Rev. John Pennylegion
August 23, 2026

Well friends, it is good to be with you this morning. If we haven’t met, my name is Penny, and I’m the senior pastor here, and it’s great that we can gather and worship and give glory to God if you are a guest or a visitor. We’re glad that you’re here, and if we haven’t had the opportunity to meet, I would love to welcome you, love to formally greet you. I usually kind of hang out by those doors in the gathering area after the service. We would love to welcome you and say that we’re thankful for you being here. But if you’ve been with us, then you know that we are in the book of Colossians, and we are in Colossians 2 this morning. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to Colossians 2. If you don’t have a Bible, we have Bibles in the chairs, and the passage is found on page 984. Now if you were with us a few weeks ago during our first sermon, then you maybe remember that I quoted a commentator who said that Colossians is perhaps the most Christ-centric of the New Testament letters. So of all the New Testament letters, the letters by Paul, of Peter, of John, that this is the most Christ-centric one of them. And at the time, maybe you remember, I said, “well, that felt a little bit like hyperbole,” right? Because every New Testament book is pointing to Jesus, and in fact, the entire Old Testament, all of scriptures, right, they find they’re fulfilling Jesus. Like the Jesus Storybook Bible says, every story whispers his name. And yet, it feels over the last few weeks that quote is playing out, doesn’t it? Because it seems as though every paragraph, every verse, every sentence of Colossians seems to talk about Jesus, doesn’t it?

And this is actually good for us. It’s good for us to be reminded of who Jesus is and what he has done each and every week, each and every page, each and every verse, because Jesus is who we ultimately need. More than theories, more than philosophies, what we need is Christ, and we’re going to see more of that today. As Paul emphasized what it is that Jesus has done, we’re going to see how Jesus unites us to himself. So with that in mind, let’s read Colossians 2, beginning in verse 6. Paul writes,

“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.” (ESV)

Friends, this is the Word of the Lord. Let me pray for us.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word and ask that you would help us, help us to see your goodness, help us to behold the beauty of Christ, help us to understand what you would

have for us from this passage. Father, we need your help, so we ask, open our eyes, unplug our ears, soften our hearts, that we would behold your glory. We pray this in Christ’s name, amen.

Now, I know some of you aren’t aware of this, but others of us are well aware that there are only 31 more games to the Major League Baseball season. So, that means the World Series is quickly coming, and my mind has been thinking about the World Series for the last week or so, and as I was thinking about the World Series, I was thinking about World Series rings. World Series rings. Rings are given to World Series champions, right? They get the World Series trophy as an organization, but then the individuals, they’re not given medals, they’re not given little miniature trophies, they get a ring. Have you ever seen a World Series ring? They’re enormous. They’re giant. They’re incredible. I had the good fortune when I was a child to wear a World Series ring. Brian Doyle, who was the second baseman, the New York Yankees, in the ‘78 World Series, happened to be at my home eating dinner at my dining room table, and he was wearing his ring, because why would you ever take it off? And I remember, I was a child, and I remembered asking him, you know, “could I wear it?” I didn’t know any better, right? So, I asked him, “can I put on your 1978 World Series ring?” And he was gracious and generous, and he took it off, and he put it on my finger, and it was giant. It’s full of gold, and diamonds, and jewels, and it said champions. It had the New York Yankees symbol on it. It was amazing. It was incredible. This is what he was given, and he has it for the rest of his life. World Series rings, that’s what champions get.

The last two years, it’s been the Los Angeles Dodgers, and so names like Otani, and Yamamoto, and Freddie Freeman, they’re the ones who are getting these rings, but when they were given these rings at the beginning of this season, there was someone else who got one. His name is Chico Herrera. Chico, I like that name, Chico. It’s not his real name, it’s a nickname, but Chico Herrera, and while many of us, even if you’re not a baseball fan, you’ve probably heard of Otani, you’ve maybe heard of Freddie Freeman, or Mookie Betts, some of these players, I guarantee you that you might be the most rabid baseball fan, and you have never heard of Chico Herrera. That’s because Chico Herrera has never thrown a single pitch from the mound. He’s never had a single at bat or hit. If you looked him up, his stats, there are none. He’s the bullpen catcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He’s the bullpen catcher, and yet, though he will never give a Hall of Fame speech, and no fan will ever sing his praises, he has a ring. He has a ring because he’s on the team. Because though he’s not Otani, though he’s not Yamamoto, though he’s not these great players, he still gets the same reward of everyone else who played in those games. He gets that ring, that reward, and that’s what Paul is telling us about us.

Union with Christ

You see, we didn’t contribute to Christ’s victory over death, and we didn’t cause him to rise again. In fact, we are the reason he went to the cross in the first place. We are the reason that he had to go to his death. It was for our sin, and yet, we get his reward. We get the victory of Christ, and we get it because we are united to him. We’re united to Christ in his death and his resurrection, so that his victory is now ours. We’re united with Christ. Did you see, I don’t know if you paid attention, or were noticing closely, how often the phrase “in him” and “with him” showed up in our few verses? There’s not many verses, but it’s there. Nine times by my count, we hear “in him” or “with him.” Seven times it’s explicitly referring to our relationship with Christ. We hear we walk in him, we’re built up in him, we’re filled in him, in him we were circumcised, in him buried with him, raised with him, alive together with him. That

language of being with or in him, Paul is using to show us that we are united to Christ, so that what is true of Jesus is true of us.

In other words, what’s true of the Savior is true of his saved people. As the king goes, so go his subjects. That’s what union with Christ means. That what Jesus has done, it’s credited to his people. We see it in verses 11 through 12. In him also, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. So we hear Paul picking up this Old Testament language of circumcision, right? We heard in our Old Testament reading that circumcision was the mark of the covenant, and it was made with hands in the flesh. But now, in Christ, we have a circumcision not made with hands, and not in the flesh. No, we have a circumcision that is given to us through Christ. That we put off the flesh as we are buried with him and circumcised in him. That we are now marked out. Marked out. That just that circumcision marked out the people of God in the Old Testament. So now, as we are baptized in Christ and buried with him, we are dead to our flesh, we now are marked out with him. We are baptized into the death of Christ. In baptism, we die with Christ’s death. And when he rose, his resurrection is applied to us. We rise with him.

Paul is telling us that Jesus did what we couldn’t do for ourselves, and he gave it to us. What he did is now ours. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, in verses 13 through 14, we hear that those who were dead in our sins are now alive in Christ. That those who had trespassed against God’s law, we are now forgiven. That those who accumulated a debt because of our transgressions, that debt is canceled. That our sins are nailed to the cross. That Christ’s life, the merits of his death, the victory of his resurrection, it is credited to you. And it’s credited to me. And it is credited to all who trust in him. God has nailed our debt to the cross. Now, you remember from the gospel accounts, there was an actual sign that was nailed to the cross. Do you remember? That when Jesus was crucified, when he was hung on the tree, the Roman authorities, they nailed a sign to the cross. And that sign, it said, “the King of the Jews.” And they nailed it to the cross as a way to mock him, to scorn him, as a way to shame him. And that’s actually an aspect of crucifixion. Shame. Crucifixion, those who were crucified, they were oftentimes crucified naked, exposed to the whole world. I know that in artistic representations, the crucified people are often covered with a small loincloth. And we understand why they would do that in art. But in reality, they were naked, exposed to the world, exposed to abuse and ridicule and shame. This is what Christ went to.

And yet what Paul is telling us is that a great reversal took place. Because the means by which the enemies of Christ sought to bring shame on him was the very way that God shamed them. We see it in verses 14 and 15, canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. That’s what Christ did. That what the enemies of God believed would bring shame to Christ was actually a time of great victory. A time when Christ took our sin upon himself and he died and was buried and he rose again. That death, that accounting for the debt of our sin, that rising to new life, he has credited to you. It is now true of you. Your sins have been wiped away. Your debt has been done away with. Your transgressions have been nailed to the cross. Now that is incredible to think about. That this one who in verse 9 is described as the one for whom the fullness of deity dwells bodily, that this one, this second person of the trinity took on flesh and gave his life so that we would have life. What is true of Christ is true of you. And so that

means, since we have been united to Christ, that we’re not our own. It means that we belong to Christ.

This reminds me of that most famous of scenes from Les Mis, right? Victor Hugo’s amazing work, the story of Jean Valjean, this criminal who’s gone out of prison and he’s needing a place to stay. And so he knocks on the door of the bishop and the bishop welcomes him into his home and gives him a place to rest and food to eat. And in the morning, Valjean is gone with all the silver. And he’s arrested and brought back to the bishop and the police, right? They laugh and they joke. He said that you gave it to them, to him. And of course, the bishop, what does he say? “Well, I did. I gave him all the silver. And in fact, Valjean, Jean Valjean, my brother, you forgot the candlesticks.” And the police officers, they were flabbergasted, right? They couldn’t believe it. And so they leave the room and all that is left is the bishop who was gracious and the criminal who needed mercy. And the bishop said, “Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you. I withdraw it from the black thoughts and the spirit of perdition. And I give it to God. You no longer belong to evil. Your soul belongs to God.”

Living Out Our Union

Because of the grace that was shown him, he is no longer his own. And neither are we. Because of God’s grace, because we are united to Christ, we are not our own. The Heidelberg Catechism puts it this way: “I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.” That’s who we are. United to Christ, we belong to him. What’s true of Christ is true of us. That because we belong to Christ, because we have died and risen with him, are united to him, that means that we now live out our union. We live out our union. That’s how our passage began: “As you receive Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” So walk in him. Walk. So notice, though, that Paul adds that qualifier, right? “As you received Christ, so walk in him.” So think about how you first received Christ. So for some of you, right, you grew up in the faith, you grew up in a covenant family, you can’t remember a time not believing in Jesus. For others of us, we came to faith later in life, we have great, you know, we have lots of memories of when we didn’t believe, and so it’s maybe easier for us to remember when we received. But regardless of whether we received Christ at a young age, or we can’t remember when, or an older age, how did we receive him? We received him with faith and repentance, with trust and thanksgiving, right? It wasn’t just simply mental awareness or cognitive ascent. No, there was a deep transformative change that took place, a sense of relief and freedom that my sin, all my sin, all of our sin, it is truly forgiven.

