Sunday Morning Message

Pastor Mike closed Romans 2 by confronting those who call themselves Jews, rely on the law, and claim to be guides to the blind—yet break the very law they teach. They rested on outward circumcision and heritage while their hearts remained uncircumcised; because of this hypocrisy the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles. The same warning applies to every professing Christian: baptism, church membership, or family heritage mean nothing without a changed heart. True circumcision is of the heart by the Spirit, not the letter, so the church must walk the walk it talks.

Pastor Mike returned to Romans, picking up where chapter 1 leaves off and pressing into chapter 2. Paul is building a lawyer’s case that every person is without excuse: the same sins listed at the end of chapter 1 bring judgment on those who practice them, yet the religious and moral people who condemn others while doing the same things stand condemned by their own standard. The law is a mirror that shows we are not righteous; belief must precede behavior, so the gospel changes the heart rather than merely legislating conduct. Those who have been washed, sanctified, and justified in Christ are no longer under wrath, yet they still fight the flesh daily and will give an account of how they used what Christ has given them. God’s kindness, forbearance, and patience are meant to lead to repentance, not presumption; an impenitent heart stores up wrath for the day when God renders to each according to his works, showing no partiality between Jew and Greek. The sermon closed by calling the church to speak the truth in love, prepare as the bride of Christ, and refuse both legalism and licentiousness.

Pastor Steve Bray of Mile One Mission in Newfoundland brought greetings from Calvary Baptist and its church plants, then preached Acts 13:1–12 as the blueprint of a missions church on mission. After recounting Antioch’s worship, fasting, and the Spirit’s call to set apart Barnabas and Saul, he listed five marks of such a church; the three he developed are these. First, a missions church has diversity: prophets and teachers from varied backgrounds, ages, and cultures who do life together as an intergenerational body rather than segregated generations. Second, a missions church is devoted: corporate worship, prayer, and fasting both precede and confirm the Spirit’s voice, so the church sends its best leaders (as Antioch sent Barnabas and Saul) rather than treating ministry as a business meeting. Third, a missions church is deliberate: once sent, Paul and Barnabas followed a clear plan—synagogue first, proclamation of the Word, disciples made, churches planted—never reinventing the Great Commission. He closes by tying the pattern to the Lord’s Table and challenging Gwathmey to experience the teaching of Acts, not merely teach its experiences, so that worship together would produce hearing from God together and the sending of the gospel.

1 Thessalonians serves as the earliest words of the New Testament—written only fifteen to twenty years after the Ascension. Elder Mike Holland walks the congregation through simple Bible study: know the context (Acts 16–17), then observation (what it says), interpretation (what it means), and application (what I do). Thessalonica was a rich, free, and deeply pagan city that idolized self-indulgence, money, and culture; into that stronghold Paul, Silas, and Timothy brought the gospel, and a young church suffered yet thrived. The applications were concrete: do ministry with a team, pray for believers by name, live by faith, love, and keep going despite pressure. He closed by calling the church to pick one nugget and start it this week.

Pastor Mike taught that every sin is ultimately idolatry—a rebellion that dethrones the true God and puts something else in His place—and that Romans 1:26–32 is the end of that road. After people exchange the truth of God for a lie, the text says three times that God “gave them up,” withdrawing the restraint of common grace so that their hearts pursue what they want. The clearest picture is the golden calf in Exodus 32: freshly delivered Israel demanded new gods, Aaron made an idol, and they celebrated it as the one who brought them out of Egypt. The same exchange happens today. God made marriage between one man and one woman very good; when that is corrupted into dishonorable passions, the result is not creation but the due penalty of a debased mind filled with every kind of unrighteousness. Scripture is sufficient, people are not “born this way” in the sense of design, and the only remedy is repentance and faith in Christ, who alone can blot out such sin and make the idolater new.

