Prayer is one of the basic disciplines of the Christian life and something every Christian must learn how to do. One time after listening to Jesus pray, His disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray like He prayed. In response to their request, Jesus provided them with a simple yet profound prayer. We know it today as the Lord’s Prayer, which is by far the most beloved and most often quoted prayer of all time. Sadly, however, it is probably the most misunderstood and misapplied portion of Scripture. Jesus never intended this prayer to be something we parrot mindlessly and mechanically. Rather, it was meant to be an example of the kind of conversation a believer should have with God in prayer—a model, guide, pattern, blueprint, or template for us to follow. In this sample prayer, Jesus gives eight essential elements of the kind of prayer God desires to hear from His people.

Every believer knows the frustration of wanting to obey God while still battling the sin that remains within. Drawing from Romans 7:14–25 and selected Scriptures, this message explores the surprising truth that God has not left us to struggle without purpose. Though indwelling sin is a relentless enemy, the Lord providentially uses our ongoing conflict with it to sanctify us, expose our need for Christ, increase our appreciation of His grace, and prepare us for the day when we will finally be free from sin forever.

The Bible is full of exhortations to pray and examples of people who prayed along with the prayers they prayed. But the only place in the Bible where any specific instruction about how to pray is given is in the Sermon on the Mount. Here in Matthew 6:5-15 and the parallel passage in Luke 11:1-4, Jesus provided His followers the most important teaching on prayer in the history of the world (i.e. The Lord’s Prayer). As we will see in the weeks ahead, Jesus provided this epic prayer not for us to mindlessly and mechanically recite but to serve as a model, a guide, a pattern, or a blueprint for the kind of conversation we are to have with God when we pray. But before Jesus taught His disciples how to pray He had to teach them how not to pray. Like every other aspect of Judaism in those days, prayer had been corrupted and perverted by rabbinic tradition. Most Jews were completely confused about how to pray the way God wanted. Prayers had become standardized; words and forms had been established and prayers were read or repeated from memory with little or no attention paid to what was being said. So before Jesus could teach His disciples how to pray, He had to undo what they had already been taught about prayer. He warned about the TWO KINDS OF PRAYER we need to avoid because neither of them accomplish anything.

In Matthew 6, Jesus continued His indictment of the scribes and Pharisees while instructing His followers in the way of true righteousness. These Jewish religious leaders tried to establish and maintain a right standing with God through a performance-orientated, works-based religion that lacked any true relationship with God which resulted in them becoming a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites. They were masquerading as something they were not. In the previous chapter, Jesus exposed how they fastidiously kept the letter of the law but hypocritically missed the spirit of the law. In this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus turned from their hypocritical teaching to their hypocritical deeds. Expanding on what He said in 5:20 about how the righteousness of His followers must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, He went even further by saying that true righteousness must not only go beyond our outward actions to our inward thoughts but it must reach even to the motives of our hearts. In vv. 1-18, He zeroed in on the three main acts of Jewish piety which are also the three main pillars of every major religion (i.e. giving, praying, and fasting). Jesus’ instruction on giving in vv. 1-4 can be divided into THREE SECTIONS.

This beloved psalm is a divinely prescribed antidepressant for the soul. We all get depressed at times and allow the circumstances of life to steal our joy. Rather than praising God and trusting Him, we question Him and complain about the troubles and difficulties He has ordained for our lives. In Psalm 42, the Psalmist honestly admitted he was discouraged and distressed and his heart was fluctuating between faith and doubt, hope and despair, and peace and distress. In light of the ups and downs of life, he modeled how not to be controlled by our feelings or let our joy be dictated by our circumstances. When we are sad because of our feelings, our enemies, and/or our trials, we have a simple choice to make. We can either throw ourselves a pity party or give ourselves a pep talk. What we choose makes all the difference in how we respond to the problems and pressures of life.

When most of us consider anger, we typically think of the more extreme cases; not the seemingly “respectable” types of anger that we experience right in our own homes. It’s critical for us to have a biblical understanding of what anger is; so that, we might redeem anger and use it for good and not for evil. This morning, we will develop a biblical view of anger by examining five aspects of anger so that we might learn how to redeem anger in a biblical way.

C.S. Lewis said reading the Sermon on the Mount is like getting smashed in the face with a sledge hammer. But this final command hits more powerfully than the rest in that it is the most challenging command of them all and it also exemplifies perhaps more than any of the other commands the supernatural nature of the citizens of Christ’s kingdom. In other words, what Christ called us to here is not natural for any of us; the thing expected of us is not only incomprehensible, it is humanly impossible. And yet it is the premier thing that sets Christians apart from everyone else in this world; namely the way we love others is radically different from the way the rest of humankind normally loves others. Jesus’ instruction in this passage on how His followers are to love others can be divided into THREE SECTIONS.

The story of Ruth and Boaz is one of the most charming, heart-warming love stories of all times. But it is not just about romance; it is really about redemption. The underlying theme of the book is God’s redemption of His chosen people. It vividly foreshadows how Jesus Christ graciously provided for our salvation by paying the price for our sins through His death on the cross. Looking at the story of Ruth from a theological perspective, we see how God in Christ redeems foreigners like us and makes us a part of His family. But from a practical perspective, Ruth serves as a role model for women to pattern their lives after. Her life exemplifies the qualities of the kind of woman who is pleasing in God’s eyes and who is a blessing to her husband and children and any one else whose life is touched by hers. As the story of Ruth’s life unfolds in the four chapters of the book that bears her name, FOUR QUALITIES that made her a “woman of excellence” come into focus.

It is ingrained in us as Americans that we all have rights which cannot be violated. Our culture has grown accustomed to individuals and groups demanding and defending their rights and all sorts of movements have sprung up over the years to fight for civil rights, women’s rights, LBGQ rights, children’s rights, worker’s rights, prisoner’s rights, disability rights, etc. all of which want to be treated equally and fairly. It seems that we all have an inordinate concern for our rights and are quick to stand up for them when we feel like they are being infringed upon. So much so if the justice system—which God ordained to uphold and protect the rights of its citizens—fails, some feel justified in taking the law into their own hands and correcting the perceived injustice by unleashing their vengeance and punishing whoever committed some crime against them or a loved one or some other innocent victim. But in this text, Jesus illustrated FOUR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS He expected His followers to forego for the sake of representing the gracious spirit of our King and His gospel. What sets citizens of Christ’s kingdom apart from everyone else in the world is we do not have any personal vendettas. And when we are provoked, mistreated, or our rights are violated, we not only refuse to retaliate and give people what they deserve, but we go the extra mile and humbly, selflessly, sacrificially, generously give them what they don’t deserve.

The fact that our justice system requires any witness to take an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth and considers it a crime if we don’t tell the truth proves just how little humans can be trusted. We are all prone to lie because we are all liars by nature. From the very beginning, mankind has shown we have a tendency to lie, deceive, embellish the truth, stretch the truth, shade the truth, and conveniently leave out important details. Jesus expects His followers to be completely honest in a world that traffics in lies and deception. Citizens of Christ’s kingdom should never have to use an oath to verify what we are saying is true since we are known for our honesty and integrity unlike others in the world who play fast and loose with their words for their own selfish ends. In Matthew 5:33–37, Jesus shared three truths for His followers to consider before ever making any kind of oath, promise, or vow that will ensure everything that comes out of our mouths is the honest to God truth.