Do you remember when you first believed that? When it first became real to you? And the thanksgiving that wells up in your heart for what Christ has done, for the faith that we now have in him, for who he is, that’s how we received him. But how we received him, we don’t stop that, we don’t move off of that, we don’t say, “well, that was great when I was 5, that was great when I was 15, that was great when I was 35,” right? We continue to walk as we received him with faith, with trust, with repentance, and thanksgiving. That is the whole of the Christian life, walking with him, recognizing who he is, submitting to him as our Lord, not just when we first believed, but all of our life.

Did you see how Paul described Jesus? As you receive Christ Jesus, the Lord. He is the king of the universe, the king over the creation, the king over our lives. We heard that just a couple

weeks ago. Jesus is the preeminent one over the world and over us. And so we don’t just submit to him back when we first believed, but we submit to him now, today, in all of our days, as we walk with him. And so as we walk with him, that means that our lives are going to be oriented with regard to the ways of the Lord and not to the ways of the world. That’s what Paul said in verse 8: “Walk in him now, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ.” So you hear what Paul’s saying, right? As you walk with Christ, as you are walking in him, do not be captive to the world. So for the Colossians, the thing that they were in danger of being captive to were the philosophies and deceitfulness and traditions that they thought set them apart. Now, I find it really fascinating that Paul uses this word captive. I find it fascinating. It’s very evocative to me because not only does it give us that picture of being in prison, right, of nowhere to go, of being surrounded, right? But when we remember where Paul’s writing this from, he’s in prison, right? He’s behind bars. He does not have freedom, and yet he’s warning those who have no shackles to be weary, to be on guard of being captive. It’s as though Paul is saying, “this one who is in prison, I am actually free because I walk in Christ.” That there is a captivity greater than bars, that is greater than jail, that is greater than prison. It is the captivity of the world.

And Paul’s saying, be mindful, be on guard. He’s warning those knotting chains about the captivity and enslavement that comes from not walking with Christ. And so for the Colossians, it was the philosophy of the day that encouraged them to move on beyond Jesus. It was human traditions. Most commentators think human traditions is referring to Old Testament Jewish practices that it would have been easy for Jewish converts to want to return to. That’s what they’re in danger of being captive by. But what about us? What are we in danger of being held captive to? Maybe it’s the allure of power and influence. Maybe it’s the promise of comfort that a middle class life might offer. Maybe it’s the enticement of sexual expression, or the charm of finding meaning in relationships, or ultimate meaning in our families. Now, all of these things in themselves have, in their right place, are good and beautiful. Power and influence, when it’s used for the sake of those who have no power, when we give voice to those who have no voice, that is using power in its right way. Sexual expression, right? In the confines of a marriage between a man and a woman, right? That is a beautiful thing. It is a gift from God. A family is a place where we can express the gospel to one another and to the world.

These things can be good and beautiful and they have the danger of holding us captive if we walk in them rather than in Christ. And so, what is it for us? It was philosophies, it was traditions for the Colossians, but what about you? What about me? Paul is saying, be on guard. Be aware. Don’t be held captive to anything other than Christ. Listen, y’all, Christ didn’t go to the cross and he didn’t scorn and shame, and he didn’t descend into the grave or rise triumphantly. He didn’t unite us to himself so we’d go along with the infatuations and entanglements of the world. No, no, he united us to himself so that we would live in light of our union with him, rooted in him, built up upon him, established in faith, abounding in thanksgiving. Because we, with him and through him, have died to those ways and we have risen to new life that we would walk in him. What’s true of him is true of us. I love that Chico Hernandez has that same ring as Shohei Otani. I love it. I love that this person, this man, that we will probably never hear about again after this sermon, has the same reward as Freddie Freeman. But I bet that if Chico Hernandez, we were to meet him, maybe we would have the privilege of having him to dinner at our house, and he’s sitting around the dining room table, and I imagine he’d be wearing that ring just like Brian was. And I could imagine that we

could ask, “can I wear it?” And he’d let us put it on, and as he would talk about the ring, I’m sure he would talk about the ring.

But you know what I bet he wouldn’t talk about? I bet he wouldn’t talk about how great he is at framing bullpen pictures. I bet he wouldn’t talk about how he is the best at warming up those guys before they go to the field. I bet he wouldn’t talk about how his knees ache from squatting all those innings. No, he wouldn’t talk about himself, because he never set foot on the field. He wouldn’t talk about himself. No, I bet he would tell us stories about Otani on the mound, and Freeman’s head, and Yamamoto coming in from the pen. He would talk about how great and victorious they were, and how thankful he could be part of it. He had nothing to do with it, and yet he still gets credit for it. Friends, as we live out our union with Christ, it means we’re going to know that we didn’t have anything to do with that victory. It means that we will know that we had nothing to do with his triumph over death. No, but we will know that because we are united to Christ, we share in that victory. We share in his death. We share in his resurrection, because as Christ goes, so go we. Amen. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you. Thank you that you have sent your Son to live, and to die, and to rise again, so that we would have life, so that the death by which he died, and the life by which he lived now, is credited to us. Father, we are thankful for that, and filled with rejoicing and celebration that what is true of Christ is true of us, not because of anything that we have done, but simply by your grace. And so we pray, Father, that you would help us to fix our eyes on Christ, and that we would walk in light of the union that you have afforded to us, so then all of our lives, not just when we first believe, not just when we first receive, but all of our lives would be filled with trust, with repentance, with faith, and with thanksgiving, that what is true of Christ is true of us. And we pray this in his name, and God’s people said together, Amen.

The post Colossians 2:6-15: Union with Christ appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

John Pennylegion

August 16, 2026

Good morning. Welcome to Christ the King. My name is Penny and I’m the senior pastor here. It is good to be with you. If you are a guest or a visitor, welcome. We’re glad that you join us this morning as we come to God’s word, as we sing to him, as we celebrate his supper in a few moments. It is good and right for us to join together and be reminded of the gospel, the truth of who Jesus is. And that’s what we’re in need of, every one of us, whether we’ve been attending CTK since its inception or this is your first Sunday. We all need the same thing, and that is the grace of our Lord. If you’ve been walking with Jesus for decades or maybe you’re a new believer or you’re exploring the things of Christ, what we are all in need of is God’s grace. And so we’re glad that we would join together and be able to hear and be reminded of his grace because that’s what we’ve been hearing in the book of Colossians. And we’re going to continue to hear about this morning. And so if you have a Bible, you can turn to Colossians chapter 1. We’re going to be looking at verses 24 through chapter 2, verse 5.

And if you have been with us over the last number of weeks, you’ve heard various things. We’ve heard various things about who Jesus is, that he is the preeminent one over creation and over the new creation, that the beauty of who Christ is, it is broken through sin and brokenness, and it is restoring and renewing those who turn to him, that we are to be grounded in this truth in the gospel. We use that word a lot, gospel. It simply means “good news,” the good news that Jesus has lived and died and risen again and that he’s making all things new. And that is what we need. We need that restoration. We need that redemption. And that’s what we’ve been hearing about. It’s what we’ve heard about in the last two weeks in Colossians. And that’s what we’ll hear about again this morning as Paul continues to describe for us and to tell us about who Jesus is and his work. And Paul this morning is not only going to talk about who Jesus is, but he’s going to talk about how is it that we grow in our relationship with Christ. And so with that in mind, let’s read Colossians 1, beginning in verse 24. Paul writes,

“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.” (ESV)

Friends, this is the Word of the Lord. Let me pray.

Heavenly Father, we ask that as we come to your Word now, that you would allow us to see and behold the goodness of your Son, our Lord Jesus. Let us see what he has done and how he is at work, and let us hold fast to your truth, hearing your Word and seeking to pursue after you. Grow us, we pray, in Christ’s name. Amen.

Well, many of you know that I have a garden in my yard. I like to garden. I don’t grow flowers. I like flowers, but I’m not good at growing flowers for some reason. I don’t know what goes well with what, and so I just grow things that I can eat, which, you know, I like that as well. But I love growing and working in the garden because I love seeing these little seeds sprout up into beautiful things that we can enjoy around our table that we can save for later when it’s cold and we can have tastes of spring and summer. And so though we’re nearing the end of the growing season, I remember the very beginning of the growing season when those beds that were brown and gray of dirt became green, full of beautiful vegetables, beautiful things, and the promise of harvest. And this summer, the harvest hasn’t disappointed. We’re coming to the end, but we’ve had plenty of tomatoes and zucchini and potatoes and peppers. It’s been a great summer of growing, except for one thing didn’t grow well this summer. And this is sad to me because it’s actually one of my favorite things to grow, and that’s my sugar snap peas. I have no idea why they didn’t grow well, but for some reason they didn’t. We didn’t have many to harvest, and we didn’t get to freeze any to bring out later to put in my sugar snap pea salad, which is delicious. They didn’t grow right. They didn’t do great. And I knew that they weren’t going to do well immediately.

You see, as soon as they started to grow, yes, they grew taller than me like normal, and yes, they had leaves like normal, but the leaves weren’t quite as green as normal. And the bright white flower that gives forth the fruit, the sugar snap pea, it wasn’t bright white. Instead, it was kind of dull and gray and wilted. And so I knew it wasn’t going to be good, and it wasn’t. The peas that did form, they were hard, and they lacked that sweet sugar snap taste. Now, I don’t know why this happened. I don’t know why they didn’t grow properly, but I do know that as I saw that they weren’t growing right, as they weren’t maturing as I thought that they would or should, I didn’t think, “well, this is just a different kind of pea this year. Same seeds, you know, but it’s just an alternative growth path for the pea.” No, I didn’t think those things. I knew something was wrong, and I knew something was wrong because I knew what a mature pea plant is supposed to be like. Seeds are supposed to grow into strong, fruitful, mature plants.

