SummitPA Sermon Audio

Throughout the month of July, Summit is rebroadcasting Prepare the Way — the series that set the theme for 2026. This year the rebroadcast comes with something new: for each week of the series, Pastor Mel, Pastor Joel, and Michael Baun sat down for an hour-long unedited conversation starting right where the sermon ends. These discussions have never been seen before and will premiere during the rebroadcast. Tune in at normal service times — Saturday at 5 p.m. and Sunday at 9 and 11 a.m. — on Facebook, YouTube, or live.summitpa.church. Note that At the Movies, Summit's in-person July series, will not be streamed due to copyright restrictions.

This week Pastor Mel preached Romans 10, picking up where guest Pastor Eran Holt left off in Romans 9. The question driving these chapters is a hard one: if God's promises are so good, why did so many in Israel miss their own Messiah? Mel answers it with a single picture — two roads to righteousness. Israel pursued being right with God by works, by keeping the law, and stumbled over the very cornerstone, Jesus. The Gentiles, who weren't chasing it at all, received it by faith. Same God, same offer, two different roads.

From there Mel opens the heart of Romans 10: the gospel is near — as close as confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead. The offer is universal — everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, with no distinction between Jew and Gentile. And because the offer is for everyone, the church has a job: faith comes by hearing, so we give, we go, we pray, and we send. Mel closes with God's relentless heart — "all day long I opened my arms to them" — and the reminder that there is a gospel in every believer, as simple as your own story of who you were before and who you are now.

1. Mel describes two roads to righteousness: Israel chased being right with God by works and stumbled, while the Gentiles received it by faith. He warns, "they got so focused on just working their way to heaven that they miss the Messiah." Where in your own life are you still trying to earn something from God that he's actually offering as a gift? What would it look like to receive it by faith instead of working for it?

2. Mel says, as gently as he can, "Our sincerity is not enough because we can be sincerely wrong. Your sincerity in a lie is still a lie. Your sincerity to an idol is still an idol." Where might you be sincere — but sincerely off — in how you're relating to God? How do you tell the difference between genuine faith and a sincere assumption you've never examined?

3. Mel insists salvation is "nearer than your next breath," but also that "your life is a confession of who you think Jesus is." If someone read your life this past week like a confession, what would it say you actually believe about Jesus? Where do the words of your mouth and the witness of your life line up — and where don't they?

4. Mel admits, "there are people in my life that I'm not sure will be saved," and yet, "when it says everyone, it means everyone." Who is the person you've quietly written off? What changes in how you treat them this week if you genuinely believe the offer of grace includes them?

5. Mel says every lost person "is a person with a name and a face and a story," and that there's a gospel in you — your own two-minute story of who you were before and who you are after. Who is one specific person God is putting on your heart? What is one concrete step this week to give, go, pray, or send toward them?

This week Pastor Aaron Holt preached Romans 9. If you have been following along with us in the book of Romans, you know that Romans 8 ends with one of the most powerful declarations in all of Scripture. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. And then you turn the page to chapter 9 and the mood shifts completely. Paul is in anguish. He is grieving. Because the question he is sitting with is: if God's promises are so good and nothing can separate us from his love, then why have most of the Jewish people rejected Jesus as the Messiah? Have God's promises failed?

That question is the engine that drives all of Romans 9, 10, and 11. And Pastor Aaron gives you the interpretive keys you need to read these chapters well -- chapter 9 is about Israel's past, chapter 10 is about Israel's present, and chapter 11 is about Israel's future.

He works through the whole chapter and surfaces three major promises. God's grace is greater than your failures. God's mercy is greater than your understanding. And God's purposes are greater than your circumstances. Each one is unpacked carefully, and he does not shy away from the hard parts -- election, predestination, the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, the potter and the clay. He handles all of it with clarity.

This week Pastor Mel takes us through the second half of Romans 8. The sermon opens with a reframe that sets the tone for everything that follows. When Paul talks about glory in Romans 8, Mel argues he is not primarily talking about heaven. He is talking about God's Spirit tabernacling in believers -- the same dwelling presence that was in the wilderness with Israel -- and about the goodness of God's Spirit being manifest through us for dominion in a broken world. Psalm 8 comes in here, and the connection between crowned with glory and given dominion over creation is one of the most striking moments in the message.

That leads into the central question Mel keeps returning to throughout: what if God is not saving us from the world, but for the world? Creation is groaning like a woman in childbirth, waiting for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed. And Mel makes the case that every time Summit does teacher appreciation or shows up for first responders, something is happening in the spirit -- the sons and daughters of God are being revealed and a little of the brokenness of the world gets relieved.

From there he works through the Holy Spirit interceding for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words, and makes a careful distinction between this and tongues -- these are sighs, the same word used in Luke 10 when Martha asks Mary to come help her. The Holy Spirit is not waiting on God to work. He is waiting on us.

Mel handles the suffering question honestly: suffering is not evidence that God does not love you. It is part of what it means to be co-heirs with Christ.

