King of Kings PCA Church: Recent Episodes
King of Kings PCA
A podcast from King of Kings PCA located in Goodyear, AZ. This will be primarily used for weekly sermons. Other topics/formats may be added as approved by our Session.
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
It’s a good thing God chose me before I was born, because He surely would not have afterwards.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Rev Alex Diaz
Money is not able to buy one single necessity for the soul.
Henry David Thoreau
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
“Culpable disturbance of shalom” suggests that sin is unoriginal, that it disrupts something good and harmonious, that (like a housebreaker) it is an intruder, and that those who sin deserve reproach. To get our bearings, we need to see first that sin is one form of evil (an agential and culpable form) and that evil, in turn, is the disruption or disturbance of what God has designed.
Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Rev Dr Justin McClendon
True faith is so contained in Christ, that it, neither knows, nor desires to know, anything beyond him...we ought not to separate Christ from ourselves or ourselves from him.
John Calvin
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Rev. Alex Diaz
Science is itself a creature and a product of time. It takes its position on the basis of things as they are made and assumes the existence of the things it investigates; from the nature of the case, therefore, science cannot go back to the time when things were not yet. Science cannot penetrate to the moment when they were given reality.
Herman Bavinck
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.
Francis Schaeffer
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
It is not possible in God's nature for him to permit anything in his decree that will terminate in evil. Evil is parasitic. God may use it, but he absolutely does not require it.
Louis Berkhof
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
Richard Baxter (17th century pastor, theologian and prolific writer): “I am the vilest dunghill worm that ever went to heaven. Lord! What is man; what am I; vile worm to the great God?” When assured by a friend that he had been very blessed by his writings, Baxter replied: “I was but a pen in God’s hands, and what praise is due to a pen?”
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
The vessels of mercy are first seasoned with affliction and then the wine of glory is poured in.
Thomas Watson
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
Concerning the Church’s tension with culture: “The deeper the consciousness of the tension and the urge to take this yoke upon itself are felt, the healthier the Church is. The more oblivious of this tension the Church is, the more well established and at home in this world it feels, the more it is deadly danger of being the salt that has lost its savour.”
Hendrick Kraemer
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Pasto Alex Diaz
What notes are to a musician, and what the alphabet is to a reader, and what numerals are to a mathematician, the fear of the Lord is to a wise man.
Bruce K. Waltke
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
We must not only be True. We must be Beautiful.
Francis Schaeffer
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
Some form of suffering is virtually indispensable to holiness.
John R.W. Stott
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
Perhaps the greatest threat to the church today isn't falling for doctrinal heresy but implicitly adopting the consumerist, self-centered assumptions of our Western culture.
Wendall Berry
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Rev Dr Justin McClendon
We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
C.S. Lewis
Third Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
No one was ever saved because his sins were small; no one was ever rejected on account of the greatness of his sins. Where sin abounded, grace shall much more abound.
Archibald Alexander
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
It’s not faith that saves. It’s Christ that saves, through faith.
B.B. Warfield
Trinity Sunday
Rev Dr Justin McLendon
Our message is Jesus Christ; we dare not give less, and we cannot give more.
William Temple
Pentecost Sunday
Pastor Josh Harp
Ministers knock at the door of men’s hearts, the Spirit comes with a key and opens the door.
Thomas Watson
Seventh Sunday of Eastertide
Pastor Josh Harp
You gotta love the church. You can’t love Christ and despise His body. You can’t reject His bride. He has promised to present His bride to the Father without spot or wrinkle. Right now we might be discouraged. Her wedding gown has been torn to shreds as if by a wolf. But the groom will surely take care of all that. He will remove every spot, mend every tear, and smooth every wrinkle. Remember, it is we who are the spots and the wrinkles. If we despise them we despise ourselves.
R.C. Sproul
Sixth Sunday of Eastertide
Pastor Josh Harp
We come to God not to get our way but to get his.