Our Understanding

You know, so far we’ve heard Paul speaking about the foundation that we have that is the gospel, and he’s talked about us being rooted in the beauty of Christ’s preeminence, but now he’s telling us what maturity looks like. We see it in verse 28, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” You see, Paul’s expectation for the church, for us, is that we would not wilt or be stunted, but we’d mature, and just as I knew what a mature pea plant is supposed to look like, and what a healthy plant should look like, and what a healthy plant doesn’t, Paul is helping us this morning by telling us what a mature follower of Christ will look like, and what he tells us is that maturity in Christ is going to have mature understanding, is going to be rooted in a solid foundation, and is going to result in mature community. That’s what we’re going to see. And mature understanding, Paul demonstrates for us this when he speaks of his own life. Did you see it in verse 24, “now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body that is the church.” Now, before we get too deep into this verse, let’s just remind ourselves of where Paul is when he’s writing this. Paul is in jail. He’s in prison, and he’s been in prison multiple times, and it’s not just prison that he’s experienced, right? Think about his entire life. He’s been shipwrecked, and he has been beaten, and he’s been stoned, and he’s been cast out of cities, and he’s bit by snakes, right? He has led a life of suffering, and now he says, “I rejoice in my sufferings.” Not, “I bemoan”, “I complain”, “I sad face”, “I vague book”. No, “I rejoice in my sufferings”.

That sounds strange to us, doesn’t it? If it doesn’t sound strange to us, it would have sounded crazy to the people who are infiltrating the church with their new philosophy, because though we don’t know about the new philosophy that was being inserted into the Colossian church, what we can surmise is that these adherents of this philosophy were trying to achieve some sort of enlightenment that would transcend the physical. They weren’t looking to rejoice in their suffering. They would have said, No, we have to throw off the body. We have to throw off the physical. We have to enter into this secret knowledge and awareness, and yet Paul says, “I rejoice”. I rejoice in my suffering. Now, listen, we don’t always know why we suffer, why we experience difficulty and struggle. In fact, I know in Tobias’s Sunday school class this morning, y’all talked about Job and suffering, and that’s one of the things, right, about Job. We don’t know always how the dots are connected and what God is doing, and yet Paul here understands. He understands that suffering, his suffering, is for the sake of others, that that’s how God is using it.

He has a perspective beyond just what he’s experiencing in his difficulty and in his strain. Look, he says, “For your sake, I rejoice in my suffering”. He describes further, “I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body.” Now, before moving on, let me just acknowledge the first part of that clause, “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions”, that is easily the most debated verse in all of the book, okay? So, there are all sorts of different interpretations, different ways of trying to make sense of it. We do not have time for me to go through all of them. So, this morning, what I’m going to do is tell you what it’s not, and then I’m going to tell you what I think it is, okay? So, what is it not? What does Paul mean when he says, “I’m filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions”? Well, he’s not saying that Jesus’s atonement was insufficient in some way, that the cross of Christ was not enough. We know he’s not saying that for a couple of reasons. One, this word affliction, it is never used in the New Testament to refer to Jesus’s sacrifice or the cross, this Greek word. So, that’s one. But more importantly, we know that Paul has already talked about how redemption comes only through the blood of the cross, right? We heard that last Sunday in our passage last week, that redemption comes only through what Jesus has done on the cross. And so, we know that Paul can’t be saying that it’s insufficient. He’s not speaking here of what Christ has or hasn’t done on the cross, okay? So, that’s not what he’s saying.

So, what is he saying? Well, I think he’s speaking of what some have called the messianic woe. The messianic woe. Now, this is this idea that with the inauguration of the messianic kingdom, right, the inauguration of Christ’s kingdom, which we heard about last week, that with Jesus’s resurrection, a new order has broken through into the world that defeats death and hell and sin, right? That resurrection has come, and that with this messianic kingdom, part of the messianic kingdom is that as we await for him to return, the people of God will experience trial and tribulation and suffering because we are united to the Messiah who suffered. That is messianic woe. And we actually see this in the New Testament. We see it in the gospels when Jesus says that we will experience tribulation, that we will experience difficulty. We see it in Romans when Paul speaks of our suffering, and it’s the idea that being a disciple of Christ means that we will suffer with Christ, Romans 8, or that we will share in his sufferings, Philippians 3. And so the suffering of Jesus, not simply his suffering in his death, but his suffering in his life, denying himself, you remember his prayer? “Not my will, but your will be done.” Denying of himself, fighting temptation, resisting the devil, this suffering of Jesus becomes the life of God’s people.

That is what we are filling up in what is lacking in Christ’s affliction, that we are participating in the suffering that Jesus engaged in first. As N.T. Wright put it, “Paul is not adding to the achievement of Calvary, he is merely putting it into practice, the principle of Calvary.” See, what is lacking is the continued suffering of the people of God until Jesus returns. That as we suffer and press through difficulty and resist temptation and fight against sin, we can rejoice. We can rejoice, not because of some sort of baptized masochism, but because we are participating in the work of Christ for the sake of others. That’s what Paul understands. That is the mature perspective, that suffering for the gospel is participating with Christ for the sake of his body. He makes it explicit, for your sake, for the sake of his body that is the church. You see, friends, by denying ourselves, by resisting temptation, by suffering for the church, we are actually making known the mystery that has been hidden. And Paul tells us that mystery in verse 27, it is “Christ in you, the hope of glory”.

Now, as I was thinking about this portion of our passage, it reminded me of that story of Peter and John in Acts 4, and the hope that they had. Do you remember in Acts 4, Peter and John had been proclaiming the gospel. They had been teaching people about Jesus and redemption that only comes through him. And so they go, and they’re causing a stir because of who they are preaching about and what they are preaching. And so they’re called before the religious leaders, and they’re examined and interrogated. And the religious leaders were told, perceived they were uneducated common men. They were astonished and they recognized they had been with Jesus. Something was different about Peter and John. And the difference was that they had been with Christ. And this difference, it plays out in chapter 5 of Acts, when again, they’re brought before the religious leaders and they’re interrogated. And this time they are not just interrogated, but they are beaten. And Peter and John, these men of great hope, these people who had been with Jesus, we are told that they went out from that place rejoicing because they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.

People noticed that they had the hope of glory. People noticed that they had a hope not of this world. A hope that was so great that they could now rejoice in their suffering. A hope that was so great that they could say what Paul later said in Romans, that “we consider the suffering of the world not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed.” That is a mature understanding. That is what we see in Paul. That’s what he’s inviting us to do. We may not always understand how God is using our struggles, our difficulties, our sufferings, but we can have understanding that the Lord is. And we can rejoice that he is using it for the good of his body.

Our Foundation

Now, if we’re going to maintain this sort of understanding, we need to have a foundation. A strong foundation. Paul spoke of our understanding of his ministry, of the mystery of hope in Christ. But then he says in verse 28, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” So, you see what the foundation is, what the soil, if you will, with which maturation occurs? It’s hearing about Christ. It’s Jesus is proclaimed. And this proclaiming comes in the form of warning and teaching. And we need warning and teaching. We need reminding of the gospel because there are dangers. We experience the dangers of deviating from the gospel. I mean, that’s what Paul’s been doing, right? With the Colossians. There’s a threat that has come into the church with this teaching that they might turn from the gospel, that they might turn from the truth. And so, Paul is warning them, he’s teaching them not to deviate. Now, listen, deviating from the gospel isn’t simply taking away from the gospel. That’s how we often think about it, right? To deviate from the gospel is to take away from it, to remove some of the things about it, right? Like, we can just keep on sinning because grace would abound. That would be deviating from the gospel. That would be taking away from it. That it doesn’t matter. Give in to temptation. It won’t really hurt that’s deviating from the gospel. It doesn’t matter. Jesus is the only way. Well, is he really the only way, right? Like, that would be deviating, taking away.

But deviating from the gospel isn’t simply taking away from the gospel or reducing it. It’s actually adding to it as well. And I have to tell you, as Western American Christians in Roanoke, Virginia, I think this is where we have greater danger of adding to the gospel, of adding to the gospel, of basically approaching the gospel with, well, the follower of Jesus is Jesus plus something, whatever that something might be. Now, I know we’ve been in the church, many of us, for many years, and we know we’re not supposed to say those things, right? Because it’s just me and Jesus, right? Like, Jesus is the only one who saves. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”, not all these other things. So, we know we’re not supposed to say it, but don’t we very easily fall victim to this of creating a litmus test that’s beyond the atoning work of Christ? Things like how a person votes or how they might educate their children, or the music that we listen to, or the people we socialize with. Isn’t that just us saying Jesus plus whatever that thing might be? I mean, that’s actually what was happening with the Colossians, right? What was seeping into the Colossian church, it wasn’t a call to reject Jesus, it was to add to Jesus with a spiritual knowledge, a hidden knowledge. But that’s deviating from the gospel by adding to the gospel, and we need reminding of that.

We need warning about that, and I hope that is what we hear every single Sunday. I hope that that is what we are hearing from this pulpit, and from our Sunday school classes, and from our times together. I hope that’s what we’re hearing every single Sunday, that we hold fast to the gospel. We don’t turn from Christ by taking away or adding to him. We stand firm with him. I hope that’s what we hear here, but I hope that’s also what we hear in our friendships, in our relationships with one another. I mean, we should ask ourselves, do we have people in our lives who will warn us about the dangers that we are flirting with, about the possibility of us deviating from the truth of the gospel? Do we have people in our lives who will say those things? And when they do, are we thankful for their commitment to us to our maturity? Paul said he toiled and struggled and prompted them towards maturity. He did it for them, for their sake.

Our Community

Now I know he was an apostle, right? He was an apostle, and that calling was unique, right? That office is over. There’s no apostles here. There’s no apostles anymore, okay? And that doesn’t change our responsibility to others, to encourage one another, to proclaim to one another, to warn and teach one another so that we would be prompting one another towards maturity. That is the foundation of the gospel. That’s the foundation that gives way to that mature understanding we already talked about, but that’s also the foundation that grows into a mature community. And that’s how Paul ends in chapter 2 verses 1-3. He says, “I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is in Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” So Paul’s saying you’ve been assured of the knowledge of God, the wisdom found in Christ, and so now this mature community will look like what? Hearts being encouraged and knit together in love. I love that image. Knit together in love. I mean, it implies that we are not standalone, separate threads wrapped around our own individual spools, but instead, as Edith Schaeffer put it, “we are a tapestry”. Have you all ever seen the back of a tapestry? If you ever get a chance, you should. I know, like, I don’t know where you would find a tapestry. We don’t have castles and, you know, maybe some of you have tapestries in your houses. I don’t know. But if you have a chance, look at the back of the tapestry, and you know what you’re going to find? You’re going to find a mess. It looks awful. It looks weird. It’s strange. It’s like all these different threads, all these different colors, and there’s no seemingly pattern to it. There’s no coherence, and they’re going in varied directions. It’s kind of like a Jackson Pollock painting, except with thread.

