Acts – Salisbury Baptist Church

The coming of the Word of the Gospel to call you to become a Christian

28th April 2024

This sermon explores the significance of responding to God's call and forming a personal relationship with Jesus. Through the examples of biblical figures like Samuel and Philip, the message emphasises that true Christianity centres on a direct connection with God through His Word, rather than through church ceremonies or creeds. The sermon invites listeners to acknowledge, recognize and respond to Jesus' call in their own lives, highlighting the transformative power of hearing and accepting the Gospel.

The Full Circle of Christ’s Love

31st March 2024

The sermon intricately weaves through the concepts of “Kenosis” and “Plerosis” (emptying and then returning to fullness) in the life, incarnation and exaltation of Jesus. The message highlights Jesus' journey from self-emptying humility to being exalted by the Father as Lord of all. It focuses on Christ's ascension, His ultimate authority, and the impact of His humility, then exaltation on our understandings of salvation and discipleship. The preacher calls for repentance, urging believers to reverse their verdict on Jesus — moving from being outside the Divine favour to acceptance within the “Beloved” — in the salvation that Christ has achieved. This message not only recounts the theological significance of Jesus' actions, but also emphasizes the practical implications for believers, calling them to a life of humility, repentance, and a deeper dedication to the exalted Christ as Lord and Savior.

Raised for our Justification

31st March 2024

This sermon emphasises the profound impact of Jesus' resurrection, not only as a historical event but as a transformative reality in the lives of believers. It delves into the Apostle Paul's teaching on knowing the resurrected Jesus intimately and experiencing the empowering resource of His resurrection in our daily lives. The sermon outlines how Jesus' resurrection serves as the foundation for our justification, ushering us into a new life in Him, assured of eternal life. Through Christ's victory over death, and consequent ongoing life, believers are invited into a personal relationship with Him, marked by empowered Christian living and the ultimate fulfilment of eternal fellowship with God. The message invites individuals to embrace the risen Christ, enabling them to live lives characterised by His resurrection's power and the certainty of God's love and salvation.

Established or Stuck in the Mud

18th February 2024

"Not only in terms of physically, economically, in terms of your development of job and whatever. Do we have that same desire to be established? But I think it's true of us all as Christians, the part of what the Scriptures tell us in the book of Romans, the whole of the idea of the book of Romans is about not only coming to Christ, but also getting established."

How to lead someone to Christ from Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch

28th January 2024

"Tonight, I'm actually doing a repeat of something across the different decades I've always tried to include in. And it is an example from the Book of Acts as to how you can counsel somebody, how you can lead a person to Christ, how you can be involved in evangelism."

Spirit of Grace continued

14th January 2024

"In our church, we've been learning about the Old Covenant and the move into the New Covenant. And so, history has been divided as far as God's promises, and particularly the covenants that he made with his people, Israel. And both the Old Covenant, through Moses, and then eventually Jesus, through Jesus, the New Covenant was made. But both of those covenants were made with Israel, God's people. Where do we come in as those who are in the church? We come in because in the making of the New Covenant, it was made available on a different basis than that which followed the Old Covenant's reliance on the Mosaic Law. But rather, the New Covenant entrance point was in your attitude to Christ. And Jesus, and belief in him, and trust in him for the forgiveness of sins, was the entrance door. The entrance door into the New Covenant God gave to Israel. And by everybody being invited to come in who were prepared to believe in Jesus, it formed a new body, not just people who were Jews, but a new body, both Jews and non-Jews, anybody, in fact, who was prepared to put their faith in Christ. That's the New Covenant."

Handling Persecution

10th December 2023

"What we've been doing in these mornings is bringing out the facts that the righteousness that those statements, those Beatitudes are about, are really of a standard that none of us can make it in our own. And it is God's intention. It is God's intention for us to understand that the righteousness needed to be in his kingdom is something that we have failed to achieve as a human race."

Paul’s method of discipleship

12th November 2023

"And no better way to find out how Christianity has been set up by God than to go back to the beginning of the first apostles, Jesus and the apostles. And to go back to the beginning of the first apostles, Jesus and the apostles. And the things that he told them to do. And so as a part of tonight we will be looking at the Great Commission."

A vision for our Church

10th September 2023

"The reason for choosing the passage in Acts chapter 9 has to do with the description in the final verse where in verse 37, if we just put that passage, Acts 9, 26, the following, it's because in that verse it describes the early church and some of the difficulties that they had gone through, it really sent them for six. Some of the persecution had caused people to leave Jerusalem, they caused others to be afraid, they were suspicious of each other. There were other difficulties between people with varying backgrounds who weren't getting on in the church and had a bit of a squabble about everybody getting looked after and some groups being favoured more than others."

I being in the way, the Lord led me

30th July 2023

"Even though the Bible teaches us that God is not willing, that any should perish, it goes on to say, but that all should come to repentance, which is to change your verdict, change your mind, to be sorry for your sin. And so there is, introduced by the scriptures themselves, these two elements that need to be held in tension, for both are true. The answer is not to find a way of thinking that chooses one and sticks to it and ignores the other, because both are in the scriptures... An antinomy is right there in the question as to whether God has chosen a sovereign or whether we've been put on the spot that our choice will make a difference."