*Even Here [Matt's Messages]

*Even Here - Challenge 2026

Lanse Evangelical Free Church

July 19, 2026 :: Psalm 139

Thank you, Challenge Team, for sharing about your week in Kansas City. It sounds like it was an incredible time of learning and fun and spiritual growth. I’m so glad we all could have a part in sending you with our gifts and especially with our prayers.

All week long, I used the prayer guide that Challenge sent us of what to pray for you every day which included what Psalms you were learning about each day.

The theme this year was *Even Here: Experiencing God in the Psalms. And every day you studied at least one Psalm together with 4,000 of your closest EFCA friends. I saw Psalm 19, 73, 51, 13, 100, Psalm 10, and Psalm 145. What wonderful songs to take into your heart!

Today, for the sermon, I thought we might take a short break from Hebrews and look at a Psalm together, specifically Psalm 139 which I think inspired the theme for Challenge this year. 

Psalm 139 ends with this prayer request. “Search me.”

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Isn’t that a great prayer? “Search me.” Have you said that to God this week? I’ll bet the Challenge Group has. “Search me.”

That’s not a snide remark like, “What are you bringing to the picnic on the 2nd?” “I don’t know! Search me!”

No, it’s a prayer for God to look into our hearts and to see what is truly there. It’s an invitation for God to know us as we really are and to move us to become who He wants us to be. “Search Me.”

How did King David get to the point where he could and would ask God to search him in that way? I think King David got to that point by knowing what kind of God He truly is. And Psalm 139 sings it to us. Let’s look at together. Verse 1.

“For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.”

We don’t know much more about the context of this prayer–many scholars believe that David has been accused by someone else of being unfaithful to the Lord, and he is seeking vindication here. I’m not sure if that’s true. I’m not sure at all what the historical setting was for this Psalm. I’ll bet they said at Challenge that sometimes it’s better not to know those details because the application feels even more immediate to our lives now.

Regardless of the setting, it’s a psalm of King David meant to be sung by others like you and me and applied to our lives today. 

David ends the Psalm by asking God to search him, but he begins the psalm by stating that he knows the LORD already has searched him. V.1

“O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.”

I’ve got four points this morning that are actually four prayers that we can pray back to the Lord ourselves. 

#1. YOU KNOW ME.

David can end up asking God to search him, because he already knows that the LORD has already done so. You know me.

“O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.”

That word for “search” means “to examine.” In our computerized world, we use the word “search” all the time these days. Often, we set a computer going to find some piece of information that we lack. We “google” things nowadays. Right? The ubiquitous “search bar.”

But this is not an impersonal search for a trivial piece of information. This is being known. This is being examined. This is a Person taking a close look at another person. It’s more like a trip to the doctor than putting a query into ChatGPT.

“God, You have checked me out. You know me.” 

David is amazed at how well God knows him. V.2

“You know when I sit and when I rise;”

Up or down. You know it. And not just what position I’m in. What I’m thinking! “...you perceive my thoughts from afar.” God is a mind-reader. V.3

“You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.”

We just sang those words together. “All my ways are known to you.” Whether I get up and head out on a walk in the morning or come home and go to bed, you know all of my doings. My patterns. My ways.

And this is not just impersonal information. It’s not just that God has a database of factoids about me. I’m not just in His spreadsheet. He knows me. He is familiar with my ways.

Many of you have pets. Do you know “the ways” of your pet? If you come home and your pet is nowhere to be seen, do you have a good idea where they could be found? You know the ways of your pet. Their comings and goings and habits. It’s not just that you could look it up in an Encyclopedia. “This is what cats generally do.” You know this pet and how he or she acts. You are familiar with their ways.

How much more is God familiar with our ways? He knows us much better than we know ourselves. V.4

“Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.”

Sometimes my wife knows what I’m going to say before I do. I thought I just came up with that sentence, but Heather was way ahead of me. Not necessarily because we think alike, but because she knows me. How much more does God know us! 

Do you see how personal this Psalm is? David is saying, “You know me.” Completely. And not just as a bunch of facts but personally, intimately, deeply, truly, relationally. You know me. V.5

“You hem me in–behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”

“I just can’t grasp how much you know me, God!”

David is filled with wonder that he is known in this way. Does that same truth fill us with wonder today? 

Most people desperately want to be known. I think that’s one of the major reasons for much of what we see, for example, on social media. People are saying, “Know me! I’m putting myself out here. Know me!”

Church, you are known! By the One that matters the most. V.6

“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”

#2. YOU’VE GOT ME.

That’s what David was saying in v.5 with “You hem me in–behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.”

You’ve got me. I’m trapped! There is no escape from behind–no back door. And there is no escape from before–you’ve arrested me. You’ve laid your hand on me.

It’s not clear whether or not David wants to escape from God. Perhaps, that feeling of being known also gives him a touch of the willies and fosters an urge to escape. Or maybe he’s just saying that even if he wanted to get away, he knows that he can’t. Either way, there is no. hiding. from the Lord. V.7

“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”

We sang those words this morning, too. “You will hold me fast.” There is no getting away from God. He is everywhere. 

If verses 1-6 were about God’s omniscience, verses 7-12 are about God’s omnipresence.

But it’s not just that God is there and standing around like some absent-minded professor. “Oh yes, he’s here, but he’s not all here.”

No, this is saying that God is present. He is relationally with David wherever David would run to.

The sky? Check.

The ocean floor? Check.

Flying at the speed of light? He’s there.

On the other side of the world? He’s there, too.

You can’t get away from God. You can run, but you can’t hide. Not even in the darkest place. V.11

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

For the God who is light, there is no place that is dark.

What’s the upshot of that? 

Well, at first, it might not seem like good news. Who wants inescapable supervision? Somebody watching you all of the time? Kind of sounds like prison?

But David knows that it is good news. V.10 again.

Wherever I am, “...even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”

“Even there.” 

“Even here.” I’ll tell you who wants inescapable supervision...sheep do. Or at least if they don’t want it, they need it. Sheep need a shepherd. You and I are needy people, and we need a good shepherd to keep a guiding hand on us all of the time. It’s so good to be able to say, “You’ve got me.”

Have you prayed that this week? Perhaps you’re going through something right now that is really painful. Have you thanked the Lord that you are not alone in that pain? Have you given yourself and your situation over to Him?

I talked to someone this week who just wasn’t willing to say that to the Lord this week. “You’ve got me.”

“Lord, you’ve got me. I know that I can’t get away from you, and that’s  such a good thing! I’m yours.” Because...

#3. YOU MADE ME. 

Verse 13. 

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

This is how deep this relationship goes: David knows that he is the Lord’s own creation. God is not just omniscient and omnipresent. He is the Creator. The Maker. God didn’t just come to know David over time. He has known David all along, from the beginning. Because He made him!

This is the verse that we quote every January around Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. And that’s right. It’s all about that. It’s all about how God is intimately involved in making us. He designed us. He designed each of us personally, and that bestows a heaping measure of dignity to every human life.