It’s just everywhere, and you can’t make sense of, I mean, you know, you can, okay. Jackson Pollock’s good, but regardless, you know, you understand what I’m saying. It’s a giant mess, but if you take that tapestry, and you flip it over, what do you see? It’s a beautiful picture. You look at the front, and you see these different threads, these individual strings, and they have been knit together to form this beautiful picture, and that’s what Paul is telling us the church is to be. That as we grow in maturity, we are joined. We are knit together in love. That this beautiful picture that’s formed out of divergent strings and messy lives, they are knit together in Christ. You see, friends, as we mature in our understanding of what the Lord is doing, and as we are built on the foundation of the gospel, this is how the Lord matures us, not simply as individuals, but as a community, as His body knit together in love, standing firm in our communal maturing faith in Christ. Amen. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we do thank you that you have given us your church, your body, and that you have not left us to ourselves, but you are knitting us together so that we would grow, not as individuals, but we would grow as a community of maturity, that we would hear your warning, we would embrace your teaching, we would hold fast to the gospel, and understand how you are using us to build up your people. And so we pray, Father, that you would give us this mature understanding, that you would root us in your gospel, and that you would grow us together, knitting us in love. And you would do this for the good of your name, the glory of Christ, and the good of your people. And it’s in Christ’s name that we pray, and all God’s people said together, Amen.

The post Colossians 1:24-2:5: Mature in Christ appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

John Pennylegion – August 9, 2026

Good morning. Welcome to Christ the King. My name is Penny and I’m the pastor here and it is good to be with you. If you are a guest or a visitor, welcome. Glad that you would join us this morning as we gather for worship and as we come to God’s word and sing to him and offer him praise. It is good for us to be together. And so it is good for us to join together this morning. And if you are new with us, you’re joining us in the second week of a new sermon series in the book of Colossians. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to Colossians, Chapter 1. If you don’t have a Bible, there are Bibles in the chairs in front of you and the passage can be found on page 983. So Colossians, Chapter 1.

We’re going to look at the middle section of chapter one this morning, verses 15-23. Now if you were here with us last week, then you might remember that we talked about how Paul is writing to this church that he’s never met before. He’s never interacted with them. He hasn’t been there. He didn’t plant it. He’s only gotten word about who they are and what they’re struggling with and the challenges they’re facing because of his friends, his friend Epaphras, who planted the church. And what Paul has heard from him is that there are these philosophies and ideas about spirituality and about religious life that are starting to seep into the church. And these philosophies and ideas are devaluing the significance and importance of Jesus. And so Paul writes to them. So I want you to put yourself in Paul’s shoes for a moment. I want you to think about what would you write to these people, to this group of believers, to this church, where there is danger of them being led astray, of being pulled in directions away from Jesus. How would you combat those philosophies, those pulls?

There’s a few different approaches maybe we would take, right? We could maybe take the Bob Newhart approach and just simply say, “Stop it,” right? “Don’t do it,” right? Just in big letters at the top of every parchment, like stop. We could do that. That’d be one way. Maybe we could shame them. That’d be another way, right? We could say something like, “Are you kidding me? Are you all idiots? Like, how long have you been trying to do this? And how long have you known of Jesus? And now you’re going to deviate from this?” Like, “Come on,” (give your head a shake). Maybe say that. Or maybe we could simply close our eyes and hope for the best. Maybe they’ll come to their senses and maybe not too much damage will have happened, right? Those are options that would be available to us, none of which are very good. But those are the options, and of those options, Paul doesn’t use any of them. No, when Paul seeks to counteract the philosophy of the day, of the errant teaching that is seeping into the church, he doesn’t close his eyes, he doesn’t shame them, and he doesn’t just simply yell, “STOP.” No, instead, he writes this in verse 15.

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.” (ESV)

Friends, this is the word of the Lord. Let me pray for us.

Heavenly Father, we ask that you would meet with us as we come to your word. Father, we need your help, so we ask you would open our eyes. We ask that you would make our minds attentive, that you would allow my words to honor you. Father, we pray that we would behold your glory, we would behold the beauty of Jesus, and we would cling and hold fast to him. And it’s in his name we pray. Amen.

Well, I imagine that the vast majority of us know the name Saint Augustine, that great bishop of Hippo, right? He’s one of the most influential thinkers in the history of the church, right? He’s got to be at least top five greatest theologians, maybe top three, right? It’s like Augustine, Calvin, I don’t really know who else, but you know, it’s those two, right? They’re right up there, because he was an incredible thinker, incredible mind. He lived in the 300s, in the 4th century, and his writings, his readings, they’re still poured over today. I have many of his works on my bookshelves. And it’s not just Christianity that he influenced, he influenced the broader culture. I remember being a history major at a secular university, and when we studied ancient history, we had to read Augustine. Not because of his theology, not for his influence of the church, but because of his influence to the culture at large. He was an incredible theologian, a pastor, an academic, incredibly insightful. And that’s what we remember of him, right? The great bishop, the great theologian.

But if you know of Augustine, you know that that’s not his whole story. Because before he was a bishop, before he was a pastor, he was someone chasing after what he called created things. He was climbing the ranks of academia, he was sexually immoral, he was ambitious for a governorship, and he devoted his life to a philosophy called Manicheanism. This was a philosophy that had an understanding of the world of dualism, that that there is good and evil, and they are competing against one another, and we’re not sure which will win, because both good and evil have great power. This philosophy, it mocked the Lord. It mocked the Old Testament depictions of God. This is who Augustine was. So what happened to him? How did he become this great bishop, this great theologian? Well, if you know Augustine’s story, you know that he was in a garden and he heard the words, “Take and read,” and he sat on a bench, and there was a Bible, and he opened the copy of the Scriptures, and he turned to Romans 13, and there he read of putting off his flesh, and putting on Christ, and clinging to the beauty of God and of Jesus. And he says in that moment, God’s beauty broke his rebellion. Reflecting on that moment, he wrote to the Lord, “Lord, late have I loved you. Beauty so old, so new. Late have I loved you. And see, you were within, and I was in the external world, and sought you there. And in my unlovely state, I plunged into those lovely created things which you made.” He wrote, “God’s beauty called and cried out loud, and shattered my deafness. Beauty broke through.”

His Preeminence Over Creation

It wasn’t philosophical arguments, and it wasn’t shame that transformed him, that combated the immorality that he was clinging to, or caused him to turn away from that errant philosophy. No, it was the beauty of the Lord. That’s what changed him. That’s what transformed him. That’s what combated all those other things that were seeking to pull at him. And that’s what Paul’s presenting in our passage. That’s what he puts before the Colossians, and what he’s putting before us. Paul combats the errant philosophy, and the teaching that is seeping into the church by presenting the beauty of Jesus. The beauty of Jesus seen in him being preeminent over creation. That’s how the passage began. We hear it immediately. “He,” that is Jesus, “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him and for him.”

There’s so much here in these few verses. I was talking to a friend of mine this week. He’s a pastor in Alabama, and he commented on this passage that you could probably preach a sermon on every word. A different sermon on every word. We’re not going to do that this morning. But there are a few things I want to point out. The first is that most theologians think that verses 15-20 is actually a hymn. It’s a song. And there’s some debate, like did Paul write the song, or is it a song that was familiar to, that was going around in the day? It was familiar to the different churches. You know, it was kind of making its way from place to place. It was kind of like the first century version of the Gettys, right? Like, it seems like everyone’s singing this, and maybe Paul’s like adapting it to his purposes. It’s probably the latter, not the former. That’s how I would probably understand it, that Paul probably didn’t write this. But he sings. He introduces poetry and song into his letter, and he sings. And what does he sing of? He sings Christ is the firstborn over creation. The firstborn over creation.

Now, when we hear that word, firstborn, it might make us think that Paul is saying that Jesus was a created being, right? Like that in the beginning, before there were the heavens and the earth and all that they contained, there was God the Father. And at some point, God the Father created God the Son, and then they made the heavens and the earth. It could make us think that that’s what Paul is saying, but that’s not what he’s saying. He’s not claiming that Jesus is a created being when he says that he is the firstborn of all creation, because to do so would to go against what the other scriptures tell us. Like in John, Chapter 1, we hear there that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word took on flesh and tabernacled, dwelt among us.” And of course, in John 1, the Word is Jesus. And so what we’re being told is that before there was the heavens and the earth, and before there was anything else, before there was even creation, there was the Father and the Son and the Spirit dwelling in perfect unity. John 1 tells us this.

Psalm 2, quoted in Acts 13, Hebrews 1 and Hebrews 5, tells us that Jesus is begotten, not made. Begotten, that means he’s of the same substance as the Father, not created. And so the firstborn of creation isn’t speaking of existence. It’s actually speaking of priority or rank. The pastor Kent Hughes put it this way. He said, “highest honor belong to him. Christ is completely supreme in creation.” That’s what firstborn is indicating, that Jesus is over the creation. Not that he is a created being, but that he is completely supreme over it. And we see that in verses 16-17. Do you see what Paul says? That “all things were created by him. All things were created through him.  All things were created for him. He is before all things, and he holds all things together.” Now listen, when Paul says all things, he means all things.

Not just things pertaining to Sunday morning. Not just things when we are reading our Bibles. Not just those things when we are going and praying to the Lord. No, when he says all things, he means it all. And just to make sure that we understand he means all things, he gets very explicit. In heaven and earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities. All things were created by Christ. You were, and I was, in this world. Jesus is the one for whom all things were created by, and for whom they were created for. And that means, because he is the creator and preeminent, that all things belong to him. All things were created through him and for him. And so practically what this means for us is that we are functioning the way in which we were created to function, and we are our most human when our lives are oriented towards him and under his rule. That when our talents, and our minds, and our words, and our careers, and our homes are lived for him.

But we know the world doesn’t operate that way very often, don’t we? I mean, we experience this. We see a world that often isn’t oriented towards the ways of the Lord. That isn’t functioning in a way that is supposed to, that is coming under Christ’s lordship. Or is seeking to live or operate in a way that gives him glory. Right? We see this in the world. We see it with wars, and strife, and murder, and hatred, with theft, and greed. That the created order isn’t functioning the way it was created to be. But y’all, that’s not just a problem in the world out there. That’s a problem in here too. Like, that’s a problem for me. It’s a problem for me because every time that I sin, every time that you sin, in that moment, in that second, we have not ordered that moment, that second around Christ. Instead, we’ve indulged our flesh, and given in to temptation, and lived for ourselves. Paul says in verse 21, “we were alienated, hostile in mind, doing evil deeds.” Christ is the creator, but his creation turned its back on him. Or as Augustine put it, “I abandoned you to pursue the lowest things in your creation.” We turn from the creator. But there’s good news.

