Hope Presbyterian Church In Winston-salem Sermons

Series: Words of LifeScripture: Exodus 20:1-2, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Chosen not for good in me, Wakened up from wrath to flee, Hidden in the Saviour’s side, By the Spirit sanctified, Teach me, Lord, on earth to show, By my love, how much I owe. Oft I walk beneath the cloud, Dark as midnight’s gloomy shroud; But, what fear is at the height, Jesus comes, and all is light: Blessed Jesus! Bid me show Doubting saints how much I owe. When in flowery paths I tread, Oft by sin I’m captive led; Oft I fall, but still arise; The Spirit comes—the tempter flies; Blessed Spirit! Bid me show Weary sinners all I owe. Oft the nights of sorrow reign— Weeping, sickness, sighing, pain, But a night Thine anger burns— Morning comes, and joy returns: God of comforts! Bid me show To thy poor, how much I owe. —Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, I Am Debtor, Andrew A. BonarThe post I Am Debtor first appeared on Hope Church PCA.

Series: Words of LifeScripture: Mark 12:28-34 “The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.” —G. K. Chesterton “The law of God is not a system of merit whereby the unsaved seek to earn divine favor but a pattern of life given by the Redeemer to the redeemed so that they may know how to live for his good pleasure.” —Alec Motyer “If Egypt binds us in a slavery that contradicts God’s original design, then the wilderness is about rediscovering that original beauty, dignity, and   responsibility . . . At Sinai God sings the lullaby that echoes the original true story . . . In that context, the Ten Commandments are not merely  restrictions but invitations to a flourishing life.  In defining our relationship with God and with each other, the Ten Commandments set up the boundaries in which we may freely live.  Each one of the         commandments either fences off enslavement or embodies h

Scripture: Acts 2:14-28 “Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.” —Frederick Buechner “The message of Easter is that God’s new world has been unveiled in   Jesus Christ and that you’re now invited to belong to it.” —N.T. Wright “Optimism hopes for the best without any guarantee of its arriving and is often no more than whistling in the dark. Christian hope, by contrast, is faith looking ahead to the fulfillment of the promises of God, as when the Anglican burial service inters the corpse ‘in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Optimism is a wish without warrant; Christian hope is a certainty, guaranteed by God himself. Optimism reflects ignorance as to whether good things will ever actually come. Christian hope expresses knowledge that every day of his life, and every moment beyond it, the believer can say with truth, on the basis of God’s own commitment, that the best is yet to come.” ―J.I. PackerThe post Everything Sad Comes Unt

Scripture: John 19:28-30

Series: Responding to Jesus the KingScripture: Acts 17:16-34 “There is more in you of good than you know.” —J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit “I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” —Anne Lamott “You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentf

Series: Responding to Jesus the KingScripture: Acts 11:1-18 “Oh how I wish insight were the cure!”  —Patricia DeYoung “Come with thy heart hard, dead, cold, full of wickedness; come as a blood-red sinner; this is the way to come to Christ!”  —John Bunyan “Grace doesn’t sell well; you can hardly even give it away, because it works only for losers and no one wants to stand in their line.”  —Robert Farrar CaponThe post The Un-Reluctant God first appeared on Hope Church PCA.

Series: Responding to Jesus the KingScripture: Acts 9:1-19 Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for. —Bob Marley There are people that really live by doing the right thing, but I don’t know what that is, I’m really curious about that. I’m really curious about what people think they’re doing when they’re doing something evil, casually. I think it’s really interesting, that we benefit from suffering so much, and we excuse ourselves from it. —Louis C. K. If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ‘Suffering should not make us bitter people,’ my mother once said, ‘it should make us better comforters.’ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind. —Billy GrahamThe post How Much? first appeared on Hope Church PCA.

