The Father Who Sees | Your Kingdom Come | February 15, 2026
2026-02-15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4o_tOEU07o

We've been walking through the Sermon on the Mount, and just a brief refresher before we pray to sort of give you the arc of what we are seeing. We are not trying to deal with every detail, nor are we necessarily trying to deal with every detail in the Bible that is contained within the Sermon on the Mount, but sort of like flying in a plane over the terrain of the earth, we're trying to sort of get a big picture of what Jesus is doing. in these words to us. And so the Sermon on the Mount begins with what we know as the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," and we find this picture of both invitation and of transformation, that Jesus invites us into a new way of life, and He begins transforming who we are. From there, we find that that transformation results in people who live for righteousness, and almost immediately,

we see what happens when the world begins to push back. And so Jesus then addresses our fear of opposition, and He talks about how we are salt and light. Then Jesus will move into dealing with righteousness and the root of sin, starting in verse 17 all the way down through verse 48, that Jesus goes beneath the behavior and to our hearts. And as we moved into last week, we've moved into this relationship with God. And to our hearts, in terms where Matthew chapter 5 ends, sort of picturing these attitudes and actions we take toward others, Matthew chapter 6 deals with our relationship to God. And in doing so, Jesus is calling us into a deeper relationship with the Father. And He's not just showing us this morning, I think, where we should be, but also laying out a path for where we should go.

Let's get right into it. Father in heaven, I thank You for Your Word. I thank You for the truth of Your Word, and the power of Your Word. I thank You that You have preserved it, and protected it, and provided it to us. I thank You for Your Spirit, who is at work applying this Word into our lives and to our hearts. To hear about giving and praying and fasting, to think of them simply as religious practices that maybe we do or maybe we don't, but help us to see more deeply into what You are calling us to be. You are calling us to be Your children, and to be near to You. So encourage this morning the discouraged, convict those who are running from You. May You open our hearts to understand and hear the Gospel. It's in Your Son's name we pray. Amen.

So the reality is, I think, probably, most of us are list-making people, right? And you say, "Well, I'm not a list-making people," but the reality is, even if you're not a list person, you still live in a world that is governed and ruled by lists. And if you don't think so, right, you go to the DMV. You have to have a list of things you need before you get there. And it's always written, I think, in the most convoluted way possible, right? You need one document from tab A. You need two documents from tab C. And if you don't have two documents from tab C, you need three documents from tab 4. And when you get there, you don't even get to go talk to somebody at the DMV, at least in Virginia. You have to go to somebody who checks a list to make sure that you have fulfilled the requirements of the list before you're allowed to do anything.

You see, we live in a world that is filled with lists. And maybe your lists are mental, right? And that's great. You sort of have a mental checklist. I do that a lot, and it's great until I completely forget what was on my list, right? The reality is, every single one of us lives in a world full of lists. Some are responsibilities. Some are overwhelming. Some are exciting things that we are looking forward to. And one of the reasons that we have so many lists is because oftentimes, right, they make things easy. We check the box and we move on to the next one. And probably a lot of us have some feelings about this. Maybe it's an opportunity. It's a tool to be more productive. If you're like me, sometimes it's a burden. It's a prison on my natural creativity. Don't fence me in with your silly list. Two things this morning as we think about lists.

In our text, we're going to see three spiritual practices: giving, prayer, and fasting. And it's very tempting to see this as a list, right? Three things to do. Three boxes to check. Jesus, in fact, is not giving us a to-do list. He's calling us to evaluate our hearts. And once he has diagnosed the problem, he's going to lead us into something wonderful, a closeness with the Father who sees in secret. Second, I want you to understand that Jesus is speaking to all of us, but he may be speaking to us in different ways, right? Some of us need to be corrected, and some of us need to be corrected fairly frequently. Maybe we're doing the right things, but we're doing so for the wrong reasons. We're seeking approval, building reputation, storing up the wrong treasure, and Jesus is going to very clearly confront that.

Some of us, what we need is an invitation, and what I mean by that is that maybe we're doing everything that we are supposed to be doing, but we're exhausted. We're checking boxes, but we don't feel like we're very close to God, and what Jesus is going to do is he's going to invite us into something better. And all of us, regardless of where we are, need to see the glory of what Jesus is offering. There is a Father who sees us, who knows us, and who calls us to himself. And so, as we walk through this giving, and this prayer, and this fasting, one of the calls of this text on our lives is to evaluate where we are, not necessarily in terms of a list with check boxes, but in regards to where our heart is into how we are following Jesus.