But David is saying something even more profound. He’s saying that in making us, God knows us and has every right over us. V.15

“My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place [the womb]. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

I think that David uses the image of “the depths of the earth” to describe the most hidden place that he can think of. They didn’t have any ultrasounds back then. The womb was, for David, the most hidden place a person could be alive on earth. But God saw into the womb. God was there, and God was directing that new life.

“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.”

David just lives in amazement. He can’t hardly believe how fearfully and wonderfully he is made, and he can’t hardly believe how sovereign God is over his life, and he can’t hardly believe how deep and long and wide are the thoughts of God. Thoughts that make and create. Thoughts that are so awesome they cannot be numbered!

Now, scholars are divided over what that last sentence in verse 18 means.

“When I awake, I am still with you.”

Does that mean that David has been exhausted by these innumerable thoughts and then wakes up at that point? Or does it go back to the first section and mean that even in the mornings when David gets up, there is God? “Even there.” Some scholars even think it means awakening from resurrection. Even when we come back from the sleep of death. 

Any way about it, the point is “I am still with you.”  There He is! There God is. God is not absent. God is present. And I am with Him. *Even here.

Now, how “with Him” am I? How with God am I? He’s all here, but...am I all His? I think that’s the point of the next four verses.

For many of us, these four verses feel like an intrusion. Like they don’t fit. But they flowed very naturally for King David. Look at verse 19.

“If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men! They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD, and abhor those who rise up against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.”

That’s what we call an “imprecatory” prayer. The Challenge Group learned about that on Thursday when Pastor Stephen Love preached on Psalm 10.  It’s an imprecatory prayer is a prayer for justice to be done by the Lord. *Even here.

Now, we tend to stumble over these verses because they can seem so far from our Lord Jesus’ command to love our enemies. And there is something new about our Lord’s command that at least modifies what is going on here in these verses. 

But the emphasis here is not on personal hatred of those who are our enemies. The emphasis is on loyalty to God over against those who are His enemies. David is saying that he does not side with those who side against God.

“Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD, and abhor those who rise up against you?”  

Another way of saying it would be to say, “I am not on Satan’s side. Not one bit.”

I’m on the LORD’s side!

I’m on Yahweh’s side.

I do not identify with the enemies of God. I hate them.

Do you see how that works? It’s not saying that we shouldn’t love our enemies. God loves His own enemies! But there is a right way to love our enemies and even a right way to hate them. If the choice is between loving them and their ways or loving God and His, then we side with God every time.

In other words, David is saying:

#4. YOU CAN COUNT ON ME.

How’s that for a prayer? Can you pray that today?

“You can count on me, Lord. You know which side of the battle You will find me on.”

I know that you know me.

I know that you’ve got me.

I know that you made me.

And so I’m yours. I’m completely yours. So, yes, go ahead–search me. V.23

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Go ahead, Lord. 

I know that You already know what You’ll find.

Search me. Know my heart.

Test me. Examine me.

Listen to my thoughts.

Some of them, I admit, are very anxious. This generation of young people is marked by anxiety.  And so am I.

And if I’m really honest? Yes, I’m anxious about You, too, God. 

"Lord, sometimes You worry me. Sometimes, I feel like I want to escape, to hide, to get out of Your gaze. But I know there is nowhere to go. And when I think about it the right way, I know that there is no place I’d rather be than. with. You. And to the degree that this is not true for me today, please forgive me. See all of the offensive ways in me, and cleanse me by the precious blood of Jesus Christ."

King David knew that God knew his sin. It was ever before him. And David knew (we know from Psalm 51, which Pastor Eric Rivera taught at Challenge on Tuesday) that David knew what it means to be forgiven.

And we know that forgiveness comes from the work of our Great High Priest the Lord Jesus Christ.

Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God to cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death so that we may serve the Living God.

Search me, O God, and cleanse me God, I pray.

*Even here.

***

People with sharp memories may remember earlier forms of this message preached in 2013 and 2020. What a joy that Psalm 139 is all true all the time!

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“Putting Us In Our Place” [Matt's Messages] Family Bible Week 2026

“Putting Us In Our Place”

Illumination Station :: Family Bible Week 2026

Lanse Evangelical Free Church

June 14, 2026 :: Psalm 8  

I have seen so many humans in the last two weeks!

I have seen so many humans in the last two weeks as I helped our daughter Robin move across the country to Vancouver Washington in the Pacific Northwest.

Robin and I jumped into her 2003 Ford Ranger stuffed to the gills with her tortoise, her gecko, and her three exotic frogs in the backseat, and we traveled 3,000 miles (with no air conditioning) crossing over 11 states in 6 days. 

We saw a lot of America the Beautiful! The spacious skies and amber waves of grain in Nebraska, the towering mountains of Colorado, the high desert mesas of Utah, and the green forests of Oregon ending up on the Columbia River as it empties into the Pacific Ocean. 

Robin now lives on the north side of the Columbia across from Portland in the beautiful city of Vancouver in the shadow of Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens. Tomorrow is her first day of work as a Vet Tech. We got her all set up in her new apartment, and thank you for praying that her stuff that we sent ahead arrived ahead of time so that I could help her unload it and unpack it before coming home this week. A wonderful answer to prayer!

I started flying home on Thursday and got as far as Chicago when a major storm canceled flights out of Chicago and into State College. So I had to spend the night in a hotel near O’Hare, and there was a tornado sighting nearby, sirens going off and everything. It was a little too exciting traveling back. But I got home, and eventually my luggage did, too!

So I have been traveling a lot in the last two weeks, and in my travels, I have a seen so many human beings!

And they come in all sorts. Big ones and small ones. Rich ones and poor ones. Red and yellow and black, brown, and white. Some with lots of hair of all kinds of color, some with no hair, much like the top of my head. Men and women and girls and boys. Speaking different languages. Different accents. Different ways of dressing. Human beings in all of their splendid diversity.

I love people-watching, especially in rest areas and hotel lobbies and airports. And as I watched all of these beautiful human beings, I thought about the theology class I’m teaching this year for Family Bible Week.

This, by the way, is the first lesson in the class. Tomorrow night, we’ll have the second lesson. My class is for the adults who are not going to the parents’ class and for the older teens who are not helping with a little kids’ class. Everybody is welcome, and welcome to the first class!

We’re in a ten-year series of classes on systematic theology. In 2024, we studied from article 1 of our EFCA Statement of Faith, the doctrine of God. Last year in 2025, we studied from article 2 of our EFCA Statement of Faith, the doctrine of the Bible. This year, hopefully not surprisingly, we’re studying article 3 of our Statement of Faith, the doctrine of humanity, what we believe about the  human condition. Let’s say it together as our Worship in Unity this week. It’s in your worship bulletin, and I also have it up here on the screen:

“We believe that God created Adam and Eve in His image, but they sinned when tempted by Satan. In union with Adam, human beings are sinners by nature and by choice, alienated from God, and under His wrath. Only through God’s saving work in Jesus Christ can we be rescued, reconciled and renewed.”

That’s our topic for the next 5 days. There’s a lot there! 

The image of God!

Adam and Eve. Men and women. Male and female.

Satan, temptation, sin.

