Luke 24:44-49 & Psalm 1 (ESV) - About a year and a half ago, just before Easter of 2021, we had a sermon preached on Psalm 2. As we saw at the time, Psalm 2 is a kind of a gateway to the rest of the book of Psalms; if you can understand it, then you will be well on your way to understanding the whole of the book. This Sunday, our final Sunday as a congregation, we will read Psalm 2’s close brother, Psalm 1. Psalm 1 is a gateway to the rest of the Psalms too, preparing us to understand their message. Why do we need to understand the Psalms? Because the Lord Jesus says that the Psalms, like all the rest of Scripture, ultimately teach us about Him, revealing Him and His glory to His people. Whether together or apart, He is our Lord, and as His people, we must worship Jesus.

1 Kings 10:1-10 & 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 (ESV) - Not long after the Apostle Paul and his co-workers began to preach the Gospel in the Greek city Thessalonica, they saw more than a few people come to faith in Jesus Christ. Soon after they were forced to leave the city because of harsh persecution, and Paul was prevented from pastoring this infant church in person. On Sunday, we will read Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonian church and we will read of his joy for them. But what was he joyful about? What about this infant church led Paul to praise God constantly for them? And what sorts of things make a church truly praiseworthy among the saints? As we drawn nearer to the time of our dissolution, let us be asking these things so that we can rightly judge a holy and faithful church from a sea of alternatives and charlatans.

Psalm 32:1-11 & Matthew 18:21-35 (ESV) - Forgiveness is one of the core concepts of the entire Gospel message. We believe that Scripture teaches us that we have been forgiven of our sins because of the work of Jesus Christ. Christians hold tightly to that truth and we proclaim it joyfully. But the passage before us confronts us with a reality that we find uncomfortable; YOU must forgive others when they sin against you. Not once or twice, but each and every time. In a culture like ours that prizes the removal and cancellation of our opponents, a sentiment that we find difficult to resist, the Church needs to remember what the Lord has really done for her. The members of the Church need to grapple with the reality that they must forgive their debtors, just as their sins have been forgiven by the Lord.

Galatians 4:8-11 & 1 Kings 18:17-40 (ESV) - In Isaiah 46:5, the Lord asks who you could compare Him to, as if this person, this thing, this god was somehow His equal. Throughout the Bible, the Lord makes it clear that He alone is God. He has no equals and no rivals that can compare with His majesty and power. But at every point in history, the Lord has been challenged by rivals and opponents that sought to win the hearts of His people. For much of the Old Testament era, worship of the idol Baal was a temptation and threat to the Israelites. But in our passage on Sunday, the Lord would make something very clear to His wayward people: He is the Lord, and there is no one and nothing like Him. May He give us His grace so that we may learn that lesson ourselves!

Ezekiel 18:30-32 & Matthew 9:9-13 (ESV) - What sort of person does Jesus call to follow Him? Whom did He come to earth for, and what does He offer them? The 1st century Jews lived in anticipation of the coming Messiah, but they mostly thought He would affirm and reward the righteous for their good lives. The wicked would receive condemnation without hope of a changed relationship with the Lord. But when Messiah came, He didn’t do what anybody could have expected. He went to a man whose life and career made others consider him an irredeemable sinner. And Jesus offered that man the opportunity to leave his old life behind and have new life with him. For our final sermon in our Matthew series, we will meet the author and read his story of how he met Jesus. Jesus came to rescue people like Matthew, people who are sinners, and He continues to rescue such people today.

Psalm 32:1-11 & Matthew 9:1-8 (ESV) - Before Jesus was born, his stepfather was told what to name him by an angel. As you may know, “Jesus” is the Greek version of the Hebrew name “Joshua,” which means “The Lord saves.” This child was to be given that name because, as the angel said, “He will save His people from their sins.” In our passage this Sunday, Jesus will forgive the sins of a man, by His own authority. But how can a mere man forgive sins committed against God Himself? Who has the right to mediate between God and man like this? Matthew will tell “Jesus has that authority,” and the church will be reminded that Jesus is far more than a man. He is equal with God and He has the authority to forgive all of our sins.

Numbers 21:21-30 & Matthew 8:28-34 (ESV) - It’s an easy thing for us to conceive of good and evil as equal and opposite things. Many forms of popular media talk about the necessity of “balance” between opposite. Good and evil; light and darkness; God and the devil. Opposites but essentially at a balance with each other, neither with a significant advantage. Even Christians can sometimes think in those ways, as if the devil and his demons are equals to the Lord and His Kingdom. In the passage we’ll be examining on Sunday, Matthew will teach us that this is not the case at all. The demonic kingdom is no match for the authority of the Son of God. Unclean spirits might hate the Lord Jesus and oppose Him, but they are helpless to resist Him. Jesus Christ is Lord, and the kingdom of evil and all its agents will crumble before Him, then, today, and forever.

Psalm 107:23-32, 43 & Matthew 8:23-27 (ESV) - One would think that, if anyone knew who Jesus was, it would be His disciples. After all, those men were there for the whole of His ministry. They were with Jesus almost constantly, day in and day out. They knew He could do miracles with a word. But when they were faced with immediate, life-threatening danger, what did they believe about Jesus? That He could save them. But if He could save them, then what sort of man is He? The passage before shows that Jesus is not a normal person. He is far greater than an ordinary human. He controls the winds and rain; what sort of a person can do that? He is God, and no storm can snatch His people from His protective hand.

Jeremiah 20:7-13 & Matthew 8:18-22 (ESV) - There are any number of points of difference between Jesus and the celebrities of today. But one difference that I think we neglect: if you wanted to be with Jesus, you had to be physically with Him. You had to go out to wherever He was, you had to walk with Him, you had to hear His actual voice in real time. And some people really wanted to be with Him. They wanted to be known as His followers and disciples, His real disciples among the great mass of crowds. But Jesus didn’t make it easy to join Him. In fact, He made some very serious and very hard demands of people who wanted to be with Him. And He makes the same demands of His 21st century disciples too. He is the Son of Man, and if we would go with Him, we must understand what that will entail.

Isaiah 53:1-9 (ESV) & Matthew 8:14-17 (ESV) - There are things that people are just used to, even if they aren’t really all that great. When you live near an airport or by a train yard, the noise gets to you at first. But once you’ve lived there long enough, you get used to the sound. Or consider sickness and disease. We’ve lived with the threat of these things for literally our entire lives, but we rarely think about the possibility of a world without them. And yet, from the Bible’s perspective, sickness is an intruder in God’s creation. It’s not supposed to be this way, and yet it clearly is. Sickness came into this world because of sin, along with every other misery that we experience, up to and including death. But our passage will show us that Jesus Christ came into this world in order to remove the power of sickness in the world. As we see this, we will also see that Jesus has taken away sin’s power on the cross of Calvary.