Series: Responding to Jesus the KingScripture: Acts 8:26-40 “If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life.  See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the final analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” —Frederick Buechner “The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: life is a story about me.” —Donald Miller “The most precious part of each day for me is the 30-40 minutes I spend each morning before breakfast with the Bible.  All the rest of the day I am bombarded with the stories the world is telling about itself.  As I take time to immerse myself in the story the Bible tells, my vision is cleared, and I see things in another way.  I see the day that lies ahead in its place in God’s sto

Series: Good News From MarkScripture: Mark 15:42-16:8 “Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer.” —John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany “Jesus was the only one that ever raised the dead, “The Misfit continued, “and He shouldn’t have done it. If He did what He said, then there’s   nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left…” —Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” “How can this strange story of God made flesh, of a crucified savior, of resurrection and new creation become credible for those whose entire mental training has conditioned them to believe that the real world is the world which can be satisfactorily explained and managed without the   hypothesis of God? I know of only one clue to the answering of that   question, only one real hermeneuti

Series: Good News From MarkScripture: Mark 14:12-16, 22-25 The Passover meal had to be prepared in a certain way and had a distinct form. It included four points at which the presider, holding a glass of wine, got up and explained the feast’s meaning. The four cups of wine represented the four     promises made by God in Exodus 6:6-7. These promises were for rescue from Egypt, for freedom from slavery, for redemption by God’s divine power, and for a renewed relationship with God. The third cup came at a point when the meal was almost completely eaten. The presider would use words from Deuteronomy 26 to bless the elements — the bread, the herbs, the lamb — by explaining how they were symbolic reminders of various aspects of the early Israelites’ captivity and deliverance. For example, he would show them the bread and say, “This is the bread of our affliction, which our fathers ate in the wilderness.” One more example: I read some years ago in National Geographic that after a forest fire in Yellowstone National

Series: Good News From MarkScripture: Mark 14:32-42 “Go to dark Gethsemane, Ye that feel the tempter’s power. Your Redeemer’s conflict see; Watch with Him one bitter hour. Turn not from His griefs away; Learn of Jesus Christ to pray. Learn of Jesus Christ to pray.” —James Montgomery “Gethsemane is where we go when there’s no place to go but God.” —Ken Gire “In the strange mercy of God, the cup of God’s righteous wrath against the sin of the world is given into the hands, not of his enemies, but of his beloved Son. And his Son will drink this cup down to its dregs.” —Lesslie NewbiginThe post The Cup first appeared on Hope Church PCA.

Series: Good News From MarkScripture: Mark 11:1-19 Until the unlimited, Unbridled and unrelenting Love of God Takes root in our life, Until God’s reckless Pursuit of us captures Our imagination, Until our head knowledge Of God settles Into our heart Through pure grace, Nothing really changes. —Fil Anderson What can we expect from God? What is He really like? What will He do with us once our denial and sin is disrupted and our hurt and fury drawn forth? It is in the dark struggles with God that we are surprised by His response to our anger and fear. What we receive from Him during difficult battle is not what we expect. We assume He wants order, conformity — obedient children. Instead, we find that He wants our passionate involvement and utter awe in the mystery of His glorious character…In the darkness of our emotional wrestling with God, we grow in our understanding of Him. When He does not respond to us as we expect, we learn about His surprising character. We attack Him with anger, but we do not receive Hi

Series: Good News From MarkScripture: Psalm 150 “My hallelujah has passed through the purgatory of my doubt.” —Fyodor Dostoyevsky “Let us praise and join the chorus Of the saints enthroned on high. Here they trusted Him before us, Now their praises fill the sky. Thou hast washed us with Thy blood, Thou hast washed us with Thy blood, Thou hast washed us with Thy blood, Thou art worthy Lamb of God.” —John Newton “Worship is the strategy by which we interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to the presence of God.” —Eugene PetersonThe post Praise the Lord first appeared on Hope Church PCA.

Series: Good News From MarkScripture: Mark 10:35-45 One day, in the course of a rambling lecture, my old professor made a statement along these lines: “There is a new problem in our country. We are becoming a nation that is dominated by large institutions — churches, businesses, governments, labor unions, universities — and these big institutions are not serving us well. I hope that all of you will be concerned about this. Now you can do as I do, stand outside and criticize, bring pressure if you can, write and argue about it. All of this may do some good. But nothing of substance will happen unless there are people inside these institutions who are able to (and want to) lead them into better performance for the public good. Some of you ought to make careers inside these big institutions and become a force for good — from the inside.” It is part of the enigma of human nature that the “typical” person —immature, stumbling, inept, lazy —is capable of great dedication and heroism if wisely led. Many otherwise ab