His Preeminence Over New Creation

There’s good news because though the creation turned from the beauty of its creator, to the ugliness of sin and rebellion, Jesus’s beauty is found not only in his preeminence over creation, but his preeminence over new creation. Did you see it in verses 18-20? “He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” So do you see what Jesus is doing? He’s making all things new. He’s reconciling all things to himself, and we see this reconciliation in creation, in the created order. Right? When Paul says, whether on earth or in heaven, he is reconciling all things to himself. He’s picking up on a theme that he wrote of himself, that he wrote himself in Romans 8. In Romans chapter 8, when the apostle Paul is talking about the redemption of Jesus, he says the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. The creation itself is groaning because it’s been subject to futility. It’s awaiting the redemption of Jesus. It’s waiting for that day when Christ will return, and when he does, he will bring forth the new heavens and the new earth. And in that day, groaning will give way to a giant sigh of relief. I don’t know what mountain sighing will sound like, but we know that the futility that the creation has been subjected to will be no more. That there will be a new heavens and a new earth because Jesus is reconciling all things to himself. And this reconciliation isn’t just in the created order, it’s in us as well.

Because look what he does. He takes those alienated, hostile in mind, doing evil things. People like you, people like me, people not living for the creator. And in verse 22, “he is now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.” Did you hear what he does? Those who are alienated are now holy. Those who were hostile are now blameless. Those who were doing evil deeds are now above reproach. And we are this way not because of anything that we did, but because of what he does. He makes us new creations and presents us to the father as holy and blameless and above reproach. New creations. That’s what we are. The apostle Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians 5, one of the most beautiful passages in the entire New Testament, when he says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God who, through Christ, reconciled us to himself.” The old is gone and the new has come. Y’all, that is the beautiful work of Christ. He is the only one who can do this. This is the beauty of Jesus making all things new. And how does he do it? Verse 20, “making peace by the blood of his cross.” Verse 22, “reconciled in his body of flesh by his death.” Verse 18, “he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.” Paul is recounting Christ’s death and resurrection because it’s by his death and resurrection that this newness comes about. In his death, Jesus took our place and his blood was shed. He takes our punishment that we deserved and through his death, he brings peace with the Father. We were alienated and now we are children of the Father. We were hostile and rebels and now we’re part of his family.

That’s what Christ does through his death. But it’s also through his resurrection because in his resurrection, this new created order is brought about. We see it in verse 18. “He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.” Paul’s using similar language to that of creation, but now he’s talking about new creation, right? Beginning. This word beginning, it’s Jesus being the source, the source of a new age that is dawned with the resurrection. That just in the beginning, before all time, Jesus made all things new. Well, now at his resurrection, there’s a new beginning, a reconciliation, a new creation that has come. It begins. It has begun. It will come in full when Jesus returns and he consummates his kingdom. And this new order will be the norm for all time, right? This is all that we will know and experience. Glorified, resurrected bodies that are free from sin and death and decay and disease. This is the new order that Jesus is ushering in. It’s what we await, but we don’t just wait for it. We actually experience it in part today. We experience it even now because this new creation that Jesus has ushered in with his resurrection, it’s on display in his church.  Did you see what he said in verse 18? He is the head of the body, the church. It is in the church, in God’s people, where we see this new creation at work because it’s in his church, in you and in me, where the people who were alienated and hostile and doing evil are now recreated through Christ.

Now listen, when I say we see this in the church, I’m not saying that the church is free from sin. I’m not saying that we are perfect. I’m not saying that we’re not going to at times hurt each other or say things we didn’t intend to say or treat each other poorly. The church is a beautiful bride who is sometimes very ugly. So I’m not saying that we are free from sin, that we embody this perfectly. No, but what I am saying is that it’s in the context of the church that Christ is bringing this new creation about. That as we see one another repenting of sin, pursuing one another in faith and love, turning from hostility and alienation and being united together, that is a demonstration of Christ’s new creation. And it’s a demonstration not just for us, but it’s a you and me would actually be united together. This is the new creation that Christ is doing. This is our story. Some of us, many of us, experienced some of the extreme of Augustine, right? We were flirting with the seductions of the world. We were given over to the indulgences of the flesh. We were mocking the good things of God. That was my story. It was some of yours, and yet God wooed us by the beauty of the cross. He wooed us by the beauty of his son.  And so if we have beheld this beauty, why would we ever turn to lesser things? Why would we ever flirt with philosophies and new ideas that would steer us away from the Lord? Why would we give ourselves to lesser things?

Paul says in verse 23, “if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven.” Now that phrase, the “if,” that conditional clause, it could register a lot of concerns maybe for us, because it could have a doubtful connotation. You’ve heard what you have heard, the gospel. You’ve said that you believe, but you know, Paul’s saying, I’m not sure if you’re really going to hold on. That’s how we could take it, kind of doubtful. Or we could actually read it more positively. The theologian Doug Mu says that we should interpret this if, we should read it more like, as I’m sure you will, continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope. You see, Paul is saying that those who have tasted of the goodness of God, that those who have beheld his glory, that those who have taken in the beauty of Jesus, that we continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel. Paul knows that temptations and rival philosophies and counterfeit beauties will come, but he’s telling us that the only place for our faith, the only stable and steadfast hope we have, is in the Christ who brings about the new creation, in the beauty of Jesus. Augustine said, “God’s beauty called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness.” And the beauty of the preeminent one over creation, the preeminent one over creation, that is the beauty of Christ that has shattered our deafness, has broken through our hearts, and has made us new. Amen. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have given your Son, Jesus, this beautiful one who has given his life so that we would live. Jesus, who is ruler over the heavens and the earth. Jesus, who is the ruler over our lives. We thank you that you, Lord Jesus, are the preeminent one, and I pray that we would gaze upon your beauty, we would behold your glory, and we would cling, holding fast, stable and sure to the hope of your cross and the hope of resurrection. And so I pray, Lord, that you would empower us to do this. Turn our eyes towards Christ and let us behold his beauty. And we pray all this in the name of Christ and God’s people said together, Amen.

The post Colossians 1:15-23: The Beauty of Christ’s Preeminence appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Rev. John Pennylegion – August 2, 2026

Good morning. Welcome to Christ the King. If we haven’t met, my name is Penny, and I’m the senior pastor here, and it is good to be with you. If you are a guest or a visitor, welcome. We’re glad that you would join us this morning, and you are joining us in the first Sunday of a new series in the Book of Colossians. So we’re in the New Testament Book of Colossians, so if you have a Bible, you can turn there to Colossians 1. If you don’t have a Bible, there are Bibles in the chairs in front of you, and you can find our passage on page 981, or you can follow along on the screens, because we’ll have the passage there as well. But since this is the first week in a new series, it’s good for us to take just a moment and to orient ourselves to this book of the Bible.

I’m sure some of you have read it before, maybe you’re familiar with it, maybe you’ve studied it. Others of us, maybe this is the first time we’ve opened up to this portion of God’s Word, and so it’s important for us to know a little bit about it. And so what we need to know is that this was written by the Apostle Paul, and he’s writing to a church that he’s never actually met. So this is a little bit unique, because oftentimes when Paul is writing a letter, he’s writing to maybe a fellow laborer like Timothy or Titus, or he’s writing to a church that he helped plant or start, that he’s familiar with, like 1st or 2nd Corinthians, or Ephesians, or Philippians. But here with Colossians, Paul’s never been there. He hasn’t interacted with these people, he doesn’t know their faces, he’s only heard their names through his fellow worker, fellow laborer, Epaphras. You see, this church was planted by Epaphras, and over the years, somewhere along the way, we’re not sure when, but Epaphras has been talking to Paul, and been sharing with Paul about this church, about how it’s growing, how it’s facing various challenges, what’s occurring within the life of the church. And so Paul’s writing to them. He’s writing to them from prison, and we’re not sure which of his imprisonments he’s writing from, right? There’s a number of them, you can read about them in Acts, but historically and traditionally, we have thought that he’s probably writing from his time in prison in Rome.

And so what this means is this is one of his later letters. And he’s writing to them because there are these philosophies and ideas that have started to seep into the church, that are devaluing the importance and significance of Jesus. And instead, these philosophies and ideas are emphasizing a need for heavenly wisdom, or secret knowledge. In fact, it’s kind of like what would later come to be known as Gnosticism. It’s not Gnosticism yet, because that doesn’t appear until many, many years after Paul is dead, but it’s kind of like a proto-Gnosticism, where the people are encouraged to move on beyond the things of this world, physicality, and the things that we experience, and what we need to achieve is some sort of heavenly, or secret, or enlightened knowledge. That’s what’s seeping into the church, and Paul’s writing to them to encourage them and to tell them that what their greatest need is, above anything else, is Jesus. In fact, so much so that some theologians have referred to Colossians as the most Christ-focused of the New Testament letters. Now, that might be a little bit of hyperbole, because all the New Testament letters point to Christ, right? But we get the point.

Paul is presenting to them and to us that what we need, more than anything else, is Christ. Okay, that’s a little bit of background. I’m sure as we go through this series over the next few months, there’ll be other bits of background, but that’s probably sufficient for now. So, let’s go ahead and dive into our passage, and we’ll read Colossians 1, beginning in verse 1.

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (ESV)

Friends, this is the word of the Lord. Let me pray for us.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can come to your word and we ask now that you would help us to open our eyes to behold your goodness. Father, we ask that by your Spirit you would meet with us, that you would give us understanding, that you would increase our knowledge, and that everything that is said and done here would honor you. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.

