From your Pastors

Overview of Sermon: Persecution of the early church scatters Christians across ancient Israel, placing Philip in the northern region of Samaria. Though first-century Jews and Samaritans hold much animosity towards one another, Acts 8 finds Philip boldly preaching the gospel to the Samaritan people, giving rise to the gospel's first recorded proclamation outside of Jerusal...

"God says that history is important, and it should therefore be important to us. In the Bible, God commands his people to pay attention to what happened in the past. He tells us to remember the past, to learn from it, and to tell the next generations about itThe gospel, the good news, announces events that happened in the past, in the death and resurrection of Christ. It i...

Overview of Sermon:This text shows a need for confession, warning Christians not to imagine they are nowwithout sin or to make a habit of brushing off sin. John first draws our attention to consider the holiness of God. In His light we better understand our sinfulness and our need for God's cleansing righteousness which comes through our confession of sin. Our confession d...

Summary:Divinely made known to him, Paul reveals the mystery of the gospel to the church in Ephesus. This mystery is that both Jews and Gentiles are fellow heirs and members of the same body in Christ. Paul also preached the riches of Christ, namely Jesus' upholding and sustaining work in our daily lives. The gathered church is also a means to an end: we testify God's mani...

Overview of the Sermon:Luke delivers to us in Acts 6:8-8:4, the story of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and how God begins to send His gospel to the gentiles. Stephen was a man who was full of faith and the Holy Spirit (6:5) and grace and power (6:8), passionate about teaching how all of the scriptures point to Jesus. In the temple, he comes under trial from the prie...

"There are certain facts in history which the world tries hard to forget and ignore. These facts get in the way of some of the world's favorite theories, and are highly inconvenient. The consequence is that the world shuts its eyes against them. Little by little they sink out of sight of the students of history, like ships in a distant horizon. Of such facts the subject of...

Overview of Sermon:As the Church in Acts continued to expand, so did the needs. In fact, complaints aboutneglected Greek-speaking widows came to the Apostles attention. They knew that these needs must be attended to. However, they also knew that if they were to care for the widows personally, then they would lose focus on their God given responsibility to minister the Word...

Having failed to overcome the church by either persecution or corruption, [Satan] now tried distraction. If he could preoccupy the apostles with social administration, which though essential was not their calling, they would neglect their God-given responsibilities to pray and to preach, and so leave the church without any defense against false doctrine. John Stott In thi...

OVERVIEW OF SERMON:Acts 5:12-42 follows a familiar patternthe apostles do signs and wonders, then courageously face up to persecution from the religious leaders. We learn from this text that the gospel picks up opposition as it picks up momentum. We see how those without the Spirit oppose the gospel with jealousy and rage. In contrast, those with the Spirit suffer for the ...

"[Envy is] resentment that it's going well for the other person and not for you." John Piper "What an envier wants is not, first of all, what another has; what an envier wants is for another not to have itThe envier has empty hands and therefore wants to empty the hands of the envied. Envy, moreover, carries overtones of personal resentment; an envier resents not only som...