Sermons from Christ Presbyterian Church in Burke, VA

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.

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow continued the church’s study of Acts with a sermon titled “Fear and Favor Part II: The God Who Sends His People,” drawn from Acts 10:1–48. Building on the account of Cornelius, a Roman centurion seeking God, the sermon traced how the Lord called Peter to cross a boundary he had never imagined crossing, sending him to bring the gospel to a Gentile household. Pastor Harlow noted that Peter wrestled with obeying this call, yet the Lord met him in his hesitation and equipped him to go. The sermon closed on Peter’s declaration that God shows no partiality, a reminder that salvation in Jesus Christ reaches every nation through the ordinary means the Lord has appointed.

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow opened Acts 10 to explore what it means to seek the God who comes to us, tracing the story of Cornelius, a Roman centurion whose fear of God and devotion drew the attention of heaven itself. Through the visions given to both Cornelius and Peter, we see how God shows no partiality, breaking barriers of ethnicity and tradition to extend his favor and fellowship to those who fear him from every nation. Peter’s proclamation in Caesarea makes plain that Jesus Christ, the one appointed judge of the living and the dead, is also the one through whom everyone who believes receives forgiveness of sins. This sermon begins a series that invites us to examine our own fear of God and to trust that the God we seek is already, always, seeking us.

This past Lord’s Day, Rev. Charles Garriott brought a guest sermon on the radical call of discipleship from Matthew 16:21-28. Jesus, after announcing his coming death and resurrection, confronts Peter’s instinct to protect him — and in doing so, confronts our own tendency to seek a comfortable, self-preserving faith. The call to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Christ is not a call to misery but to the only life worth having, because whoever loses his life for Christ’s sake will find it. Rev. Garriott pressed the question that cuts to the heart of every soul: what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow preached on the growth of the early church in Acts 9:31-43, showing how fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit worked together to build up the saints. When Peter healed the paralyzed Aeneas in Lydda, the whole town turned to the Lord. When Peter raised Tabitha from death in Joppa, word spread and many believed. Pastor Harlow reminded us that the same Lord who brought healing and resurrection through Peter’s ministry continues to comfort His church today, growing His people through both a right fear of Him and the abiding presence of His Spirit.

This past Lord’s Day, Ruling Elder Scott Hatch walked through the conversion of Saul in Acts 9:1-30, one of the most dramatic turns in the New Testament. A man bent on destroying the church is confronted by the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and transformed into one of its greatest witnesses. Hatch traced what Paul learned in that encounter, that grace reaches even those most opposed to it, and asked what this means for us today. The same Christ who stopped Saul in his tracks is still in the business of turning enemies into sons.

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow opened Acts 8:26-40, the account of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, to show how God directs His servants down unlikely roads to reach unlikely people. Philip’s obedience took him to a desert highway, where he found a court official puzzling over Isaiah 53 with no one to explain it to him. Pastor Harlow traced how the suffering servant of Isaiah pointed forward to Christ, and how the gospel Philip preached reached across every barrier of nation and status to bring a foreigner and outcast into the family of God. The sermon closed with the eunuch’s baptism as a picture of the good news still going out today, to outsiders near and far.

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow preached on the strange conversion of Simon the magician in Acts 8:9-25. Revival breaks out in Samaria, a place no one expected, among people no one expected, as Philip preaches Christ and the Spirit confirms the work through the apostles. Yet Simon’s story is a sobering warning: he believed and was baptized, but his heart remained fixed on power rather than on the Lord who gives it. Peter’s rebuke calls Simon, and us, to repent of loving God’s gifts more than God himself.

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow preached from Acts 8:1-8 on the inseparable tension of lament and joy that marks the Christian life. The passage opens in grief: Stephen is dead, Saul is ravaging the church, and believers are scattered across Judea and Samaria under fierce persecution. Yet what looks like catastrophe becomes the very means by which the gospel advances, as those scattered go out preaching the Word and Philip proclaims Christ in Samaria to great effect. The sermon called the congregation to hold both realities together honestly — that genuine sorrow over suffering and genuine joy in Christ are not opposites, but twin marks of life in the Spirit.