Douglas Mennonite Church

Sermon: O Worrier, Consider The Lillies  Date: January 18, 2026  Scripture: Matthew 6:25-34  Speaker: George Veith  We live in an age of worry. Studies from Statistics Canada tell us that 1 in 4 Canadians report to have moderate to severe anxiety. Gen Z and Millennial Canadians between 18 and 39 years old reported the highest levels of anxiety, loneliness, depression and stress of any age group (3...

Sermon: Two Masters  Date: January 11  Scripture: Matthew 6:19-24  Speaker: Paul Walker  We who live in consumeristic cultures must remain aware that we live in a context that is perpetually trying to get us to be discontent with what we have. We are conditioned to chase after more. We are trained to get our value from money, possessions, and material gains. Jesus tells us that “You cannot serve b...

Sermon: Prepare the Way  Date: January 4, 2026  Scripture: Matthew 3  Speaker: George Veith  In Matthew 3 we meet Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. John the Baptist’s role was to prepare the way for Jesus. He was the embodiment of Isaiah’s vision of a “voice calling in the desert to prepare the way of the Lord”. (Is 40:3) John called the people of Israel to repentance and enacted this through bapti...

Sermon: Sing In Exaltation  Date: December 28  Scripture: Luke 2:8-20  Speaker: Paul Walker  Worship is not just something that happens at church. Worship is a state of your heart— which is expressed in our thoughts, words, and deeds. Look at the Christmas narrative and see how the central characters expressed their worship in a variety of ways: Mary was moved to sing a song of gratitude to God. J...

Christmas Eve Candle-light service  Sermon: Joy Of Every Longing Heart  Date: December 24  Scripture: Selected Scripture Passages from Luke 1-2  Speaker: Paul Walker  At the heart of the Christmas story is longing. Elizabeth and Zechariah long for a child in their old age (Lk 1:5-25). Mary longs to be the servant of the Lord (Lk 1:38) as she sings about her God and Saviour whose mercy extends “fro...

Blue Christmas Evening Service  Sermon: Far As The Curse Is Found  Date: December 21  Scripture: Matthew 2:13-23 Speaker: Paul Walker  The Magi do not return to Herod. The response from Herod is to eliminate any possible challenge to his power-hold over Israel. Herod commands that all male baby boys under two years old be put to death. It is a tragedy. Perhaps no event in the gospels challenges ou...

Sermon: The Unexpected Worshipers  Date: December 14  Scripture: Matthew 2:1-12  Speaker: George Veith  We often picture the Magi as three Kings or three wise men who arrive alongside the shepherds in an epic Nativity evening of worship on an O Holy Night. The story that Scripture tells us is far more complicated. For starters, the Magi arrive on the scene after the birth of Jesus— likely years af...

Sermon: A Life Interrupted  Date: December 7   Scripture: Matthew 1:18-25  Speaker: Paul Walker  Joseph was pledged to be married to Mary. As was the Jewish custom during the betrothal period, Joseph was probably away building a home and preparing for his marriage to Mary. Joseph surely had plans and dreams about what his future would look like. However, God had other plans for Joseph. Joseph’s li...

Sermon: Bad Blood  Date: November 30  Scripture: Matthew 1:1-17  Speaker: Paul Walker  The Gospel of Matthew opens with a genealogy— or a family tree— of Jesus the Messiah. In our modern day, we tend not to care too much about genealogies and long family trees. We might even view genealogies as incidental information, but this list of Jesus’ family tree tells a story about Israel, a story about us...

Sermon: What do you see?  Date: November 23  Scripture: Matthew 6:22-23, Matthew 9:27-31  Speaker: Paul Walker  Jesus taught us that what we see is shaped by how our eyes are trained to see the world. If our eye is bad, our sight will be corrupted. We need good eyes to see the world rightly. When we see things, we project our own biases upon what we are seeing. What we see out there is interpreted...

Sermon: The Heart of the Matter  Date: November 16  Scripture: Matthew 6:19-24 Speaker: George Veith One of the ingrained messages we receive in our culture is to do all you can do to get rich and stay rich. We spend a majority of our lives in the workforce earning and storing up wealth in the hope of an eventual retirement. Into our modern day consumeristic context we hear an invitation from Jesu...

Sermon: “And When You Fast…”  Date: November 9  Scripture: Matthew 6:16-18 Speaker: Paul Walker  Jesus comes out of teaching on prayer and begins to talk about another spiritual practice. “When you fast…”. Jesus doesn’t say, “IF you fast” but rather he assumes that people will be regularly fasting. This might strike us as odd in our modern North American context that tends to disparage the idea of...