And salvation through Jesus Christ, the Light of the World. 

If you haven’t planned to come yet, please plan now to join us. Dinner is at 5:30 tomorrow night. There will be plenty for everyone. The program starts at 6:15. This is for you. 

We’re going to be learning about what it means to be human. To be a human being created in the image of God. All of those humans I saw in my travels were created in the image of God.

Cody referenced that big idea in his message two Sundays ago. Thank you, Cody, for teaching us God’s Word–how and why to glorify God and enjoy Him forever! That’s why we are made. That’s what humans are for. We are made with a special connection to God and are intended to reflect Him to the world. Humans are made to be like mirrors reflecting the glory of God for the world to see.

God is the light (Psalm 27:1, John 8:12). And we are intended to be little mirrors reflecting that light.

And as I was thinking about where to go in holy Scripture to kick off our study of what it means to be a human, part of mankind, my mind kept coming back again and again to Psalm 8.

Especially because in verse 4, King David writes the question into his song:

“What is man?" What is a human being? What does it mean for us to be human?

And King David directs that question at God Himself. Because that’s where we are going to get the real answer to that question.

Everybody has an answer to that question, “What is man?” but so many are just plain wrong. 

And what I love about Psalm 8 is that it puts us humans in our place in all the right ways. Psalm 8 puts me in my place. 

Psalm 8 is about God. It's an amazing song about our amazing God. It starts and ends with magnificent praise to God, and the middle is full of worship, too. And while King David is leading us in worshipful praise of our magnificent God, he is also, at the very same time, masterfully putting us in our place in all the right ways.

I don't know about you, but I often need to be to put in my place.

I need to be told where I belong, where I fit in the grand scheme of things. So that I don't get too big for my britches. (Or too small for them either.) Psalm 8, while praising God, puts us in our place in all the right ways. Let me show you what I mean. Psalm 8, verse 1.

“For the director of music. According to gittith. A psalm of David. 

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.”

Here's my place:

#1. LOOKING UP AT OUR LORD'S MAJESTY.

King David wrote this song “according to gittith.” We don't know what that means. Maybe it's a song for people from Gath or maybe a “gittith” is a musical instrument or musical style. We don't know. But David wrote it and gave it to the director of music for the temple for God's people to sing their hearts out.

And for people who were in church of a certain age, there’s a song that immediately jumps to mind by Michael W. Smith. Anita played it as the prelude this morning.

“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.”

You can just feel the praise pulsing through the psalm! David is joyfully overwhelmed with the glory of God. 

He names God here. He uses God's covenant name: YHWH. Whenever you see that capital L-O-R-D in your English Bible, the covenant name for God revealed most gloriously at the burning bush is standing behind it. Yahweh. "O YHWH, our Lord," our sovereign. 

King David is singing about His Heavenly King and claiming Him as his. You see that little word “our?” That's a relationship word, isn't it? He isn't just saying, “God, you are majestic.” He is saying, “Our God is majestic.” The one we belong to. The one we are in relationship with.

“O Yahweh, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

Do you feel it? That word “majestic” means "awesome, magnificent, splendid, beautiful, grand, exalted.”  “High and lifted up!”

King David is enthralled by how dazzling, awe-inspiring, sensational, and glorious God is! His name (His reputation, His glory, His name) is majestic, not just here but everywhere, “in all the earth.” Wherever you go, God's glory fills the earth.

And above! “You have set your glory above the heavens.” All creation (in heaven and earth) is a testimony to the glory of God. All things point to the majesty of the name of the LORD. God is transcendent over all.

That puts us in our place, doesn't it? Looking up at the majesty of our God. He is worthy of our worship. 

That's one reason why we need to set aside time every day and especially every week just to worship. We come together as a congregation this morning to worship, to declare the majesty of the name of Yahweh. His name deserves our praise. His name deserves our singing! He is transcendent and glorious over all. Amen?

And then, verse 2 is a real surprise to me. It calls for more praise, but the people praising are the surprise. Verse 2.

“From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.”

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, but I never see those kids coming in this psalm. The Lord's name is majestic over everything, and He has ordained praise from the lips of children and infants. 

From the smallest and the weakest. I guess he's putting us in our place. He doesn't start with the great and the strong. He starts with the humble and weak. When the humble and the weak praise God, there is strength. 

That word for “praise” there in verse 2 is literally, “strength.” Strength of praise is the general idea, I think. And when the weakest lift up the name of the LORD, they shame the supposedly strong. They silence the foe and the avenger, the enemies of God.

Remember when Jesus quoted this verse? It was Palm Sunday when Jesus came into town riding on a donkey, the little children praised Him. And it enraged the Pharisees, but Jesus said, in a mic-drop moment, “Haven't you read Psalm 8? That's what the little kids are supposed to do.”

God loves to humble the proud by using the praises of the humble. I love it when the stage up here gets filled with little kids praising God. God loves to humble the proud by using the praises of the humble. Because He deserves it.

“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

How are you doing at looking up at the majesty of our God? Are you worshiping the Lord every single day? Are you seeing how majestic He is in all of the earth? Not just on Sundays when we're singing in here, but on Mondays when you're slogging it out at work?

It helps to get out into creation. I saw a lot of beauty in the last two weeks. Snow-capped mountains. Rushing rivers. The vast ocean. Huge trees. Water falls. Even the high mesas with their massive piles of sand and stone were beautiful in their own way. These all reflect the majesty of God. He made them! In just a minute, we’re going to sing:

“The mountains are His!

The valleys are His!

The stars are His handiwork, too!”

That line comes from Psalm 8. I think that David probably wrote this song at nighttime reflecting on sleepless nights on guard duty as a shepherd on the hillside looking up at the night sky filled with stars and thinking, “My God made those.” Which is very humbling, but also very exhilarating, isn't it?

“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

And then verse 3 is surprising, too. In fact, even David is surprised by it! Look at verse 3.

“When I consider your heavens [YOUR heavens], the work of your fingers [handiwork, like my wife's knitting], the moon and the stars [it's nighttime], which you have set in place...what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”

Do you see David's question? The Lord is not just majestic. He is mindful!

He is mindful of David and other human beings. That's what “son of man” means here, it means humanity, humankind, probably represented by the first man, Adam.

When I look up at the Milky Way, I think, how is it that that majestic God would even have one thought about me? Little old me!

Do you feel the amazement? Do you get a sense of the wonder that David is singing about? This song really puts us in our place. It humbles us, but in a thrilling way.

And then it humbles us again by telling us that we are not insignificant. Yes, we are small, but we are not insignificant. You would think that we are less than a speck. When you think about God and Who God is in all of His majesty and splendor and beauty and glory and magnificence. And then you think about who you are...

And then you think, “God thinks about who I am? I am in God's mind? God cares for me?”

What dignity! What significance! What meaning that gives to our lives!

The world will not tell you this. The world will either tell you that you are the greatest, you are a god, and you deserve all of your wildest dreams to come true. Or the world will tell you that you are worthless, a nothing, a meaningless speck, a cog in the machine, here today and gone tomorrow.