Series: Good News From MarkScripture: Luke 2:21-38 “Waiting on God isn’t about the suspension of meaning and purpose. It’s part of the meaning and purpose that God has brought into my life.  Waiting on God isn’t to be viewed as an obstruction in the way of the plan.  Waiting is an essential part of the plan.  For the child of God, waiting isn’t simply about what the child will receive at the end of his wait.  No, waiting is much more purposeful, efficient, and practical.  Waiting is fundamentally about what we will become as we wait.” —Paul David Tripp “Waiting is active. Most of us think of waiting as something very passive, a hopeless state determined by events totally out of our hands. But there is none of this passivity in scripture. Those who are waiting are waiting very actively. They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing. That’s the secret. The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. Active waiting mean

Series: Good News From MarkScripture: Luke 2:1-14 Christ came to prove that God came to tell the truth, that God keeps his promises. Christmas means God can be trusted.  —John Piper Nothing is more wonderful for a sinner to receive than mercy.  —Philip Ryken We can recognize Jesus the same way the shepherds recognized him: by his humility. When we see him wrapped in the swaddling cloths of his humanity – and even more, when we see him dying in the naked agony of the cross – we know he is the Christ God has sent to save us.  —Philip RykenThe post The Pleasure of God first appeared on Hope Church PCA.

Series: Good News From MarkScripture: Luke 1:57-80 Sabbath is the stranger you’ve always known. It’s the place of homecoming you’ve rarely or never visited, but which you’ve been missing forever. You recognize it the moment you set eyes on it. It’s the gift that surprises you, not by its novelty, but by its familiarity. It’s the song you never sang but, hearing it now, know inside out, its words and melody, its harmonies, its rhythm, the way the tune quickens just before the chorus bursts. Its been asleep in you all this time, waiting for the right kiss to wake it. Life is meant to be much different — fuller, richer, deeper, slower — from what it is. — The Rest of God, Mark Buchanan But in fact the real difficulty, because the supreme mystery with which the gospel confronts us, does not lie here at all. It lies, not in the Good Friday message of atonement, nor in the Easter message of resurrection, but in the Christmas message of incarnation. The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was

Series: Good News From MarkScripture: Luke 1:39-56 Hymns are not only powerful, they sneak into our soul. As William Cowper sings, “Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings; it is the Lord who rises with healing in His wings.” William Cowper was well aware of the power of hymns, as he wrote in a letter to a friend, “It is a noble thing to be a poet. It makes all the world so lively. I might have preached more sermons than even Tillotson did and better, and the world would have been still fast asleep. But a volume of verse is a fiddle that puts the universe in motion.” Hymns have this ability to sneak in undetected and surprise us! And we desperately need the truth of the mercy of God to break through, to reform us, to restore our sanity, to open our eyes to help us see Jesus as beautiful and believable—in short, to shape us as a people of God. In her book A Royal Waste of Time, Marva Dawn tells of Vaclav Havel, a playwright who was also the president of the Czech Republic. He was asked how the

Series: Good News From MarkScripture: Mark 10:17-31 “The sins I once feared to lose became a delight to dismiss.  You turned them out and took their place, pleasanter than any pleasure.” —Saint Augustine “A religion that costs nothing is worth nothing! A cheap Christianity, without a cross, will prove in the end a useless Christianity, without a crown.” —J.C. Ryle “You can survive on your own.  You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own.  But you cannot become human on your own.  Surely that is why, in Jesus’ sad joke, the rich man has as hard a time getting into Paradise as that camel through the needle’s eye.  Because with his credit card in his pocket, the rich man is so effective at   getting for himself everything that he needs that he does not see that what he needs more than anything else in the world can be had only as a gift.  He does not see that the one thing a clenched fist cannot do is accept, even from God himself, a helping hand.”—Frederick Buechner “Thou who wast rich be

Series: Good News From MarkScripture: Mark 9:2-8 “The Church needs to regain the vision of Christ on the mountain, the light by which we see light, the echo of the divine voice acclaiming Jesus the beloved Son — the biblical symbolism of a majestic, incarnate, crucified God as the only source of hope for the  transfiguring of a disfigured world.” —Dorothy Lee He left His Father’s throne above, So free, so infinite His grace! Emptied himself of all but love And bled for Adam’s helpless race. ‘Tis mercy all, immense and free; For, O my God, it found out me.   —Charles Wesley “It isn’t Narnia, you know,” sobbed Lucy. “It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?” “But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan. “Are — are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund. “I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” —C.S. Lewis, T