Christ Church NC

Matthew 28 teaches us that belonging precedes maturity. Baptism is God’s way of welcoming people into His family. He places His name on us, ensuring that we belong, and then that belonging shapes us into mature disciples over time. God doesn’t make us pass a doctrinal examination before He claims us as His own. Baptism marks the beginning of the life of a disciple of Jesus, it is not a graduation into a higher level of the program. This baptismal truth underscores God’s generosity and big-hearted desire to bring all people into His family, hence the presence of this teaching at the heart of the Great Commission. Baptism is a wide open front door to the Kingdom of God, not a hurdle that’s hard to clear.

Psalm 150 is a snapshot of the end of history inviting us into the future of heavenly praise that will one day fill up the whole earth.

Psalm 122 shows us a people gladly ordering their lives around worship as they travel to Jerusalem—the city where God dwells, His people gather, and His King rules. This sermon considers what Jerusalem teaches us about worship, work, culture, and the Church, and how the blessings once found in the city of God ultimately come to us in Christ.

Psalm 116 teaches us to respond to God’s tangible acts of deliverance with tangible acts of thanksgiving. In Israel, thanksgiving wasn’t just an inward feeling, it could become a public event involving sacrifice, food, celebration, and a gathering of God’s people. God gives us practices of thanksgiving because giving thanks forms us into thankful people.

Psalm 131 is a prayer that helps us remember that we can trust God to grow us up and make us more like Him in every circumstance.

Psalm 58 reminds us that there are times when evil grows so large that we have no lawful power to stop it ourselves. Rather than encouraging personal vengeance or vigilanteism, God gives His people prayers that entrust justice to Him.

David’s psalm of confession reminds us that no matter how great our sin, God’s love is greater.

In Psalm 13 David asks God some candid questions that, without context may seem disrespectful or entitled—they aren’t. David’s prayers are responses to and reminders of God’s promises. David isn’t making demands, he is reminding God of His own plans and asking Him to bring them to fruition. This Psalm invites us to interact with God the same way—grab onto God’s promises and don’t let them go.

Psalm 19 helps us reflect on how and why God speaks. It turns out that He speaks to us in order to teach us how to talk back to Him.

Psalm 2 together with Psalm 1 functions as an introduction to the Psalter. Before teaching God’s people to pray, Psalm 2 reminds us who we are. We are God’s people, walking God’s path, following behind God’s King.

Before teaching us how to pray, the book of Psalms poses a question: what path are you on and where does it lead? Psalm 1 compares God’s path to man’s and invites us to take the path that leads to life.

This sermon seeks to set Baptism and The Lord’s Supper into their broader biblical context to help us identify them as one of the ways that God delivers His Word to His people. It is an exercise in biblical theology and theological reasoning intended to deepen our experience of church life and Sunday worship. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are God’s visible Word, re-preaching and manifesting God’s promises.

What is actually happening when the Church gathers for worship? In this sermon from Hebrews 12, we trace the Bible’s recurring mountain imagery from Eden to Sinai to Zion and ultimately to Christ in order to show that worship is far more than education or inspiration—it is the gathered Church ascending Mount Zion through Christ to meet with the living God.

Paul began the letter to the Ephesians with abstract theology as he spoke to us about powers, principalities, heavenly places, divine fullness, mysteries, and new creation. But he ends the letter with normal people doing normal things in order to show us that the cosmic mission of God cashes out in ordinary embodied faithfulness.

In Ephesians 6:10–17 Paul teaches us that spiritual warfare is usually not sensational, but conventional—the daily battle to maintain a heavenly perspective in the midst of earthly troubles, trials, and annoyances. God does not leave His people defenseless in this battle, but strengthens us through worship with His gathered people, and by clothing us in His own armor as He forms His character and life into us through Christ.

In Ephesians 6:1-9 (and 5:22-33) Paul teaches us how to make our households hum the happy working song of the New Creation as authority and servanthood are reimagined and reshaped by Christ.

In Ephesians 5:22-33 Paul shows us that marriage is more than a social arrangement—even more than “the building block of society.” Marriage is a living picture of the Gospel. In these verses Paul paints a beautiful picture of Jesus’ love for church and he makes it the paradigm for understanding marriage. Paul invites us to participate in preaching the powerful Gospel of Jesus through our practical life together as husband and wife.

In this sermon we explored a biblical theology of womanhood and motherhood through the lenses of sacred architecture, life, and new creation. Eve is not merely “made,” but “built” from Adam’s “side,” using language that echoes the construction of the tabernacle and temple. Woman is presented as part of the sacred architecture of God’s world—a living pillar helping uphold a creation filled with God’s presence and life.

In Ephesians 5:1–21, Paul shows us that the Christian life is not just about personal transformation—it’s about the renewal of the world. As those who were once darkness but are now light in the Lord, our lives expose what is broken not by fixating on it, but by embodying something better. This kind of light doesn’t just reveal—it awakens. And as the Spirit fills God’s people, that awakened life takes on a new texture: shared joy, gratitude, and harmony. The new creation doesn’t just shine—it begins to sound like something, as the church becomes a people who sing and live together in step with Christ.