Neither are true, because of Who God is.

God is majestic over all creation, and God is mindful of His special creation, humankind.

And even more mindful, if you can say it that way, of His own children, those who belong to Jesus Christ.

Remember when Jesus said, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows" (Matthew 10:29-31).

This majestic God is mindful of you.

And we know even better than King David how big the universe is.

One author I read said it this way, “On a clear night David could likely see 2,000-3,000 stars. What if he'd had a good pair of binoculars? Up to 100,000 [stars]. What if David knew...that if the Milky Way galaxy were the size of the entire continent of North America [which I traveled across last week], our solar system [!] would fit in a coffee cup, and that the Milky Way is one of perhaps 100 billion such galaxies in the universe? [David] would have been even more staggered than he was–but he had enough to stagger him, to be impressed with the massive vastness of his world over against his apparent insignificance...When he exclaims, ‘What is man?' he is speaking in baffled wonder and perplexed joy! Only the condescension of God can hold together astronomical vastness and individual concern. It gives David liturgical goose-bumps" (Dale Ralph Davis, "The Way of the Righteous in the Muck of Life, pg. 97-98).

David breaks out in song, and so should we!

This majestic God is mindful of you.

Do you need to hear that today? God's mind is on you.

He sees you.

He knows you.

He knows what's on your mind.

He knows what's on your plate.

He knows what's coming this week.

And you matter to Him.

Not because you're so grand. He's so grand!

But because you're His. And because He made you to represent Him.

That's where David goes next in verse 5. He goes back to the creation account in Genesis 1 and sings about that. Look at verse 5.

“You made him [Adam, the Son of Man] a little lower than the heavenly beings [or literally, “a little lower than God”] and crowned him with glory and honor.”

The majestic and mindful King of the World made us...little kings and queens of the world.

Remember what God said in Genesis 1? 

This will be what we will focus in class on tomorrow night, and I’m sure it was rolling around in David’s head as he wrote this song. Genesis 1:26-28.

God says, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. [Rule.] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

The image of God and rulership go hand in hand. God made us to represent Him and together to rule the world as those made in His image.

He put a crown on our heads! How's that for putting us in our place? Didn't see that coming!

The shepherd boy who became a king knew that He was tiny and made out of dust and yet was also made to wear a crown and help rule the world for God!

Did you know that you were made to wear a crown?

Verse 6. “You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.”

We were made to rule all of that. Just think about everything in those categories.

Here's your place: Looking Up at Our Majestic God. But also:

#2. LOOKING OVER THE REST OF CREATION.

As one of our God's faithful representative rulers.

Humans were meant to be a kind of royalty. If you've ever read the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis was a master at creatively communicating that truth. King Peter, Queen Susan, King Edmund, and Queen Lucy learn of their royalty that comes as a gift of the Christ-mirroring Aslan and the Emperor Over the Sea. And they learn to rule as representatives.

How are you doing at representing God in this world? You may not rule over very much right now.

I have a little 5 acres I’m responsible over in Lanse. And for 28 years, I have had a leadership role here though I’m certainly not the ruler of Lanse Free Church and don’t ever want to be. I don't rule over very much. But how am I doing at representing the God in whose image I am supposed to rule?

What do you rule over?

It was fun to see Robin setting up her home in her apartment in Vancouver. To see Fritz the Tortoise and Winona the gecko and the three frogs, one of them is Dolly and another is Dex, and I think the other one is Mustachio. And she cares for them. She feeds and waters them. And makes sure they have light and heat. I’m not sure how you can tell a tortoise is happy, but I think those animals are pretty happy there in Robin’s domain.

What do you rule over? And how are you doing at representing God there?

Maybe in a workplace?

Maybe in a household?

Maybe in a community?

What's your dominion?

We were made to look up to the majesty of God, and (amazingly) in the mindfulness of God, we are also made to look over the rest of creation and represent our Lord to it as responsible rulers.

And of course, as an entire race, we are not doing a very good job it. We have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And our rule over the world God made has been despotic, and disappointing, and disastrous. That's why we have wars and violence and rioting and racial injustice and even hurricanes and raging forest fires and raging epidemics. Because, as the human race, we have dropped the ball.

Only one human has ever lived up to the promise of Psalm 8. And it sure wasn't David. David could see it, and he could sing it, but he couldn't live it out the way it should be.

Do you know where this Psalm gets sung again in the New Testament? You should. We just studied it a couple of months ago!

It's the Letter to the Hebrews chapter 2. Listen to this:

“But there is a place where someone has testified: ‘What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet.' [Sound familiar? Hebrews says...] In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. [Things are not the way they are supposed to be.] But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone" (vv.6-9).

Psalm 8 puts us in our place. Here's our place:

#3. LOOKING FORWARD TO JESUS.

Looking forward to Jesus, because of His death and resurrection and present session, putting everything back to the way it was always supposed to be.

“We see Jesus...now crowned with glory and honor.” Fulfilling Psalm 8, being everything we were always supposed to be. And, one day, making everything new. Majestic, Mindful, Messiah.

What’s the application of that?

“Fix your eyes on Jesus!”

He is the image of God. He “is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being...” (Hebrews 1:3).

The radiance of God’s glory! Or another way of saying, He is the Light of the World. 

No wonder, David returns in the last line to the first.

“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

***

Note: Astute readers with long memories will recognize that a hefty portion of the message has been adapted from a previous sermon I preached during covid, “Majestic and Mindful,” August 30, 2020.

The major difference is that I have been sharpened in my understanding of the image of God, especially by reading Dignity and Destiny by John Kilner. I no longer believe that the image of God has been lost or even damaged by our sin. All humans (lost and found) are still made in the image of God with a special connection and substantial reflection of God. It’s because of that status that sin is so grievous and salvation so glorious.

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“The Son” [Matt's Messages]

“The Son”

Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus 

The Letter to the Hebrews

Lanse Evangelical Free Church

January 18, 2026 :: Hebrews 1:1-4  

“Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus” 

That’s the name of this new sermon series that we’re starting today on The Letter to the Hebrews, and it’s also the theme of my pastoral vision for Lanse Free Church in 2026.

Today is our Annual Reports and Vision meeting after we “mangia” on our Italian feast, and we’re going walk through a review of the Lord’s work in us in 2025. A record-setting year in so many ways! And we’re also going to hear about our hopes and dreams and goals for 2026.

And in my annual pastoral report, when I got to the vision part, I just wrote, “I don’t have a grand plan for 2026.” Some years, I have a big idea of what specifically I want us to work on and try to achieve. Last year this time, it seemed like we were really close to getting a pavilion out there to foster relationships with one another and serve our community. And, praise God, we did!  And I’m sure we’re going to do more big things in 2026, but I don’t have a grand plan for them.

But what I do know is what I think we should focus on this year. Or more specifically whom we should focus on in 2026, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is our Light and our Salvation. He is the Stronghold of our lives. A life-changing relationship with Him is the one thing that we must pursue this year.

We need to be fixing our eyes on Jesus.

Those words come from chapter 12 of this book of the Bible. The writer says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (12:1-2).