Eugene H. Peterson
Fifth Sunday of Eastertide
Pastor Josh Harp
To rejoice always is to see the hand of God on whatever is happening and to remain certain of God's future salvation. Without such conviction joy would not be possible in the face of affliction, suffering and death.
Charles A. Wannamaker
Fourth Sunday of Eastertide
Rev Alex Diaz
When a man truly sees himself, he knows nobody can say anything about him that is too bad.
Martin Lloyd-Jones
Third Sunday of Eastertide
Pastor Josh Harp
But we are gravely mistaken to think that Christianity protects us from the pain and agony of mortal existence. Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Second Sunday of Eastertide
Pastor Josh Harp
When Jesus wanted to tell his disciples what his death was all about, he didn't give them a theory--he gave them a meal.
N T Wright
Easter Sunday
Pastor Josh Harp
The gospel is not just the ABCs but the A to Z of the Christian life. It is inaccurate to think the gospel is what saves non-Christians, and then Christians mature by trying hard to live according to biblical principles. It is more accurate to say that we are saved by believing the gospel, and then we are transformed in every part of our minds, hearts, and lives by believing the gospel more and more deeply as life goes on.
Tim Keller
Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
Pastor Josh Harp
It requires more prowess and greatness of spirit to obey God faithfully, than to command an army of men; to be a Christian, than to be a captain.
William Gurnall
Fifth Sunday in Lent
Rev Alex Diaz
Make no mistake: it does not always pay to be a Christian. Nor is honesty by any means always the best policy, if material gain is your ambition. Poverty has often been part of the cost of Christian discipleship.
John R.W. Stott
Pastor Josh Harp
Fourth Sunday of Lent
The truth is available to mankind, but we repress it. ... God speaks plainly through his works, but we perversely mishear him.
Al Wolters
Third Sunday in Lent
Pastor Josh Harp
There are some of your graces which would never be discovered if it were not for your trials.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Second Sunday in Lent
Pastor Josh Harp
Drinking beer with friends is perhaps the most underestimated of all Reformation insights
and essential to ongoing reform; and wasting time with a choice friend or two on a regular
basis might be the best investment of time you ever made.
Carl Trueman
First Sunday in Lent
Pastor Josh Harp
It is one thing to protect the right of every religious person to follow the dictates of his conscience without fear of persecution; it is another to say that opposing convictions are both true. We must know the difference between equal toleration under the law and equal validity according to truth.
R.C. Sproul
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Pastor Josh Harp
Sing to the lord, all the earth!
Tell of his salvation from day to day.
Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous works among all the peoples!
For great is the Lord,
and greatly to be praised,
and he is to be feared above all gods.
1 CHRONICLES 16:23-25
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Pastor Josh Harp
In a mixed community we do not desire a theocracy; rather, we oppose it with all our might,
for two cogent reasons: (1) Wherever such church rule was established, it always ended in
tyranny and the corruption of a people. (2) The church lacks the gifts required for giving
laws for civil society that evince intimate knowledge and understanding of civil life.
Abraham Kuyper
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Pastor Josh Harp
The goal of our life should not be to find joy in marriage, but to bring more love and truth into the world. We marry to assist each other in this task. The most selfish and hateful life of all is that of two beings who unite in order to enjoy life. The highest calling is that of the man who has dedicated his life to serving God and doing good, and who unites with a woman in order to further that purpose.
Leo Tolstoy (from a letter to his son)
Third Sunday after Epiphany
Pastor Josh Harp
The fact that we still live well cannot ease the pain of feeling that we no longer live nobly. John Updike
First Sunday after Epiphany
Pastor Josh Harp
Stars cross the sky, wise men journey from pagan lands, earth receives its savior in a cave.
Let there be no one without a gift to offer, no one without gratitude as we celebrate the
salvation of the world, the birthday of the human race. Now it is no longer, “dust you are
and to dust you shall return,” but “you are joined to heaven and into heaven shall you be
taken up.”
Basil the Great
First Sunday after Christmas
Rev. Dr. Justin McLendon
There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.
