St John's Ashfield

The Heart of Repentance

More than 1000 times, the Bible refers to the core of being human as ‘the heart’. So what is the heart, what does it do, and how do we repent from the heart?

The Beginnings of Repentance

Repentance and its flip side, faith, are not only the beginning of the Christian life; they are also the engine of Christian growth. As we start our integrated series, we learn the uncomfortable truth about where repentance begins - in the gap between our created destiny and our lived reality. Hear how to grapple with the gap.

A song of joy

Praise is one of the most human things we can do, and one of the most godly things we can do - it is the default stance of the Psalms. And so in this Psalm, we join the Psalmist in his calling the whole earth to praise the living and true God, because of his greatness and his graciousness.

A song of longing

Have you ever felt like God is far away? Have you wondered if he remembers you? Have you prayed and wondered if anyone hears you? In psalms 42 & 43 we have a prayer of longing for God’s presence. It’s a song to sing in the darkness; it’s a song that we all need to sing in some seasons of our lives. How does this song help us to connect with God through dark times — to find what we so desperately need to survive — and even to grow more deeply connected to him through them?

A song of strength

When your world collapses around you, the nearly overwhelming temptation is to panic. Ps 46 knows all about such a moment, and not only calls us to a fierce fearlessness, but gives us the spiritual resources to do that. Learn from his wisdom.

How Christians live together

Christians are called to live in a beautiful peaceableness - and that will require the special ministry of leadership and the general ministry of encouragement. Be inspired by Paul’s vision of a community of peace.

How Christians hope in the face of death

Death stalks everything, and eventually claims everything. Does that mean that death wins? Christians grieve in the face of death’s power, but they don’t grieve without hope. Hear the Apostle Paul teach us how to have hope even in the face of death.

How Christians grow more and more

We live in a pleasure/pain culture: what’s pleasurable is good, what’s painful is bad. Paul’s call to holiness in 1 Thessalonians 4 — to seek to please God more and more by living his way, even when it’s hard — doesn’t make much sense in a culture like ours. But what if pleasing God also brings pleasure? Paul believes it does, and shows us how pleasing God helps us to understand and express our sexual desires.

How Christians feel for one another

Loneliness, the social scientists tell us, is an epidemic in Australian culture. We long for deep connection with others, but we frequently fail to find it. In contrast, Paul and the Thessalonians share an astoundingly frank and affectionate connection — sticky; gooey; and yet able to withstand loving conflict. Where do they find the personal and spiritual resources to throw themselves into deep connection with one another, with vulnerability and without fear?

How Christians serve one another

Paul holds together what we often put asunder - an intense care and affection for people, at the same time as a holy ambition for their growth into maturity. This sermon explores how he does it!

How the gospel makes Christians

The church in the town of Thessalonica was brand new, and already separated from their founder and leader. And so the Apostle Paul writes to inspire and instruct them how to keep growing in their new faith, in what is a wonderfully encouraging letter, as they live in faith, hope and love, serving while they wait for Jesus.

I will give you rest

Rest for the soul - what a need, in a thirsty world! What a promise, by the only one who can deliver. This is the finale to our Matt 10-11 series, and it ends with one of the great promises of Jesus, rest for the soul!

Such was your gracious will

How do you believe when believing is hard? Jesus tells us three things about believing: believing is not (only) about evidence; believing is not about competence; believing is about relationship. When you get those three things, it’s possible for your belief in God to deepen — even through the things that make believing hard.

Greater than John the Baptist

One of the real tests of what kind of person we are is how we deal with disappointed expectations. Jesus speaks to two different groups of people with disappointments, and then calls for faith beyond disappointment.

Do not love them... love Him

A love greater than all other loves; a love which will rightly order all other loves; nothing less than this is what Jesus calls us to in being his disciples. And it makes sense, because he took up the cross - our cross - so that in his grace we can also take up the cross as we we follow him. Listen to this grace and call of Jesus.

Have no fear of them... fear Him

How do you sustain compassion and therefore mission, when the culture around doesn’t want the Jesus you proclaim? How as a sheep do you love the wolves? Only by overcoming rightly ordering your fears (this week) and your loves (next week).

