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baptist church
baptist church
Topic: Ethics
At Open Icon Baptist Church, we value great preaching — preaching that engages deeply, humbly and honestly with Jesus, the Bible, and the pain and joy of living in the real world. And since going permanently online, we have been able to welcome great preachers from all over the world without having to wait for them to visit our shores. Click here to meet the inspirational preachers depicted in the gallery above, none of whom have preached for us!
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8 February, 2026
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Topic: Compassion, Culture, Discipleship, Ethics, Jesus, Justice, Law, Suffering
Scripture: Matthew
Jesus calls us to be salt and light by living a public embodied faith that tells the truth, resists indifferent silence, and makes God’s justice and love visible in the world.
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1 February, 2026
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Topic: Blessing, Discipleship, Ethics, Generosity, Service, Vocation
Scripture: Matthew
The call to live the beatitudes is not about turning them into a guilt-inducing to-do list, but about living a life that is a blessing to others.
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28 September, 2025
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Topic: Apocalypse, Community, Compassion, Ethics, Generosity, Hospitality, Love, Politics, Relationships
Even in the face of a catastrophic collapse of the world as we know it, God calls us to imagine and invest in a beautiful future.
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6 October, 2024
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Topic: Ethics, Fullness of Life, Grace, Law, Marriage, Relationships, War
Scripture: Mark
Jesus calls us to embrace God, life, and one another with joy, delight, hope, and grace, not with heartlessness cloaked in legalities.
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29 September, 2024
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
The book of Esther is like a joke that has aged badly, enabling us to see how righteous anger at anti-semitism can become its horrifying mirror image.
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18 February, 2024
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Topic: Apocalypse, Bible, Conversion, Covenant, Discernment, Ethics, judgement, Lent, Repentance
Scripture: Genesis
Both contemporary and ancient understandings of the rainbow sign point to God’s expansive love overcoming our fears and hostilities.
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11 June, 2023
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Topic: Discipleship, Ethics, Faith, Fear, Healing, Purity, Righteousness
Scripture: Matthew
Jesus calls us to follow him in being a contagious force for love and mercy rather than fearfully quarantining ourselves from bad influences.
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25 September, 2022
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Scripture: Luke
The cross of Jesus can teach us to recognise the innocence of suffering, and so enable us to recognise our own dependence on God’s mercy and to stop digging our own hells.
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4 September, 2022
As dangerous climate change unfolds before our eyes, the best possible outcome is entirely dependent upon humanity coming to a full acknowledgement of its special power and its special responsibility, which must centrally involve mastering our power.
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22 May, 2022
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Scripture: Revelation
Much traditional morality is based on the idea of separation into binary categories, good and bad, but the Bible also points a path towards a liberating non-binary future in God.
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31 January, 2021
Science, theology and reason can often lead to a sound set of ethical behavioural conclusions which then need to be set aside because, in reality, love demands something else.
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18 October, 2020
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Self-interested leaders will frequently manufacture frightening images of an angry dangerous God to silence opposition and maintain their grip on power, but Jesus opens our eyes to these abuses and to the reality of a God of incorruptible love.
