Sunday Talks

This week at Blackrock we heard from the Director of Christian Unions Ireland - Mark Ellis. Mark leads a team of staff who are working with students across the island to equip them in giving every student an opportunity to respond to the message of the Gospel. This morning he brings us a message from Mark 9. 

It was a passing comment this week, from someone who has experienced so many knocks to her business this year. She said: I don’t know what kind of God is looking down on us... is he just toying with us? But the very opposite is true. God is not toying with us. God has shown us extraordinary mercy. At the start of a new year, I’d love for all of us in Blackrock to set out living in 2021 with the me...

Household visits are limited this Christmas. But via live stream, there are two guests to welcome in to your home for just a couple of minutes. Hear them out, as they have something important to say. Both of them will draw your attention to the reason for Jesus’ coming as a baby at the first Christmas. That’s the purpose of these visits to your home... so Luke can show us, help us to recognise tha...

As well as counting down to this Christmas , let’s look back at the first one . There are 3 instalments of the Christmas story in this part of Luke’s gospel. Luke gives us the circumstances, the explanation and the response to the birth of Jesus.

We have called this series A Call to Faithfulness . Deep into December you may feel there are too many calls on your time and energy! But please allow this most significant of calls to register with you personally, for these few moments as we read from the Bible. The lines of today's passage you may have heard hundreds of times. Christmas after Christmas. What we need to hear again isn’t their fam...

A year that saw old certainties crumbling on the world-stage was simultaneously the year that changed everything personally for Isaiah. It was, perhaps, in the turmoil of the death of a long-reigning monarch, who’d ruled things for over half a century, that he could see his own and his people’s need for a greater, and mightier King. 2020 has brought this kind of change to the front doors of every...

Were you expecting a love song in Isaiah? That’s what 5:1-7 is, and as we will hear in a moment, it’s a love song with a searching chorus (v3-4) and a heart-breaking conclusion. If the prophet ever stood up and performed these lyrics to God’s people, the solemn message probably would have left them, at the end, in a kind of reflective silence.

How did God's people, Judah feel? One moment there’s a breath-taking description of their city, reimagined in the future as the highest of the mountains , the mountain of the house of the Lord (2:2). And the next moment, there’s a graphic commentary of the state of everything around them. The people of Jerusalem and Judah, in the present day, were being exposed. That’s what Isaiah does here, he pa...

As Christians we tune in to God’s word in every year, every era – to hear God’s appointed spokespersons, and more than this, to hear God’s verdicts, God’s analyses, God’s challenges to our ways of thinking and our ways of living. And as we’ll see in a moment, there are a few shocks in store. So as we pick up the Book of Isaiah the prophet, as well as reading an ancient, celebrated manuscript, reme...

War imagery has been used very effectively to describe the situation we are in with COVID- 19. Front-line workers fight with an enemy coronavirus, waves of attacks are put down, we’ve talked of resilience, equipping our hospitals, and where to draw battle lines. All this communicates the urgency there is and the stance required of us all in the face of an unprecedented global pandemic. As Paul sig...

As a Christian there may be a danger of not realising who the real boss is! The Bible reminds us here. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is concerned with our relationships with each other: relationships that must actively demonstrate that we are part of God’s new humanity, the church he is building. Relationships that show we are overflowing with what God has done in our lives. We’ll see time and ti...

Today’s message is one that’s particularly important to listen to all together at home, because the Apostle Paul is talking to children and their parents. We all fall into one of those categories or both, no matter what age we are. And this is the Bible’s message about building the church at home. Children I’d love for you to listen out for an “O” message. You won’t have long to wait. So listen up...

Paul’s letter paints the most spectacular of panoramas : God’s amazing plan to build his church. It’s a vision planned and focussed and centred on the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ and his church - It’s this relationship between Christ and his church that’s definitive. It’s the model, the ultimate relationship as we consider how we get on and relate to each other – Christ and the church. Whether you a...

We’re quite familiar in 2020 with checking in on how much we walk – how many steps? It would be a little bit more surprising if one evening you looked at the step counter on your watch or phone to see a description of the quality of your walk ... imagine seeing the word “wise” or “unwise” pop up! But it might be helpful. For the bible urges Christians to scrutinise their walking. That is, we’re to...

Summer is long gone: it’s behind us in terms of its long, bright evenings. And this year more than most, you might be wondering about what’s ahead of us in the dark winter. There’s lots of uncertainty this year heading from the light of summer to the darkness of winter. There is, however, a sense in which something completely the opposite of this has taken place. That is, among Christians. Instead...

Paul, writing and describing the building of the church to the Ephesians, wants Christians to be aware that there may still be some toxic clutter to deal with. And that harmful, toxic clutter is in the whole area of our personal relationships with each another. As we build Blackrock Community Church together we are to do the same. So today’s Bible reading is a really practical call to action, to g...

Last week we saw Paul’s sketch of the thriving church, growing up into and called to stand up in maturity alongside it’s founder: the Lord Jesus Christ. And all the time his urgent call to Christians, his readers, to walk in a manner worthy of their calling to be part of this church. Today we see Paul turn to hone right in and speak directly to the men and women, the ordinary Christians who make u...

In our passage today there are a Biblical set of sketches. Sketches of what the church should look like . Here in Ephesians Chapter 4, Paul’s not so much concerned with building layout as with the conduct and behaviour of all of us: the people. What the church should look like. Come with me for a few minutes and see and hear what the Bible tells us about what the church, what Blackrock Community C...

The blueprints produced by an architect are exciting documents. Together with the artists sketches and the dazzling elevations a proposed new structure looks amazing – but then you wonder if the reality will ever match up. Can such a magnificent building take shape? So it is with us... we might wonder at the description of the church in Ephesians. We’ll see today that it’s because of Almighty God...

We’ve all felt a bit cooped up these months, but imagine really being imprisoned: your freedom restricted, your future uncertain, your life on hold – all your closest relationships severed, and being completely unable to do the work you’dgiven your life to. Who wouldn’t feel like giving up? In Ephesians 3, the prisoner facing that awful reality is Paul, 3:1, who describes himself as a prisoner for...

On a Sunday when the masks and the screens have gone up between us – we are reading about an opposite, and an even greater reality described in the Bible... about dividing walls coming down and a new structure being built up. We are hearing about people not being separated from each other... but amazingly, being joined together!

Christians are called to a completely new way of life. That’s what sanctification is all about. Listen to what the Bible teaches about how this works.

Justification by faith was the doctrine that stoked the furnace of the reformation. However, it is too relevant to leave on a history shelf. In these briefing notes we’ve been considering some of the major Christian teachings and I want to suggest to you that getting clear on this one is potentially the most life-changing. Listen in.

No doctrine of the Christian faith is more repugnant that this truth – that we are all sinners. Speaking biblically about sin and the human condition will make us feel very uncomfortable. However, listen to this briefing on what the Bible says about sin.

There isn’t much room for God these days in popular discussion. That is one reason why the opening words of the Bible are just so shocking: “In the beginning, God…” God simply is. Then the more you read the Bible, the more a picture emerges of this God who is and what he is like. Listen to this message from Exodus 4 and consider who God is and how you might encounter him and respond to him.