You see, Jesus uses these three things—giving, praying, and fasting—to diagnose the problem of our heart. And I want to start by saying we need to understand that these things, Jesus is saying, they are good. Jesus' words here in this text assume that we are going to be doing them, right? The formula found in this text is "when you." So Jesus begins by saying, "When you give, when you pray, when you fast," the implication here is not if you do these things, it's when you do these things. Because there is a temptation that we frequently have that treats certain spiritual actions as sort of maybe the advanced class for people who are more mature than I am, or as optional add-ons that maybe improve a little bit, but they don't really change the structure of who we are in Christ.

So sort of like sprinkles on ice cream, right? It's nice and it's pretty, but it doesn't really change the ice cream all that much. These spiritual disciplines that Jesus is using as examples of hearts that are either rightly focused or wrongly focused are a normal expression of life of people who walk with God. And the problem is that we can easily do these things for the wrong reasons, and so what Jesus is going to do is he's going to show us our hearts. So I want to start by showing you the pattern, and then we'll walk through and explain the contrast, and we'll talk about different kinds of people in our hearts and sort of see where we end up. So I want to move into the pattern, and the pattern in this is pretty simple. Three times is going to give us the same structure, right?

When you give, when you pray, when you fast. And in that structure, what he's going to do is he's going to sort of contrast different audiences. So he's going to contrast hypocrites, or those who play a part, who are sort of play-acting at what they are doing. In prayer, he's going to add an extra group, not just the hypocrites, but the Gentiles, and then again in fasting, he's going to talk about the hypocrites. Now the contrast between these groups is those who are children of their Heavenly Father, right? Over and over, he says, "Your Heavenly Father." And so the contrast in this text, in this list of three things, there is a contrast between those who are sort of playing or seeking to manipulate with their religious actions, and those who are children of the Father. And then there's going to be a contrast in the Lord.

He will say, "They have received their reward." And then three times he says, "Your Father who sees in secret will reward you." And notice that this is a completed reward, on one hand, versus a reward that is given by our Heavenly Father. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. I want you to understand, Jesus is not giving us three separate lessons. He's showing us one thing repeated three times, so that we don't miss it. Because sometimes, right, we have to have things hammered into our heads, and pushed into our hearts, before we can see the reality. And the pattern here shows that our spiritual practices, they go deeper than just sort of simple actions. And those actions don't just display what we believe, but they also display our heart, and they expose what we actually want.

At the heart of this, there is something that we desire. And Jesus talks about this reward, and He talks about those who have received their reward in full, that their desire in these things is to receive acclaim, or importance, or to have themselves listed up, or to be seen as influential, or spiritual, or holy. There's something we want. That's the reward that's being talked about. And on the other hand, there is a reward that is given by our Father, and ultimately what we'll see is that is a relationship that is deeper and closer and more wonderful than anything we can ever imagine. And so in this pattern, the three things: the contrast, and then ultimately seeing this reward that we desire that shows us our hearts. Let me give you an example. Forgiving, it's the man who is generous,

because it gets him acclaim, or the one who is generous because his giving helps him depend more deeply and more fully on the provision of his heavenly Father. The same is true for prayer. The man who is super spiritual or a call to remember and run to their heavenly Father. And the same is true with the priority of fasting. So I want us to, first of all, see this pattern, and secondly, I want us now to begin to understand the contrast. One of the things that's important, especially as we come to texts like this, is to see all of what God says on a topic. Because if we only look at a small piece, it's very easy for us to get the wrong idea. So imagine that you're studying marriage, and you only look at King Solomon, right?

You're going to come away with a pretty skewed view of what marriage is and how many wives it's acceptable for a man to have at one time. And the same is true if we come to where Jesus talks about giving to those in need, as he talks about praying, as he talks about fasting, and he talks about doing so publicly versus in secret. If we only see this picture in this text, we're going to come away with an incomplete picture, right? The real problem here isn't, is giving, praying, or fasting public? It's deeper. It's, "What am I seeking as I give and pray and fast?" It's not the visibility. It's the motivation for that visibility. He's not saying that private is holy and public is sinful, and the issue is visibility or secrecy. It's the reason behind why you're doing it this way, right?