So, the other week I was having lunch with a friend. It was just a normal lunch, casual. There was nothing earth-shaking. There was nothing groundbreaking. There was nothing mind-blowing about our lunch, our conversation. It was just a normal kind of catch-up. How are things going? Let’s reconnect a little bit. And as the lunch was ending and we were getting ready to go to our different places, my friend stopped and said, “Well, what do you need?” What do you need? And I have to tell you, in that moment, I was taken back a little bit. I was kind of surprised that he would ask me this question. It was innocent enough, but it kind of threw me for a loop, and it was a little bit disorienting because I can’t remember being asked that directly about my need, right? He didn’t ask, “Is there anything you need? Is there anything I can do?” He simply said, “What do you need?” And that implied to me that I clearly have some sort of need he’s aware of. If he would have said, what do you need? Or how can I help you? Or is there anything I can do for you?, then I could have processed that a little bit and realized, well, I’m not a needy person. I don’t need anything. I’m perfectly fine. But “What do you need?” It kind of was unsettling.

And the first thing that ran through my mind that I didn’t say out loud was I need nothing. I didn’t know how to respond to him. Because in that moment, and honestly, in most moments of my life, I don’t want to be in need. And I don’t want to be known as someone who is in need or is needy. And yet, as I was thinking about that, the truth is that every time that I ask for prayer for myself, or every time I pray for myself, or I pray for someone else, I am praying because in that moment, that thing that I’m praying about means I have need. Right? I’m praying for God’s patience, for his direction, for his strength, for his leading, for his wisdom. By praying for it, it implies that I don’t have it. That I am in need. And the truth is, it’s not just me that’s in need, but we all are. We’re all in need. And Colossians 1 is helping us to see what that need is.

Gospel Rootedness

We see it through Paul’s prayer for the Colossians. Now, as we come to Colossians 1, there are kind of multiple ways we could approach this passage. We could approach it from the standpoint of associating ourselves with Paul, and saying, this is the model prayer for people in need. So, we could approach it that way, and there’d be nothing wrong with that. It’d be totally appropriate. Pastors have done this, you know, many, many times over. Totally fine. Or we could approach it by associating ourselves with the Colossians and seeing that maybe this is a prayer for our need. So I’m going to take the second way. We’re going to look at it by associating ourselves with the Colossians and seeing that Paul is praying not only for their need, but for ours. And what our need is, is gospel-rootedness and gospel-fruitfulness. Those are the two things that we’re in need of. Gospel-rootedness and gospel-fruitfulness. And we see the rootedness in the Gospel in the three things that Paul points out in verses 3-5. He says, “We always thank God when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, the love you have for all the saints, and because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.” So, you hear it, right? Paul’s heart is stirred with thanksgiving when he hears about their faith, love, and hope. Those are the things that root us in the gospel. Faith, love, and hope.

1. Faith

Now, faith isn’t just some kind of nebulous, rootless trusting in anything. Faith is specific. Did you see that? Paul didn’t just say “Faith”, he said “Faith in Christ Jesus.” Faith in Christ Jesus. Now, look, we’re in church, and maybe you’ve, you know, you’re familiar with the ministry here at CTK. Maybe you’ve been coming for a while. Maybe you’ve listened to some of the sermons from time to time online, whatever it might be. But we’re in church, and so you’re going to expect at some point we’re going to talk about faith in Jesus, right? Like, we’re at least going to say that phrase because faith is a very churchy thing, and it’s a very important churchy thing. And because we’re familiar with it, it’s easy for us to hear faith in Christ and just be like, okay, I know, faith in Christ, but let’s get a little bit deeper. Let’s get to something meatier, something more theological.

But don’t move so quickly off faith. Now, in fact, we don’t want to bypass this. We want to actually sit with it for at least a second, because the truth is that there are many things we can put our faith in. We shouldn’t presume that we have put it in Christ, because there are many things we’re invited to put our faith in. Other religions, national leaders, right? The economic markets, ourselves, right? We can put our faith in our ability, our knowledge, our capabilities. We can put our faith in so many things. And so before we move off of it, we have to ask ourselves, where is our faith? What have we put our faith in? Is it these other things that we are invited to, or is it in Christ? Because in an ultimate sense, faith that isn’t in Jesus is brittle, and it’s movable, and it is rootless. The faith only has ultimate value if it’s in Christ. And so where is our faith?

•  Love

Gospel rootedness begins with faith, but Paul doesn’t just stay at faith, he moves on to love. And look who they love. They love all the saints. Now, that word saint in the New Testament, some of you know this already, saint isn’t referencing super Christians, okay? Saint isn’t those people who, like, sell all their possessions, and they move into a jungle, and we never hear about them again until they come back with a tribe that is converted to Jesus, right? Like, that’s not the saint that Paul is talking about. Saints aren’t super Christians. They’re not canonized. They’re not those who perform miracles. No. Biblically speaking, saint is anyone who has faith in Jesus. So, if you’re here this morning, and your faith is in Christ, and his resurrection, his death, his work for forgiveness, then that means you are a saint. You’re a saint. Saint Doug, and Saint Hugh, and Saint Sarah, and Saint Lisa. That we are the saints. That’s what Paul calls us. That’s what the New Testament calls us. That if we belong to Jesus, we are united to him, and we are his saints.

But we’re not just united to him, we’re united to one another. So, we love not only Jesus, but we love his people. That’s what Jesus said in John 13. Do you remember? He said, “by this all people will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Love for the saints is evidence that we belong to Christ. Now, love may not sound all that radical or unique to our ears, because we live in a world that’s calling us to love always, right? We’re supposed to have love for our country, and love for our family, and love for our friends, and for goodness sakes, Virginia is for lovers, right? Calls to love are all around us. But think about the people that we love.

The people that we love are often people who are very much like us, aren’t they? People who raise their kids like we do. People who vote like we do. People who look like we do. People who sound and behave like we do. But love of the saints? Well, that’s a love where skin color, and common language, and economics, well, it has nothing to do with it. You see, we love one another because the gospel transcends those things that often divide us. It transcends us because it unites us in Christ. That the most important thing about who we are, our faith in Jesus, is the thing that we have in common, and that’s what we are united around, and that’s why we love one another. That the gospel unites us in Jesus, and unites us in love. I mean, think about Paul. I said earlier that Paul had never met these people, but you wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t shared that with you, and we’re just reading through Colossians. You would have assumed, I bet, I would have, that Paul had planted this church. He had spent many years with these people, right? He had walked through hardship and joy, and he knew their faces and all their names because there’s so much love, right? There’s so much affection in just these first 14 verses. You would assume he knew them intimately, and he’s never met them.

The Colossian church could have showed up at his jail cell, and he would have had no idea who they were, and yet he loves them. He loves them because he is united to them in Christ, and we are united to one another. That is gospel rootedness. It’s love. It’s faith, but finally, it’s hope.

• Hope

We hear it. “A hope laid up for you in heaven.” You see, gospel hope is not founded in the things of this world. No, gospel hope turns our attention to what’s to come. We heard it actually in our assurance of pardon. We heard in Titus that “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation, training us to renounce ungodliness, to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives, waiting for our blessed hope.” And what is that hope? Well, it goes on in Titus. “The appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” That is the hope that is laid up for us in heaven. That Jesus is going to appear. He is going to return, and when he does, he will make all things right. He will do away with sin and death and despair, and we will dwell with him and all the saints. The saints who came before us and the saints who will come after us. We will dwell for all time. That is the hope of heaven. That is gospel hope.

A hope that doesn’t look to the things of this world for redemption, but looks only to Jesus. That’s what we hear at the end of our passage. Did you see it in verses 12-14? “The Father who has qualified you, qualified us, to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” What is this inheritance? It’s heaven. “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness, transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” You see, friends, that’s what it means to be rooted in the gospel. To have faith and love and hope, because we were once those who were dead in our sins and trespasses. We were those who were once dwelling in the land of darkness, but we have now been transferred. The word transfer, the theologian Peter O’Brien, he comments that this invokes the image of a king picking up a people and moving them at his will. And that’s what God has done to us. We didn’t transfer ourselves. We didn’t move from darkness to light on our own. No, he transferred us from darkness to light, from death to life, from the tyranny of sin to the kingdom of Jesus. And he has done it through the work of Jesus, the one who forgives our sins. Friends, that is what we need.

Gospel Fruitfulness

That is the rootedness of the gospel, the hope, the faith, the love that we have in the gospel. But Paul doesn’t only talk about gospel rootedness. He also talks about our need for gospel fruitfulness. So we see the language of fruit in verse 6-10. The gospel is bearing fruit, increasing in the world. Verse 10, believers are to bear fruit. And so for Paul, this bearing of fruit plays out in two ways. The first is in knowledge and the second is in our walks.

1. Our Knowledge

So we see with knowledge in verse 9, “that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” Okay, so I said earlier that we want to associate, we’re going to associate this morning more with the Colossians than Paul, but for just a moment, let’s think about Paul. And let’s think about his prayer. And when I thought about Paul’s prayer, I realized how different Paul’s prayer is than my prayers. So what do I pray for? I pray for my behavior, my thoughts, my actions, for wisdom. I pray for the health of others, for relational dynamics, right? I pray for all these things. And all those things are perfectly fine, right? Don’t hear what I’m not saying. Pray for those things, you know. Pray for them for yourselves. Pray for them for me. Pray for them for one another. There’s nothing wrong with those. But you notice what Paul prayed for? Knowledge. The knowledge of God. To increase in wisdom and understanding. You see, the fruit of the gospel is us growing in knowledge of who God is and his will for our lives.

Now maybe you’re thinking, it’s all well and good, Penny, but I’ve believed in Jesus for decades. I’ve known the Lord since my earliest days. I know an awful lot about God. And that’s probably true. In fact, I know many of you, I know most of you, and you do know a lot about God. But think about the relationships you have with others. Like your relationship with your spouse, with your children, with your friends, with your siblings. Do you ever exhaust learning about your people in your life? I mean, like, would you ever go to your wife, say, and say to her, “I know you want to share with me all this stuff that you’ve learned or been thinking about, but, you know, I kind of know what I need to know.” I mean, you could say that, but then you better follow it up with some jewelry and maybe some flowers, right? You would never say that because we also know the truth is that we can never exhaust those relationships, right? That over weeks and months and years and decades of living with a spouse, of being around our siblings, of engaging with our friends, that we’re learning more about who they are. We’re learning more about what they love, what they think. And if this is true of our spouses, of our siblings, of our parents, how much more true of an infinite, almighty, creator God. We can never exhaust our knowledge of him.

