Steve Froud – Emmanuel Steve was my first cell group leader after moving to Southampton, and though he and his family moved to London to help plant a church, it is great to hear his occasional talks online. He has a refreshingly honest and direct style that I enjoy.
  • Simon Ponsonby – St Aldates After benefiting enormously from his preaching at New Wine and reading his books, I have had the privilege of meeting Simon on a few occasions and debating topics with him over email. He is a magnificent preacher with a real warm-hearted love for God. While you are there, also look out for talks by Charlie Cleverly.
  • John-Daniel Laurence – St Mikes I have known J-D since childhood, and when Steph and I used to run our “full faith” evenings, we would invite him and others round to our house to preach in our living room until the early hours of the morning. He is now Curate at a church in Aberystwth.

I could go on for ages, but don’t want to make this into a list of people you’ve already heard of anyway (I’m guessing you already know about Tim Keller, John Piper, Mark Driscoll?). Two that I have been listening to recently are Stef Liston at Revelation church in London, who is a down to earth, direct Bible teacher, and Doug Wilson, who almost defies description, but is a profound thinker who will come at topics from angles you don’t expect and even if you are not persuaded by his overall theological system there is much to appreciate and learn from in his sermons. Andrew Wilson and Joel Virgo are two others I keep tabs on.

So, over to you. Who do you listen to and why?

Saturday Morning Theology – Salvation

I’ve had a few complaints recently that my blog isn’t being updated regularly enough. Part of the reason has been that my focus has been on preparing material for theology & Bible teaching sessions. Earlier this year, thanks to plenty of help from by good friend Mark Mould, I ran a “Saturday Morning Theology” course, consisting of 10 talks on the doctrine of salvation. It was the second course we had run, the first being on the doctrine of the church.

We didn’t take up the typical headings found in a systematic theology, but rather attempted to go chronologically, starting with God’s electing purpose before time, then to the fall, to the cross and resurrection, then onto the new birth, the Christian life, and finally persevering to the end and our future hope. We didn’t cover anywhere near everything that should be covered in a course on salvation, but it was really good to wrestle with these doctrines from slightly different angles to normal, and also to have some lively debate on controversial topics that can be too easily avoided or skirted around (like predestination and perseverance of the saints).

Anyway, thanks to the efforts of Matt Riley, all the talks are available to watch on video. The sound quality is sadly not that good, but most of the talks have handouts and presentations available to download. A few of them are available as MP3. The videos and additional downloads are available here.

I’m afraid new blog posts are likely to be sparse in the future too, as I’m currently working on a summer series of seminars on the book of Esther. I’ll try to turn my notes into posts if possible.

Sermon – Idolatry (Joshua 24)

I had the privilege of being invited to preach at Bishopdown Baptist Church a week ago. They had been working their way through the book of Joshua and I was tasked with speaking on the final chapter.

As part of my preparation, I worked through the book of Joshua with the help of Dale Ralph Davis’ excellent exposition, No Falling Words. The chapter is interesting because it brings up the subject of idolatry, so I also drew on some of Tim Keller’s insights from his Counterfeit Gods book.

Anyway, the sermon is available online to listen to here. There was a slight technical hitch with the recording which meant the level isn’t quite as good as it could be, but it seems to be reasonably good quality.

Actually the whole sermon wasn’t about idolatry. My main points were:

  1. God’s faithfulness in the past
  2. A choice to make in the present (turning from idols)
  3. The need to persevere to the end

In fact Joshua 24 is rich enough to preach several sermons on. I didn’t even get a chance to touch on Joshua’s famous words “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”. (Josh 24:15)

While I’m on the subject of idolatry, here’s a link to another sermon on idolatry I preached back in September 2008 as part of a series on the Ten Commandments at KCC.

[audio:http://media.kcc.uk.net.s3.amazonaws.com/50a640de-06df-46cb-ab59-ef549084dd8f.mp3]

Sermon – Growing up in Christ (Col 1:28,29)

I am aware that my blogging this year has been rather sparse, mostly consisting of book reviews. This is because I have been busy preparing various talks, which always takes priority over blogging. However, a number of them are now available to listen to online, so I am planning to post links the here.

The sermon is on the theme of growing up into maturity in Christ, and is based on various verses from Colossians, which I have been studying my way through this year (some commentary reviews to follow in a month or two). I preached it at my church’s “Abide” evening, which is aimed at students and twenties.

You can download and listen to it here.

[audio:http://media.kcc.uk.net.s3.amazonaws.com/8ced5ff9-4395-41a7-9d77-659f9bf1271a.mp3]

My preaching notes can be viewed here.