Episodes
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Advance the Gospel
What if the trials, pressure, or "prisons" you face are actually the very platforms God wants to use to advance the gospel? In this message on Philippians 1:12–18, we explore how Paul’s chains unexpectedly emboldened the early church and spread the good news further than before. Discover how...
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Worthy of the Gospel
Paul has an unshakable joy that isn't impacted by circumstance, where does this come from? In this passage we see Paul's meaning statement: "To live is Christ, to die is gain". Today we look at how our ultimate hope frames our present meaning and determines our joy. And we see that Christianity…
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A Charter for Joy
In this sermon on Philippians 1:1–11, we explore how the apostle Paul models a life of defiant, subversive joy even while facing trial and imprisonment. Discover how Paul's deep affection for the believers and his unshakable confidence—knowing that God faithfully carries to completion the good…
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The Church in Philippi
Whose plans do you think are better? Yours or God's? In Acts 16, Paul’s plans changed dramatically. The Holy Spirit kept shutting doors and steering him somewhere completely unexpected: Philippi. Paul’s story is a reminder to let go of control and to respond to God with trust and obedience, and…
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What God taught me about...
This mornings panel of messages are linked by the idea, ‘What God Taught me…’ Gina’s sharing on what it means to Wear Christ, Jocelyn on our Imperishable Crown & Ollie on Beyond Faithful. Sharing from Ephesians 4; 1 Corinthians 9 and Jeremiah 29.
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Contentment: Living the Scandalous Life of Enough
Join us this week as guest speaker Hugie from Anchor Northern Beaches explores Philippians 4:10-13, and what it means to live with contentment. In our lives, we are often guilty of always chasing more, never satisfied with what we have. But if we pause and reflect - where is God inviting you to…
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A Call to Remain
Deuteronomy ends in a way not many stories do; with a grave, an unfinished promise, and a leader who spent forty years walking toward a land he would only ever see from a distance. In this final message of our Choose Life series, Matt asks what it means to be remembered well, and why the death of...
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A call to choose Life
Every day we are faced with thousands of decisions, but the ultimate choice set before us is between life and death. In Deuteronomy 30, Moses calls God's people to a decision that goes far deeper than human willpower, it requires a complete transformation of the heart. Discover how God provides…
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A Call to Everyday Holiness
Deuteronomy's long stretch of law lands on one declaration: Israel is the LORD's, and the LORD is Israel's; a treasured, holy people. But holiness was never meant to be private; it was meant to be seen by the watching world. Matt looks at what it means to be set apart not for our own sake, but as...
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A Call to Consecration
We spend a lot of energy trying to feel "clean", chasing quick fixes like digital breaks and fresh starts. Yet Deuteronomy 12 challenges us to look deeper at what our lives are truly consecrated for. Our Lead Pastor, Matt Sparks, connects the dots between Israel's altars and Christ's ultimate...
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A Call to Remember
It's easy to feel like you need God when you've got nothing left. Deuteronomy 8 asks a harder question: do you still need him when you've got everything? Moses looks back at Israel's wilderness and ahead to their promised land, and finds the same test of dependence in both.
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A Call to Love
What do we do when we want to love God, but keep forgetting him? Deuteronomy 6 speaks to that very human problem. In this sermon, we look at why our attention drifts, why other things so easily take God’s place, and how listening, remembering and retelling the story of God’s love can shape the…
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A Call to Covenant
We tend to hear the Ten Commandments as a courtroom: rules to keep, or rules you've broken. But that's not how they were given. Before God says a single "you shall," he reminds Israel of a rescue already accomplished. In this sermon, we look at Deuteronomy 5 and ask what changes when we read the...
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A Call to Obedience
Everyone worships something, you just might not call it worship. In this message from Deuteronomy 4, we ask why an ancient warning against idol-worship might be the sharpest diagnosis of modern life you've never heard: why the things we build our identity on always let us down, and why a "jealous...
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A Call to Trust
Forty years after fleeing slavery in Egypt, God's people stood on the edge of everything they'd been promised and chose fear over trust. In this message, we trace three ways ancient Israel let doubt curdle into disobedience, and what it looks like to trust a God who's already proven He'll carry…
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How to Grasp and Know God
Today we will be diving into Paul's letter to the Ephesians, prompting us to ask ourselves, what does our heart desire when we wonder? Do we ever wonder about God? Through Ephesians 3: 16-21, Paul is encouraging us to ask God for the ability to grasp and know him.
