Sermons on Matthew
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Sermons on Matthew

God and Same-Sex Marriage

Sitting on my counter at home right now is an envelope from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, containing a survey question asking whether Australia should legalise same-sex marriage. It’s been a long road getting to this point, with many political turns along the way. The question is one that has been raised several times over the last few years. And, unfortunately, this is an issue where the Christian church has been seen to be unloving, unkind and ungracious. Christians are…

Lead us not into temptation

Today’s passage: Matthew 6:9-15 How people communicate can tell you a lot about the kind of relationship that they have with each other. If they barely talk, you know that something is wrong. The same is true if one only sees one party talking and not giving the other a chance to speak. During his sermon on the mount, in which Jesus was describing the life fully committed to God and His kingdom, Jesus spent a bit of time teaching…

Forgive us our sins

Today’s passage: Matthew 6:9-13 I pity you. You’re pitiful. You’re so pitiable. Stop for a few seconds and think about what those words make you feel. Chances are, you’re first reaction might not be positive. In our culture today, the idea of being pitied is one that isn’t much appreciated. We assume that for somebody to pity us, they must think of themselves as being superior to us. We can equate pitying someone with looking down on them in pride.…

Give us today our daily bread

Today’s Passage: Matthew 6:11 Prayer: it’s both the easiest thing in the world, and something so many Christians struggle with. Prayer is simple talking with God – both speaking to Him and listening to His voice. Just as all relationships require communication, so too does our relationship with our God. Why then do so many Christians fail to have a thriving prayer life? Perhaps it’s because we have yet to fully appreciate that God really does love us, and really…

Your Kingdom Come

Today’s Passage: Matthew 6:10 Last week, we started looking at the model prayer given to us by Jesus as He taught the crowds around Him in Matthew 5-7. As in everything, there was something different about Jesus when it came to praying. He spent a lot of time praying. But I don’t think that prayer was ever a duty for Jesus, the way we sometimes think of it. When Jesus prayed, He was talking with His Father. He was speaking…

Dealing with Doubt

Today’s passages: Matthew 14:22ff, Matthew 28:15ff In his book on doubt, Os Guinness writes that “What is most dangerous to Christianity is not that Christians doubt, but that there seems to be so little open discussion and understanding of doubt. This must be changed.” This morning, we’re making a start on that sort of change. Are you a Christian who struggles with doubts? It’s not the sort of thing we like to admit to each other. We like to give…

Fasting

Today’s passage: Matthew 6:16-18 In our journey through Jesus’ sermon on the mount, the last few weeks have focused on Jesus’ warning that we not do our acts of righteousness in order to get human praise. If the good things we do are not done for God, then we shouldn’t expect God to stand in the way of what we really want: the praise of people. But if we do our good deeds in secret – so that they are…

Praying to Impress

Today’s passage: Matthew 6:5-8 Last week, we continued our exploration of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, considering what kind of person a “kingdom of God” person is. At the end of Matthew 5, Jesus said that we – his disciples – should be perfect as our Father in the heavens is perfect. But immediately after urging perfection – for that is what a person wholly made like Jesus is like – Jesus saw fit to warn us…

Jesus, Righteousness, and the Law and the prophets

Today’s passage: Matthew 5:17-20 God is King, and life in his kingdom is the best life there possibly can be. It’s a life that is perfectly in accordance with God’s will; in God’s kingdom, everything is exactly as God wants it to be. As creator of all that is, God is sovereign over all that is – he alone has the right (and the capacity!) to rule everything. The bad news of the Bible is that we humans reject God…

Salt and Light

Today’s passage: Matthew 5:13-16 God is king, and in his kingdom, things are the way that God wants them to be. Which, since God is God, makes God’s kingdom the best place for us to be. God is love, and his kingdom is a place of love. God is perfect, and his kingdom is a place sans any sinfulness or brokenness or imperfection. It’s a place where there are no tears, where there is no danger, and where there is…

Made Fortunate by God

Sermon passage: Matthew 4:23-5:12 I love attending men’s breakfasts. True, when I’m waking up at some unearthly hour my first thought is not one of joy. Yet that tends not to last too long: it’s great hanging out with my brothers in Christ, discussing life together, praying together, and thinking through our devotion together. Oh, and the breakfast… that’s quite nice too! But a while back I did something rather silly: I rocked up at a men’s breakfast sans my…

The Light in the Darkness

Sermon passage: Matthew 4:12-25 Matthew 4:12-25 One of the things Taryn and I did on our recent holiday to New Zealand was to visit a weta cave in Zealandia. The cave was actually an old mine tunnel, cut into a mountain. Taryn, her brother Nathan and I slowly made our way into the tunnel, using the torches on our phones to try and avoid the wetness in the middle of the tunnel floor. Coming from the brightness outside, the tunnel…

Dealing with Temptation

Sermon passage: Matthew 4:1-11 Do you ever find yourself tempted to do something which is wrong? What is it? Why is it tempting to you? Is it wrong in and of itself, or would it only be wrong depending on specific circumstances? When do you feel the lure of temptation the most? When are you most likely to give in to temptation? How do you feel when you experience temptation? Temptations are only tempting because, at some level, we think…

The Culmination of God’s Plan

Today’s passage: Matthew 1 God is the King of all that is, was and ever will be. The good news that Jesus came preaching was that God’s kingdom was near. He called us to repent and to believe that good news. He called us to become his disciples, to come to him: the way, the truth and the life; the only way to the Father. The Bible teaches that God is the creator of all things, and that we were…

Weary and heavily burdened?

Today’s passage: Matthew 11:25-30 Being religious is very hard work. As humans tainted by sin, we seem to have an inbuilt understanding that in order for us to have any significance in this life and success in the next, we have to be successful in the here and now. We assume that we have to prove our devotion to God in order for him to accept us. We know that God is holy and perfect, and we know that he…

Freedom from… guilt and shame

Passages: Zechariah 3, Matthew 27:3-10, John 21 What do you do with your guilt? Like all emotions, guilt is a gift from God – but one that so easily turns from gift to curse. Properly, guilt reminds us that we have failed to live up to some standard. It’s not meant to be pleasant. But it is meant to bring us to a place where we repent, seeking forgiveness and turning from what we were doing wrong. But what about…

Freedom from… worry

Passage: Matthew 6:19-35 Jesus told a parable once about a farmer who went scattering good seed. Some seed fell on the footpath, and were eaten by birds. Some seed fell on shallow soil with underlying rock, and withered when things got hot. Other seed fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants. Sill other seed fell on fertile soil, producing an incredible crop. Jesus explained the meaning of these different soils (Mathew 13:18-23), saying that the…

Jesus’ demand for 100%

The disciples have realised that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Now, Jesus starts telling them that he will go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed, and on the third day rise from the dead. Peter reprimands Jesus for saying this. Jesus says “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me.” Peter was seeing things from a human perspective, not God’s. Jesus disturbed the disciple’s ideas of what the Messiah would be like.…