NOTE: this week's sermon is AUDIO ONLY.

Deuteronomy 18:15-22 (ESV) & Hebrew 1:1-4 (ESV) - Four Sundays from now, we will celebrate Easter and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus, the center point of all that we believe in as Christians. To prepare us, we will be examining four selections from the book of Hebrews. These passages will show us that Christ isn’t simply good; as far as the Bible is concerned, He is the best, superior to anyone who came before or after Him. This Sunday, we will begin by seeing that God has revealed Himself to us through Jesus. What makes this revelation better than anything that the prophets brought to the Church? Hebrews 1:1-4 will tell us, and leads us to worship the Son who sits at the right hand of God.

Psalm 131:1-3 & Matthew 7:7-11 (ESV) - Since we returned to our sermon series on Matthew at the end of January, we’ve spoken about prayer more than once. Including the sermon coming this Sunday, three of the last eight sermons have been about prayer. We’ve been reading passage by passage through Matthew, so we’re only preaching what he wrote down. But why talk about prayer so much in such a relatively brief section? What do we still need to learn about prayer that we haven’t already seen? The answer is certainty. Jesus wanted His disciples to know that they could have certainty that their prayers would be answered. They could have certainty that God loved them and would give them good things. When we read these words on Sunday, may the Lord give us that same certainty when we pray too.

Psalm 119:65-72 & Matthew 7:1-6 (ESV) - When human beings find something that they enjoy or appreciate, they have a tendency to run with it to an unhelpful extreme. What was once good and pleasant gets wrenched into something ugly and even destructive because it was used wrongly. The passage we’ve come to this Sunday is one that I think tends to get misused in this way. It seems that anyone, even a non-Christian, can say, “Jesus said, ‘Judge not,’” and act like no one has the right to criticize them for anything they do or say. If that’s not what Jesus intended by this passage, what then did He mean for His disciples to learn? This is a passage that teaches God’s Church about how they are to evaluate themselves and others in light of God’s holiness. And to learn how to properly judge one’s self is a vital skill, as we will see, lest harmful consequences result from our sins against the Lord.

Psalm 104:10-15, 27-35 & Matthew 6:25-34 (ESV) - Last week, we received a stern warning from the Lord Jesus, a warning not to love money and the things it can buy, or to lay these things up for ourselves. But that raises a very practical question: what about things that we need to live? There are basic things that every human needs to be able to stay alive. If we don’t have money, if we don’t plan on how to get them, then we won’t have enough to live, right? Jesus will challenge our tendency to worry and fret with a simple command: don’t. Don’t be anxious about your daily needs? Why? Because, as we shall see, your Father in heaven, the one whom we pray “Give us this day our daily bread” to, He knows what you need. And because of His love for you, Jesus says that there’s no reason for us to be afraid of the future.

Ecclesiastes. 5:10-17 & Matthew 6:19-24 (ESV) - Many times, we assess something by its worth to us. You’d rather pursue something that is more valuable than something worthless. But how do we distinguish between something worthwhile and worthless? What makes the difference between them? For Jesus, treasure, valuables, precious things, ought to be laid up. But He also says that not every treasure is worth storing up. There are things worth laying up and things that are not. But how do we tell the difference between them and why does it matter? It matters because where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. As we prepare to worship our Lord on Sunday, let us consider the sorts of treasure we have laid up, and whether it is indeed worthwhile treasure. There are only two sorts of treasure and two masters one may serve. Which truly rules our lives?

2 Chronicles 1:1-12 & Matthew 6:16-18 (ESV) - Since we restarted our series on Matthew this year, we’ve seen Jesus say several times, “When you do a righteous deed, do it in this way rather than this wrong way.” Once again, He says this, now about fasting. But how do we approach fasting? Jesus expects that His disciples would fast, but it’s rarely commanded or expected in the same way that prayer is, for example. Today, for a number of reasons, we rarely fast, if ever. But if Jesus expects that it will happen, there must be a reason to do so. What is the purpose of this dimension of righteousness? And how are we to practice it so that it pleases the Lord? Christ will call our attention to the heart behind our actions and, in doing so, He will teach what a fast done to the Lord ought to look like.

Nehemiah 1:1-11 & Matthew 6:7-15 (ESV) - We all know that not everything can get done all at once. You might have five things to tackle, all of them good or helpful, but you can’t do all of them at once. You have to prioritize. The most important or immediately vital thing gets tackled first, the extra project with a later deadline gets set to the side for now. We do the same thing when we pray to the Lord. When we bring our concerns to Him, we do so according to what is important in our hearts. What we consider vital or meaningful, that is what we pray for. But what should we be praying for? What should we consider to be of first importance? What does the Lord teach us about Himself through our prayers? As we continue in Jesus’ instructions on how to pray, let us consider the content of our petitions. And let us ask that the Lord would teach us how to put His glory above and before all of our desires.

Psalm 145:13-20 & Matthew 6:5-6 (ESV) - Everyone has to learn to do things. From the simplest, most mechanical body movement to the loftiest thought experiment, we have to learn how to perform actions and do them right. Some things, we might be able to pick up on our own, like when a baby figures out how to walk. But for many things, we have to be taught and trained by someone else how to do it correctly, because we can’t figure it out on our own. In our passage for Sunday, Jesus must teach the disciples how to pray to their Father in a proper way. Lest they follow in the error of the Pharisees, they must learn how to pray correctly, and why, from Jesus. We, too, need that same instruction in prayer. May our God open our hearts to receive His teaching on how to commune with Him.

Psalm 139:1-12 & Matthew 6:1-4 (ESV) - [NOTE: these Scripture passages are cut off at the beginning of the video. You may consider reading them prior to listening to the sermon] - Before we took a break for Christmas in November, we had been preaching a series on Matthew’s Gospel. In our last sermon, Jesus exhorted His Disciples to be perfect as their heavenly Father was perfect. As those who had been called to be part of the kingdom of heaven, the disciples needed to practice righteous deeds. But according to our Lord, it is entirely possible to do a righteous thing with the wrong motive and spoil the whole thing. The disciples needed to understand: righteousness practiced so that others would praise the disciples is not righteous; it’s hypocrisy. As we prepare for worship this Sunday, let us prepare to have the motives of our hearts confronted by Jesus, so that we can practice true righteousness in His name.

Proverbs 1:1-7 &; James 1:5-8 (ESV) - Where does the wise man get his wisdom? Where does the godly woman get her understanding? I’ve been blessed by God to have godly mentors who I call upon for advice and wisdom. And even now as an adult, I still say, “I want to be like that person when I grow up. I want to have wisdom and godliness like them.” Our passage for this Sunday, we will see that all God’s church has a need for wisdom. We are called to grow in it, lest we be spiritually immature Christians. But where do we get that wisdom from? What is its source? James will tell us about how the Lord gives wisdom to His people, and we will learn the simple way to gain wisdom: ask for it.