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Faithful Work, Loving Deeds, Enduring Hope
Most of our prayers are focused on the next day or week, but what would it look like for our prayers to be shaped by eternity?In 1 Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul models a radically different posture for our prayer lives. Instead of focusing inward on immediate comforts, Paul challenges us to…
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Enlightened Eyes
Jacqui shares Paul's prayer from Ephesians 1:15-23 - a prayer that God would enlighten the eyes of our heart to know him and to know the hope, inheritance and resurrection power of Christ that is ours too.
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A Foundation for Gratitude
Most of our prayers orbit our own lives; jobs, health, the small stuff. But the Apostle Paul prayed for a church he'd never met, and what he asked for wasn't comfort or circumstances, it was knowledge! In this message from Colossians 1, we learn to pray with a wider lens: kingdom-shaped prayers...
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Tithing is Trusting
Money reveals what we actually trust. In this talk from 2 Corinthians 9, Matt explores why consistent, gospel-motivated generosity isn't a financial strategy, it's an act of faith that grows our trust in God as our ultimate provider. When we give, we're not just being obedient, we're training our...
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The Comparison Trap
We all know the feeling: someone else has what we want, and the maths just doesn't add up. This week, Ps. Matt opens up Psalm 73, where the ancient songwriter Asaph wrestles with the same comparison trap we scroll into every day, and nearly loses his faith over it. A message about how a shift in...
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Reframing the Cost of Living Crisis
In this week's message, we're taken to the Sermon on the Mount to reframe the cost of living crisis; not as a financial problem, but as a test of faith. The antidote to anxiety isn't a better budget or a higher salary, but a rightly ordered life that seeks God's kingdom first. A message about...
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MOVEMENT SUNDAY
On this special day, guest speaker Pastor Ashley Brown from Wasilla Bible Church reads from 1 Corinthians:15 and discusses how Jesus' resurrection opens the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven for us all.
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Familiar Stranger: Pentecost Sunday
In this Pentecost Sunday message, our Lead Pastor Matt, explores why the Holy Spirit came not to make us comfortable, but to make us courageous, and what it looks like for ordinary people to be filled and sent by the same Spirit that transformed a fisherman into a preacher who turned Jerusalem...
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Familiar Stranger: Clothed with power
In this penultimate Sermon of our Familiar Stranger series, Jacques explores how we can live the Christain life in timidity but we are to trust in the power of God. As he may manifest in his gifts for the church.
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Familiar Stranger: Keep in step with the Spirit
Are you white-knuckling your faith and wondering why you keep losing the exact same battles with sin day after day? A lot of us treat the Holy Spirit like a one-time transaction we received at salvation, leaving us trying to survive an exhausting world entirely on our own fumes. This message…
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The Familiar Stranger: A Story of Extremes
Most of us know about the Holy Spirit — we've sung about Him, read about Him, maybe even preached about Him — but if we're honest, He often feels more like a theological category than a living person. In this first message of Parakletos, we explore why that gap exists, what Scripture actually...
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The Familiar Stranger
Most of us know about the Holy Spirit — we've sung about Him, read about Him, maybe even preached about Him — but if we're honest, He often feels more like a theological category than a living person. In this first message of Parakletos, we explore why that gap exists, what Scripture actually...
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Hungry for the word
In a world designed to keep us scrolling, how do we cultivate a genuine hunger for what actually matters? Join us as we explore 1 Peter 2:2-3 and the "Power of 4"—a life-changing rhythm of engaging with Scripture that moves us from being spiritually malnourished to truly satisfied in Christ.
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Once for all
When so much of life feels uncertain and unfinished, we’re always seraching for something solid to stand on. Hebrews 10 shows the beautiful contrast between the old sacrificial system, where sacrifices had to be repeated again and again, and the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus. What those...
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Easter Sunday
In a world where evil often feels impossible to overcome, the "Easter Paradox" reveals that what appeared to be a victim on a cross was actually a Victor disarming the powers of darkness. This message explores how the King of Glory broke the "impenetrable stronghold" of death, transforming a…
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Work & Rest
Discover how a "Rule of Life" and the practice of Sabbath offer a subversive rebellion against the modern cult of busyness and "striving". By embracing our God-given limits, we move from the anxiety of "toil" to a rhythm of "shalom" that fuels our vocational flourishing.