Sermon: Deliver Us  Date: November 2  Scripture: Matthew 6:9-13  Speaker: Paul Walker  This last line of Jesus’ prayer reminds us of our own frailty and the reality that evil is a force from which we need deliverance. We live in a broken world and have an enemy —the satan— which tempts us to fall. God does not tempt (James 1:12-13), but God does allow us to be tested and go through trials to refin...

Sermon: Forgive Us  Date: October 26, 2025  Scripture: Matthew 6:9-15  Speaker: Hans Boge Sr.  The Lord’s Prayer contains, at this point, a most unusual thing: a clause which commits the prayer to actions which back up the petition just offered. ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ Prayer and life are here locked indissolubly together. This isn’t saying that we...

Sermon: Give us this day, our daily bread  Date: October 19  Scripture: Matthew 6:11, Mathew 7:9-11  Speaker: George Veith  There many ways you can focus your prayer i.e., worship, thanksgiving, confession, consecration. Jesus teaches us that we should focus at least a part of our prayer time in petitioning or asking God to meet our needs, referring to the phrase ”daily bread.” In the historical c...

Sermon: Your Kingdom Come Date: October 12 Scripture: Matthew 6:9-13 Speaker: George Veith Jesus came announcing and enacting the Kingdom of God. Every parable, every teaching, and every personal encounter recorded in the Gospel’s ultimately tells us about King Jesus and his arriving Kingdom. It is perhaps surprising that Jesus asks his disciples to pray for the Kingdom to come, and the will of Go...

Sermon: Hallowed Be Your Name    Date: October 5        Scripture: Matthew 6:9-13 Speaker: Paul Walker Of all the lines in the Lord’s prayer, the phrase “Hallowed be Your Name” is one of the more confusing statements. We rarely use the word “hallowed” in our common day vocabulary— which means to honour, sanctify, set apart, and treat with the highest of respect. And even if we do, we might misinte...

Sermon: Becoming the Perfect Church Date: September 14 Scripture: Matthew 5:43-48 Speaker: Paul Walker Jesus tells his disciples to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”(5.48) This can sound like an impossible ideal from Jesus. Really, how can anyone be perfect? The key to understanding this passage is “therefore,” because it shows us that this verse is the conclusion of the...

Sermon: Jesus Shaped Speech  Date: August 31 Scripture: Matthew 5:33-37 Speaker: Nicole Marble Israelites took oaths that made their statements legally obligating because they implored the presence of God in the commitment—but this only happened because half-truths, deceptions, and lies were all too common. To take oaths was to assume that honest speech was not always present. Jesus speaks to a cu...

Sermon: Re-humanizing Objectified People Date: August 24 Scripture: Matthew 5:27-32 Speaker: Paul Walker Jesus continues his antitheses statements by addressing adultery and divorce. The Law prohibited adultery, which is having sex with anyone other than your spouse. Jesus goes further than the law by speaking against the root cause of adultery: lust. Lust is when we look to desire and intentional...

Sermon: Murdering Our Hostilities  Date: August 17  Scripture: Matthew 5:21-26; Numbers 35:16-28  Speaker: Paul Walker Murder was a serious offence in the Torah. (Numb.35:16-28) To deliberately kill another human was punishable by death. Even if the killing was unintentional, the guilty person would need to flee to a city of refuge to escape retaliation. Simply put, the Law tried to limit murder f...

Sermon: Laying Down The Law? Date: August 10, 2025 Scripture: Matthew 5:17-20 Speaker: Paul Walker Jesus insists he’s come to fulfill the Old Testament, and fulfill it completely. He hyperbolically says “not one letter or stroke of the pen will pass away until I fulfill it.” He’s going to fulfill the law in a way that goes beyond the righteousness of the Pharisees, not by literally adhering to eve...

Sermon:  Salty Jesus People Date: August 3, 2025 Scripture: Matthew 5:13-16 Guest speaker: Nicole Marble After giving us the Beatitudes, Jesus then immediately begins talking about being salt and light. Salt & light people inhabit the way of Jesus to be a radical alternative to a darkened world. Both salt and light are images for impact on something else: salt impacts, for instance, meats, whi...

Sermon from Douglas Mennonite Church on July 27, 2025 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Sermon from Douglas Mennonite Church on July 20, 2025 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada