Introduction: Brothers and sisters, today we come to the opening of Luke's Gospel. Before we talk about this passage, I want to ask you a question first: when was the last time you heard God speak to you, as though he were standing right in front of you?

Not “when did you last read your Bible”, and not “when did you last pray”, but this: when did you last truly sense God speaking to you through the Scriptures? When did God last step into your life by his Spirit and turn it around and make it new? If we are honest, most of us would probably say, “It has been a long time.”

And that is exactly the spiritual climate of the time when Luke 1:1–25 was written. After the prophet Malachi, it seemed that God fell silent for four hundred years, because from the close of the Old Testament…

[Galatians 3:27-4:7] 2026.09.13 Race, Gender, Class – Think like a son, not a slave

Race, Gender, Class – Think like a son, not a slave

Big Idea: You are baptised into Christ, clothed with him, one in him. So don’t identify yourself as a slave would, but as God does: his adopted son.

1. We identify ourselves as slaves to the world’s elements (3:28; 4:1–3)

2. God sent both his Son and the Son’s Spirit to make us cry, “Abba, Father” (4:4–6)

3. Be identified as God identifies you: His adopted son (3:27–29; 4:7)

Matthew 22.1_14 20260906 Come to the wedding of the King’s Son

Come to the wedding of the King’s Son

Passage: Matthew 22:1-14

Big Idea: Don’t insult the Heavenly Father’s invitation with excuses or defiance — come when he summons, clothed in what he provides.

1.      The King summons: Everything is ready for the Son’s wedding (vv.1-4)

2.      The invitees’ snub: The invitee’s insulting excuses and the King’s new summons (vv.5-10)

Introduction: If we look around at the world today and see war, persecution, sickness, unemployment, broken families and anxious hearts, we may well ask, “Does all this tribulation, all this hardship, mean anything? Where is God?” The truth is that the “tribulation” in your life and mine is being counted.

Two thousand years ago the apostle John was exiled to the island of Patmos, a desolate quarry. By then he was already an old man. A lonely old man, watching the church suffer cruel persecution under the Roman Empire, watching many, many believers killed and many more Christians wavering in fear. It was in that darkness that God opened a door in heaven to old John. And what did old John see? Not the suffering of earth, but the eternal celebration of heaven. A vast crowd that no one could number, gathered together from every nation, tribe, people and language,…