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Career and Calling
Stop waiting for a "sacred" calling and start seeing your Monday-to-Friday as an act of high worship. Drawing from the story of the artisan Bezalel, this message explores how God uniquely wires, equips, and positions you to serve His purposes through excellence in your everyday work.
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Work and the Curse
Discover how the "Fall" chapter in God’s story transforms our unmet expectations into a realistic perspective of work that balances fruit with frustration. By understanding sin as a distortion of God’s creative intention, we can stop idolizing or loathing our labor and instead find a hopeful way…
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Thank God it's Monday
The Goodness of God, the Goodness of Work God has created work for each and everyone of us. As we find our purposes, partner with God and seek pleasure in the vocation God has given us, may we glorify him and serve others with our gifts and talents.
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Not For Display: Raise em Up
Inspired by the vision of Psalm 78, this message explores the critical "three-generation slide" and the danger of gospel amnesia. Join us as we look at how to move from merely assuming our faith to actively investing in the next generation, turning a community of believers into a family of...
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Not For Display: No Spectators
In this sermon, Matt explores how the Bible calls each one of us to play our part when it comes to ministry. There are no spectators when it comes to our faith.
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Not For Display: Discipled by the Algorithm
Discipled by the Algorithm explores how Psalm 1 and John 15:4–5 confront the quiet forces shaping our desires, attention, and habits every day. Jesus invites us to abide in Him like branches in the vine, so that instead of being formed by endless feeds, we become rooted, fruitful, and alive in…
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Not For Display
Not For Display: Faith that only looks good on the outside is useless. In this episode, we unpack James 2:14‑26 and challenge our church to move from passive belief to a life of action, power, and obedience that changes everything.”
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When Jesus Walks you Home
Joel Bennet - Guest Preacher When Jesus walks you home. Jesus walks with us in what feels insignificant. Jesus walks with us through disappointment. Jesus walks with us when we invite him in. We can depend on him and know that he will be faithful till the end of the age.
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Keeping Score before God
Jesus tells a story for people who feel spiritually fine. In Luke 18:9–14, He exposes the quiet sin of self-righteousness and the hidden ways we justify ourselves by comparison. This message invites us to lay down our measurements and rediscover the mercy of God.
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Jesus Loves Me , This I Know!
A teaching from John 13 that invites us beyond knowing about Jesus’ love to being personally affected by it. This sermon explores how Christ loves us completely, practically, unconditionally, and intimately, and calls us to receive that love as the truest foundation of our identity.
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Love One Another
How do you actually know if you’re following Jesus? John’s answer is simple and challenging—love. Not vague feelings or good intentions, but a love shaped by the way God has first loved us. God’s love redefines how we treat others and is the clearest, truest sign that Jesus is at work in us.
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Better Than Our Plans
The story found in Luke 8:40-56 disrupts the self reliance we reach for at New Year and the belief that our plans can secure the future we want. Jesus alone can be trusted with both our timing and our plans. His ways lead to a better life than any of us could have imagined for ourselves.
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Christmas Service
In this sermon, we reflect on what Christmas means to us as Christians: a reminder of God's promise to us.
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Unbroken
How can I be sure God really loves me? Paul gives us the answer in Romans 8:31-39, reminding us that if God didn’t hold back His own Son, there’s nothing—absolutely nothing—that can separate us from His love.
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CELEBRATION SUNDAY
How can we remain thankful and joyful in a world full of disappointment and hurt? This is a rally call to defiant joy based on the firm conviction that God. Is. Good!
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No wasted pain
Romans 8:28-30 contains a promise that there is No Wasted Pain for those who follow Jesus. But what does that mean when we encounter suffering and evil in a broken world? And how do we exchange the great, assuring promise of this passage with false comforts and human platitudes?
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Breathe in the bones
Drawing on Romans 8:22–27, this sermon reflects on the Spirit’s groaning intercession as the reason Christians can hope even while we wrestle with sin and suffering. We learn how the Spirit forms in us a posture of eager expectation for the world God is making new.
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The weight of glory
In this message, The Weight of Glory from Romans 8:18–22, we explore Paul’s breathtaking vision that present suffering is not worth comparing to the glory that awaits God’s people. Through vivid imagery and honest reflection, we’re reminded that the path to glory always runs through the cross—and...
About this show
Weekly preaching audio from Anchor City. Find Home.Weekly Gatherings: 10am Factory Theatre, Marrickville 2204.Lead Pastor: Matt Sparks
Hosted by
Anchor Church Sydney
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