It's, "Why are you doing it in this specific manner?" So, yesterday I was driving through town, and it was nice, and everybody was outside, and I'm driving by this one specific house that we go by on a pretty regular basis when we're cutting through town. It has no yard, or it does have a yard, but it's like the size of the communion table with a fence. The driveway takes up the rest of the front of the house, and there's no other space. And I drive by, there is a muscled, shirtless guy with his weight bench in the middle of the sidewalk with the biggest dumbbells I've ever seen, right? They had to be bigger than 50-pound dumbbells. And he's sitting there in the middle of the sidewalk, and he is not even doing anything. I had to stop right there for a few minutes because of a stop sign, and he's just sitting there, you know,

one arm on his knee, the other arm holding the dumbbell, just in the middle of the sidewalk, not even in his yard. And I'm thinking, "Dude, like you have a house, right? The problem isn't people seeing you working out. It's when you have to move your car so you have enough room to drag your weight bench out the front door of your house, put it in the sidewalk, put your car back in the driveway, and then sit on your weight bench in the middle of Winchester so that everybody can know that you can curl 75-pound dumbbells even if they never actually see you doing it. The problem isn't being seen. It's why are you going through all of this effort in order to be seen. That's exactly what Jesus is talking about. The problem isn't that we pray publicly or privately, or we give publicly or privately,

or we fast publicly or privately. It's why are you doing it the way that you're doing it. There is a time when we are called to do so privately. Jesus goes and prays privately all the time, but then there's other times where he prays publicly. In John chapter 17, there's times where we give quietly and anonymously, where our left hand doesn't know what our right hand is doing, but then there's times like in Acts chapter 4, where people are giving publicly to the work and support of the saints. It's kind of summed up like this. Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Notice what this text specifically says. Beware of practicing your righteousness. Here's the key part.

Before other people in order to be seen by them. That the purpose of this is those who do so in order to be seen by them. You see, the practices aren't the problem. It's the treasure that's underneath these things. So I want to take a look at these contrasts in this text. And I want to begin with Matthew 6:2-4. We'll move through these fairly quickly. And Jesus says this: "Thus when you give to the needy..." It's known specifically here, it's not sort of a general picture of offering. But it is giving specifically to the needy. "Sound no trumpet before you." Now there's a couple options here in regard to this. There were some receptacles in the temple that were sort of roughly trumpet-shaped. And so when you would put your coins in, because there's no paper money in this day and this time, it would kind of rattle in.

So you could give like one piece of silver, or you could give like 150 copper coins. So if you really want to make your offering have an audible impact on the crowd that surrounds you, you get it all in pennies and you sort of rattle it in the offering thing. That may be what Jesus is referring to. I think he does later in the Gospels. But I think here, specifically, it's not about offerings in the temple. It's about when you give to the needy. And there were some who in this time, when they would give to those who are needy, they wouldn't simply seek out those in need, but what they would do is they would, and I thought about borrowing my brother-in-law's trombone for this. They would get there, and they would make a big racket,

not just to let the needy know that there was money being handed out, but so that everybody could see them handing that money out to those who were in need. He says this, "When you give to the needy, sound no trumpets before you, as the hypocrites do in their synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." There's two ways to give to those in need. One that glorifies self, and one that pursues and reflects the heart of God. Let's take a look at Matthew 6, beginning in verse 5.

"And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, for they love to be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard with their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him." A couple of differences here. We have two groups contrasted to one instead of just the hypocrites versus the children of God, and one is the publicity.

This is not talking about going out and publicly praying for someone or with someone or for something specific. It's not, I think, talking about the National Day of Prayer as you walk through D.C. praying. This is talking about if I, every morning, instead of going through my prayer list, either in my office or in my living room, I take my prayer list down to the corner by McDonald's and Pleasant Valley and Jubal Early, and stand as you would in the first century, my hands out raised, my eyes straight to heaven, and pray through my prayer list in a really loud voice so that everybody knows I have a lot to say to God. That's not about me talking to God. That's about me making sure people see me. The second contrast here is do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do.

