Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

Sunday Schedule:

9:00 a.m. – Worship
10:15 a.m. – Hope Café
10:45 a.m. – Worship

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Advent 2022

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The Threat and Relief of Christmas

December 25, 2022 |

“Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love’s sake becamest man;
Stooping so low but sinners raising,
Heavenward by thine eternal plan.
Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love’s sake becamest man.”

Frank Houghton

“No matter how much we give lip service to the notion of free grace and dying love, we do not like it.  It is just too . . . indiscriminate.  It lets rotten sons and crooked tax farmers and common tarts into the kingdom, and it thumbs its nose at the really good people. And it does that, gallingly, for no more reason than the Gospel’s shabby exaltation of dumb trust over worthy works.  The work of redemption is done entirely by the Redeemer and not at all by the redeemed!” 

Robert Farrar Capon

“We need a Savior – even (or especially) we who think that we are good Christians.”

Frederick Dale Bruner

“One of the most unbelievable parts of the Christmas story is that a bunch of men showed up to a child’s birthday party and remembered presents!”

Will Nettleton

The Best of All—God is with Us!

December 24, 2022 |

21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall call his name Immanuel”

(which means, God with us).                                                                                                                                       

Matthew 1:21-23

The Deep and Wide Promise Fulfilled

December 18, 2022 |

“Come, thou long expected Jesus,
born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee.
Israel’s strength and consolation,
hope of all the earth thou art;
dear desire of every nation,
joy of every longing heart.” 

Charles Wesley

“Oh! I love God’s ‘shalls’ and ‘wills.’ There is nothing comparable to them. Let a man say ‘shall,’ what is it good for? ‘I will,’ says man, and he never performs; ‘I shall,’ says he, and he breaks his promise. But it is never so with God’s ‘shalls.’ If He says ‘shall,’ it shall be; when He says ‘will,’ it will be.” 

Charles Spurgeon

“Here is a simple Gospel mantra always to keep in mind: “One, I am a complete idiot. Two, my future is incredibly bright. Three, anyone can get in on this.” 

Ray Ortlund Jr.

Great David’s Greater Son

December 11, 2022 |

“The early Christians did not say ‘look what the world is coming to!’ but ‘look what has come into the world!’”

Carl Henry

“So I’ve been waiting for the King
To come galloping out of the clouds while the angel armies sing
He’s gonna gather His people in the shadow of His wings
And I’m gonna raise my voice with the song of the redeemed
‘Cause all this darkness is a small and passing thing”

Andrew Peterson, “The Dark Before the Dawn”

“In short, we need to be forgiven. That’s the only way for our discontent to be healed. It will take more than a miracle worker or a divine genie—it will take a Savior. Jesus knows that to be our Savior he is going to have to die. And we will discover that in the process of dealing with what we thought were our deepest wishes, Jesus has revealed an even deeper, truer one beneath—and it is for Jesus himself. He will not just have granted that true deepest wish, he will have fulfilled it. Jesus is not going to play the rotten practical joke of giving you your deepest wish—until he has shown you that it was for him all along.”

Tim Keller, Jesus the King

A Collision Course: the Expected Messiah and the Received Messiah

December 4, 2022 |

“Who is this, so weak and helpless,
Child of lowly Hebrew maid,
Rudely in a stable sheltered,
Coldly in a manger laid?
‘Tis the Lord of all creation,
Who this wondrous path has trod;
He is Lord from everlasting,
And to everlasting God” 

William Washam How

“John [the Baptist] saw the mission of the Coming One as primarily one of separation: those who repented he would save and the unrepentant he would judge. John, in fact,expected this twofold messianic work to take place in a single eschatological event. He had predicted that the coming Messiah would both ‘gather his wheat into the granary’ and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire (Matt. 3:12). When John was in prison, he began to reflect on the fact that, while he did see Jesus gathering wheat, he did not see him burning chaff.” 

Anthony Hoekema, The Bible and the Future

“Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” 

Acts 2:36

Who Is This? The Lord Saves

November 27, 2022 |

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” 

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Did Jesus live? And did he really say
The burning words that banish mortal fear?
And are they true? Just this is central, here
The Church must stand or fall. It’s Christ we weigh.”

Sheldon Vanauken, “The Gap” from A Severe Mercy

“What child is this who laid to rest
On Mary’s lap is sleeping
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet
While shepherds watch are keeping?”

William Chatterton Dix