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Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

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Sunday Schedule

Sunday School 9:30 a.m.
Hope Café 10:15 a.m.
Worship 10:30 a.m.

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Sermons

The latest sermon from our pastors is posted here each week.

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Giving Ourselves to the Ministry of the Word

October 22, 2017 |

“Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son.”

—Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, 18

“God speaks to us: not only to move us to do what he wants, but to enable us to know him so that we may love him. Therefore God sends his word to us in the character of both information and invitation. It comes to woo us as well as to instruct us; it not merely puts us in the picture of what God has done and is doing but also calls us into personal communion with the loving Lord himself.”

—JI Packer, Knowing God, 110

“How dare we speak, if God has not spoken? By ourselves we have nothing to say. To address a congregation without any assurance that we are bearers of a divine message would be the height of arrogance and folly. It is when we are convinced that God is light (and so wanting to be known), that God has acted (and thus made himself known), and that God has spoken (and thus explained his actions), that we must speak and cannot remain silent. As Amos expressed it, ‘The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?’ (3:8) . . . God has spoken. If we are not sure of this, it would be better to keep our mouth shut. Once we are persuaded that God has spoken, however, then we too must speak. A compulsion rests upon us. Nothing and nobody will be able to silence us”

—John Stott, Between Two Worlds, 96

The Declaration of Dependence

October 15, 2017 |

Like a flash of lightning, prayer exposes for a nanosecond what I would prefer to ignore: my own true state of fragile dependence.
—Philip Yancey
Prayer
I do not control the action; that is a pagan concept of prayer, putting the gods to work by my incantations or rituals. I am not controlled by the action; that is a Hindu concept of prayer in which I slump passively into the impersonal and fated will of the gods and goddesses. I enter into the action begun by another, my creating and saving Lord, and find myself participating in the results of the action. I neither do it, nor have it done to me; I
will to participate in what is willed.
—Eugene Peterson
The Contemplative Pastor
America is the land of pioneers and possibilities. We blaze our own trails and control our own destinies. I take care of myself and think that taking care of you is your job. This  attitude infects the American church, where we all too easily overlook the significance of the New Testament metaphor for the church as a family of God. … You cannot read the New Testament with integrity and think that being a Christian boils down to you, Jesus, and your Bible. We are the family of God, brothers and sisters with Christ.
—Wendy Widder
The Story of God Bible Commentary: Daniel

Gracious Offering and Eager Doxology

October 8, 2017 |

“If we are not giving away our money in remarkable portions, we have not grasped (or we are not currently remembering) Christ’s generosity in saving us. Let’s put it even more starkly: you will always give effortlessly to that which is your salvation, to those things that give your life meaning. If Jesus is the one who saved, your money flows out easily into his work, his people, and his causes. If, however, your real religion is your appearance, your social status, your pleasure, and your security, your money flows most easily into those items and symbols . . . To give largely and liberally, not grudging at all times, requires a new heart – an old heart would rather part with its lifeblood than with its money.”

—Tim Keller

“The trouble with being rich is that since you can solve with your checkbook virtually all practical problems that bedevil ordinary people, you are left in your leisure with nothing but the great human problems to contend with: how to be happy, how to love and be loved, how to find meaning and purpose in your life. In desperation the rich are continually tempted to believe that they can solve these problems too with their checkbooks, which is presumably what led Jesus to remark one day that for a rich man to get to Heaven is about as easy for a Cadillac to get through a revolving door.”

—Frederick Buechner

“If Christ were only a cistern, we might soon exhaust his fullness, but who can drain a fountain? Myriads of spirits have drawn their supplies from him, and not one has murmured at the scantiness of his resources. Away, then, with this lying traitor unbelief, for his only errand is to cut the bond of communion and make us mourn an absent Savior!”

—Charles Spurgeon

Growing True

October 1, 2017 |

“The certainty and completeness of God’s mercy [is] the magnet of confession . . . we run to his arms with our sin-sick hearts because we know there is grace sufficient, boundless, and free already there. We repent because we are forgiven, not to gain forgiveness . . . we are forgiven because he was forsaken, not because our contrition is adequate . . . we are cherished children of God despite our constant waywardness and the inevitable inadequacy of our confession.”

—Bryan Chapell

  “Absolution is neither a response to a suitably worthy confession, nor the acceptance of a reasonable apology. Absolvere in Latin means not only to loosen, to free, to acquit; it also means to dispose of, to complete, to finish. When God pardons, he does not say he understands our weakness or makes allowances for our errors; rather he disposes of, he finishes with, the whole of our dead life and raises us up with a new one.  He does not so much deal with our derelictions as he does drop them down the black hole of Jesus’ death. He forgets our sins in the darkness of the tomb. He remembers our iniquities no more in the oblivion of Jesus’ expiration. He finds us, in short, in the desert of death, not in the garden of improvement; and in the power of Jesus’ resurrection, he puts us on his shoulders rejoicing and brings us home . . . The work of redemption is done entirely by the redeemer, and not at all by the redeemed.”