He pictures our lives as a race, and Jesus is set before us at the finish line which Jeff has so helpfully illustrated for us in the new sermon graphic. And he says, “Fix your eyes on Jesus.”

Don’t take your eyes off of Him. Not for one second. Don’t get distracted. Don’t get discouraged. Don’t stop running towards Jesus. Don’t go backwards! Stay focused on Jesus.

If we do that as a church, we’ll end up where we are supposed to be when we get to 2027 and beyond.

And that’s the central message, I think, of this entire book of the Bible, and it’s the point of the first four verses which we are studying today.

Interestingly, these four verses are actual one long “elegant and eloquent” sentence in the original Greek (Schreiner). It takes like four sentences in English to do what the writer did in just one in Greek! This writer is a incredible thinker and author. He is an amazing theologian. 

And we also don’t know who he is! This is a strange letter because it isn’t signed. There is no “from” or even “to” in the header of this “email.” 

We know it’s a letter because of the greetings that are included at the very end. But it’s not a letter like most letters. In fact, it’s more like a sermon. At the very end of the letter, the writer calls it, “a word of exhortation” or a “word of encouragement”–the same Greek word as we emphasized in the letters to the Thessalonians last year. It’s a "kick in the pants" kind of encouragement letter.

We could call it a sermonic letter.

And it comes unsigned. Now, the recipients knew who wrote it. They clearly had a close relationship with him. He knew them. He knew what was going on with them. The recipients were apparently primarily Jewish Christians (Hebrews) who were having second thoughts about following Jesus.

We don’t know exactly where. Somewhere in the Roman Empire in the first century, probably before 70 AD when the temple was destroyed. They might have been Hebrew Christians in Jerusalem or perhaps more likely, they were in Rome itself.

Wherever they were, they were getting scared. These Hebrews were being persecuted, not for being Jews (which is hard enough most places in this world), but for being followers of Jesus Christ. And they were seriously considering going backwards. Drifting off the path. Dropping out of their race. Quitting on Jesus.

Know anybody who has done that? Have you been tempted that way yourself?

These folks were. They were feeling the pressure. And their friend knew it. And so he wrote them this letter.

We don’t know his name. Some people think it was Paul, and that’s possible, but he writes very differently than Paul who also signed all of the other books by him in the New Testament. Some have though Silas or Barnabas. A lot of different names have been thrown out there. [Maybe even Priscilla with her husband Aquilla? Possible but unlikely, especially because of the masculine participle in 11:22)] Maybe the most popular these days has been Apollos. 

We don’t know...and that’s okay. Because God knows and the original recipients knew and the church has long recognized Who the more important author of this sermonic letter is–the Holy Spirit Himself. And we know when we’re reading it, that this is the very Word of God.

And it’s telling us to fix our eyes on Jesus.

In fact, that’s where the letter starts. Did you notice how abrupt the opening paragraph is when Copper read it to us? This is unlike any letter I’ve ever gotten. There’s no, “Greetings! How’s it going there in Lanse? I hope this letter finds you warm and well-fed. How’s January treating you? Everybody healthy at your house?”

There’s none of that. It just launches in...

“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe” (vv.1-2).

He gets right at it, doesn’t he? And he gets right to the Son.

He says that there have been and are two phases of God’s revelation to man. God has spoken in two ways. They are both similar (because it’s the same God) and dissimilar. Let’s look at it more closely. Verse 1.

“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways...”  Now stop there for just a second.

The first thing that we must see is that God has spoken.

That’s super-important! Our God is a speaking God. He wants to be known. He wants to tell us things and often has. He is not a mystery in that sense. He is not a silent God. God could be God and not ever speak. He could be all-powerful, all-wise, all-knowing, omnipresent, holy, holy, and holy and never say a word. But our God wants to tell us things and often has.

In the past (what we call the Old Testament) God spoke to our ancestors in the faith through special spokesmen, through messengers, what verse 1 calls, “the prophets” at many times and in various ways. I love the old King James version there. It says “in sundry times and in divers manners.”

God spoke in lots of different ways over the years. Just look through your Old Testament and see all the ways and times that God spoke through the prophets.

And was that bad? No! That was good. That was wonderful that God would speak to His people. Last year we studied God’s words to and through the Prophet Daniel and then later the Tale of Queen Esther. Daunting but delightful!

The Old Testament was (and is) a good thing. But it was also incomplete. It was a like a cliffhanger. Remember the cliffhangers in the Book of Esther? What was going to happen to our hero? Tune in next time! Well, we got all of these promises in many times and various ways, and fits and starts and types and shows, and then....everything went dark and silent for 400 years. Verse 2.

“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son...”

You see the contrasts? In the past versus these last days. We are living in the last days, and we have been ever since Jesus came the first time. We may or may not be in the last of the last days (when Jesus comes again), but we are in the last days (our Prayer Group just talked about that on Wednesday night).

And in these last days, God has spoken not just to our forefathers but to us. To New Covenant Christians. And He has spoken to us not by prophets but “by His Son.” Literally “in a son.” 

He hasn’t spoken to us through a mere prophet. He has spoken to us in a Son. There is a new and better kind of revelation that has come on the scene when Jesus came to us. He is not just a new mediator of the message, but He is the message itself! 

God’s Son is God’s Word. And He is the final word. The full and final word. He is the climax and culmination of the revelation of God! “[God] has spoken to us by His Son.”

Wow. What a privilege we have! To have a Word from God that is so wonderful and so personal because the Word is a Person! God didn’t just send another prophet. He sent a Son. The One and Only Son He had. No wonder the writer just jumps right into it! And no wonder the writer wants to fix our eyes on Jesus. Because He Himself is the message from God Himself.

What a privilege we have to hear that message. And what terrible thing it would be to ignore it. 

Church, we must:

#1. FIX OUR EARS ON THE SON.

As we head into 2026, we need to fix our eyes on Jesus and fix our ears on Him, as well. 

Jesus is the full and final way that God communicates Himself to us. And so we must listen to Him. And we do that by reading the New Testament, too. The New Testament is the record of and explanation of and application of the revelation of the Son. The Old Testament was great, but the New Testament comes along and completes and fulfills and ties it all together by revealing the Son.

The Son. This letter is going to make a big deal out of Jesus being the Son. Just like God did at Jesus’ baptism and at Jesus’ transfiguration:

“This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5).

Fix your ears on the Son.

What Jesus says is true.

What Jesus says is right.

What Jesus says goes.

What Jesus reveals about God is what we need to know.

And we need to listen and not stop listening until Jesus returns.

Are you listening? Do you have your ears fixed on Jesus? Do you know what He says in the New Testament? Do you know what He promised? Do you know what He taught? Do you know what He commands? Are your reading your Bible? Are you listening?

Or do you have something else in your ears?

I like to listen to podcasts when I’m walking, and when I’m driving. But that can be dangerous to put on noise-canceling headphones or earbuds. [By the way, why do we call them “earbuds?” I don’t like the sound of that. Like some flower or something is going to grow out of my ears.]