A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that
know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.
This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable
wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
The House of Christmas by G.K. Chesterton
Fourth Sunday of Advent
Pastor Josh Harp
When we read that “the Word became flesh“ (John 1:14), we are not to suppose that he was
changed into flesh, or mixed with flesh. The Son of God became Son of Man, not by
confusion of substance, but by unity of person. “We assert that his divinity was so joined
and united with his humanity that the property of each nature remains whole, and yet from
these two natures one Christ is constituted.” Equipped with this impeccable formula, Calvin
can readily dismiss the error of Nestorius, who separated what he should’ve distinguished
and ended with two Christs; and he can warn us against the madness of Eutyches, who so
stressed the unity of Christ’s person as to destroy both of his two nature’s. It is no more
permissible to confuse the two natures in Christ them to pull them apart.
B.A. Gerrish
Third Sunday of Advent
Pastor Josh Harp
No one was ever saved because his sins were small; no one was ever rejected on account of the greatness of his sins. Where sin abounded, grace shall much more abound.
Archibald Alexander
Second Sunday of Advent
Pastor Josh Harp
Jesus shows us humanity as we were meant to be. He shows us what humanity looks like without sin, and it is breathtaking and marvelous.
Rebecca Pippert
First Sunday of Advent
Pastor Josh Harp
The first coming of Christ the Lord, God’s son and our God, was in obscurity; the secondwill be in the sight of the whole world. When he came in obscurity no one recognized himbut his own servants; when he comes openly he will be known by both good people and bad.When he came in obscurity, it was to be judged; when he comes openly it will be to judge.
Augustine (AD 354-430)
Last Sunday after Pentecost: Christ the King
Pastor Josh Harp
It is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them - in
which case, if you don't watch out, they cease to be adversaries. Flannery O’Connor
Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
I will not glory, even in my orthodoxy, for even that can be a snare if I make a god of it... Let
us rejoice in Him in all His fullness and in Him alone. Martin Lloyd-Jones
This is the final recording of a multi-part Marriage Workshop conducted at King Of Kings.
Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
True prayers are like those carrier pigeons which find their way so well; they cannot fail to go to heaven, for it is from heaven that they came; they are only going home.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Pastor Josh Harp
Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
Jesus does nothing independently of the church nor can the church do anything
independently of Christ. Max Thurian
Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
Sola scriptura did not invite a free-for-all approach to Scripture in which any and all had the right to assert its authority to substantiate whatever insights they claimed to have attained from it.
James Payton
Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
Rev. Alex Diaz
We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was.
Cormac McCarthy, words of Duena Alfonsa in All the Pretty Horses
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
When a man truly sees himself, he knows nobody can say anything about him that is too
bad. Martin Lloyd-Jones
This is the sixth of a multiple part series of workshops on marriage presented by King of Kings.
This is the fifth of a multiple part series of workshops on marriage presented by King of Kings.
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Rev Dr Justin McLendon
It’s a good thing God chose me before I was born, because He surely would not have afterwards.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
In God’s design, the world is the theater of God’s glory, and humans are placed in it as
privileged spectators of his works. B.A. Gerrish
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
“Culpable disturbance of shalom” suggests that sin is unoriginal, that it disrupts something
good and harmonious, that (like a housebreaker) it is an intruder, and that those who sin
deserve reproach. To get our bearings, we need to see first that sin is one form of evil (an
agential and culpable form) and that evil, in turn, is the disruption or disturbance of what
God has designed.
Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
True faith is so contained in Christ, that it, neither knows, nor desires to know, anything
beyond him...we ought not to separate Christ from ourselves or ourselves from him.
John Calvin
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
Every Christian should be both conservative and radical; conservative in preserving the faith and radical in applying it.
John R.W. Stott
This is the fourth of a multiple part series of workshops on marriage presented by King of Kings.
This is the thirdof a multiple part series of workshops on marriage presented by King of Kings.