There's a tendency, when we're trying to find or get something, we try to manipulate people with a lot of words. So we add a whole bunch of extra words. As a kid, I never did this, but I knew kids that did who would go to their parents and say, "Oh, great and wonderful father! You're the best dad ever! You are so handsome, and you are so good at everything you do. Maybe we could go get some ice cream." Now, I never did that, and my parents don't believe anything they say about that. But there's a way that we sometimes try to manipulate with our words, and that's the picture here. I'm going to use a whole lot of words. Think about Elijah and the prophets of Baal, where they go out before their God, and they pray, and they scream, and they cut themselves with all their words, and nothing happens.

And then Elijah simply kneels down, and he asks that God would show himself to the people of Israel, and flame descends upon the sacrifice, right? There's ways to pray. One that promotes self, one that seeks to manipulate God, and one that rests in his provision as a good father. Pick up in verse 16, "And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, so their fasting may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head, wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." I was in my third year of Bible college, and I had a couple roommates, and we had somehow secured

what had used to be the preaching lab in the basement of the men's dorm as our room. So we had a very large dorm room. One of my roommates, conveniently, he worked at the gas station down in the corner that had, like, wings and pizza, and according to the corporate policy, at 9:30 we could make fresh wings and pizza, and at 10 o'clock they had to throw away everything that was made. And so we had a pretty fairly, like, large supply of wings and pizza in our dorm room fridge, and one of the guys in the dorm, and he was a younger guy, comes walking in, and he sits down, he's like, "Man, I am so hungry." Now we're pretty used to that, because everybody knows that we have a lot of wings and a lot of pizza.

He's like, "Man, I am so hungry. I just really need some food." He's like, "Man, it's like my stomach's just eating itself up." And I was like, "Dude, you don't have to flatter us. Like, tell us how hungry." There's, like, pizza and wings in the fridge. He goes, "Can't do that, man. I'm fasting right now." That's the picture of what Jesus is talking about. He's like, "Get out of bed. I'm not going to wash around. I'm going to go work out and be sweaty and roll around in the dirt." And everybody goes, "Whoa, you look terrible." Yeah, I'm really, really worshiping God today. The picture here is, once again, not fasting is bad, but fasting in such a way that expresses the pride versus the picture of fasting that says, "God is more important to me than food." Right? Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Am I doing this to be seen, or because I want to know my Heavenly Father more deeply and grow more closely to Him? Now, there is an objection that I've heard from some, is that in this modern day, I don't think anybody would ever go through religious practice in order to manipulate others. And I would just simply say to that, "Go to church camp, or a youth retreat, and look at all the 15-year-old boys who are worshiping, and holding hands with the 15-year-old girls." Right? Really giving their all, not necessarily as a former 15-year-old boy, because I really want to throw my hands up in worship, but because there's a really cute girl next door who will gladly hold my hand if I do that. Or, more practically, probably almost every week or every other week, we get some kind of mailer that's distributed to our congregation that says,

"Hey, we're a Christian company, and we would really love for you to pass this out to every person in your church. Throw it in your bulletin." And everything, a lot of them are travel and tours, and they're not necessarily bad things, but it's sort of hiding an agenda under the name of Christ. Right? We may not blow trumpets, but we certainly know how to broadcast our goodness. There are three groups of people I want us to consider this morning, right? First, some of us practice these things in order to gain something for ourselves, right? Give to be seen as generous. Pray to be admired as spiritual. Fast to be known as devoted. And Jesus will say, "If this is us, we have received our reward in full." Right? We've aimed at people and we've gotten people. That's all we get.

It's pride. It's performance. It's using spiritual practices to build a reputation. Some practice these things to know and to grow and to know God more deeply, and to know Him more fully and grow in our relationship with Him. Right? So in giving, it's an expression of how God has given to us. It's joyful thankfulness. And it's a reflection of the Father's heart. And in doing so, we find ourselves knowing and growing closer to God, and are rewarded by a deeper relationship with Him. That some who pray with God in focus, it's because they're dependent and honest with their God. Fasting because God is their greatest treasure. And Jesus says, "Your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you." Right? The reward isn't reputation. It's relationship. It's closeness. It's becoming closer to the Father.

