Sermons from Christ Presbyterian Church in Burke, VA

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow showed from Acts 13:44–14:7 how Paul and Barnabas kept preaching with joy even as the gospel met both glad faith and bitter opposition. When many in Antioch rejected the word, the apostles turned to the Gentiles, and “as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” In doing so […]

This past Lord’s Day, Alex Kiess, pastoral intern at Shady Grove Presbyterian Church, preached on the larger debt every sinner owes and the larger mercy that cancels it. In Luke 7:36-50, a woman known for her sin anoints Jesus’ feet at a Pharisee’s table, while Simon, the host, quietly judges both her and the Lord […]

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow opened Acts 13 to show how the gospel Paul preached in Antioch rests on promises God had already made and already kept. Paul traces the story from the exodus through David all the way to Jesus, showing that every word God spoke to Israel found its fulfillment in Christ’s […]

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow opened Acts 13:1-12 to trace how the Holy Spirit set the church at Antioch in motion for the work of missions. The believers there fasted and prayed before the Spirit called Barnabas and Saul, a picture of how gospel labor begins in worship and obedience rather than human strategy. […]

This past Lord’s Day, Chaplain Stewart Fowler preached from Psalm 1 on what it means to be truly blessed. The psalmist sets two paths before us: the righteous, rooted like a tree beside flowing water, and the wicked, driven off like chaff in the wind. Fowler showed that delight in God’s law is not a […]

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow closed out his two-part study of Acts 12, turning to Herod’s sudden downfall and the patience of God that precedes it. In Acts 12:18-25, Herod accepts the crowd’s praise as though he were a god himself, and judgment falls on him swiftly and finally. Peter’s own words remind us […]

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow began a two-part series in Acts 12, considering how a weak and persecuted church prayed to a God far stronger than her enemies. Herod’s violence against the early church, the imprisonment of Peter, and the earnest prayers offered at the house of Mary set the stage for a night […]

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow preached the second installment of the series “What Were The First Christians Like?” returning to Acts 11:19-30 to consider how God’s hand sustains His people amid the sufferings of a fallen world. Luke’s account of the church scattered from Jerusalem shows believers enduring persecution while the Lord’s providence carried [&#...

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow opened a two-part series on the church at Antioch, asking what marked the first Christians as they took root in a diverse and demanding city. In Acts 11:19–30, believers scattered by persecution carried the gospel to Jews and Gentiles alike, and the Lord’s hand was upon their witness. Barnabas, […]

Pastor Harlow continued the church’s series in Acts, turning to the criticism Peter faced after preaching the gospel to Cornelius’s household in Acts 11:1-18. Working through the passage in two movements, the critics Peter answered and the repentance unto life that followed, Pastor Harlow considered the temptation to fear the approval of man more than […]

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow continued the church’s study of Acts with a sermon titled “Fear & Favor Part II: The God Who Sends His People,” drawn from Acts 10:1–48. Building on the account of Cornelius, a Roman centurion seeking God, the sermon traced how the Lord called Peter to cross a boundary he […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow preached on the strange conversion of Simon the magician in Acts 8:9-25. Revival breaks out in Samaria, a place no one expected, among people no one expected, as Philip preaches Christ and the Spirit confirms the work through the apostles. Yet Simon’s story is a sobering warning: he believed […]

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow preached from Acts 8:1-8 on the inseparable tension of lament and joy that marks the Christian life. The passage opens in grief: Stephen is dead, Saul is ravaging the church, and believers are scattered across Judea and Samaria under fierce persecution. Yet what looks like catastrophe becomes the very […]

This past Lord’s Day, Rev. Charles Garriott, Founder and Executive Director of the PCA’s Mission to North America’s Ministry to State, preached from Psalm 69:1–3 on the theme of pursuing peace in the midst of overwhelming distress. The psalmist’s cry from the deep waters is the cry of every believer who has known the weight […]

On Ascension Sunday, Pastor Harlow preached through Acts 7:54–8:1, tracing three reactions to Stephen’s testimony and death: the fury of the crowd, the faith of Stephen, and the response of Jesus from heaven. As the stones fell, Stephen looked up and saw what his killers could not — the Son of Man standing at the […]

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow preached from Acts 7:1–54, where Stephen stands before the Sanhedrin and delivers one of the most sweeping surveys of redemptive history in all of Scripture. From Abraham to Joseph, Moses to David, Stephen traces a single thread through the centuries: every covenant, every deliverer, and every prophet pointed forward […]

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow preached from Acts 6:8–15, taking up the remarkable detail that those who looked at Stephen in the council saw his face “like the face of an angel.” Paired with the Old Testament reading from Exodus 34, where Moses descended from Sinai with his face shining from his encounter with […]

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Harlow continued the Acts series with a look at the early church’s first internal crisis. In Acts 6:1–7, a complaint arises among the Hellenists that their widows are being overlooked in the daily distribution, and the apostles respond not with defensiveness but with wisdom, identifying the problem, proposing a solution, […]

Pastor Harlow opened Acts 4:32–5:14 to show that the early church was made up of real people whose hearts were either being shaped by grace or hardened by deception. The generosity of Barnabas illustrated what it looks like when the Spirit of God forms a community around the needs of others, while Ananias and Sapphira’s […]

This past Lord’s Day, Pastor Mark Moore, Deputy Wing Chaplain at Joint Base Andrews, preached from Psalm 85, tracing the psalmist’s journey through three movements of faith. The Sons of Korah begin by remembering God’s past forgiveness – He covered their sin, withdrew His wrath, restored the fortunes of Jacob – and that memory becomes […]