Sunday Talks

The state of humanity may be “significantly more alarming” than you ever realised. What exactly is the biblical diagnosis? After his report on this, Paul explains how some extraordinary intervention has potential to bring people from death to life. Listen to find out more.

The writer of Ezra suddenly brings us from over a decade of paralysis to a new beginning, a rebuilding restart. How does this restart come about? Listen in to hear how restarts in God's work begin, how they are sustained and how they are resourced.

God’s work is always opposed. We’ll be looking closely at some of the history of that opposition in this time of rebuilding the temple, Ezra 4. The writer seems to want us to realise that this was no blip in history. God’s work will always face opposition. We aren’t supposed to minimise it, but to study it closely. Listen too for the echoes of the opposition faced by Jesus Christ.

Reading Ezra 3, we are struck with the priority of the people: they build an altar before they build a temple. But why? In this message you will see God's people recognising their greatest need and the Bible's unmistakable signposting towards God's ultimate solution to the human sin problem: Jesus Christ.

The historian in me has always been really fascinated by lists of people. But what about the lists of people and places in Ezra 2? I hope we’ll see from Ezra Chapter 2 that it is well worth taking the time to read through them. Here are all the people who obeyed God. People who wanted to get things right where God and worship are concerned. This list is important because these are the people who s...

God’s sovereignty can never be toggled to the off-position! God’s word from Ezra chapter 1 directs our attention to the Lord’s sovereign hand at work. It is the sovereign hand of the Lord that brings restoration to His people. The Lord is in control. Listen in to hear more.

If you are a Christian, you’ve received an envelope containing a new life-mission. The purposes and aims of your life are re-directed! We can see how Matthew plainly connects the resurrection with this new, life-defining mission. At the end of Matthew's gospel, there’s a nudge from Matthew to read our new mission and come to terms with it. Listen in as you open yours.

Down through history, even when they set their minds against Christianity, people have found themselves confronted by the facts of the resurrection of Jesus. Matthew ends his gospel with a presentation of these facts. Then he does something else. Matthew shows how the resurrection of Jesus Christ compels us. Listen to this message from the last short chapter of Matthew's gospel.

Whether you are a story consumer or a story maker, what do you think of the story of the events in the run up to the first Easter? What Matthew has recorded and compiled wasn’t designed for quite the same type of story consumption we’re used to. And there are clues in his text about what he wanted us to do with what’s in front of us. This story is different. Listen in to find out why.

Jesus confronts us here in Matthew about where we are investing our worries. As catchy as the tune is, Hakuna Matata is no biblical philosophy. Simply living with a “no worries” approach doesn’t square with life as a Christian. In this whole area of "worries," Jesus sets out two things we will be considering in this talk:aA principle for followers of Jesus and a pursuit for followers of...

The Bible says that we are all investors. With whatever amount of money and resources we have, we are all investors. Just after as Jesus calls out the hypocrisy of showing off in how we give or pray or fast as his followers… he poses a series of questions aimed at challenging and teaching and warning investors like you and me. Three questions here - listen in!

Prayer. It isn’t some religious spectacle. It’s a heart-cry. Listen as we consider Jesus' model prayer and specifically where he invites his followers to pray our needs.

The words of this prayer have probably been repeated meaninglessly more than any other prayer in history. It is ironic given that Jesus tells his followers not to pray like that. Here in Blackrock why don’t we move away from that sad irony? As you listen in, come and consider how we should pray as genuine Christ-followers! 

There’s a kind of religion that is all to do with doing good things to be seen doing them. And there’s – sadly – a very common form of Christianity of this kind too. That Jesus should speak so directly to his followers about it should alert us that anyone who is a Christian is susceptible. Listen to hear what Jesus says about religious practice and our motivations. 

Jesus calls his followers to resemble their father, God himself. This means more than mere transactional love for the people who love us back. Will you love your enemies? This is the way Jesus loved... all the way to the cross, to save us, enemies, from our sins. Listen in to this message from Blackrock Community Church on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus wants his followers to do more than wear the badge of truthfulness. As he takes charge of our lives, as we follow him, the king, he wants us to go beyond the surface to heart-level commitment to truth. Listen to this message exploring the next part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

As Jesus teaches about what it means to follow him he moves in a different direction than his contemporaries or culture around us. Listen to what he is teaching in the realm of sex, lust and divorce. Will you follow his direction?

We are very used to being individuals who live independent lives. So where does church fit in? We are going to see that, Biblically speaking, the church is central. We’ll look briefly at some of what the Bible teaches on the church, culminating in Paul’s description in the middle of Ephesians 3. 

It is always good to be thinking in terms of a biblical audit of how we are getting on as a local church. Paul challenged the Christians who made up the local church at Ephesus by giving them a description of what local churches should look like . Not just individuals, but as the people, who make up the church. What should the local church look like? And the surprise here is that the measure of a...

What if, as Christians with new identities in Christ we had a new community to belong to? Well, the remarkable truth is that we do! And it’s described here in Peter’s letter to Christians who were feeling cut-off and under pressure in hostile circumstances. If you are a Christian, you’re not just a new individual with a new hope… the bible sketches out that you’re part of a new building with the L...

Why don't you take the Shepherd’s approach to Christmas this year? What is this Shepherd’s approach and how will you take it? Come and consider Luke’s description of the first Christmas to find out.

What does it look like to live in the way God intended? In this part of Matthew we start to see the King’s standard as Jesus gives examples, starting with how his followers should deal with anger.

This was no smooth accession. No seamless transition from one regime to the next. Matthew has announced that Jesus Christ’s is a profoundly radical and new regime. There’s been a fundamental shift! It’s a new era! This is the Kingdom of heaven, it’s norms revealed in the sermon on the mount, and so the King – Jesus Christ, made his way to the teacher’s podium and opened his mouth and taught them (...

Millions of us have sent our DNA off to specialist laboratories for analysis – desperately looking for clues about our identity. As well as being citizens of Christ's Kingdom, what else does the gospel according to Matthew reveal about the identity of Christian disciples?  Here are two distinctive markers for Christian disciples as we open up the Bible’s analysis from Jesus Christ about who w...

Officials here in Ireland have tried to communicate this sad message recently: "If you arrive here with nothing , we’re sorry, but you’ll have nowhere to go." Don’t you long for a better place? The good news, from Matthew, is that for people who come to realise their spiritual poverty, that they have nothing, there is a better place: a whole new Kingdom, under Jesus Christ the King. When people ge...