Christchurch Miami Audio Podcast

What About Manhood?

What does it mean to be a man? On Father's Day — preaching from his deployment in the Middle East — Pastor James Drake walks through David and Goliath and finds three men, but only one who understands true manhood: biblical masculinity is strength surrendered to God for His glory and the good of others. We're not David in this story; we're Israel, until our Champion steps forward. Jesus is the greater David. So run toward your giant — faith moves, fear hesitates.

What About Hypocrisy? - Luke 18:9-14

What about the hypocrites in the church — and what if one of them is you? When NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope, its mirror had been ground with breathtaking precision — against the wrong standard. It passed every test it gave itself, blind to its own blindness. In this message from our What About? series, Elder Rick Closius shows that this is exactly what hypocrisy and self-righteousness do to the human heart. Working through Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14) and Paul's verdict in Romans 3, Rick exposes the trap of comparative righteousness — measuring ourselves against other people instead of the holiness of God — and then turns the mirror on himself: after 32 years as a deputy sheriff, "I'd become the very Pharisee." But the parable ends in mercy. The tax collector who could only cry, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner," went home justified — declared righteous as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Go home justified today — not because your mirror is flawless, but because your Savior is. 📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao9IBoGUi2Y [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao9IBoGUi2Y] 📖 Daily devotionals + study guide: https://app.christchurchmiami.org/2026-06-14-what-about-hypocrisy/resources/ [http://christchurchmiami.org/2026-06-14-what-about-hypocrisy/resources]

Is the Bible Really Reliable? - 2 Peter 1:16-18

Can a 2,000-year-old book really stand up to modern scrutiny — or is the Bible just a collection of "cleverly devised myths"? In this eighth sermon in our spring apologetics series What About?, Pastor Kent Keller takes on one of the hardest questions skeptics and Christians wrestle with: is the Bible actually reliable? Kent walks through the textual evidence — comparing New Testament manuscript count and copy-gap against ancient sources like Homer's Iliad and Caesar's Gallic Wars — then turns to the eyewitness testimony of Peter and John themselves. Peter wrote that the apostles "did not follow cleverly devised myths" but were eyewitnesses of Jesus' majesty on the Mount of Transfiguration. John, writing against early Gnostic heresy, insisted he saw Jesus' physical body with his own eyes. And hundreds of resurrection eyewitnesses still living when the gospels circulated were never refuted — not by the religious leaders who hated Jesus, not by the Roman soldiers who crucified Him, not by anyone. But Kent's sharpest challenge is to a culture where 68% of Americans read the Bible less than once a year: if you don't open it, it does you no good. Hebrews 4:12 calls God's Word "living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword" — but only if you read it. 📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AFSTsvUlgg [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AFSTsvUlgg] 📖 Read the blog: https://christchurchmiami.org/blog/2026/06/04/is-the-bible-really-reliable [https://christchurchmiami.org/blog/2026/06/04/is-the-bible-really-reliable]

But What About Suffering? Why a Good God Allows Pain - 1 Peter 4:12-19

If God is all good, all loving, and all powerful — why is there so much sin, suffering, and evil in the world? In this seventh sermon in our spring apologetics series What About?, Pastor Kent Keller takes on the hardest question Christians and skeptics share. From 1 Peter 4:12–19, Kent walks us through three movements: don't be surprised by suffering, don't be unprepared for what comes next, and don't lose sight of the final outcome. The Bible was written by suffering people to suffering people. God himself, in Jesus, entered our suffering first — and the pattern that runs through the whole biblical story is suffering, then judgment, then glory. As former Senator Ben Sasse has said, facing his own stage-four cancer: "There are no maverick molecules in the universe." Nothing in your story is outside God's care. This message lands with Andrew Murray's four anchors for the seasons when you don't know what to do next — and with the gospel reminder that Jesus walked the road of suffering first so that you would not walk it alone. 📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bD-dEwtr84 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bD-dEwtr84]

How Do You Pass Faith to Your Kids? - Deut 6:4-9

How do you pass faith to your kids when life won't slow down? Pastor James Drake — preaching from the field during his current Army Chaplain deployment — answers one of the most pastoral questions parents ask: how do we hand on a living faith in a culture engineered to crowd it out? Drawing on Deuteronomy 6:4-9 — the Great Shema — and Jesus' citation of it in Mark 12:29-30 as the greatest commandment, this message walks through three movements: who actually sits on the throne of our hearts, what it means to love God with everything, and how that love becomes a rhythm woven into ordinary family life — sitting, walking, lying down, rising. The sermon lands not on "try harder" but on the better news of a Savior who fulfilled the Shema we never could and writes it on our hearts from the inside out. "Faith isn't an event you perform. It's a rhythm you live." — Preached at Christchurch Miami on May 17, 2026.