Wise as serpents, innocent as doves

Following Jesus as he sends us on mission can add serious complications to our lives — especially when it comes to relationships with our friends, families, and colleagues. What does it look like to have the snake-like wisdom and dove-like innocence Jesus calls us to in our wolf-eat-sheep world?

As you go

To be a disciple of Jesus is to be sent by him into his world on his mission. This first sermon in the series on Jesus instructions to his disciples on mission opens up the beautiful wise balance that Jesus preserves.

Getting into shape: In a tribalistic world

More and more, our culture is characterised by tribalism - identity politics, victim status, minority identity. Where do we get the spiritual resources to own the different experiences that constitute us as people, and at the same time to overcome boundaries? This sermon explores how the gospel transcends tribalism.

Getting into shape: In a consumeristic world

How do you fill up the lack in your life — the spaces left when your life isn’t what you want it to be? Consumer culture says: buy this product! But can we really create a story for ourselves through what we buy? Is that the way to blessing? The Christian gospel suggests another way to blessing: embracing the lack. In our consumer culture, a bit more lack might be just what we need in order to see what good things God holds out to us in Jesus.

Getting into shape: In an individualistic world

One of the key values of our culture is individualism — the idea that I’m my own master; that I get to write my own story. What matters is my choices, and no one else can decide for me. How does the gospel speak to this aspect of our culture? In particular, how is it possible to live out Paul’s instruction in Colossians 3 to “admonish one another” — to tell one another how to live! — in the light of the individualism we hold so dear? 

Getting into shape: In a therapeutic world

Secularism is the big story of the culture around us, and it is made up of several chapters. This week we look at what one author famously called ‘the triumph of the therapeutic’, and contrast it with an astonishing gospel capacity, to ‘boast in our sufferings’.

Easter Day

Why was the cross so important to Jesus? And what does it say about us, that Jesus dies for us? Explore the cross of Christ this Easter.

Good Friday

Ancient people knew as well as us scientifically-minded moderns that dead people don’t get un-dead. And yet, that’s what Christians believe happened to Jesus of Nazareth, and that’s what Luke reports for us, loud and clear, in his gospel. But Easter isn’t about your head — it’s about your heart. In Luke 24, we meet two travellers on the road, and through their experience of meeting the risen Lord Jesus, we learn how Jesus’ resurrection — if it really, truly happened — will change your h...

The righteousness of God

What advantage has the Jew?

Praise from God

Often our internal lives can be largely devoted to point-scoring. We mentally assess the behaviour of others, and worry that they might be assessing us! Perhaps unsurprisingly, we tend to give ourselves more generous points than others. Our love of point-scoring reveals the hypocrisy of our hearts — and when confronted by the justice of God, that’s a real problem. How can we live un-hypocritically? The solution lies in the good news that God’s justice is not a matter of point-scoring, but of...

God shows no partiality

There are two ways to be lost, far from God, under his judgment. One is obvious, the other is more subtle, but the Apostle Paul is a sure guide. Listen to how he unfolds it in this sermon.

The heart of darkness

How does God reveal his righteousness in the gospel? That’s the great question we are left with at the close of the introduction to Romans. Romans 1.18-32 make it clear that the first part - although not the last part - of the revealing of the righteousness of God is the revealing of the wrath of God. This sermon explores the wrath of God and the heart of darkness - as part of God’s great project of gospel hope.

Not ashamed of the gospel

The gospel is something of which the Apostle Paul is not ashamed - not for a moment, not under great pressure, not in the midst of great sacrifice. And he teaches us how not to be ashamed as well.

The gospel of God

There are many, many problems in the world. And God is the opposite of indifferent to them - he loves the world he made. As this sermon begins our series on Romans, God’s great Solution is introduced.

Vision Sunday

What’s the thing all of us need most in our lives? According to Paul, it’s to be strengthened in our inner being with the limitless love of Christ. This sermon looks at how this vision will take shape for us at CCIW in 2018.