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously
committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and
destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human
being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
...faith lays hold of what is promised and therefore hoped for, as something real and solid,
though as yet unseen.
Philip Hughes
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
Ever since in the creation of the universe he brought forth those insignia whereby he shows
his glory to us, whenever and wherever we cast our gaze. …And since the glory of his power
and wisdom shine more brightly above, heaven is often called his palace. Yet…wherever you
cast your eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some
sparks of his glory.
John Calvin, Institutes, 1.5.1
This is the second of a multiple part series of workshops on marriage presented by King of Kings.
This is the first of a multiple part series of workshops on marriage presented by King of Kings.
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
The vessels of mercy are first seasoned with affliction and then the wine of glory is poured
in. Thomas Watson
Pastor Josh Harp
Ninth Sunday after pentecost
It seems silly that anyone who knows the difference between happiness and pleasure would
continue to trade happiness for pleasure. It seems utterly stupid for a person to do
something that he knows will rob him of his happiness. Yet we do it. The mystery of sin is
not only that it is wicked and destructive but that it is so downright stupid.
R.C. Sproul
Rev Dr Justin Mclendon
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
What notes are to a musician, and what the alphabet is to a reader, and what numerals are to a mathematician, the fear of the Lord is to a wise man.
Bruce K. Waltke
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Rev Alex Diaz
[On Evil] I was trying to find the origin of evil, but I was quite blind to the evil in my own method of research.
Augustine, Confessions, 7.5
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father. J.I. Packer
This is an update from Pastor Josh Harp on the recent PCA General Assembly held in Memphis, TN.
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
There is a special kind of phobia from which we all suffer. It is called xenophobia.
Xenophobia is a fear (and sometimes a hatred) of strangers or foreigners or of anything that
is strange or foreign. God is the ultimate object of our xenophobia. He is the ultimate
stranger. He is the ultimate foreigner. He is holy and we are not.
R.C. Sproul
Third Sunday after Pentecost
Rev. Alex Diaz
It is characteristic for our minds to be ever engaged in passing judgment on the things
which come before us. No sooner do we apprehend than we judge; we allow nothing to stand
by itself: we compare, contrast, abstract, generalize, connect, adjust, classify.
John Henry Newman
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
It’s not faith that saves. It’s Christ that saves, through faith.
B.B. Warfield
Trinity Sunday
Pastor Josh Harp
God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and
unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.
Westminster Confession of Faith, 3.1
Pentecost Sunday
Pastor Josh Harp
If you've inhaled God's love and God's power and forgiveness and salvation, you've got to exhale God's love into a broken world.
John Wesley
Seventh Sunday of Eastertide
Pastor Josh Harp
There’s a story that a British newspaper sent out an inquiry to famous authors, asking the
question, “What’s wrong with the world?” The writer G. K. Chesterton responded:
Dear Sir,
I am.
Yours, G.K. Chesterton
Sixth Sunday of Eastertide
Pastor Josh Harp
The fact is that the same Creator God and the same sovereign power that called the cosmos
into existence in the beginning has kept that cosmos in existence from moment to moment
to this very day.
Al Wolters
1
Fifth Sunday of Eastertide
Pastor Josh Harp
You gotta love the church. You can’t love Christ and despise His body. You can’t reject His
bride. He has promised to present His bride to the Father without spot or wrinkle. Right
now we might be discouraged. Her wedding gown has been torn to shreds as if by a wolf. But
the groom will surely take care of all that. He will remove every spot, mend every tear, and
smooth every wrinkle. Remember, it is we who are the spots and the wrinkles. If we despise
them we despise ourselves.
R.C. Sproul
Fourth Sunday of Eastertide
Rev Jonathan Foster
…the whole Bible leads us to expect a glorious renewal of life on earth, so that the age to
come will be an endlessly thrilling adventure of living with God on the new earth. With his
presence pervading every act, we shall be more fully human than we have ever been,
liberated from sin, death and all that hurts or harms.