So a couple of years ago, I got these new kind of headphones. They are bone-conduction technology. It sits on my temple and goes through my thick skull, and I don’t have to have anything budding in my ears. So I can hear the traffic! If Jim Beveridge is roaring down the road I’m on to check his traps, I can tell he’s coming and get out of the way. And that also means when Jim goes by, I can’t hear my podcast. I am rightfully distracted.

But in the ears of our hearts, we should have noise-canceling going on. We should shut out every distracting voice that isn’t the Son telling us what is true. I don’t mean to not be good listeners to people. I’m talking about our focus.

We must fix our ears on the Son and Him alone.

Why? Well, the writer is just getting started. The second he mentions the Son, he goes off on like seven different things that we need to know about the Son. Many of these things are going to be themes that he will return to again and  again in this letter. Let me read the whole thing to you from the middle of verse 2 on:

The Son “whom he [God] appointed heir of all things, and through whom he [God] made the universe. [He] The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.”

Wow! Just wow! What a Person this Son is?! Where do you start?

The writer starts at the end. He says that Son has been appointed by God as the “heir of all things.”  That makes sense. If God owns all things then His Son would be His heir. From Father to Son. He would inherit all things. And that’s quite a statement.  Because it includes everything, right? That’s what “all things” means. Jesus is due to receive all things. They are all His by right.

Look around you right now. Everything you see belongs to Jesus and one day will. There is coming a day when all things will come to Jesus. God has appointed it. 

And then, the writer goes from the future to the past. From the end to the beginning, to creation. Verse 2 again.

“...and through whom [the Son] he [God] made the universe.” 

Literally, “made the ages.” 

God’s Son was God’s Agent of Creation! The Son was there when God created the heavens and the earth. In fact, He wasn’t just there. He was deeply involved.

The Book of Colossians says, “For by [the Son] all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him” (Colossians. 1:16).

All things! He isn’t just going inherit them. He made them! Why wouldn’t we fix our ears on Him?

Take sex for example. The world has a lot to say about sex. But the world did not invent sex. It’s God’s idea. And a good one, I might add. And Jesus was there when sex was invented. So, we probably ought to listen to Jesus when He says how sex out to be used. How we ought to treat our bodies and the bodies of other people.

And that’s true of everything. That’s true of natural resources, too. The land and the animals and the water. Jesus was used to make all of that, as well, and it’s all going to be His one day again. Are we doing what He wants with the Earth?

The Apostle John wrote, “Through [The Word] all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3). Why’s that? It’s because “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God...and the Word was God” (John 1:1). And that’s verse 3!

“The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being...”

Wow! What more wonderful words could we have to describe Jesus?!

“The radiance of God’s glory.” That’s as good as it sounds. Jesus is the shining forth of God’s glory.  Like if God was the Sun up in the sky, God the Son is like the beams of light that come out of the Sun so that we can see the Sun. Where does the sun end and the beams begin? There really isn’t a difference, is there? When we feel the beams of the Sun on us, we say we feel the Sun on us. And that’s right. So the Son of God is the beams of God’s glory showing us the bright splendor of God.

“The LORD is my light and my salvation–whom shall I fear?”

The writer of this sermonic letter would have loved the Nicene Creed that we recited all during Advent. He had been dead for 300 years when it was written, but he would have loved what it said about Jesus.

“[We believe] in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only begotten Son of God,

eternally begotten from the Father,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

of one essence with the Father.

Through Him all things were made.”

They got that from this book, didn’t they?

Verse 3 says the Son is “the exact representation of [God’s] being...”

He is the perfect picture of God. If you want to see the Father, look at the Son!

I have heard that I look a lot like my Dad. People have gotten us mixed up before. And I think that’s a compliment because he’s really handsome guy. 

 

But Jesus is (in His essence) a perfect picture of God.

Because He is God, as well. “True God from true God...”

This is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday when we especially think about the image of God in humans from conception on. We are made in God’s image. Or, better, we are made according to God’s image. And that means that we should treat people with dignity. Unborn people. Born people. Citizens. Immigrants. Refugees. Police. Family. Enemies. People that look like us and people who don’t look like us.  People are not trash and should never be treated like trash. Because we are made according to the image of God.

But! The Son is the image of God (see 2 Corinthians 4:4)!

“The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being...”

Church, we must fix our hearts on Him!

#2. FIX OUR HEARTS ON THE SON.

Jesus is worthy of our worship. Other humans are deserving of our respect, but Jesus is worthy of our worship. 

He is God! The Son of God is God the Son. And we should fix our hearts on Him.

Are you worshiping Jesus with all of your heart this year? Or has somebody or something else snagged your attention? We call those things that take God’s place in our hearts: “idols.” And they can be things that are really good. Things that God has made but we let them slip into a position in our hearts that should be fixed for God alone: Money, Family, Popularity, Fun, Power All good things, but they become bad things when they become “god-things” for us.

The Son of God is God the Son. And we should fix our hearts on Him alone.

Are you letting yourself get distracted? That’s how you can end up falling out of the race.

The Son is the heir of all thing, maker of all things, the radiance of God’s glory, and the perfect picture God’s being. And here’s what He’s doing right now. Last phrase of verse 3.

“...sustaining all things by his powerful word.”

Wow. Jesus is holding everything together. “All things.”

That’s mind-blowing.  Look around the room right now. You see all the things? All the people? All the pews? All the wall-hangings back after Christmas. All the speakers. All the walls. All the ceiling. This says that all of that is “sustained” by the powerful word of the Son. And that goes for everything down that hallway. All of our Italian feast. And everything on our campus. The Ark Park, the Pavilion, the Lanse Free Fridge, the basketball court. Every blade of grass. Every cubic inch of pavement in the parking lot. All the way down to the core of the Earth and everything above us to the Sun out to the stars. He’s the reason why science works! The Son of God is “sustaining all things by his powerful word.”

If Jesus says, “Be no more,” it would all be gone.

Colossians 1 says, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). Do you believe that? 

No wonder we are supposed to fix our eyes on Jesus! Because He’s holding everything together.

Which makes the next phrase so shocking.

“After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.”

Now, given what we’ve seen so far, the fact that He is seated at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven isn’t so shocking, though it is amazing to learn that Someone is worthy of sitting right there!

No, what’s really shocking to think about is that this One Who is the heir of all things, maker all things, sustainer of all things would also “provide purification for sins.”

He’s acting as a priest. We’re going to learn a lot about priests as we study Hebrews together. This is the place in the Bible where we learn that Jesus acts as a High Priest. Providing purification, cleansing, for sins. And we’re going to learn that He does this priest thing unlike any other priest. Because the blood that this priest offers to cleanse people from sin is His own blood. 

The Son of God became the Son of Man and was mocked, flogged, and crucified.

Mocked, flogged, and crucified?!

This Person? 

This Son was mocked?

This Son was flogged?

This Son was crucified?

Oh yes, and the letter will take us much deeper into what that means for us today.

It means, in short, that we are saved from our sins!

We have been purified.

He have been cleansed.

We have been washed clean.

All who believe in the Son have been purified. And that makes all of the difference in the world.

