The consolation of Job

A sermon by Rod Benson for Seniors Week. Martin Luther called it “magnificent and sublime as no other book in Scripture.”[1] “Considered from a purely literary perspective, the book of Job is the supreme literary achievement of the Old Testament.”[2] Job is a biblical book like no other. Its themes invite philosophical speculation. Its story …

A passion for reading the Bible

A sermon by Rod Benson What makes us who we are? What distinctive passions and practices shape our identity as Christians who are known as Baptists? I don’t mean “distinctives” in the sense of what marks us out as weird, peculiar or crack-pots in the minds of others. It’s not about coming up with a …

What is justification?

Or, How to find peace with God - A sermon by Rod Benson Romans 4:25-5:2 A lot can happen in three days. On Friday we reflected on what it means to affirm that “Christ died for us.” This morning, as dawn broke over Lithgow, people from various Christian traditions gathered at the old blast furnace, …

Wisdom for church conflict

A sermon by Rod Benson Proverbs 29:20 There’s a lot you didn’t know about your tongue. The human tongue is the main sensory organ for taste, with between 3,000 and 10,000 taste buds. There are eight muscles in our tongues, four of which are attached to the bone, and the other four are the only muscles …

Wisdom for church planning

A sermon by Rod Benson Proverbs 21:5 As a small child I lived for six years in Wollongong, an industrial city south of Sydney. Ours was the last block of land in the street to be built on. Some Sundays after church, we would go to the site and observe the progress: concrete foundations, plumbing, …