So how do we increase in knowledge then? Well, it’s not through secret wisdom. It’s not through hidden philosophies. It’s through the ways that God has revealed himself. It’s through things like reading the Bible and reading great theological books and coming to worship and sitting under God’s word and going to Bible studies and Sunday school classes. This is how we grow in the knowledge of God. And this is where many of us are probably going, this is speaking my Presbyterian language. Because we like thick books and big theological words, right? Because we’re the people that, why would we use a five-cent word that everyone would understand when we could use a five-dollar word that only we do and makes us look so smart? But we must see, friends, that gospel fruitfulness isn’t theological big-headedness. We shouldn’t reduce fruit to data because data is not enough.

Think about the wise men when they came to Herod. So, you know, the nativity story in Matthew chapter 2, the wise men, they’re following the star and they see where it’s coming and they know that this is where the Messiah is going to be born, the king of the Jews. And so they go to Herod, right? Because you go to a palace, that’s where a king would be born, logically. But they go to King Herod and they say, “Where’s the king to be born?” And Herod has no idea who they’re talking about. So Herod goes to the chief priests and the scribes. These are the experts in the Jewish law. He goes to them and says, “There’s a king supposed to be born. Supposedly he’s maybe been born. You know anything about it?” And what do they do? They quote from the Old Testament. Oh yeah, the king of the Jews, the Messiah, is to be born in Bethlehem.

So if you’re a scribe, you’re a chief priest, right? You have the biggest heads theologically, right? And you have been waiting and hoping and longing for the Messiah to come. And you just got wind that maybe that a baby has been born and it sounds an awful lot like this one that you’ve been waiting for. What would you do? You would drop everything, right? You would throw away your papers, you’d go running, you’d be sprinting, right? Wise men, can I hop a ride on a camel? Let’s go, right? But what did they do? They went back to their books and they put their heads down because data and information isn’t enough. What we do with knowledge is what we need to be pursuing. Fruit isn’t just knowledge. It is knowledge, but it’s not just knowledge.

• Our Walk

Because true fruit leads to true walking. It leads to walking. That’s what we see as we grow in knowledge. Verse 10, “So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” True knowledge manifests itself in true action. That we are not simply to be doer or knowers about God in his word, but we are to be doers and reflecting that knowledge of him. As N.T. Wright put it, “understanding will fuel holiness, holiness will deepen understanding.” And that is the fruitfulness that we are to be pursuing. This is the work of God in us. We see it in verse 11. After we “walk in a manner worthy of the glory of God,” Paul says, “being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy.” You see, God strengthens us by his glorious might so that we would endure. We would live with patience and joy. We would manifest the qualities of the gospel, love and hope and faith. That we would have gospel fruitfulness.

Now listen, it’s very important for us to hear that some of us, when we hear walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, that for some of us could feel like a noose around our necks or a blade above our heads. Because what we might hear is we better get our stuff together and we better walk in a way that pleases God or else. And I better make sure I’ve got all my words right and I’ve got all the ways that I’m supposed to look and all the things. I better get it all right. That’s what some of us hear. But y’all, that’s not the gospel. The gospel is Christ has redeemed you. He has forgiven your sins not because you pulled yourself together. No, you didn’t transfer yourself from death to life. He did it. The gospel is Christ redeeming and forgiving and it comes before our walking. You see, we respond to his grace. We respond to his redemption with joy and patience and endurance. We respond because he has loved us. Not so that he would love us.

You see, the walk, this gospel fruitfulness, isn’t us trying to merit God’s grace. It is a joyful response to his grace. C.S. Lewis was once asked, “Is it easy to love God?” And he replied, “It is to those who do it.” This isn’t as paradoxical as it sounds. When you fall deeply in love, you want to please the beloved. That is the gospel. That when we have tasted of the love of God in Christ and we have experienced the work of the gospel in our lives and when our need for forgiveness has been met in Jesus, we’ll want out of joy to please our beloved. We will want to be rooted in the gospel and experience and grow out and manifest fruitfulness from that gospel. And we need his help to do it. And so let’s ask him to do to help us now. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you. Thank you that you have revealed the gospel of our Lord Jesus to us. And that is our greatest need. The forgiveness of sins, the redemption of our bodies, the work that you, Jesus, have done on our behalf. And so we pray that you would root us in faith and love and hope, that we would turn our eyes towards you and fix them upon your grace, clinging to it, holding fast to it. And as we hold fast, Father, equip us to live fruitfully as a beautiful response to your beautiful grace. We pray that you would help us. We are in need of your grace. And so we ask that you would lead us and guide us. And we pray all of this in the name of Christ, and God’s people said together, Amen.

The post Colossians 1:1-14: Paul’s Prayer for Our Need appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Proverbs 4:20-24, 12:18-19, 17:28, 18:21, 25:11, 26:4-5, 27:14: Words appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Proverbs 6:6-11, 8:22-31: Work appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post  Proverbs 9:1-6, 13-18: Leave Your Simple Ways, and Live appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Proverbs 3:11-12, 4:1-7, 13:24, 22:6, 23:15-16: Family appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Proverbs 30:1-9 : Give Me Neither appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Proverbs 14:29-30; 15:1, 18; 16:32; 19:11, 19; 24:28-29; 25:21-22: Anger appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post  Proverbs 23:1-18: Surely There Is a Future appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Proverbs 13:20, 15:22, 17:17, 18:24, 25:20, 27:5-6, 27:9, 27:17, 28:23: Friendship appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Proverbs 1:1-7: In Need of Wisdom appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Habakkuk 3: Rejoice in the Lord appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Habakkuk 2:2-20: Where to Put Your Faith appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Habakkuk 1-2:1: Don’t Look Away appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 12: Go Your Way appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 11: God Is in Control appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 10: A Vision for Daniel’s Grief appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 9:20-27: Delay Not appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post John 20:1-18: Darkness Defeated appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 9:1-19: Nothing in Our Hands appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 8: Waiting for the End appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 7: The Comfort of Apocalypse appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 6: Life With the Lion appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 5: A Banquet of Warning appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 4: The Way Up Is Down appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 3: Called to Worship, But Whom? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 2:24-49: The Fragile vs. Firm Kingdom appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 2:1-23: Wisdom in Exile appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Daniel 1: Faithfulness in a Foreign Court appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download a copy of the bulletin below:

The post Matthew 7:21-29: The Rock of Our Faith appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 7:12-20: The Kingdom Path appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 John 2:28 – 3:10: God With Us: In Heaven appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Luke 2:8-20: God with Us: In the Manger appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Isaiah 6:1-8: God with Us: In the Temple appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Exodus 33:1-6, 17- 34:9: God with Us: On the Mountain appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post God With Us: In the GardenGod With Us: In the Garden: Genesis 1:26-31; 2:5-7, 15-17; 3:8-11 appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 7:7-11: The Needy Who Ask appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 7:1-6: On Judging Others appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 6:25-34: Do Not Be Anxious appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 6:19-24: Serving What Is Temporary or What Is Eternal? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 6:5-15: The Prayer of Kingdom People appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 6:1-4, 16-18: Before An Audience appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 5:43-48: Loving Your Enemies appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 5:38-42: Putting Aside Vengeance appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 5:33-37: Handling the Truth appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 5:31-32: Divorce and Marriage appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 5:27-30: Extinguishing the Embers appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 5:21-26: Dealing with a Murderous Heart appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 5:17-20: The Law and Righteousness appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 5:13-16: Salt and Light appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 5:1-12: Kingdom Qualities appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 38: God the Rebuker, God Our Salvation appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 35: Responding to Attack appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 50: God Speaks appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 88: Being Shaped By Lament appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 134: Blessing appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 37: Fret Not, There’s a Good Future appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 13: When Life Keeps Being HARD appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 145: A Song of Praise appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 13:20-25: A Final Blessing appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 13:7-19: Imitation appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 13:1-6: The Job of Every Christian appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 12:18-29: A Kingdom That Cannot Be Shaken appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 12:4-17: A Father’s Discipline appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 12:1-3: And We Run appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 11:17-40: The Family Trait appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 11:1-16 Faith: Trust and Hope appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post John 20:19-29: Too Good To Be True? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 10:19-39: Let Us appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 10:1-18: Solving Imperfection appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 9:15-28: The Mediator’s Blood appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 9:1-14: Perfect Priest, Perfect Sacrifice appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 7:1-28: The Order of Melchizedek appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 6:13-20: Anchored appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 5:11-6:10: Warning and Hope appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 4:14-5:10: Our Great High Priest appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 4:1-13: Rest for Our Souls appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 3:7-19 : On Alert appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 3:1-6: The Servant and the Son appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 2:5-18: The Founder of Our Salvation appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 1:4 – 2:4:Resisting Drift, Feeding Our Faith appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Hebrews 1:1-3: God Speaks appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post John 3:16-21: The Love and Justice of God Revealed appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Luke 1:26-38