David Lawrence
Third Sunday of Eastertide
Reverend Doctor Justin McLendon
In the resurrection [Christ] Himself and we with Him were justified. His arising was the
public declaration of our acquittal. And that is not all. Christ was raised for our justification
in this other sense also that He could appropriate to us personally the acquittal implied in
His resurrection. … His resurrection is at one and the same time the evidence and the
source of our justification.
Herman Bavinck
Second Sunday of Eastertide
Pastor Josh Harp
Presbyterians claim that no part of God’s creation is exempt from God’s providence. It is
not as though Pharaoh was under God’s control, but Adam was not; or Cyrus was under
God’s control, but Augustus Caesar was not. All of God’s creatures are under his control.
Even inanimate objects and forces are under God’s control.
Sean Michael Lucas, On Being Presbyterian
1
Easter Sunday
Pastor Josh Harp
The essence of the Christian religion consists in this, that the creation of the Father,
devastated by sin, is restored in the death of the Son of God, and recreated by the Holy
Spirit into the kingdom of God.
Herman Bavinck
Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
Pastor Josh Harp
Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.
From The Donkey by G K Chesterton
Fifth Sunday in Lent
Pastor Josh Harp
Mark Twain allegedly said, “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me; it’s the parts that I do understand.”
Fourth Sunday in Lent
Pastor Josh Harp
What has happened with Jesus can be understood only in light of the Scriptures, yet the Scriptures themselves can be understood only in light of what has happened with Jesus. These two are mutually informing. And before the disciples will be able to recognize the risen Lord, they must grasp especially the nexus between suffering and messiah-ship. Joel Green
Third Sunday in Lent
Pastor Josh Harp
I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed, that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamozov
Second Sunday in Lent
Rev. Dr. Justin McLendon
If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
First Sunday in Lent
Pastor Josh Harp
Second sermon in a series through Colossians (first sermon February 5, 2023)
But we are gravely mistaken to think that Christianity protects us from the pain and agony of mortal existence. Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Final Sunday after Epiphany
Pastor Josh Harp
Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and if true, is of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.
C. S. Lewis
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Pastor Josh Harp
Lord, Give her strength
to see your mighty hand,
To know
that she will make it through each waking hour.
Excerpted from Now, Not Yet by Susan E. Erikson
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Dr. Michael Goheen
Sola scriptura did not invite a free-for-all approach to Scripture in which any and all had the right to assert its authority to substantiate whatever insights they claimed to have attained from it. James Payton
Fourth Sunday After Epiphany
Pastor Josh harp
How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross? I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society
Third Sunday After Epiphany
Pastor Josh Harp
The Wisdom Literature needs Ecclesiastes then, in order to keep us from entrusting ourselves to trite formulas under the sun. It is not that Proverbs ignores exceptions. It too makes plain that rules aren't enough and that context matters for how we apply wisdom. Zack Eswine
Second Sunday after Epiphany
Pastor Josh Harp
The essence of the Christian religion consists in this, that the creation of the Father, devastated by sin, is restored in the death of the Son of God, and recreated by the Holy Spirit into the kingdom of God. Herman Bavinck
First Sunday after Epiphany
Pastor Josh Harp
As we think about this wisdom approach, we can meditate on the fact that if Proverbs focuses on the norms and rules, 'Ecclesiastes focuses on the exceptions.'
Zack Eswine
New Year's Day 2023
Pastor Josh Harp
Our message is Jesus Christ; we dare not give less, and we cannot give more. William Temple
Christmas Day Service
Pastor Josh Harp
The incarnation was not the first manifestation of his fatherly love, but the pledge of it. B A Gerrish
Fourth Sunday of Advent
Pastor Josh Harp
The essence of the Christian religion consists in this, that the creation of the Father, devastated by sin, is restored in the death of the Son of God, and recreated by the Holy Spirit into the kingdom of God. Herman Bavink
Third Sunday of Advent
Pastor Josh Harp
Jesus does nothing independently of the church nor can the church do anything independently of Christ. Max Thurian
Second Sunday of Advent
Pastor Josh Harp
What notes are to a musician, and what the alphabet is to a reader, and what numerals are to a mathematician, the fear of the Lord is to a wise man.