And this is what Jesus is inviting us into now. There is a third group that's found. It's not necessarily found in this text, but it's found a little later in the Sermon on the Mount. There are some who simply go through the motions. They give, they pray, they fast, they check the boxes. They're not seeking God, but they're not seeking people either. They're just sort of doing what they think they're supposed to do. Faith and salvation become a checklist. Something I can say that I've gotten this done. There's no heart, no dependence, no love, no relationship. Maybe it's a lack of spiritual desire, but maybe it's discouragement. Maybe it's struggle. Maybe it's opposition that we've been facing. Maybe it's heartbreak. And it's easy to find ourselves simply going through the motions. Jesus warns about this in Matthew 7:21-23.

We'll be there in a few weeks. Those who said, "We have done all of these things," and Jesus tragically says, "You may have done them, but you never have known Me." It's not you didn't do enough. It's not you failed the test. It's that you do not know Me. There's a way to check the boxes and do the practices, but no relationship. What I want you to know this morning is that God knows your hearts. Three times in this text we find this phrase: "The Father who sees in secret." This is not a threat of divine surveillance. But it's rather this, right? We're so easily focused on what looks good. Samuel, in 1 Samuel 16, as he gathers Jesse's sons, and he begins to look at them, knowing that he's going to anoint one as king,

he will look at Eliab, and he'll say, "Surely this is the guy. He looks kingly. He's tall. He looks like a mighty warrior." And in the very next verse, the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees." Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. This is not a picture of how you dress, as it's so often used in church, right? This is a picture of where our heart is going. What God is saying to Samuel is that God sees what's truly going in on the inside. And God chooses David. And here's what we find about David in Acts chapter 33. Quoting from the Old Testament, "I found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, who will do all of my will."

Here's the sobering fact about David. David's greatest failure comes when he stops seeking God's heart. When he stayed home from going to battle and he sees Bathsheba, he took what he wasn't his and then covered it up with murder. Confronted by Nathan, David repents, and he prays this: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." You see, God isn't impressed with your public image. He sees your hidden heart. And the God who sees in secret transforms you in ways the praises of the crowd never could. So here's what I want us to lead us to, right? We've seen the pattern and the contrast. The different kinds of people. We've seen the text. What now? You can have a great appearance and still have a broken heart. So I want to try to diagnose our hearts with two questions and maybe a statement. The first is this: Are you part of the family?

Right? There's things that we have to be part of before we can come in, right? There are some privileges that are only afforded to those in the family. So I can go to my parents' house, I can walk through the front door, I can lay down on their couch and fall asleep. Maybe not even saying a word to anybody. Just walk in, lay down on the couch and fall asleep. And that's fine. Weird if the FedEx guy does it, right? That's a little bit strange because he's not part of the family. And so this morning, the first question to diagnose our hearts is this: If I'm struggling in these ways, maybe I have no desire for any of these things. The first question is this: Am I part of the family? You might say, "How can I become part of the family?"

Go back to the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. He opened his mouth and he taught them saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs are the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." The first steps to this are seeing our brokenness, our emptiness, the poorness of spirit. But not just seeing it, because we live in a culture that celebrates us saying, "You know, I'm broken, but this is the way I am." Notice this next thing that Jesus says, "Blessed are those who mourn." And this isn't general sadness, but a mourning over that brokenness in spirit, mourning over sin. We must see our brokenness. And as you continue on in this text, what you find is that Jesus takes those broken people, and he brings them into a kingdom, and he transforms them, and ultimately leads them to a deeper joy.

So the first question is, "Are you part of the family?" The second question is, "This is what's in the way." Right? So we have a dog, and we have a bunch of baby gates. Not because we have babies, but because we don't want the dogs going where they're not supposed to. So we put up a barrier that keeps them from being where we don't want them to be, and maybe in your relationship with God there is a barrier right now. And maybe that's sin. Because one of the effects of sin is that we almost immediately hide or separate ourselves from those we have sinned against. Or you see in the book of Genesis that Adam and Eve's instinct was to try to fix it, and then they went and hid, and then after that they made excuses.

And we do the same exact thing, and we know this happens, right? Ever loan somebody money, and they can't pay you back, so they just stop talking to you? They avoid you? They hide from you? Maybe it's not that. Maybe they've wronged you in some way, or maybe you've wronged others, and you just avoid people altogether. I was thinking about this back in college. We had a young man who, specifically about money, had a phone in our room, and he said, "Can I borrow it to call my girlfriend? I'll pay you for the long distance." And a $300 phone bill later, he never tried to talk to us again, right? That's what sin does. It says, "I've broken the relationship, and now I can't go back." And maybe the issue this morning is that you're part of the family, but you need to repent.

