Chichester Baptist Church Sermons

This week in our series on Frontline Sunday's we are thinking about how God can use us wherever we are. The story of Jacob, meeting God through a dream as he slept on the road side shows us that everywhere we go can be a potential place to encounter God. Even the unexpected places can be places of transformation where God is at work.

Starting our Galatians series. The danger of adding anything else to the gospel such that it becomes an additional set of rules. Sometimes adding more takes away. The Gospel is for the whole Christian life not just the start of it.

Our identity as God's chosen people who are exiles in this world reminds us who are. Now as ever, as God's people we are called to make a difference in God's world.

The most famous part of the most well known verse in the book of Esther talks about being called 'for such a times as this'. Essentially the application we take from this is often that we are here for a reason. In this sermon we take time to look at the wider context either side of this verse and find the phrase is more nuanced and more challenging and applicable for all of us.

Fake news, alternative facts and warped messages are prevalent in our society. How come digital technology has turbo-charged fake news? In this talk Ian White analyses the nature of fake news and how to spot it.

Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything, said Steve Jobs as he was introducing the first iPhone in 2007. He had no idea! The smartphone has totally revolutionised the way we live. But every revolution brings undesirable consequences, and this is no exception. How does the Christian think about and live in the smartphone world? That's the question we reflect on in this message.

We live in a culture where the human treatment of the environment is increasingly becoming an area of debate and concern. Tonight's culture watch considers some of the questions this poses to us as Christians and provides some biblical resources to help us think through our response to these issues and care for God's creation.

The letter to Philemon gives us a tantalising glimpse into the story of a runaway slave, Onesimus, who had since been converted, and was now returning to his master Philemon with the letter from Paul. In the opening verses we learn 5 things about partnership: Partners - Don't go it alone - Share the same needs - Share the same goals - Seek each other's best - Celebrate each other's success

Continuing our look at aspects of our culture, we explore this year's biggest grossing film and what it tells us about our culture.

This message follows on from some people being baptised during the morning service. It looks at the story of Jesus' baptism and we find there some lessons about the way our heavenly Father redefines our identity. God makes the same declarations over us as he did over his Son.

Lessons from the artist LS Lowry. This was a baptist service in a day when we have baptisms in the morning too. We pick up lessons from a passionate communicator of a message and from a great artist looking at one particular painting from Lowry in Tate Liverpool.

Start of our series looking and learning from different examples from film, literature and the arts and seeing what the lessons, illustrations and applications there maybe for us as Christians. The film Green Book won the Acedemy award for best film and has applicable lessons about equality and sharing a frontline. We showed the trailer in the sermon https://youtu.be/QkZxoko_HC0

The author of Psalm 119 clearly loved the Word of God. There is no other explanation for this psalm! So how did he come to love it so much? Taking the first six sections of the psalm, we draw out six reflections, six clues which help explain the author's love of God's Word, six insights to help us make the most of God's Word too.

In our final session on #WDWGFH, we look at the call to whole life discipleship. Exploring why this is important and what it looks like to be followers of Jesus in all aspects of our lives.

Paul exhorts the Colossians to have a things-above mindset. This message thinks about what it means to have a Kingdom perspective and how our discipleship is influenced as a result.

Suffering surprises us. We wonder how a God who loves us could let certain things happen to us - doesn't he care, or is he powerless to help? But in this powerful passage Peter tells us we shouldn't be surprised if we suffer for our faith, and then proceeds to give what to us might seem seven surprising truths about suffering. And it's not just these truths that are surprising. He suggests three surprising responses too!