Talks from 2023

Talks from 2023

Zechariah’s Song || Delle Matthews|| Luke 1:67-79

Have you ever thought – what I’ve done is too bad. Unforgivable. Irredeemable? Well simply put. You’d be wrong. With Christmas just around the corner, here’s your reminder that Jesus is our one true hope, and that nothing can separate us from the love …

Mary’s Song || Joel Snibson || Luke 1:46-56

It can be hard to see from our 2000 year of removal from the birth of Jesus, but his coming was the start of a revolution. Like all good revolutions, this one had an anthem in song: Mary’s song, that we find in Luke. Connect with us at ➜ Website: https…

Hannah’s Song || Tim Johnson || 1 Samuel 2:1-10

Today marks the start of Advent, a season of quiet anticipation for Christmas. Maybe not so quiet these days, as seasonal creep brings Christmas carols earlier and earlier, and pre-Christmas catchups mount. But as a church, we’re trying to make space f…

Miriam’s Song || Joel Snibson || Exodus 15:1-18

As we wait for Christmas, to celebrate the birth of our saviour, carols will be a big part of that. Singing to remind ourselves, and to bring praise to God for who his is and what he’s done. We’re starting a new series today looking at song from the bi…

Part of God’s Story || Tim Johnson || Colossians 3:1-14

What stories do we tell ourselves? Maybe stories of success, accomplishment, achievement. Maybe stories of failure, and an attitude of “I’m not good enough”. We’re coming to the end of our series on identity, called You Do You, and well today be explor…

Made for God || Tim Johnson || Galatians 4:4-11

We’re halfway through our You Do You series- exploring this idea of ‘expressive individualism’, and where we find our identity. Modern western culture says to find your true self, you just need to look inward. But as we’ve seen, looking inwards isn’t t…

Made for Community || Joel Snibson || 1 Peter 2:1-10

There’s a saying, that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. The idea being that we are shaped by those we interact with the most. Today we’re exploring the idea that ‘You Do You’ doesn’t work, as we’re made as people who…

Saying YES to God || Maddy Bialecki || Matthew 21:28-32

What’s more important, saying you’ll do something, or actually doing it? Today we’re hearing another story from Jesus, about the kingdom of heaven. Connect with us at ➜ Website: https://stjohnsdc.org.au ➜ Facebook: https://facebook.com/stjohnsdc ➜ In…

God’s Unfair Grace || Joel Snibson || Matthew 20:1-16

When we focus on our own work and good deeds, we can fall into the trap of comparison. Instead, let’s focus on God’s scandalous grace, bringing joy and celebration when we see others also receiving that grace! Connect with us at ➜ Website: https://stjo…

St John’s Extra: The End of Suffering

The Christian faith, including the Christian understanding of suffering, centres on the good news of Jesus: his life, death and resurrection. Last episode we discussed the amazing truth that God experiences pain and suffering in the person of Jesus. God understands our suffering, not in a merely theoretical way, but experientially. But the Christian faith offers us more than a God who has experienced our pain. That is amazing and comforting but it doesn’t solve the problem of suffering and…

When will suffering end? || Tim Johnson || Job 42

When will it end? When we’re in the midst of suffering, it seems to go on forever. But today, we’ll see the end of Job’s suffering, as we also come to the end of the book of Job, and the end of this series on the problem of suffering. Connect with us a…

St John’s Extra: God’s experience of Suffering

The heart of the Christian faith is the good news about Jesus: his life, death and resurrection. It is this which shapes the Christian understanding of suffering too. Perhaps the key thing that Christians can say about suffering is that God is not remote or removed from human suffering. Christians believe that God himself took on human flesh in the person of Jesus. He lived as one of us, he experienced all the highs and lows of human existence, and…

St John’s Extra: Suffering within our Story

As we wrestle with the problem of suffering, we need to think about how suffering fits within the story that we are living in. Humans are storytellers and we understand the world we live in through a ‘big story’ (the fancy name is a metanarrative) which provides a framework for understanding and interpreting reality. For Christians, our big story is contained in the bible and the first two ‘episodes’ of this story helps us understand the problem of suffering in…

Are you allowed to shout at God? || Tim Johnson || Job 30

Jesus shouted “MY GOD MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME!?” as he hung on the cross. But are we, as God’s created beings, allowed to talk to God in that way? Are we allowed to shout at God, get angry at God, lament with God? Connect with us at ➜ Website:…

St John’s Extra: Taking God out of the Equation

In these episodes of St John’s Extra we are wrestling with the problem of suffering. Last week we acknowledged that suffering is a real problem but not everyone would agree with this. For an atheist suffering is not a problem at all because it is just the way things are in a materialistic universe and there is no point trying to grapple with it and explain it. This is the way that the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins puts it: ‘In…