Lament & Joy: The Christian Life

Fear & Favor Part I: Seeking the God Who Comes to Us

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow opened Acts 10 to explore what it means to seek the God who comes to us, tracing the story of Cornelius, a Roman centurion whose fear of God and devotion drew the attention of heaven itself. Through the visions given to both Cornelius and Peter, we see how God shows no partiality, breaking barriers of ethnicity and tradition to extend his favor and fellowship to those who fear him from every nation. Peter’s proclamation in Caesarea makes plain that Jesus Christ, the one appointed judge of the living and the dead, is also the one through whom everyone who believes receives forgiveness of sins. This sermon begins a series that invites us to examine our own fear of God and to trust that the God we seek is already, always, seeking us.

A Gospel Challenge

This past Lord’s Day, Rev. Charles Garriott brought a guest sermon on the radical call of discipleship from Matthew 16:21-28. Jesus, after announcing his coming death and resurrection, confronts Peter’s instinct to protect him — and in doing so, confronts our own tendency to seek a comfortable, self-preserving faith. The call to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Christ is not a call to misery but to the only life worth having, because whoever loses his life for Christ’s sake will find it. Rev. Garriott pressed the question that cuts to the heart of every soul: what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

Fear & Comfort

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow preached on the growth of the early church in Acts 9:31-43, showing how fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit worked together to build up the saints. When Peter healed the paralyzed Aeneas in Lydda, the whole town turned to the Lord. When Peter raised Tabitha from death in Joppa, word spread and many believed. Pastor Harlow reminded us that the same Lord who brought healing and resurrection through Peter’s ministry continues to comfort His church today, growing His people through both a right fear of Him and the abiding presence of His Spirit.

The Dramatic Conversion

This past Lord’s Day, Ruling Elder Scott Hatch walked through the conversion of Saul in Acts 9:1-30, one of the most dramatic turns in the New Testament. A man bent on destroying the church is confronted by the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and transformed into one of its greatest witnesses. Hatch traced what Paul learned in that encounter, that grace reaches even those most opposed to it, and asked what this means for us today. The same Christ who stopped Saul in his tracks is still in the business of turning enemies into sons.

Following God (When Life Takes an Unexpected Turn)

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow opened Acts 8:26-40, the account of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, to show how God directs His servants down unlikely roads to reach unlikely people. Philip’s obedience took him to a desert highway, where he found a court official puzzling over Isaiah 53 with no one to explain it to him. Pastor Harlow traced how the suffering servant of Isaiah pointed forward to Christ, and how the gospel Philip preached reached across every barrier of nation and status to bring a foreigner and outcast into the family of God. The sermon closed with the eunuch’s baptism as a picture of the good news still going out today, to outsiders near and far.