Hope Presbyterian Church In Winston-salem Sermons

Series: The Gospel of GodScripture: Romans 9:14-29 “It is at first unsettling to be confronted with God’s absolute sovereignty in our salvation. But ultimately this is our true security, for if there was nothing in us, but only God’s good pleasure, that brought us into grace, then there is nothing in us that can take us out of grace.” Robert Yarbrough “The moment of surrender is the moment you choose to lose control of your life, the split second of powerlessness where you trust that some kind of ‘higher power’ better be in charge, because you certainly aren’t.” Bono “Behind the history you witness is a History-Maker who can be trusted; beneath the values you violate is the mercy to forgive you; beyond the death you must die is the life he has pioneered: resurrection.” Glen ScrivenerThe post Have Mercy first appeared on Hope Church PCA.

Series: The Gospel of GodScripture: Romans 9:1-13 “I never wanted to follow Jesus. I never wanted to follow Jesus. I never wanted to follow Jesus. He rescued me, He rescued me. No turning back, no turning back.” Red Mountain Music “There’s a direct correlation between the accuracy of our memory and the effectiveness of our mission. If we’re not teaching people how to be saved, it’s perhaps because we’ve forgotten the tragedy of being lost. If we’re not teaching the message of forgiveness, it may be because we don’t remember what it was like to be guilty. And if we’re not preaching the cross, it could be that we’ve subconsciously decided that—God forbid—somehow we don’t need it.” Max Lucado “Continue seeking him with seriousness. Unless he wanted you, you would not be wanting him.” C.S. LewisThe post The Gospel of God: Tragic Unbelief and Miraculous Belief first appeared on Hope Church PCA.

Series: Latest SermonScripture: Mark 16:1-8 “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 hermeneutic of the gospel: a c

Series: Latest SermonScripture: Mark 11:1-11 “Now to the gate of my Jerusalem, The seething holy city of my heart, The saviour comes. But will I welcome him? Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start; They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing, And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find The challenge, the reversal he is bringing Changes their tune. I know what lies behind The surface flourish that so quickly fades; Self-interest, and fearful guardedness, The hardness of the heart, its barricades, And at the core, the dreadful emptiness Of a perverted temple. Jesus come Break my resistance and make me your home.” Malcolm Guite, Palm Sunday: A Sonnet “It is ourselves that we must spread under Christ’s feet, not coats or lifeless branches or shoots of trees, matter which wastes away and delights the eye only for a few brief hours. But we have clothed ourselves with Christ’s grace, with the whole Christ — ‘for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ’ — so let us spread ourselve

Series: The Gospel of GodScripture: Romans 8:31-37 “What matters supremely therefore is not in the last analysis the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it – the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind. All knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment therefore when his care falters. This is momentous knowledge… There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love for me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.” J. I. Packer, Knowing God “The work which His goodness began, The arm of His strength will complete; His promise is y

Series: The Gospel of GodScripture: Romans 8:18-30 “We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.”  Mary Oliver “Wisdom teaches us that tears, at their best, pay tribute to something lost that was once cherished, and it was wise to cherish it. We lament the loss of a genuine good.”  Zack Eswine “The absence of hope is a hellish state of utter despair. In contrast, Christian faith offers hope as a present reality, a foretaste of heaven directing us toward an eternal relationship with Christ. This hope is not a passive waiting at a departure gate but an active journey, empowered by faith in God’s promises, providence, and power. It’s a hope we can hold fast because God has promised to finish what he started in us.” David CassidyThe post The Gospel of God: Between Groaning and Glory first appeared on Hope Church PCA.

Series: The Gospel of GodScripture: Romans 8:12-17 “A true Christian is one who has not only peace of conscience, but war within. He may be known by his warfare as well as by his peace.”   J.C. Ryle “The spiritual world cannot be made suburban. It is always frontier, and if we would live in it, we must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed.” Howard R. Macy “The love of God is not a mild benevolence; it is a consuming fire.”  Bede Griffiths “It would be nice and fairly nearly true, to say that ‘from that time forth, Eustace was a different boy.’ To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy. He had relapses. There were still many days when he could be very tiresome. But most of those I shall not notice. The cure had begun.”   C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn TreaderThe post The Gospel of God: War and Peace first appeared on Hope Church PCA.