Have you come to trust in the Son for your purification? Have you fixed your heart on Him? If you have not yet trusted Jesus as your Savior, I invite you right now and right here to do so. He has provided purification for sins by His own blood, and it was efficacious! Because after He did that, what did He do?

“He sat down!” 

It was finished. His work was done. He no longer had stand. He could sit down, and look where He sat (see Psalm 110)! 

“At the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.”

We’re going to see that again and again in this book, too (8:1, 10:12, 12:2). His work is perfect, and He is exalted on High! He’s been given the name that is above every name. Verse 4.

“So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.”

And now we see one of this writer’s favorite words that gets repeated at least fifteen times in this sermonic letter. And it’s the word “superior.” Or “greater” or “better” or “more excellent.”  He’s going to have a long list of things for us that the Son is greater than. There are all things that are good, but Jesus is better. 

Like angels, for example. He starts there, and we’ll see that he goes on about it to the end of the chapter. Angels are good. Gabriel, Michael, and all of them are special messengers from God.

But Jesus is better.

Jesus is greater. 

Jesus is superior. 

And in His exaltation to the right hand of the Majesty in heaven, he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.

Which I think is..."Son."

Now, of course, He has always been superior to the angels because He’s always been the Son. But He was made lower than the angels, in a way, when He took on humanity in His incarnation. But then He died and rose and was exalted as the God-Man and is above the angels once again. So He is superior in every way.

Church, we must fix our eyes on Him!

#3. FIX OUR EYES ON THE SON.

He is greater than anything else!

Why would we fix our eyes on anything other than Him? He is seated at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven! He is the co-ruler of the Universe. He is the heir of all things, the maker of all things, the sustainer of all things, the ruler of all things. The radiance of God’s glory and the perfect picture of His being. Why would we fix our gaze on anything else? Why would we listen to anything other than the Son?

Lanse Free Church, in 2026, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

***

Bonus Message:

I preached on this passage once before, twenty years ago (when I first started posting them on this blog) on Celebration Sunday the year we first paved the parking lot: God's Son.

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LEFC Pastor's Report - 2025 In Review

Lanse Evangelical Free Church exists to glorify God

by bringing people into a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ

through worship, instruction, fellowship, evangelism, and service.

Celebration Sunday September 2025

The Annual Pastoral Report

Pastor Matt Mitchell

Year in Review: 2025

Dear Church Family,

Serving King Jesus as your pastor is one of the greatest privileges of my life. Thank you for giving me another year to preach the Word, equip the saints, and shepherd the flock of Lanse Evangelical Free Church. 

Ours has been a long and fruitful partnership. Our congregation is nearly 134 years old, and I have been the pastor for more than one fifth of our church’s history. And I’m not done yet! I am eager to see what the Lord might do in and through us in the coming year.

Serving the King in New Territory

In my pastoral report this time last year, I emphasized the new territories that we had recently entered in ministry together and laid out a vision of “Serving the King in 2025.” I’m pleased to report that, by God’s grace, that’s truly what we did. Read through the pages of this document, and you will be encouraged to see many of the ways that our church family rolled up our sleeves and served the King of Kingdoms over the last twelve months. These are some highlights:

Ark Park Pavilion

Probably the most obvious new thing that happened for LEFC was the construction, dedication, and utilization of our brand new pavilion for the Ark Park! We are praising the Lord for this sheltering structure that is now giving us a new place to foster relationships both for the church family and our community. The Ark Park Pavilion is a perfect complement to the playground which we launched twenty-five years ago and the Lanse Free Fridge which just celebrated its first anniversary of helping our neighbors to feed one another. Thank you to our trusty Facilities Team who coordinated all of the efforts to erect it, and thank you to everyone who gave over the previous five years to fund this project. You were serving the King!

Serving Neighbors in Kentucky and Lanse

In July, we sent a ministry team to eastern Kentucky to serve the King by serving precious people whose homes had been devastated by flooding in 2022. The eleven of us (in our bright green t-shirts) lived in an EFCA church building for a week and traveled up and down the “hollers” doing construction and re-modeling led by ReachGlobal Crisis Response missionaries (in blue t-shirts). The motto we learned that week was “People Over Projects.” 

After we returned, some of our team, along with others from the congregation, served the King by serving a homeowner here in Lanse who needed help cleaning up garbage that had been dumped in a ravine behind his house. I hope we can do more to serve others locally, regionally, and globally in the days to come. 

New Logo

For over a year now, a diligent group of our staff and leaders have been working on ideas for a new logo to express the essence of our church in one simple recognizable image, and we hit upon an acorn with a cross embedded in it. We hope it captures the idea of life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ. The cross is red to symbolize what our King did for us in His sacrificial death, and there is a green leaf shooting from the top to symbolize our spiritual growth together as a church family.

The acorn fits with our location here in the woods of central Pennsylvania, and it corresponds with the tree logo of the EFCA down to using some of the exact same colors. Thank you to the team who worked on conceiving it, especially Jeff Schiefer, our resident graphic artist, who donated his time and expertise to crafting this deceptively simple and deeply meaningful logo for the church.

Every Good Deed and Word

For the second half of 2025, I endeavored to pray 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17 for every family in our church directory:

“May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.”

I prayed those words especially for our hard-working church staff and leaders.

Jordyn Skacel has led the growth and development of our Family Ministries in the last year. Read her report in these pages to learn about the many events, programs, outreaches, retreats, classes, and resources that have helped parents to lead their families into a life-changing relationship with our King, Jesus Christ. We are blessed to have a lot going on for families right now. And she’s still just getting started. There is much more to come!

Cindy Green continued to clean up our many messes and help us to be good stewards of the building that the King has given us to share and use for ministry.

Jenni English kept us all pointed in the same direction, providing clear church communications and orchestrating all of the details of the church office. After two years of faithful service, Jenni is now transitioning out of this role as her family has moved out of state. She continues to run the office from afar while she trains her successor. Thank you, Jenni, for all of your service for us and for our King!

As we prayerfully searched for Jenni’s successor, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that the Lord was answering two prayer requests at the same time. Ever since we learned the sad news that the Quehanna Boot Camp and SCI Rockview would be closing, we had been praying for the many in our community and church who are affected. And the Lord led Keith Hurley who had been employed at Rockview to apply for the administrative assistant position for us which he will assume, Lord-willing, in early March. We look forward to seeing what our King will do in and through Keith in that new role.

I was privileged to serve the King alongside the other elders of our church–Keith Folmar (2025 chairman), Cody Crumrine (2025 vice-chairman), Keith Hurley, Curtis Quick, and Abraham Skacel. I believe that the King encouraged our hearts and strengthened all of us in every good word and deed done in His name in 2025.

Even More Growth

We continued to grow in 2025 in church participation, setting new records for attendance in Sunday morning worship. We averaged 171 people per Sunday, a 4.2% increase over the previous year (which was a record in my time here as your pastor).  We have grown significantly in attendance since the pandemic (up 24% from 2019), but we’ve been learning that the average attendance numbers don’t tell the whole story of just how large our worshiping community has become. Our attendance team tracked 467 individuals who came at least one Sunday in 2025! The previous year was 411 which had been another record.) The lowest attended Sunday was February 9th (121 people), and the highest attended was Resurrection Sunday (April 20th) with 254 people counted (more than the previous year). Perhaps the best number to focus upon is that we had 247 people who attended on average once per month in 2025.