The search for purpose

When Ecclesiastes gets into your soul, it brings a revolution of joy. Paradoxically, it is clarity about death that powers this joy. This sermon explores how that dynamic works.

The Search for Power

The abuse of power runs rampant in our sin-disfigured world. We see unbalanced power dynamics at work in global injustices and in our personal relationships. How can we live well when others abuse their power over us, and serve well when we have power over others? The Teacher instructs us in how to engage power with a kind of shrewdness that makes space for joy, even in the midst of injustice.

The search for wisdom

There are good funerals and bad funerals — some that give space for grief, and some that squash it. The Teacher tells us that the search for wisdom culminates in a good funeral: the wise person lets death teach her that even wisdom has its limits. In the face of the reality of the death that awaits us all, how can we let funerals teach us to live lives of serious joy? 

The search for wealth

Money makes the world go round, so they say. But not according to The Teacher in Ecclesiastes, who shows us that the love of wealth will eat you alive! He has a better way.

The search for meaning

Ecclesiastes is ancient wisdom that feels incredibly modern. The Teacher gives us a modest proposal for life, cutting against the grain of our all-or-nothing culture. Come on a wold ride!

Christmas Day

The wise men see, come and worship, and so show us how to respond to the one born King, God with us.

They shall name him Emmanuel

Of all the Big Life Events human beings experience, becoming a parent for the first time is surely one of the biggest. Jesus’ adoptive father Joseph discovers that he’s going to be a parent in the most extreme of circumstances: his fiancée is pregnant; the kid isn’t his; and, apparently, it’s God’s! Joseph’s response  to this news is full of remarkable grace and compassion. How can Christmas help us to respond to our own Big Life Events in a comparable way? 

Jesus' shady past!

The intrigue of Jesus’ family origins is traced through Matthew’s genealogy and opens up the joy it is to be celebrating Christmas again.

My heart recoils within me

Does God’s love overcome God’s holiness, or is his love in fact the outworking of his holiness? Here the profound reflection of Hosea the prophet on the holy love of God, because of which he sent his only Son into the world.

From you shall come forth one who is to rule

Mission around about

Mission is not just over there - it's also right here. The call of Jesus Christ is to be on mission for him wherever we are. And so this sermon takes a look under the hood at mission at CCIW - the heart, the strategy and the plan.

Partnerships in the Gospel

In Paul's letter to the Philippians we see that involvement is God's mission is not just for the experts. Everyone who has been saved by the gospel can partner in gospel ministry. We do this through proclamation, prayer, and practical and financial support of missionaries.

Why on earth are we here

The world is a complex, beautiful and chaotic place that can be so overwhelming it sometimes seems easiest just to ignore it. But God's desire for his people is so much more than that. We are His treasured possession, priestly kingdom and holy people, called to live with a profound global purpose.

Jesus Christ is in you!

After everything paul and the church at Corinth have been through, it comes as one of the craziest prayers ever prayed - “this is our prayer, that you may become perfect”. This is Paul at his pastoral finest, and he teaches us a great deal about the real character of pastoral care.

I do not want what is yours, but you

As Paul prepares to visit Corinth a third time he is at pains to let them know that in coming to them again, the only reason he wants to come at all is because he genuinely and truly loves them. This sermon explores the basis and power for Paul’s rich love and grace towards the church in Corinth, even in weakness, and the way this shapes and transforms our relationships with one another.

God's power made perfect in weakness

Power in weakness, strength in pain; glory in crucifixion. These are the paradoxes of the gospel, and the paradoxes of our lives. Walk with Paul as he invites us to walk it with him, as he walks it with Jesus.

Boasting as a fool

Paul boats ... of his weaknesses! And what a catalogue of pain and suffering for Christ. In this sermon, we learn from our Apostle how to never adopt a stance of superiority, even when big issues are at stake.

The disguises of Satan

Being attacked by someone else is always hard, but it’s even harder when the attack really hits home at the point of my weakness. The inevitable temptation is to respond defensively. But Paul finds another way. This sermon digs into where he gets the spiritual power for that radically different response.