Series: The Gospel of GodScripture: Romans 8:1-11 “I tell myself that if I serve more, sign up for more, read my Bible more, just be more, then finally, I will be enough to be in a real relationship with God. But that’s all smoke and mirrors. We’re all fatally wanting, and though we try our best, we can’t hide it from the One who made us. And yet, we are found whole and without stain: ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ (Rom 8:1). He looks to judge us, failing and phony people, and sees instead His perfect, pure and blameless Son. We can breathe. We are free.” Emily Price “[The Holy Spirit] internalizes the triumphs of Christ crucified within the depths of the human being, so that our inclinations start changing from evil to good. The law cannot do that. The law tells us to pump harder, but the Holy Spirit makes springs of living water flow from within. The law tells us to pedal faster, but the Holy Spirit fills our sails. And that is the power of real holiness.” Ray Ort

Series: The Gospel of GodScripture: Romans 7:13-25 “When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.” Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel “I am a riddle to myself; a heap of inconsistencies.” John Newton “I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.” John Newton

Series: The Gospel of GodScripture: Romans 7:1-12 “Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone …. Apart from Christ we can do nothing, so if we do nothing, we can be sure it is apart from him.” Dallas Willard “In Jesus’ death and resurrection, the whole test-passing, brownie-point-earning rigmarole of the human race has been canceled . . . The gospel of grace is the final posting of the CLOSED sign on the sweatshop of the human race’s perpetual struggle to think well of itself.” Robert Farrar Capon “Spiritual practices don’t justify us. They don’t save us. Rather, they refine our Christianity; they make the inheritance Christ gives us on the Cross more fully our own. The spiritual disciplines – such as regular prayer, and fasting, and tithing, and attentiveness to our bodies – can form us as Christians throughout our lives. Are we obligated to observe these disciplines? Not gener

Series: The Gospel of GodScripture: Romans 6:15-23 “If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” C.S. Lewis “In service which Thy will appoints, there are no bonds for me; For my inmost heart is taught “the truth” that makes Thy children ‘free’; A life of self–renouncing love is a life of liberty. Anna Waring “I am growing in the awareness that God wants my whole life, not just part of it. It is not enough to give just so much time and attention to God and keep the rest for myself. It is not enough to pray often and deeply and then move from there to my own projects. As I try to u

Series: The Gospel of GodScripture: Romans 6:1-14 “Salvation by grace, salvation by free grace, salvation not by works but according to the mercy of God is indispensable to godliness. Retain a single shred or fragment of legality with the Gospel and you take away the power of the Gospel to melt and conciliate. On the tenure of ‘do this and you will live,’ a spirit of fearfulness is sure to enter; and the man striving to be square and even with his Creator is, in fact, pursuing all the while his own selfishness instead of God’s glory. It is only when, in the Gospel, acceptance is bestowed as a present, without money and without price, [that he can then] repose in Him as one friend reposes in another… rejoicing in the impulse of gratitude, by which he is awakened to the charms of a new moral existence. And never does the sinner find within himself so mighty a moral transformation, as when under the belief that he is saved by grace, he feels constrained thereby to offer his heart a devoted thing, and to deny ung

Series: The Gospel of GodScripture: Romans 5:12-21 “If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, absolute life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?” Eugene Peterson, The Message “We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ’s cross, and Adam’s tree, stood in one place; Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me; As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face, May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.” John Donne, Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness “Humble people own up to their sins. They laugh at what’s foolish in their lives, but they grieve over their sins. And then they trust the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. They trust the Lamb of God to take away their sins too.” Cornelius Plantinga, Under the Wings of God