Paul shows us how to walk the road out of exile, teaching us the practices and habits that will shape us into the kind of people who belong where God is taking us. Our exile from the life of God (Eph. 4:18) conditioned us to fill ourselves up illicitly and fleetingly with carnal pleasures, but the man who has returned to the life of God—being filled up with it—no longer has to work on filling himself. He turns his attention to filling others with the same life with which God has filled him.

Christ leads us out of exile and forms us into a unified, mature people who are learning to live like we belong in the home he’s bringing us to.

In Ephesians 3:14–21, Paul is driven to his knees in prayer under the weight of the cosmic calling God has placed on the church (3:10). But in prayer that weight is lifted, as the love of Christ and the power of God are revealed as the guarantee of the mission’s success.

On Easter morning, the story of Scripture begins again. In John’s Gospel, Jesus rises where humanity first fell, turning the site of ruin into the birthplace of renewal.

In Ephesians 3:1–13 Paul says that the mystery that’s been hidden for ages is being revealed in the church—that mystery is the coming together of all peoples in Christ. It’s unification without coercion—conquest by compassion. The Church is made up of Jew, Gentile, slave, free, man, woman, rich, and poor, all found to be one in Christ. This is the picture of the end of the world. And it is a glorious end to which we are headed. The Church gets there first, and we bring the world with us.

In Ephesians 2, Paul shows how Christ fulfills Israel’s sacrificial system—removing our sin, paying our debt, raising us into new life, and bringing us into peace with God and one another. What once happened through sacrifices in the temple is now accomplished in Christ and applied to His people, culminating in a shared meal of fellowship with God.

Paul prays that the church would see what is already true: Jesus is reigning, resurrection power is already at work, and the church is the instrument through which Christ will fill the world. Because these truths are so surprising, God must open the eyes of our hearts to believe them.

Ephesians 1:3-14, a dense, 202 word sentence in Greek, is a majestic explosion of worship as Paul announces that a rescue of even greater importance than The Exodus has taken place through Jesus and is working itself out among His people.

Ephesians 1:1-2 is a beautiful reminder of a simple, but profound truth: God loves you and He wants you with Him. This sermon explores the shape of that love and shows us how to remain rooted in it.

In this opening message on Ephesians, we explore Paul’s sweeping announcement that the New Creation has already begun. The King has been crowned. Heaven and earth are being reunited. A new humanity has been formed. And through the church, God is displaying His wisdom to the world. God is making us new so that we can renew the world.

In Haggai 2:20–23, God promises to reverse a curse His people could never undo. The Davidic “signet ring” once torn away in judgment is restored, pointing beyond Zerubbabel to Christ. In Jesus, the logic of the old world is overturned: death no longer spreads uncontested—life does. The resurrection inaugurates new creation, and the Church now lives as the King’s signet ring, bearing resurrection life into a world still fighting the old regime.

This sermon names the limits of our obedience—clarifying what it can and cannot accomplish. Haggai 2:15–19 shows how much obedience matters in practical ways and how dramatically responding to God can change our lives. But verses 11–14 make it clear that obedience, while powerful, is not powerful enough to heal the deepest fracture we face. That problem requires something beyond our faithful action—it requires God’s gracious intervention.

In Haggai 2, God meets a discouraged people longing for the glories of the past and reorients their hope toward the future. This sermon explores how God moves His people from nostalgia to new hope and calls the Church to participate in the building of an even more glorious temple and kingdom than Solomon’s.

This sermon brings us into God’s halftime pep talk as He encourages and recommissions His people to get them back in the game after a season of failure.

Christmas doesn’t conclude the story—it starts it. This sermon from John 1 shows how Jesus’ birth launches God’s work of new creation in the world. The Spirit who overshadowed Mary now fills the Church, bringing new life wherever Christ is received. Christmas is a kickoff, not a capstone—and every conversion, baptism, and quiet act of faith becomes another nativity scene unfolding in the world.

Before Bethlehem is a manger, it is a grave. This sermon traces Rachel’s sorrow from Genesis through Jeremiah and into Matthew, showing how God brings redemption through loss rather than around it. The good news of Christmas is not that God spares us from darkness, but that He meets us there and brings forth light.

In Genesis 15–21, Abraham and Sarah show us what happens when God’s promise meets a long season of waiting. God delays not because He has deviated from the plan, but because He is teaching His people that His promises are received, not produced—and that salvation will come not by the power of the flesh, but by the power of the Spirit.

In Acts 28, Luke shows that the story of Jesus continues—unhindered—through His Spirit-filled people.Paul’s protection from the serpent, his healing ministry on Malta, and his bold proclamation in chains all declare that the risen Christ still rules, still restores, and still advances His kingdom through ordinary believers.Acts ends abruptly because the mission it describes has not ended; it continues in us, the living temples through whom the glory of God is filling the earth.

