Sermons on Matthew (Page 4)
Immanuel: God With Us
Text: Matthew 1:18-25 18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying,…
Is Your Lamp Burning?
In some fundamentalist-type religious groups, you hear about the second coming all the time, usually pointing to something going on in the world today as a sure sign that “Jesus is coming soon!” so you’d better “Repent or perish!” But in others (probably most), you hear little, maybe because talk of judgment and Jesus’ second coming is usually associated with the kind of church mentioned above, and most of us don’t want to be connected to that. But, truth be…
Show Me the Coin
There’s a lot of talk these days about the relationship between Christians and government. This isn’t a new kind of tension, because apparently Jesus’ peers had similar discussions. In this short text, Jesus doesn’t solve all of the difficulties, of course—Paul would later reflect on this this theme more in Romans 13—but he speaks to some of the tensions in his world: he didn’t side with the Zealots, who wanted to rebel against the government, and neither did he side…
The Great Commission
This is the last sermon of this four-part sermon series. Three weeks ago I spoke on The Great Compassion (Matt 9:35-38 — Jesus’ love for us); two weeks ago we studied The Great Confession (Matt 16:13-23); last Sunday: The Great Commandment (Matt 22:34-40 — love God and neighbor). Notice how the series progresses from Jesus’ love for us (Compassion), to our response to him (Confession: He is the Son of God), to our living out the call of discipleship (Commandment:…