This week Pastor Mel brings us to Romans chapter 8 -- what he and many theologians consider to be the most important chapter in the entire Bible. Mel opens with the four most liberating words in Paul's writing: there is no condemnation. He unpacks what that actually means -- not that condemnation was abolished, but that Jesus took it on himself so we don't have to carry it. And he makes the case that this freedom is not just about your past. It covers your present and your future too.

From there the message moves through eleven verses in which Paul references the Holy Spirit eleven times. Mel traces the Spirit's work from the very beginning -- hovering over the chaos in creation, coming upon judges and kings and prophets in the Old Testament, temporarily and selectively -- all the way to Pentecost in Acts 2, where everything changed and the Spirit became permanent and available to every believer.

There is a really powerful section on the Greek word translated as "to mind" -- and what it means to be in agreement with the flesh versus in agreement with the Spirit. Mel connects it to the word amen, and the application is practical and pointed: where does your mind go in the still, quiet moments of your day?

Next week Mel picks up in Romans 8:18 and gets into what it means to share in Christ's glory -- and his suffering.

This week Pastor Mel continues the Romans series with Week 13, and he lands in one of the most personally honest passages in all of Paul's writing -- Romans chapter 7.

The big question Paul is answering is one that every honest Christian has probably asked: if grace covers our sin, does that mean we can live however we want? Paul's answer is emphatic. Of course not. And Mel walks through exactly why, using the striking image of marriage. When we died with Christ, we died to the law -- and now we are free to marry someone new. Not the law, but Christ himself. And just like any healthy marriage, that relationship means we don't only ask what we want. We ask what he wants.

From there, Mel moves into the wretched man passage, where Paul confesses that he does what he hates and cannot do what he wants. Mel makes the case that this is not a passage about spiritual failure. It is a passage about spiritual honesty, and about the difference between being called to perfection and being called to a lifelong process of being perfected.

This week Pastor Mel continues our series through the book of Romans, picking up in the second half of Romans chapter 6 where Pastor Kim left off. Using the vivid historical reality of slavery in the Roman Empire — including an actual slave tag discovered in Rome — Mel unpacks Paul's powerful argument that every one of us is a slave to whatever we choose to obey. He walks through what it means to be freed from sin's dominion, why so many believers find themselves returning to old masters, and what it looks like to surrender wholeheartedly to God rather than simply going through the motions of religious duty. It is a challenging and deeply practical message about freedom, identity, and the incredible gift of grace found in Romans 6:23.

In week 11 of our Romans series Pastor Kim teaches on Romans 6 showing the shift from what God has done for us to what He is doing in us. She unpacks our union with Christ in His death and resurrection, declaring that we have died to sin and been raised to new life so sin no longer rules over us. Kim uses powerful illustrations like the rope lowered into a well, the removal of Lazarus's grave clothes, and the Israelites who crossed the Red Sea yet still thought like slaves preferring familiar bondage. She challenges believers to reckon themselves dead to sin and alive to God, to stop dressing in old identities and to present every part of their bodies as instruments of righteousness under grace. The message ends with a powerful invitation to surrender fully to Jesus, to experience true freedom and declare we are no longer slaves. The Holy Spirit empowers daily resurrection living.

In part two of our Asking for a Friend series Pastor Mel preaches about Heaven. He challenges popular misconceptions—such as an ethereal realm of clouds, pearly gates, mansions, or endless worship—drawing instead from Scripture to portray it as a physical, renewed reality where the new heaven and new earth merge. He distinguishes the temporary paradise believers enter upon death from the permanent new creation, where heaven descends to a refined and restored earth, echoing Eden's pre-Fall goodness with meaningful work, glorified physical bodies free of weakness or imperfection, and the reunion of loved ones in perfected relationships. Mel affirms that believers will remember earthly life, animals will inhabit this renewed creation, and that pets may be present through God's extravagant generosity. He stresses stewarding God's gifts faithfully as "good and faithful servants" in the Parable of the Talents. Ultimately, he presents heaven as God's restorative plan through Christ to reconcile and renew all creation.

In week one of our series called Asking For a Friend, Pastor Mel directly confronts seven common questions about same-sex attraction and behavior by firmly placing biblical authority above personal feelings or cultural context. He begins by outlining four views on rules versus context (and Bible versus feelings), rejecting the first three positions that allow feelings to override Scripture and affirming the fourth: the Bible is God’s unchanging, authoritative Word, so any apparent conflict is resolved by submitting our context to it, not vice versa. Addressing the frequent objection that “Jesus never mentioned homosexuality,” Mel shows that Jesus explicitly upheld and intensified the moral law on sexuality—condemning lust as heart-adultery, restricting divorce, and reaffirming God’s creation design of male and female in marriage. He further cites the moral law in Leviticus, the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah for “unnatural desire”, and Paul’s clear listing of homosexuality alongside other sins that exclude people from the Kingdom of God. Mel points out the immediate hope: “such were some of you” but you were washed, sanctified, and justified in Christ.