In Acts 27, Paul’s ship is overtaken by a violent storm. While everyone else panics, Paul becomes an anchor of calm—steady, faithful, and full of hope. Luke isn’t just telling a sea story; he’s showing us what it looks like when the living temple of God meets the storms of the world.The God who “founded the earth upon the floods” (Psalm 24) is still turning chaos into creation—and He does it now through His people. Jesus is still calming storms; He’s just doing it through us.

In Acts 23 Paul declares that he is on trial for the hope of the resurrection. What was so offensive and explosive about Paul’s resurrection doctrine and what does it mean for us today? Answering those questions is the goal of this sermon.

Paul finally makes it to Jerusalem—the narrative has been building to this moment—only to leave us with a massive anticlimax. Paul isn’t killed and no one gets converted—there’s no triumph and no tragedy—just tension. Often our lives look the same, and Paul provides a model of faithfulness in such circumstances.

God isn’t nearly as averse to errors as we are. Our modern obsession with precision and accuracy has made us spiritually risk-averse, hesitant to act when we sense the Spirit’s leading. This sermon on Acts 21:1–6 confronts that tendency and calls us back to the faithful courage of those who got it wrong the right way.

Paul’s farewell to the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:17–38) is more than a set of instructions; it is the heart of a pastor laid bare. His trials and tears illustrate God’s own suffering love for the world, and his words remind us that weakness and struggle in our own lives don’t discredit the gospel—they make it believable. Paul shows us that true life is found not in self-preservation but in giving ourselves away for others, because “it is more blessed to give than to receive."

Our culture prizes free thought, open inquiry, and debate. We imagine ourselves as autonomous agents making independent choices. The truth is, we are helplessly and hopelessly directed—shaped by others in our thinking, our values, and our convictions. Scripture says we are sheep, always being shepherded, always imitating someone. This sermon calls us to aim that imitative impulse toward Christ.

This sermon exposes our tendency to “technique” our way into getting what we want. For many, even our Christian faith can become a tool we employ in an attempt to gain something we feel is missing. Acts 19 corrects this way of thinking and presses us toward the truth that it will never be a tool, technique, or program that settles things in our lives or in our world, but a Person.

Acts 18 highlights God’s extraordinary work through ordinary means and encourages us to look for His glory--making appearances in the mundane.

In Acts 17:16–34 Paul entered a high-stakes situation before the Areopagus in Athens. Areopagus means “Hill of Ares” (Mars Hill to the Romans). Originally it referred to the rocky hill near the Acropolis, but by Paul’s day it often referred less to the location and more to the prestigious council of Athenian elders who traditionally met there. The Areopagus wasn’t a hipster coffee house or an edgy pub that philosophers frequented—it was an aristocratic council that weighed matters of civic religion in the city and was charged with guarding Athens’ civic and religious life. That backdrop foregrounds Paul’s nerve, resolve, and faithfulness in a way from which we can learn a great deal.

Paul and Silas’ ministry in Thessalonica provoked outrage because they proclaimed “another king—Jesus” (Acts 17:6). For the Jews, this was a theological threat: Jesus as Messiah challenged their power and interpretation of Scripture. For the Romans, it was a political threat: Caesar demanded ultimate allegiance, but Christians confessed Christ alone as Lord. The gospel was disruptive then and remains disruptive now—reordering priorities, provoking resistance, and turning the world not upside down.

Sundays sermon traced out the common thread in the episodes of Acts 16: the cost of the call to follow Jesus. The book of Acts is kind of like a docuseries on the continued life of Christ in the life of the Church, His body. Jesus continues pouring His life out for the life of the world through His people as we surrender our lives to God’s saving purposes for our children, our neighbors, our communities, and our world. But, just like Jesus, what we give away in service and submission to God, He returns, pressed down, shaken together, running over. 

Acts 15 took us into one of the most pivotal moments in church history; when God’s people had to wrestle with what to do when His work seemed to challenge their understanding of His word. For centuries, Scripture was clear: God’s covenant people bore the sign of circumcision, and His law marked them off from the nations. Yet now, the Spirit was being poured out on uncircumcised Gentiles, and without requiring them to take on the full yoke of the law. The Jerusalem Council shows us that faithfulness to God means holding fast to His unchanging word while also recognizing and embracing His surprising work. It calls us to humble discernment, a willingness to be corrected, and a trust that God’s Spirit never contradicts His word, but sometimes overturns our assumptions about what His word means.

This sermon on Acts 13–14, explored how the gospel didn’t just challenge religious assumptions, it disrupted the political and social order of the ancient world. As Paul and Barnabas proclaim salvation to the Gentiles, their message threatens the fragile arrangement between Rome and the Jews, provoking hostility from every side. But behind the upheaval is a deeper truth: God was dismantling the old scaffolding of empire to build His unshakable kingdom and to show His people (again) that our trust is not in horses or chariots, but in the name of the Lord our God.