—Robert Farrar Capon

“What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness.  I have nobody to forgive me.”

—Margaret Laski

Joining in God’s Song

September 24, 2017 |

“To Christ the Lord let every tongue
Its noblest tribute bring.
When He’s the subject of the song,
Who can refuse to sing?
Survey the beauties of His face
And on His glories dwell.
Think of the wonder of His grace
And all His triumphs tell.

Since from His bounty I receive
Such proofs of love divine,
Had I a thousand hearts to give
Lord, they should all be Thine!
A thousand men could not compose
A worthy song to bring,
Yet Your love is a melody
Our hearts can’t help but sing!”

—Samuel Stennett

 

“Words and music did for me what solid, even rigorous religious argument could never do, they introduced me to God, not belief in God, more an experiential sense of God.”

—Bono

 

“Chant down Babylon with music!”

—Bob Marley

God’s Call to Worship

September 17, 2017 |

“I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the LORD!’”

—Psalm 122:1

 

“Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Just as I am, Thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
Because Thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!”

—Charlotte Elliott

 

“The entire message of the Gospel is not usually verbalized in the call to worship, but its features inevitably glisten. By a scriptural call to worship we understand that God welcomes us into his presence and invites us to participate in his purposes. Though we are weak, he is welcoming; though our iniquities are great, he remains inviting. The call to worship necessarily and simultaneously commends God’s worthiness and consoles us in our unworthiness. We can come to him; he wants us; and, he delights in our praise.”

—Bryan Chapell

Worship: What Do You Love?

September 10, 2017 |

“Every man becomes the image of the God he adores. He whose worship is directed to a dead thing becomes dead. He who loves corruption rots. He who loves a shadow becomes, himself, a shadow. He who loves things that must perish lives in dread of their perishing.”

—Thomas Merton

 

“False gods destroy and devour lives, health and resources; they distort and diminish our humanity; they preside over injustice, greed, perversion, cruelty, lust and violence.  It is possibly the most satanic dimension of their deceptive power, that in spite of all this, they still persuade people that they are the beneficent protectors of their worshipers’ identity, dignity and prosperity, and must therefore be defended at all costs.  Only the gospel can unmask these claims.  Only the gospel exposes the cancer of idolatry.  Only the gospel is good for people.”

 —Christopher Wright

 

“Worship is the strategy by which we interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to the presence of God.”

—Eugene Peterson

Putting Deadly Sin to Death

September 3, 2017 |

“Greed, gluttony, lust, envy, and pride are no more than sad efforts to fill the empty place where love belongs, and anger and sloth are just two things that may happen when you find that not even all seven of them at their deadliest ever can.”

—Frederick Buechner

 

“I am a riddle to myself; a heap of inconsistencies.”

—John Newton

 

“Come with thy heart hard, dead, cold, full of wickedness; come as a blood-red sinner; this is the way to come to Christ.”

—John Bunyan

 

“Though sin wars, it shall not reign; and though it breaks our peace, it cannot separate from his love. Nor is it inconsistent with his holiness and perfection, to manifest his favor to such poor defiled creatures, or to admit them to communion with himself; for they are not considered as in themselves, but as one with Jesus, to whom they have fled for refuge, and by whom they live by faith.”

—John Newton

Lust: the Disordered Love

August 27, 2017 |

“The fire of lust’s pleasures must be fought with the fire of God’s pleasures.  If we try to fight the fire of lust with prohibitions and threats alone – even the terrible warnings of Jesus – we will fail.  We must fight it with a massive promise of superior happiness.  We must swallow up the little flicker of lust’s pleasure in the conflagration of holy satisfaction . . . Our aim is not only to avoid something erotic but also to gain something excellent.”

—John Piper

 

“The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union. The Christian attitude does not mean there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures of tasting without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.”

—CS Lewis
Mere Christianity

 

“We use an unfortunate idiom when we say of a man prowling the streets, that “he wants a woman.” Strictly speaking, a woman is what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be a necessary apparatus… [Real love] makes a man really want, not [even] a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious fashion, the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.”

—CS Lewis
The Four Loves

Gluttony: Consuming that Leads to Emptiness

August 20, 2017 |

“A glutton is one who raids the icebox for a cure for spiritual malnutrition.”

—Frederick Buechner

 

“Where gluttony is there is no incarnation, no resurrection, no kingship, no humanity, no God, in short—no living Christianity. Instead we have only gnosticism, anarchy, and idolatry. As those of us who struggle with gluttony know, it ultimately leaves us alone, without hope, and bloated with discontent. And we were made for more than this. This is why God calls (and helps) us away from lives of gluttony—because we were made for more. We were made to be whole, embodying the creational proportionality that marks the kingdom of God. We were made to be shepherded, walking the path of beauty laid out for us by our King. And we were made for God, living not by bread alone, but by the fullness found in the One who feeds us with Himself.”

—Greg Thompson

 

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

—Matthew 5:6