Series: The Gospel of GodScripture: Romans 5:1-11 “Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin? The blood of Jesus whispers peace within. Peace, perfect peace, ’mid suffering’s sharpest throes? The sympathy of Jesus breathes repose.” Edward Bickersteth “There are but two lessons for the Christian to learn: the one is, to enjoy God in everything; the other is, to enjoy everything in God. The one ennobles the rich; the other elevates the poor: and all who have learned these lessons are, and must be, happy.” Charles Simeon “All the gifts of sovereign grace are intended to give us joy.” Charles Spurgeon

Series: Latest SermonScripture: 2 King 6:1-7 “I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free, For His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me.” Civilla Martin “The gospel message says: ‘You don’t live in a mechanistic world ruled by necessity; you don’t live in a random world ruled by chance; you live in a world ruled by the God of Exodus and Easter. He will do things in you that neither you nor your friends would have supposed possible.’” Eugene H. Peterson, Five Smooth Stones “The point of the resurrection is not simply that the creator God has done something remarkable for one solitary individual (as people today sometimes imagine is the supposed thrust of the Easter proclamation), but that, in and through the resurrection, the present evil age has been invaded by the age to come, the time of restoration, return, covenant renewal, and forgiveness. An event has occurred as a result of which the world is a different place, and human beings have the new possibility to become a different kind of peo

Series: Latest SermonScripture: Psalm 16 “You are like a jar of river water all shaken up. What you need is to sit still long enough that the sediment can settle and the water can become clear.” Ruth Haley Barton “‘You are what you think’ is a motto that reduces human beings to brains-on-a-stick. Ironically, such thinking-thingism assumes that the ‘heart’ of the person is the mind.” James K.A. Smith “Just forgiven? And is that really all there is to being a Christian? The gift of eternal life comes down to that? Quite a retreat from living an eternal kind of life now!” Dallas Willard

Series: Promise-Keeping GodScripture: Luke 2:8-14

Series: Promise-Keeping GodScripture: 2 Samuel 7:1-17 “Here is the great fulfillment . . . what God did when he sent his Son into the world is an absolute guarantee that he will do everything he has ever promised to do.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones “The disappointment, brokenness, suffering, and pain that characterize life in this present world are held in dynamic tension with the promise of future glory that is yet to come. In that Advent tension, the church lives its life.” Fleming Rutledge, Advent “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” Rabbi Tarfon

Series: Promise-Keeping GodScripture: Genesis 12:1-4 “There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them. It takes the whole Bible to tell this Story. And at the center of the Story, there is a baby.” Sally Lloyd-Jones, The Jesus Storybook Bible “Whether idea or man, Jesus is a model that, day to day, encourages much good. He is a mirror that reflects, for many of us, our hopes. We see Jesus as many different people—dutiful son, ascetic, revolutionary, sage, martyr — depending on our personal beliefs and, indeed, our personal needs. A great many of us, Christians and not, want Jesus on our team. We want to be His teammate. We want to be like Him. We want Him to be like us. … [One point is clear:] Whether Jesus was sent from Heaven or not, whether He died on the cross or not, and ascended or did not — Jesus is alive in our time. To believers and nonbelievers alike, Jesus matters. Still matters. He long has. He

Series: Promise-Keeping GodScripture: Genesis 3:1-19 “‘The Son of Man,’ Jesus says, ‘comes at a time you don’t think’ (in an hour that seems like nothing to you). To be ready for that, therefore, all you have to do is wait in faith for nothing — that is, for death. And the only way of being unready is to cut short that waiting by unfaith — to dash off on material or spiritual excursions we think will give us life. But our life does not consist in the abundance of things we possess (Luke 12:15). Rather our life is hid with Christ in God (Col. 3:3) and the mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection. He who loses his life for Jesus’ sake, therefore, will find it.” Robert Capon “Oh, the devil’s singing over me an age old song That I am cursed and gone astray Singing the first verse so conveniently over me He’s forgotten the refrain: ‘Jesus saves!’” Shane & Shane “The good news of Advent is not that we are faithful in our waiting (we often aren’t) but that God is faithful in his coming.” Rich Villodas