Author Archive: Tom Barns
Seeing the Face of God
You know how it is when you wish you’d said something, but you think of it too late. Last summer I was doing open air preaching with a team in Bournemouth, on the south coast of England. I’d started to speak in the square, a young man had stopped to argue and before long a […]
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Parables: The Weeds in the Field
This blog post is part of a series of study notes on Parables written for the Sunday School Adult Bible Study group Read Matthew 13v24-30 & 36-43 How can we understand Jesus’ parables? Why does Jesus speak in parables? Remember what we’ve already seen in this chapter (Parables: The Sower) – Jesus tells the parables to make a […]
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Parables: The Sower
This blog post is part of a series of study notes on Parables written for the Sunday School Adult Bible Study group Read Matthew 13v1-23, focussing on the parable in verses 3-8 Parables were used by Jesus in some of his teaching. Here in Matthew 13 we have one of the first main parables, one of the […]
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Self-control – Fruit of the Spirit
Galatians 5v1-26 What is self-control like? Different from the others – it’s about ‘not doing’ more than doing. Think of examples (positive and negative): Joseph – Genesis 39 David – 2 Samuel 11 Cain – Genesis 4v7-8 But is this something we can (or want to) do naturally either? See Acts 24v25 – we’re not […]
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Gentleness – Fruit of the Spirit
Matthew 11v16-30 What does the world think about gentleness? It’s just weakness – if you want to get anywhere you need to be tough. Paul talks about being completely humble and gentle – this would have been a completely foreign concept in his day and is much the same in ours. Heart gentleness What is […]
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Faithfulness – Fruit of the Spirit
Psalm 89 This word is translated in a few different ways in the New Testament. Faith, assurance, faithfulness, fidelity. 244 times in total, and nearly all of them are actually translated as ‘faith’. A few are words that mean the same thing as faith. Titus 2v10 it is translated as fidelity. Romans 3v3 and Galatians […]
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Goodness – Fruit of the Spirit
Galatians 5v16-6v10 What is good? The word here is to do with practical goodness – ‘kind goodness’ – actions that go with standards. What does the world think is the standard for goodness? People often try to go for some kind of standard which involves what the majority thinks, which boils down to ‘what’s popular […]
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Kindness – Fruit of the Spirit
Luke 6v27-38 If we compare different translations of the Bible we may have, we find this is translated either ‘kindness’ or ‘goodness’. Which is it? It means something like ‘good kindness’ and if we look at the context of other uses of the word it becomes clear that kindness is probably the best interpretation here […]
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Longsuffering – Fruit of the Spirit
Hebrews 6v10-20 Everything keeps getting faster. And no matter how fast we can do things, people still run out of patience. Long-suffering could perhaps be translated literally as ‘long-tempered’. It means having a long fuse, putting up with a lot. It’s one of two types of patience we find in the New Testament – the […]
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Peace – Fruit of the Spirit
John 14v23-31 The world is quite keen on peace – national peace, interpersonal peace, personal peace. But do they have peace? Isaiah 59v7-8 – they don’t know peace Isaiah 57v19-20 – there is no peace for the wicked Jer 6v14 – they say ‘peace, peace’ when there is no peace Jesus gives peace not as […]
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