But maybe it's distance and time, right? There are people, our relationship has fallen away because we're far away, and it's been a long time since we've seen them. And maybe in your relationship with God, that's the struggle, is that you have become distant from Him. Maybe it's discouragement and brokenness, and it feels like you're stuck and you can't move. Maybe it's pride, thinking you've got it all together. Here's the answer, I think, and it's found in your Father. Jesus tells some parables, and the one that's the most famous talks about a son who distances himself from the Father. In the midst of sin, he ends up feeding pigs, and eventually, in the midst of his sin, smelling like pigs, he comes back home. Not with reluctant acceptance, but the Father runs to greet him with joy.

And he doesn't tell that son, "Go get yourself cleaned up," but the Father himself puts a clean robe on him, and a new ring, and a new celebration. And that same Father then leaves the party, and goes to the brother who is outside, who is full of pride, and has separated himself, and he says, "Come in." And if we look through Scripture, we see that God is the one who sits with the discouraged, and encourages, and strengthens, and helps. So one of the questions is, what's in the way? And then to see the Father who comes, and gets you, and welcomes you, and sits with you, and comforts you. And then sometimes, and this is maybe for the rest of us, sometimes we need to go get him. I love the story in the Gospels, where there's a man who couldn't walk, and he needs to get to Jesus.

And so what do his friends do? They go, and they grab him, and they cut a hole in the roof, and they drop him down to Jesus. This guy was separated. There was a gate, and he couldn't get there. And so his friends went, and got him, and brought him to Jesus. And sometimes, that's exactly what you and I need, is somebody to grab ahold of us, and take us to Jesus. As friends, and we have friends, are we even thinking about that? And part of the reason maybe we don't think about it is we don't share our discouragements and our struggles with others. People can't help if they don't know. I'll give you an example. This week, Thursday, I was discouraged. Felt terrible all day. Wednesday, everything I had to do was piling up, and I was just struggling on Thursday.

One of my good friends comes by my office, and I'm not like a hugger, but he is. He comes in and gives me a hug, and I was like, "Great. Thanks for that. It's helping so much." And he goes, "Hey, you want to go upstairs and pray?" And I was like, "I'm kind of not one of those guys who thinks that where you pray matters." He goes, "Let's go upstairs and pray." I was like, "Okay. I'll humor you." We go upstairs, and he prays for a bit. And you know what? That was exactly what my heart needed. To pull me out of the grumpiness and the frustration and the tiredness. And nothing was really all that wrong, but I needed a friend to come and drag me to where I needed to be. And so this isn't just a call for you to say, "I need to get there." It's a call for us to say, "I know someone who's struggling.

How can I lower them through the roof to Jesus?" You see, every single one of us needs the gospel. This brings us to our third call is that we must guard our hearts. Maybe you're doing okay. Things are on the right track. Don't take the goodness of God for granted. Martin Luther says the gospel that we must learn it, we must know it, and we must beat it into heads repeatedly because we're a forgetful people. You see, every single one of us needs the good goodness of the gospel. There's a family, that there is a Father who comes and gets us, and there is one who guards us as we walk this life. Listen to these words from Psalm 68: "God settles the solitary in a home. He leads out the sinners to prosperity, but the rebellious dwell in a parched land."

The picture of the God who comes, and He takes the lonely, and He puts them in a family. He takes the prisoners, and He brings them to a place of plenty. But if we are rebellious and say, "I will not go," we find ourselves in the midst of a parched and broken land. So our call this morning is to know that there is a family. It has been given to you in the good news of the Gospel. There is one who will come and get you, who will invite you in, who will forgive you, who will love you, who will save you, and that we guard that good news of the Gospel through thankfulness and remembrance all the days of our life. Let's pray. Father in Heaven, we've covered a lot this morning. Help us to see your heart for the broken and the hurting.

Help us as we seek to follow you, that we do so not simply through external action, but with a heart fixed on knowing you more deeply. Forgive us of our sin. Strengthen our weary hearts. Help us to see those who need encouragement, and help us to have the courage too.