Sermons from Christ Presbyterian Church in Burke, VA

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow showed from Acts 13:44–14:7 how Paul and Barnabas kept preaching with joy even as the gospel met both glad faith and bitter opposition. When many in Antioch rejected the word, the apostles turned to the Gentiles, and “as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” In doing so they took up Isaiah 49:6, God’s promise that his Servant would be a light for the nations, a promise fulfilled in Christ, the light of the world, who now makes his people a light to others. Though they were driven out of Antioch and threatened in Iconium, the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit, a reminder that our faithfulness rests on God’s sovereign work rather than on how our efforts are received.

This past Lord’s Day, Alex Kiess, pastoral intern at Shady Grove Presbyterian Church, preached on the larger debt every sinner owes and the larger mercy that cancels it. In Luke 7:36-50, a woman known for her sin anoints Jesus’ feet at a Pharisee’s table, while Simon, the host, quietly judges both her and the Lord he invited. Through the parable of the two debtors, Jesus shows that her lavish love was not the price of her pardon but the fruit of it, since it was her faith that saved her. Simon’s real problem was not that he owed less but that he could not see what he owed, and the gospel opens our eyes to our own debt so that we might love much the One who paid it.

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow opened Acts 13 to show how the gospel Paul preached in Antioch rests on promises God had already made and already kept. Paul traces the story from the exodus through David all the way to Jesus, showing that every word God spoke to Israel found its fulfillment in Christ’s resurrection. The passage also shows two very different responses to that same message: some in the synagogue received it with joy, while others turned away from it entirely. Harlow reminded the congregation that because God kept every promise concerning His Son, believers can rest their whole lives on the promises He has made to them.

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow opened Acts 13:1-12 to trace how the Holy Spirit set the church at Antioch in motion for the work of missions. The believers there fasted and prayed before the Spirit called Barnabas and Saul, a picture of how gospel labor begins in worship and obedience rather than human strategy. As the two set out, they met resistance from Elymas the magician on Cyprus, a reminder that opposition to the gospel is nothing new and that the Lord’s power overcomes it. Pastor Harlow traced the pattern of calling, going, and sending as the ordinary means by which Christ builds His church and carries the gospel to the nations.

This past Lord’s Day, Chaplain Stewart Fowler preached from Psalm 1 on what it means to be truly blessed. The psalmist sets two paths before us: the righteous, rooted like a tree beside flowing water, and the wicked, driven off like chaff in the wind. Fowler showed that delight in God’s law is not a burden but the source of stability and fruit in every season of life. The psalm calls us to examine where we are planted and to trust that the Lord who knows the way of the righteous will sustain those who remain rooted in him.

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow closed out his two-part study of Acts 12, turning to Herod’s sudden downfall and the patience of God that precedes it. In Acts 12:18-25, Herod accepts the crowd’s praise as though he were a god himself, and judgment falls on him swiftly and finally. Peter’s own words remind us that God’s delay in judgment is not slowness but mercy, giving sinners time to repent before the day of reckoning arrives. Even as an earthly king rises and falls, the word of God keeps increasing and the church keeps multiplying, a sign that Christ’s kingdom cannot be stopped by human pride or power.

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow began a two-part series in Acts 12, considering how a weak and persecuted church prayed to a God far stronger than her enemies. Herod’s violence against the early church, the imprisonment of Peter, and the earnest prayers offered at the house of Mary set the stage for a night when an angel led Peter past sleeping guards and out of his chains. Pastor Harlow traced how the Lord answered those fervent and persevering prayers even as Herod pursued his own display of power, contrasting the very different ends met by Peter and by Herod himself. He closed by considering prayer as an ordinary means God uses to bring about extraordinary and even supernatural effects.

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow preached the second installment of the series “What Were The First Christians Like?” returning to Acts 11:19-30 to consider how God’s hand sustains His people amid the sufferings of a fallen world. Luke’s account of the church scattered from Jerusalem shows believers enduring persecution while the Lord’s providence carried the gospel forward through them. Rather than removing His people from hardship, God strengthens them to persevere in it, a truth the congregation reflected on through “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus” and “Come, Behold, the Wondrous Mystery.”

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow opened a two-part series on the church at Antioch, asking what marked the first Christians as they took root in a diverse and demanding city. In Acts 11:19–30, believers scattered by persecution carried the gospel to Jews and Gentiles alike, and the Lord’s hand was upon their witness. Barnabas, seeing the grace of God among them, brought Saul from Tarsus, and for a year the two taught a congregation known for its faith, its readiness to speak of Christ, and its hunger for His Word, a people who came to be called, simply and rightly, Christians. Pastor Harlow drew out what this young church’s character still asks of believers today.

Pastor Harlow continued the church’s series in Acts, turning to the criticism Peter faced after preaching the gospel to Cornelius’s household in Acts 11:1-18. Working through the passage in two movements, the critics Peter answered and the repentance unto life that followed, Pastor Harlow considered the temptation to fear the approval of man more than the call of God. Peter did not defend himself but simply recounted what God had done, and his accusers fell silent, then glorified God for granting the Gentiles life. The sermon pointed us to the same freedom Peter knew: when we fear God rightly, we are released from needing anyone else’s approval to obey him.