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I Will Never Cast Out (John 6:37)

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  Saturday, July 19, 2025 Psalm 45 2 Samuel 3:2-19 John 6:35-51 I Will Never Cast Out (John 6:37) [ Jesus said, ] “ All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” If the world’s worries were not enough to stress about, there are plenty of voices in the spiritual realm that want to make us worry, too. Are you good enough? Do you pray enough? Do you give enough? Is your love or faith strong enough? Is there enough? To all those questions and worries, Christ says: enough. If you come to me, I will never cast you out. Christ is enough. If you have come to Christ, then that is enough of your worries. Certainly, once we have come to Christ, he then spurs us on. There is always more he wants us to do; but there is never any more he needs us to do. We have been prepared for good works, but how and when and to what standard we complete those good works has no bearing on whether Christ will cast us out, b...
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Glad To Take Him In (John 6:21)

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  Friday, July 18, 2025 Psalms 41; 44:1-9 2 Samuel 2:18-3:1 John 6:16-34 Glad To Take Him In (John 6:21) Then [ the disciples ] were glad to take [ Jesus ] into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. It feels like just recently we were reflecting on how the Bible treats the chaos of life poetically with the image of rough water. There was the Psalm describing the chaos of life as floodwaters; here in today’s second lesson we have the chaos of the storm on the Sea of Galilee. While it feels like a little bit of a stretch to interpret this passage as a direct one-to-one lesson about Christ’s presence in the storms of our own life, it is still striking just how similar an experience it is. Chaos in life can happen when there is just so much to think about, so much that needs to be done, and it all needs to be worked out and sorted yesterday. All that headspace becomes filled up with the problems of life, and w...
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King By Force (John 6:15)

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  Thursday, July 17, 2025 Psalm 40 2 Samuel 2:1-17 John 6:1-15 King By Force (John 6:15) Do you remember that strange time when certain voices tried to make the phrase “Christ is King” defined as hate speech? The internet certainly is a wild and wacky place. I wonder why, though, people may have felt that way. Do we say Christ is King as a call to action? Are we saying that our current rulers, celebrities, influencers and social commentators have proved themselves to be no good, and so we ought to make Christ our King? That is not so bad, I suppose. It is true that idolatry is a bad idea, and so we all should make Christ our King. Yet when Christ fed the people on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, they tried to take him by force and make him king, which didn’t suit him one bit, and so he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. St John’s gospel is wonderful because it does such a good job of emphasising Christ’s independence. In every moment of...
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Who Clothed You Luxuriously (2 Samuel 1:24)

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  Wednesday, July 16, 2025 Psalm 38 2 Samuel 1:17-27 John 5:30-47 Who Clothed You Luxuriously (2 Samuel 1:24) “ You daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,     who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet,     who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.” There’s a crude joke that is not worth repeating, it is about a New Zealander or a Welshman depending on where you live. The humour relies on the fact that things are funny because they are true. And it is true that, no matter how good and noble and generous and loving you are, if you make one mistake, then all the good you did is forgotten, and you are only known for that one mistake. It takes a certain level of self-reflection, self-control and wisdom to be able to see the good in someone who has done something awful. Saul was famous for two things: being the Lord’s anointed, and losing that anointing. Towards the end of his life, everyone had seemed to forgotten tha...
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Testifying By Your Own Mouth (2 Samuel 1:16)

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  Tuesday, July 15, 2025 Psalm 37:1-17 2 Samuel 1-16 John 5:19-30 Testifying By Your Own Mouth (2 Samuel 1:16) And David said to him, “Your blood be on your head, for your own mouth has testified against you, saying, ‘I have killed the Lord 's anointed.’” Does anyone really do anything that they think is wrong? There might be a time of balancing pros and cons of any certain action, but does anyone actually go out of their way and try to do something they don’t like? Even when people commit objectively evil acts, there is still some formula they are working from that justifies their actions. We might disagree with their formula, and their actions, but there is still something inside that person that makes them feel justified. The infamous Amalekite who brought the news of Saul’s death to David was like this. He knew David and Saul weren’t getting along, and when he discovered Saul was dead, he pretended to be the one who had finished Saul off. There ...
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The Boasting Soul (Psalm 34:2)

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  Monday, July 14, 2025 Psalm 34 1 Samuel 31 John 5:1-18 The Boasting Soul (Psalm 34:2) My soul makes its boast in the Lord ;     let the humble hear and be glad. I grew up during the time when video games consoles were starting to become commonplace in people’s homes. It wasn’t as widespread as it is now – plenty of people certainly had plenty of consoles, but it was still enough of a novelty that, while none of us were any good, we were all very excited about it. We would all want to talk about some new game coming out, or some new trick we had learned in a game everyone was playing at the time. And there would always be someone who wanted to be special and make something up. This person is so widespread there is now the famous line to describe them: the type of person that claims “my uncle works at Nintendo”. Success by association is not usually an admirable trait in a fellow human. There may be some passing interest to learn...
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Into Your Hand (Psalm 31:5)

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  Saturday, July 12, 2025 Psalm 31 1 Samuel 30:7-25 John 4:43-54 Into Your Hand (Psalm 31:5) Into your hand I commit my spirit;     you have redeemed me, O Lord , faithful God. Towards the end of John’s Gospel, after Jesus washes the disciples feet and before his arrest, we read what has been called his “high priestly prayer”; that is, a prayer Jesus offers in his role as high priest on behalf of all Christians. It is worth going back to whenever we feel disheartened, because it gives us a taste of the prayer that Jesus is offering constantly on our behalf right now in heaven. Yet it might not be the only prayer we have in scripture that he has made on our behalf. We have what is called the “words from the cross”, seven different things Jesus said when he was being crucified, collected from the four gospels. It is widely accepted that he quoted Psalm 22, which helps us understand why he cried out “My God, my God, why have you...
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