Pastor Mike opened the fall series in Romans 1:18–25 by tracing how that text, especially verse 17, became Martin Luther’s breaking point and the rallying cry of the Reformation: salvation is by faith in Christ’s righteousness alone, not by works, indulgences, or church tradition. Paul then turns from the good news to the bad news. God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of those who suppress the truth. Wrath is not a defect in God but the necessary response of His holiness to rebellion; if He did not punish sin, He would not be just. Jesus drank that cup in the great exchange, becoming sin so that all who believe receive His righteousness, while the wrath of God remains on everyone who does not obey the Son. No one is without excuse. God’s eternal power and divine nature have been plain in creation since the world began, so general revelation leaves every person accountable even where a missionary has never gone. The message closed on sovereignty and grace: God is still pursuing sinners, fellowship is restored only in Christ, and those He has called are to be a voice for that gospel.

The Sanhedrin—Annas, Caiaphas, and the rest of the high-priestly family—put Peter and John in the center and demanded, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” After a night in jail for healing a lame man and preaching the resurrection, Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, did not soften the answer: it was by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom they crucified and whom God raised from the dead, that the man stood before them well. He then quoted Psalm 118: the stone they, the builders, rejected has become the cornerstone. The climax is verse 12: there is salvation in no one else; there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. The council was astonished at the boldness of uneducated, ordinary men and recognized that they had been with Jesus.That is the text Pastor Fred Weymouth of The Fix lives and preaches. Fred and Casey Weymouth once chased the next “fix” in addiction; Christ remade them and sent them to reach the lost and broken through a Virginia recovery ministry and church plant. Acts 4:5–13 is their message in a sentence: ordinary people who have been with Jesus can stand before any authority, name Christ without shame, and insist that He alone saves. The same Spirit who filled Peter fills those who belong to the only Name that heals, delivers, and makes the rejected stone the cornerstone.

Paul turns from greeting to thanksgiving: he thanks God through Jesus Christ for the Roman believers because their faith is proclaimed in all the world. He constantly remembers them in his prayers, asking that by God’s will he may at last succeed in coming to them—not as a celebrity apostle, but to impart some spiritual gift so they may be established, and that he and they may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. He is under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, to the wise and to the foolish, and so he is eager to preach the gospel in Rome as well. The heart of the letter is then stated: he is not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. In that gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” The passage therefore moves from gratitude and pastoral longing to the unashamed announcement that God’s saving power and His justifying righteousness come only through faith in Christ.

This week marks the opening of a new sermon series on the Book of Romans. Paul opens Romans by identifying himself as a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—the good news promised beforehand through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures. That gospel concerns God’s Son: according to the flesh He is the descendant of David; according to the Spirit of holiness He was declared the Son of God in power by His resurrection from the dead—Jesus Christ our Lord. Through Him Paul received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations for the sake of His name, including the believers in Rome who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, loved by God, and called to be saints. The greeting then bestows grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grounding the whole letter in Christ’s person, the Scriptures, the resurrection, and the church’s identity as a people set apart for obedient faith.

Pastor Mike closed the summer Psalms series with Psalm 26, David’s prayer of self-examination and integrity rather than a psalm tied to one crisis. David asks the Lord to vindicate and test his heart and mind because he has trusted without wavering; integrity, Spurgeon and J. C. Ryle remind us, is character carved on hearts, not a name only. That integrity is possible only in Christ (John Bunyan, 1 Kings 9’s testimony about David, John 14’s promise of the Spirit). David then guards his company—no sitting with falsehood or evildoers—because bad company ruins good morals; the preacher used the unguarded Mount Evans road and the children’s song “Be careful little eyes…” as pictures of needed guardrails while we remain in the world but not of it (John 17). Watchfulness turns to thanksgiving: proclaim God’s deeds aloud, give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5), love the place where His glory dwells—now the gathered church, since believers are the temple. The psalm ends on level ground at the foot of the cross; Jude’s doxology and Joshua 24 (“as for me and my house we will serve the Lord”) call the congregation to choose faithfulness, plug into the body, and walk as people of integrity wherever God has placed them. The sermon closed with an invitation to trust Christ, be baptized, join the partnership class, and use every gift inside the local church.