Bruce K Waltke
First Sunday of Advent
Rev Josh Hahne, Founding Pastor
the problem with anxious people is not merely that they think negatively about life. The problem is much more radical than that. Anxious people think untheologically about life. Sinclair B Ferguson
Last Sunday after Pentecoxt
Pastor Josh Harp
The Supremely important point here is that basic Old Testament promises and predicates, which originally applied to the people of Israel, are now transferred to the universal Christian community. Christianity knows that it is the elect Israel.... The transfer is wholly grounded upon, and executed by, Christ. G Schrenk
Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
While we are here, there will be cross events, as well as agreeable ones.... Sometimes things are softly and agreeably gliding on; but, by and by, there is some incident which alters that course, grates us, and pains us.... Everybody's lot in this world has some crook in it. Thomas Boston
Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
It seems silly that anyone who knows the difference between happiness and pleasure would continue to trade happiness for pleasure. It seems utterly stupid for a person to do something that he knows will rob him of his happiness. Yet we do it. The mystery of sin is not only that it is wicked and destructive but that it is downright stupid. R.C. Sproul
Twenty first Sunday after Pentecost
Continuing in Ecclesiastes
Pastor Josh Harp
I cannot submit my faith either to the pope or to the council, because it is clear that they have fallen into error and even into inconsistency with themselves. If, then, I am not convinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by cogent reasons, if I am not satisfied by the very text I have cited, and if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection to God's word, I can neither nor will retract anything, for it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.
Martin Luther's response at the Edict of Worms, 1521
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Continuing our series through the book of Ecclesiates
Pastor Josh Harp
Some form of suffering is virtually indispensable to holiness. John R W Stott
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Josh Harp
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven - Pete Seeger
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Pastor Josh Harp
Presbyterians claim that no part of God's creation is exempt from God's providence. It is not as though Pharoah was under God's control, but Adam was not; or Cyrus was under God's control, but Augustus Caesar was not. All of God's creatures are under his control. Even inanimate objects and forces are under his control. Sean Michael Lewis, On Being Presbyterian
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Pastor Josh Harp
What has happened with Jesus can be understood only in light of the Scriptures, yet the Scriptures can only be understood in light of what has happened with Jesus. These two are mutually informing. And before the disciples will be able to recognize the risen Lord, they must grasp especially the nexus between suffering and messiahship. Joel Green
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Second in a series through Ecclesiates
Pastor Josh Harp
I believe in original sin. ...I know that I'm capable of craving a cold beer in a village of starving kids. ...I understand that selfishness vies for space in our hearts with compassion... George Stephanopoulos
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
The first sermon in a series in Ecclesiastes
Pastor Josh Harp
Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but only empties today of its strength. Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Final sermon in the Hebrews series.
Pastor Josh Harp
The first coming of Christ the Lord, God's son and our God, was in obscurity; the second will be in the sight of the whole world. When he came in obscurity no one recognized him but his own servants; when he comes openly he will be known by both good people and bad. When he came in obscurity, it was to be judged; when he comes openly it will be to judge. Augustine (AD 354-430)
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost.
Rev. Kelley Hand, Pastor, Desert Palms PCA, Chandler AZ
The fear of man has ensnared us. We trim our sails to the prevailing theological wind. We dilute the gospel so as to render it supposedly more palatable. We love the praise of men even more than the praise of God. We escape suffering by compromise. John R. W. Stott
The sixth and final sermon of a short series on the fourth of Isaiah's Servant Songs. Pastor Josh Harp
The fifth sermon of a short series on the fourth of Isaiah's Servant Songs Pastor Josh Harp
The third of a short series on the fourth of Isaiah's Servant Songs. Speaker: Pastor Josh Harp