King's Church

How do we know we have the right books in the Bible, no more and no fewer? In Lesson 3 of the Foundations Series, "Pure Words," Pastor Samson shows that the answer rests on Jesus Christ Himself: He affirmed the Old Testament, He authorized His apostles to write the New, and the church recognized the books God had given rather than creating them. Along the way you'll hear why Roman Catholic and Protestant Bibles differ, the truth about the "lost gospels" (including one with a talking cross), and why no one alive today can add a book to the Bible. Most of all, you'll come away with fresh confidence that God's Word is just what Psalm 12:6 calls it, "pure words," tried and proved.

Colossae was a small, fading town, and one of the great Bible scholars called it the least important church Paul ever wrote to, yet that little church received one of the highest views of Jesus Christ anywhere in Scripture. Someone was telling those believers they didn't need to give up Jesus, only to add something to Him: a ritual, an experience, a deeper secret. Paul's answer still rings out today: "in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him." If you've ever felt small, or wondered whether Jesus is really enough, this message will remind you that Christ is not where you start; Christ is where you stay.

Have you ever been asked, "Where was your church before Luther?" In about fifty-four minutes, this teaching puts its arms around the whole story of the Reformation, from Wycliffe and Hus through Luther, Zwingli, Tyndale and Calvin, all the way to the confession we hold at King's Church. You'll meet a Cambridge priest whose "bruised bones leapt for joy" over a single verse, a translator strangled and burned for giving England the Bible, and the very bishop who had turned him away, later putting his name on that same Bible. Most of all, you'll see that the Reformers were renovators, not innovators, and that the gospel they recovered is the same good news that still rescues sinners now.

Was the Reformation a revolution, or a recovery of something that had been buried? In "An Old Gospel, Recovered," Pastor John Samson preaches Romans 1:16-17, the very verses that set Martin Luther free, and shows that the gospel the Reformers proclaimed was not invented in 1517 but promised by the prophets and preached by the apostles. Along the way you will hear why Luther said, "I did nothing; the Word did everything," what the Pharisee and the tax collector teach us about being right with God, and why the whole sixteenth-century debate came down to one small word: alone. Most of all, this message asks a question no one can afford to leave unanswered: when you stand before God, whose righteousness will you be trusting?

Is the Bible just a collection of ancient religious opinions, or has the God who made the world actually spoken? In Lesson 2 of our Foundations series, "And God Said," we see from Hebrews, 2 Timothy and 2 Peter that God has spoken, and that He has put in writing everything we need to know Him, trust Him and obey Him. We look at how God breathed out His Word through real human writers, how Jesus Himself treated every word of Scripture, and why God's Word lands in our settled way of thinking like a huge rock dropped into a still lake. If you've ever wondered whether you can really trust the Bible, or whether an ordinary Christian can understand it, set aside 54 minutes for this teaching and face the question we close with: If God has spoken, will I listen?

Many people today have settled the matter: Jesus, yes; the church, no thank you. In Matthew 16, Jesus refuses to let us separate Him from His church, and Pastor John Samson opens up what "this rock" really means, why even death cannot stand against Christ's people, and what Jesus meant when He promised, "I will build my church." You'll hear how a church conceived in eternity joins Abraham, Moses, and David with believers today, and how the Savior who bought His church with His own blood turned a ferocious enemy, Saul of Tarsus, into one of its builders. Whether you have been hurt, have drifted, or are simply too busy, this message presses the question every Christian must answer: What does the church have to do with me?

What do a crowd at Jerusalem's Water Gate, an Englishman shivering in a prison cell near Brussels, and the apostle Paul in chains have in common? In this teaching we open Nehemiah 8 and 2 Timothy 2 to see that God gave His Word to be understood, and we trace what it cost to put the Bible into the language of ordinary people, from John Wycliffe's burned bones to William Tyndale's plowboy vow. You'll hear Tyndale's only surviving letter, written from his cell, asking for a warmer coat, a lamp, and "above all" his Hebrew Bible, set beside Paul's own request for his cloak and his parchments. Come hear why the people of Nehemiah's day went home rejoicing "because they had understood," and why that same joy is waiting for you every time you open your Bible.

In 1428, church officials dug up a man who had been dead for forty-four years, burned his bones, and threw the ashes into a river, because he had dared to put the Bible above the pope and his followers were putting it into plain English. In this 17-minute recording, Pastor John tells the story of the men who risked everything to put God's Word into the hands of farmers, shopkeepers, and plowboys, from Wycliffe and Hus to William Tyndale. They could chain the messengers and burn them at the stake, but as Paul wrote from his own prison cell, "the word of God is not bound!" Come and hear why the Reformation began with an open Bible, and face the question this story puts to every one of us: when did you last open yours as though it had cost somebody his life to put it in your hands?

Have you ever believed God's promises with all your heart, prayed hard, and then watched heaven go silent while the wrong people prospered? Psalm 10 opens with that very question, "Why, O LORD, do you stand far away?", and takes us through three rooms: the room where the wicked man boasts that God will never see, the room where David prays, and the throne room, where a runaway servant woman, a cry in Gethsemane, and a Savior who still prays for His people all answer the same question. If God has seemed far away from you lately, come and hear why the psalm ends in a very different place: "O LORD, you hear the desire of the afflicted."

The Bible's first words are not an argument for God but an announcement: "In the beginning, God." In this opening lesson of our new Foundations series, Pastor John Samson shows why Scripture can speak that way, tracing a line from Genesis 1 through Psalm 14 to Romans 1, where Paul says God has made Himself plain to every person. If that is true, the real issue is not a shortage of evidence but what we do with what we already know, and that changes how we answer the coworker who says, "Prove to me that He exists." Come for a shoe, a beach ball, and a man named Nabal, and stay for the good news that the God creation points to has shown Himself most clearly in the face of Jesus Christ.