We grew in membership, as well, taking in five new official members: Macy Mitchell, Roye & Cayli Houston, and John & Kara Suhoney. With a few departures and counting our five associate members, our membership now totals 96–which is also a record in my time here as your pastor.

Clearly we are continuing to grow which is encouraging because it means we have more people to bring into a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ and more people to send out to make disciples of others. This growth is also challenging in many ways because it brings new complexity, logistical problems, space considerations, and scheduling issues. We are “a growing family in a smaller house,” and we don’t all know each other! Let’s endeavor to set new records in 2026 for making new connections, learning each others’ names, and serving one another in love. 

Pastoral Ministry

This was a very active year for me in ministry. Being the solo vocational pastor of such a lively and growing flock means that I always have something valuable to do and also that I have to learn to prioritize my time and to empower others to serve the King, as well.

Preach the Word (2 Timothy 4:2)

In 2025, I chose to lead our church into several daunting yet delightful books of the Bible which I had never preached through before with an overarching focus on eschatology. We began the year in 2 John and 3 John and then dove head first into the wild and wonderful Book of Daniel, focusing on the prophesy of “The King of Kingdoms.” After that, we studied both of Paul’s letters to the Church of the Thessalonians putting special stress on the “Eternal Encouragement” that we can enjoy and pass to others today. Near the end of the year, we reveled in the rollicking Tale of Queen Esther that raises the searching question “Where Is God?” and then answers it indirectly yet overwhelmingly in story form. I am so glad we are living in a comedy and that there is no such thing as chance! Lastly, during the holiday season, with the classic carol, “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” on our lips, we studied what the Bible has to say about the arrival of the Son of the Most High and prayed for His soon return–“Come, Lord Jesus!”

Abraham Skacel, Cody Crumrine, Keith Hurley, Chip Wolfe, Caleb Lucien, Jim Panaggio, James Laird, and District Superintendent Kerry Doyal also fed us nourishing meals from God’s Word in 2025.

Equip the Saints (Ephesians 4:12)

I spend a lot of time in meetings and sending messages to empower, equip, and guide our staff and leaders to develop our ministries. I continue to be encouraged at the beautiful blend of new and older members who are working together to do effective ministry at LEFC. Check the roster for any of our ministries, and you will see the names of both younger and more seasoned volunteers listed. Ministry is a team sport, and while I do also get into the game as a player, increasingly my primary role on the team is to be a coach and a cheerleader. 

I also get to invest in equipping ministry beyond our local church family. In 2025, I got to teach on the Tale of Queen Esther and Resisting Gossip for the School of Discipleship at Miracle Mountain Ranch. I continued to serve as the Chairman of the Allegheny District Constitutions and Credentials Board. I got to assist five pastors get their ministry licenses in 2025, and there are more candidates for credentials right now than we have ever had in the process. Once again, I coordinated the Stay Sharp Theology Conference and answered theological and governance questions for churches who are considering affiliation with our association of churches. I also led an ongoing district pastors’ gathering that meets near Pittsburgh several times a year.

On the national EFCA level, I continued to serve as the Book Review Coordinator for the EFCA Blog. We published three book reviews this year including one by our own Cody Crumrine! I also continued as a member of the EFCA Spiritual Heritage Committee which met both at EFCA One in Des Moines and also at my alma mater, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), one last time at their campus in Illinois. TEDS announced this year that they are moving to British Columbia to become the seminary of Trinity Western University, our sister school in western Canada. This seems to be a good move for TEDS as they continue to serve our King by raising up well-educated leaders for His global church.

One highlight of national ministry for me this year was being included on the interview team for the new EFCA Director of Pastoral Theology and Care. As a long-serving local EFCA pastor, I know how valuable it can be for our churches to have someone in that key role, and it was a joy and privilege to get to interview candidates and to provide my input on the selection. The new director is Scott Barber who works closely with Greg Strand and will also be teaching at Stay Sharp in March. 

It is no secret that I love the EFCA, and at the end of the year, I got to shoot a video for the national office extolling many of the things I deeply appreciate about their ministry for us. 

Thank you for allowing me time to serve our King outside of the West Branch area. 

Shepherd the Flock (1 Peter 5:2)

In 2025, I had the honor of spending more meaningful time with the people of our church family. Thank you for inviting me to visit your homes and workplaces, to sit in the audience or the stands cheering on your talented kids at dance recitals, drama productions, musical concerts, and all kinds of sporting events. It is a great privilege to sit by a hospital bed or stand by the casket of one of your loved ones. I truly love getting to be present for both the high times and hard times for our flock.

I had the solemn privilege of leading two memorial services in 2025–John Walter (who had died in late 2024) and Christine Miller. That is  probably a record for the fewest I’ve ever led in a year.

This year, I had the joys of officiating for Roye and Cayli (Bundy) Houston’s and attending Chad and Meizhen (Belko) Green’s weddings. I also got to speak at George and Betty Leathers’ fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration.

We had a record number of babies (6!) born to people connected to our church in 2025! I had the privilege of helping four sets of young parents dedicate their little ones to the Lord.

In November, I was honored to play a part in baptizing three followers of Jesus–Whittaker Crumrine, Jon Michaels, and Holly Michaels.

I can’t be there for every special moment, but as your shepherd, I love getting to be present for every one that the Great Shepherd allows me.

Speaking of shepherding, my own pastor, Kerry Doyal, is on a much-deserved sabbatical from December 2025 through February 2026. He has done a fabulous job of shepherding me these last six years, and I’m glad he’s getting a break. Pastors need pastors, too, and I have one of the best. 

Thank you all, as well, for loving and supporting me and my family. This flock takes good care of its shepherd, and Heather and I are extremely grateful.

Vision for 2026 - Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus

I don’t have a grand plan for 2026. 

I know some of the things we hope to accomplish this year. You can get a glimpse of them from the other parts of this annual report. We hope to partner with up to three new missionaries to reach out with the gospel both in the United States and around the world. We hope to send youth to WinterCon and Challenge. We are gearing up for another excellent Family Bible Week and Fall Retreat. The Facilities Team is going to upgrade the playground and try out a pickleball court. There are all kinds of new things in the works, but I don’t have a detailed plan for everything we’re going attempt together this year.

I have, however, settled on what I’m going to preach first, and that is the Letter to the Hebrews. The unnamed author of that New Testament letter is concerned that his readers are tempted to take their eyes off of Jesus and go back to their old ways. So the author reminds them just how superlative and superior Jesus is to every other option. Jesus is greater than anything else and therefore is worthy of our continued contemplation. In chapter 12, he writes:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrew 12:1-2).

I can’t think of a better focus for us in 2026 in all that we do as a church than to keep our gaze fixed on our King. He is worthy!

In His Grip,

-Pastor Matt

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