NHPBC Sermons

Acts 4:1-12 Event: Sunday Service Speaker: Doug McMasters

Event: Miscellaneous Speaker: Micah McCormick

Philippians 2:5-11 Event: Sunday - PM Speaker: Mark Wiesner

Acts 3:17-26 Event: Sunday Service Speaker: Doug McMasters

Joy feels personal, but Paul refuses to let us keep it private. Philippians 2:1–4 makes a bold claim: the fullness of Christian joy is tied to humble unity in the local church, not just our individual walk with God. We talk through what Paul means by “complete my joy” and why encouragement in Christ, comfort from his love, fellowship with the Spirit, and real affection and mercy are meant to spill...

A miracle draws a crowd, and the crowd does what crowds always do: they lock onto the most visible people in the moment and assume the power must be there. Working through Acts 3, we start with a modern rescue story, the 33 Chilean miners lifted from the darkness, and we ask the same question that hangs over the temple courtyard in Jerusalem: what if the power is never in the instrument at all? We...

A man spends decades being carried to the same spot, asking the same question with an open hand: “Can you spare a coin?” Then Peter stops, stares him in the eyes, and says something that still confronts us today: “I don’t have silver or gold, but what I do have, I give you… in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk.” That moment at the Beautiful Gate in Acts 3 is more than a miracle...

A bridge doesn’t prove itself on opening day, it proves itself when the weight shows up. We start with the Brooklyn Bridge and then drop below the surface into Acts, where Luke shows what really holds the church steady when life stops feeling safe. Acts 1 and 2 give us the beauty of Pentecost, prayer, and growth, but Acts 3 to 7 brings the load: threats, arrests, internal conflict, and a martyr’s...

Faith is a gift most of us love to talk about. Suffering is the gift we’d rather return unopened. Philippians 1:29-30 refuses to separate them, and we slow down long enough to hear what Paul is really saying: God graciously grants believers not only the ability to trust Christ, but also the privilege of suffering for Christ. We trace how Scripture describes saving faith as God’s work from beginnin...

Most of us know what we want from a church: a strong preacher, a friendly welcome, the right music, a convenient drive, good programs for our kids, and maybe a few familiar faces. Then Acts 2:42-47 steps in and asks a sharper question: what is God actually building when he builds a church? We open one of the clearest portraits of the early church and trace the three devotions that define a healthy...

Your strongest identity might be the one you never question, until it starts running your life. We’re in Philippians 1:27-28, where Paul drops a simple but searching command: as citizens of heaven, we live worthy of the gospel of Christ. To make that hit home, we step into the world of Philippi, a Roman colony proud of its status, and we ask what happens when civic loyalty quietly becomes the thin...

A lot of people can say “I’m a Christian” and even believe it, yet Jesus warns that not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” truly knows him. That tension is where we start, then we let Acts 2:37-41 do its work on us. When Peter preaches Jesus from Scripture, the crowd doesn’t shrug it off. They get pierced to the heart and ask the question that always reveals what’s real: “What should we do?” We walk t...

Chains, courts, and uncertainty usually crush joy, but Paul insists they don’t have to. From a Roman prison and with Caesar’s tribunal ahead, he can still say he will continue to rejoice and that Christ will be honored in his body whether by life or by death. We follow Paul’s logic through Philippians 1:19–26 and ask the question underneath all our stress: what kind of confidence holds when you ca...

Ephesians 5 might be the most quoted marriage passage in the Bible and one of the most misused, so we slow down and read it with both conviction and care. Some of us hear hope in these words because they describe the kind of covenant love we ache for. Others feel pain because marriage has been marked by betrayal, disappointment, divorce, or grief. So we begin with grace and a clear purpose: this p...

You can be doing all the right things and still feel empty. That is where we start: the exhaustion of the daily grind, the rushed prayers, the quiet fear that you are not measuring up, and the creeping sense that God feels far away. Then Mark 6 flips the script with a sentence we do not expect from a holy, busy Savior: “Come away… and rest for a while.” We lean into what Christian rest really is,...

Prison. Rival preachers. Personal attacks. If anyone had a reason to spiral, it’s Paul, yet Philippians 1:12–18 captures him doing something unexpected: he rejoices. We open the passage and trace how encouragement can hold steady when life is unfair, grief is heavy, or people seem against you. This is not about ignoring pain or forcing a smile. It’s about finding a kind of joy that can coexist wit...

Death doesn’t ask permission, and it doesn’t wait for a ceremony. We start with a vivid real-world picture of instant authority, then turn to the authority none of us voted for but all of us feel: death. From there, we open Acts 2 and follow Peter’s street-level sermon in Jerusalem, preached only weeks after the crucifixion of Jesus, where the core claim lands with force: Jesus is already enthrone...

If you could hear Jesus praying for you in the next room, would you still be anxious about what’s coming? That question opens a doorway into one of the clearest, most practical prayers in the New Testament: Paul’s prayer in Philippians 1:9–11. We walk slowly through Paul’s “school of prayer” and pull out five lessons that can change your prayer life right away. You don’t need long, eloquent words...

A battle was fought after peace had already been signed, simply because the soldiers did not know what day it was. That story becomes a gut-check for our faith: we can sing about the resurrection on Sunday and still live Monday like the war is not decided.  We walk through Acts 2 and Peter’s first Christian sermon, where he explains Pentecost by opening Scripture and quoting the prophet Joel. The...

Event: Sunday Service Speaker: Doug McMasters

Joy is easy to claim when life is stable. Paul writes Philippians 1:7-8 from imprisonment, and his joy still sounds steady, personal, and fearless. We dig into why: he holds the Philippian believers in his heart, and they hold him in theirs through real gospel partnership that shows up in prayer, provision, and loyalty when it would be safer to step back.  We work through five elements of Paul’s j...

A 1615 Geneva Bible has a strange little picture before Genesis: a crumbling tower and a line that points to Babel, where languages divided. That single image sets up a claim Acts 2 makes with force: humans cannot build the spiritual life or the deep unity we crave, not by effort, not by intensity, not by ambition. Only God can do it, and Pentecost is where we watch him do it in public. We walk ca...

Joy isn’t the same thing as a good day, and it doesn’t show up automatically when life gets hard. We turn to Philippians 1:3-6 and listen to Paul speak from prison with a steady, surprising joy that doesn’t match his circumstances. That contrast opens a new angle on the Christian life: joy grows from spiritual roots, not from comfort, control, or a perfect track record. We walk through three roots...

Peter denied Jesus in public, then broke down in private, then tried to go back to “normal.” So when Acts 1:15 says, “Peter stood up,” we should feel the shock. We trace how the resurrected Christ restores Peter, recommissions him, and turns him into the kind of leader who can step into a messy room and tell the truth without flinching. That truth is brutal: Judas betrayed Jesus, the scandal is al...

Joy that only works on good days isn’t strong enough for real life. Philippians grabs us by the collar because it’s one of the Bible’s most joyful letters and it’s written by the Apostle Paul while he’s imprisoned, chained, and waiting for trial. That tension forces an honest question: is there a kind of Christian joy that suffering can’t cancel? We walk through Philippians as a whole and map its...