This sermon was preached on 6/8/2025 by Dr. C.N. "Nick" Willborn, senior pastor at Covenant PCA, Oak Ridge, TN. We love to share teaching on worship, the church, and the offices since sermons on these subjects are somewhat rare. Dr. Willborn is widely considered to be an authority on the office of deacon and has written extensively on the subject. The opening music is an a capella verse of Psalm 150C from the Trinity Psalter Hymnal. https://www.covenant-pca.com/our-pastors

PCA pastor and former GA moderator Fred Greco shares advice on important overtures to the upcoming assembly and provides a user's guide for new presbyters, spectators, or viewers of the assembly. 

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rlcSQQqKlU

Pastors Scott Edburg and Jared Nelson of the Polity Matters podcast join us along with Presbygirl Zoe Miller to wade through a flood of overtures for the 2025 PCA General Assembly. See all the overtures here: https://pcaga.org/resources/#overtures

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3fCIE_0ncA

Dr. Sean Morris, associate pastor of Covenant PCA of Oak Ridge, TN, preaches on the ascension from Acts 1:1-11. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unk3QHXXUSw

Brothers in ministry, Greenville Seminary invites you to their 2025 Summer Seminar: Contemporary Challenges in Pastoral Ministry. Carl Trueman and David Hall will join us on campus for a series of lectures on preaching, pastoral communication, pastoring and people, and the pastor's personal life. August 5-7 in Greenville, SC. Registration is $125/person. You can sign up here.

Special thanks to Nathan Clark George for our opening and closing instrumental. Nathan serves as the Pastor of Worship alongside Kevin DeYoung at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, NC. You can access Nathan's fantastic catalog here.

Pastor Stephen Spinnenweber joins us to talk about his new book "Loving the Law." The book can be found at many outlets, including the Christian Focus website: https://www.christianfocus.com/en-us/product/9781527112520/loving-the-law-paperback

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo2mC0nDmeY

Pastor Chris Drew is our guide as we walk through Westminster Confession of Faith chapter 19, Of the Law of God.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxOWdAHeXLE

1. God gave to Adam a law, as a covenant of works, by which he bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience, promised life upon the fulfilling, and threatened death upon the breach of it, and endued him with power and ability to keep it.

2. This law, after his fall, continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness; and, as such, was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai, in ten commandments, and written in two tables: the first four commandments containing our duty towards God; and the other six, our duty to man.

3. Beside this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, his graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits; and partly, holding forth divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the new testament.

4. To them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

5. The moral law doth forever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that, not only in regard of the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God the Creator, who gave it. Neither doth Christ, in the gospel, any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation.

6. Although true believers be not under the law, as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified, or condemned; yet is it of great use to them, as well as to others; in that, as a rule of life informing them of the will of God, and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly; discovering also the sinful pollutions of their nature, hearts, and lives; so as, examining themselves thereby, they may come to further conviction of, humiliation for, and hatred against sin, together with a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ, and the perfection of his obedience. It is likewise of use to the regenerate, to restrain their corruptions, in that it forbids sin: and the threatenings of it serve to show what even their sins deserve; and what afflictions, in this life, they may expect for them, although freed from the curse thereof threatened in the law. The promises of it, in like manner, show them God’s approbation of obedience, and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof: although not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works. So as, a man’s doing good, and refraining from evil, because the law encourageth to the one, and deterreth from the other, is no evidence of his being under the law; and, not under grace.

7. Neither are the forementioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the gospel, but do sweetly comply with it; the Spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely, and cheerfully, which the will of God, revealed in the law, requireth to be done.

Our guest was Jonathan Landry Cruse, pastor of Community Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Kalamazoo, Michigan. His authorial output is approaching 10 books (including What Happens When We Worship) and his new book in the Christian Focus "Track" series, A Student's Guide to the Church.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JyW97XTIrE

Pastoral intern & proud son of the PCA Robert Hasler joins Sarah and Zoe to discuss the seeming decline of interest in traditional Protestantism and Presbyterianism, and how we might recover from this through a high view of the ordinary means of grace and ordinary faithfulness.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea5qDfR2Pxw

Pastors Joe Cristman and Zach Byrd, Presbygirl and pastor's wife Zoe, and Justen the fighter pilot-ruling elder help us assess some controversial new overtures that will come before the PCA General Assembly in June. See overtures 26-28 here: https://pcaga.org/resources/#overtures

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCGDD5HT3wg