The post  Luke 1:26-38: An Ordinary Girl and an Extraordinary Child appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post John 3:16: Eternal Life appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post John 3:16: The Challenge and Invitation of the Gospel appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post John 3:16: The Gift of Gifts appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post John 3:16: The Wonder of Love appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post John 3:9-15: A New Way of Seeing appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post John 3:1-8: The Ruler and the Rabbi appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 16:1-8: The End of the Beginning appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 15:1-47: The King’s Cross appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 14:53-72: The Judge Who Is Judged appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 14:32-52: Preparing for the Cross appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 14:12-31: The Line between Good and Evil appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 14:1-11: What’s He Worth? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 13:1-37: Living in the In-Between appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 12:35-44: Who Gets the Glory? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 12:13-34: The God of the Living and of Life appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 11:27-12:12: The King’s Authority appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 11:12-25: Cursing and Cleansing appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 10:32-52: What Do You Want? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 10:13-31:Becoming appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 10:1-12: An Accommodation and The Ideal appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 9:30-50: The GOAT appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 9:14-29: A Lesson about Faith appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 9:1-13: The King of Glory appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 8:34-38: The Way of Jesus appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 8:22-33: Seeing the King appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Ephesians 3:14-21: How can we possibly love & obey God? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 8:1-21: Remembering the King appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 2 Corinthians 2:14-17, 3:3-6: Sufficiency for Ministry appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 7:24-37: Coming to the King appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 7:1-23: A Matter of the Heart appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 6:45-56: You’ve Got to See This appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 6:30-44: Rest Interrupted appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 6:14-29: Fury and Fascination appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 6:1-13: That’s Offensive!  appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 5:21-43: The Story of Two Daughters appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 5:1-20: Power Over Evil appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 4:35-41: The King Who Calms appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 4:21-34: Christ’s Kingdom appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Easter Sunday – Mark 16:1-8: The Faithfulness Shown In The Resurrection appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 11:1-11: The Parade of Majesty and Meekness appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 4:1-20: Hearing God’s Word appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 3:7-35:Relating to Jesus appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 2:23-3:6: The Lord of the Sabbath appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 2:13-22: Feasting or Fasting? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 2:1-12: The Forgiving King appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 1:21-45: The Authority of the King appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 1:14-20: Following the Leader appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 1:9-13: Anointed and Faithful appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Mark 1:1-8: Announcing the King appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 24: True Story, True Service appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 23: Clinging to God appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 2 Corinthians 4:7-18: Endurance appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Revelation 21:1-5; 22:17-21 – Second Advent: The Renewal of All Things appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 – Second Advent: Hope of His Coming appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 24:36-44 – Second Advent: When Will He Come? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Galatians 4:1-7 – Second Advent: Jesus’ First Advent appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 22 – A Life of Faithfulness appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 20 – Refuge and Restoration appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 14:6-15 – Caleb’s Request appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 10 – Faithful to His Word appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 9 – Who’s In and Who’s Out appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 8 – Promise and Renewal appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 7 – The Wages of Sin appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 5:13-6:27 – The Battle of Jericho appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 5:1-12 – Whose We Are appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 3:1-4:7 – A Memorial to Remind Us appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 2 – An Unexpected Faith appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Joshua 1 – Be Strong and Courageous appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 44 – Yet for Your Sake, O Lord appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 98 – Singing that Fills the Earth appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 41 – Our Foundation When Faced with Affliction appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 107 – Give Thanks appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 116 – How Do We Love God When It Hurts? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 126 – Remember, Remember appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 65 – How Could I Ever Give Thanks to God? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 54 | God Is My Helper appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 125 – Surrounded by God appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 124 – Hazards and The Helper appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 16:25-27 – Praise: The Last Word appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 16:1-23 – What Kind of Community Does King Jesus Create? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 15:14-33 – Pointing to Jesus appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 15:1-13 – Domestique appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 14:13-23 – The Weak and Strong Living Together appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 14:1-12 – Dealing with Our Disagreements appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 13 – Living as a Dual Citizen appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 12:9-21 – The Shape of Love appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 12:1-8 – God’s Mercy Makes a Difference appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 11 – God’s Faithfulness Continues appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 9:30-10:21 – Surrendering to God’s Work appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Luke 23:44-47; 24:1-11, 44-49 – The Innocent Man appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 9:1-29 – The Promise of Sovereign Mercy appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 8:31-39 – Confident in Christ appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 8:26-30 – Help in Our Weakness appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 8:18-25 – The Groans and the Glory appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 8:12-17 – Assured of Our Adoption appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 8:9-11 – Transformed by the Spirit appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 8:1-8 – Set Free & Following Jesus appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 7 – Life Outside of Prison appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 6:15-23 – You Are Not Your Own appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 6:19-24 – Stewarding our Money appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Ephesians 5:15-20 – Stewarding Our Time appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 Peter 4:7-11 – Stewarding Our Relationships appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 – Stewarding our Gifts appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Luke 24:1-3, 13-15, 27; Matthew 20:25-28 – Christ Is Central appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Luke 1:26-38 – Responding to the Extraordinary appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Genesis 2:15-17; 3:6-8; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 – Christ the New Man appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Deuteronomy 17:14-20; Philippians 2:5-11 – Christ the King appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Isaiah 53:4-9; Hebrews 4:14-16, 7:23-28 – Christ the Priest appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Deuteronomy 18:15-22; Hebrews 1:1-4 – Christ the Prophet appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 6:1-14 – What, Then, Shall We Say? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 5:12-21 – Life and Death appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 5:1-11 – Rejoicing in Our Past, Future, and Present appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 4 – What Do We Put Our Faith In? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 3:21-31 – Boasting in God’s Righteousness appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 3:1-20 – Looking into the Mirror That Is the Law appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 2:12-29 – Human Guilt & God’s Grace appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 1:18-32 – Consequences of the Unrighteous Life appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Romans 1:1-17 – Salvation appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 – The Message and Manner of our Lives appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post John 4:5-26 – The Surprising Christ appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Revelation 3:14-22 – To the Church in Laodicea appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Revelation 3:7-13 – Holding Fast in Philadelphia appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Luke 15 – God’s Search for Prodigals appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Revelation 3:1-6 – To the Church in Sardis: Esse Quam Videri appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post To the Church in Thyatira appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Revelation 2:12-17 – To the Church in Pergamum appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Revelation 2:8-11 – Suffering in Smyrna appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Revelation 2:1-7 – To the Church in Ephesus appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Revelation 1:9-20 – Hearing to See appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Revelation 1:1-8 – What is Revelation About? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 39 – The Wait of Silence appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 75 appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 37 – Reorienting Our Desires appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 4 – Trouble Sleeping appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 66 – The Why and the When of Thanks appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 Corinthians 15:50-58 – Victory appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 Corinthians 15:35-49 – The Nature of Resurrection appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 Corinthians 15:12-34 – The Benefits of Resurrection appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 28:1-10 – The Empty Tomb appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 21:1-11 – The King appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 3 John – Imitation appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 2 John – Rejoice and Watch appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 John 5:13-21 – Christian Confidence appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 John 5:1-12 – Birthmarks appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 John 4:7-21 – Beloved, Let Us Love One Another appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 John 4:1-6 – Discerning Deepfakes appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 John 3:11-24 – More Than Words appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 John 2:28-3:10 – Confident When He Comes appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 John 2:18-27 – Holding Fast in the Fourth Quarter appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 John 2:12-17 – Who Do You Love? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 John 2:3-11 – Commandments, Old and New appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 John 1:5 – 2:2 – Three Beautiful Words appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post 1 John 1:1-4 – What We Proclaim appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Isaiah 49:1-7 – A Light for the Nations appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 1:18-23 – Unprecedented appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Isaiah 42:1-10 – The Lord’s Servant appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Isaiah 11:1-10 – The Shoot and the Fruit appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Isaiah 9:1-7 – The Child of Hope appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Isaiah 7:1-17 – The Problem and the Promise appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 25:14-30 – Working in the Kingdom appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 25:1-13 – Are You Ready? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 22:1-14 – A Wedding Invitation appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 20:1-16 – The Generous Kingdom appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 18:21-35 – The Kingdom of Forgiveness appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 13:47-52 – One Fish, Two Fish, Bad Fish, Good Fish appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 13:44-46 – The Kingdom of Heaven appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 13:31-33 – Small Start, Great Growth appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 – The Wheat and The Weeds appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 – The Soil of Your Heart appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Matthew 13:10-17 – Parables: Secret Revealed appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Ecclesiastes 2:18-26 – Everybody’s Working for the… appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 61 – Hiding and Hoping appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 147 – Singing amidst Ruin appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

The post Psalm 12 – Pure Words amidst Filth appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 100 – The Command to Praise appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 108 – A Song of Confidence appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

20210725_final

The post Psalm 92 – A Song of Thanks appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

20210718_final

The post Psalm 5 – A Just and Loving God appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

20210711_final

The post Psalm 131 – Calming a Stormy Soul appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 119:161-168 – Pursuing Faithfulness While Facing Persecution appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 11 – Refuge in the Lord appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 121 – Our Help appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Proverbs 25:28; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 – The Fruit of Self-Control appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Matthew 11:28-30 – The Fruit of Gentleness appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Galatians 5:16-24 – The Fruit of Faithfulness appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

20210523_final

The post Luke 6:43-45; Romans 12:9-21 – The Fruit of Goodness appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Galatians 5:16-24 – The Fruit of Kindness appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post James 5:7-11 – The Fruit of Patience appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Ephesians 2:11-22 – The Fruit of Peace appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post John 15:1-11 – The Fruit of Joy appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 – The Fruit of Love appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Philippians 4:10-23 – A Word of Thanks appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Luke 24:1-12 – The Hope of the Empty Tomb appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Philippians 4:8-9 – The Presence of the God of Peace appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Philippians 4:2-7 – Rejoicing in Our Union appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Philippians 3:17 – 4:1 – Imitating Heavenly Citizens appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Philippians 3:10-16 – Running to the Goal appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Philippians 3:1-11 – Rejoice! It’s Rubbish appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Philippians 2:19-30 – Lives of Imitation appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Philippians 2:12-18 – The Joy of Obedience appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Philippians 2:1-11 – Humbly United appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Philippians 1:27-30 – A Worthy Manner of Life appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Philippians 1:18b-26 – Life and Death appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Philippians 1:12-18a – Rejoicing in the Gospel appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Philippians 1:1-11 – Prayer For The People appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Revelation 3:7-13 – The Key of David appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Luke 18:35-43 – The Son of David appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Matthew 22:21-46 – The God of David appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post 2 Samuel 7:1-16 – The Promise of Someone Better appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Ruth 4 – There Is a Redeemer appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

*We experienced some technical difficulties this week. The audio cut out in a couple of places.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Ruth 3 – Redeemer appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Ruth 2 – A People of Care appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Ruth 1 – Living with Loss appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post 1 Samuel 31 – How the Mighty Have Fallen appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post 1 Samuel 27:1-4; 28:1-2; 29:8-11; 30:6-10, 21-25 – What or Who Dictates You? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post 1 Samuel 28:3-25 – The Warning of a Godless Life appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post 1 Samuel 26 – When Opportunity Comes appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post 1 Samuel 25 – Don’t Be a “Nabal” appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post 1 Samuel 23-24 – The Right Kind of Reach for a King appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post 1 Samuel 22 – The Cave of Refuge appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post 1 Samuel 21 – On the Run appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 148 – Praise That Fills Creation appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 7 – In You Do I Take Refuge appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 25 – We Wait appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 146 – Who Do We Trust? appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 141 – A Self-Aware Prayer appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 127 – Depending on God appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 115 – The Lord We Trust appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 86 – Incline your ear, O LORD appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 59 – Fragile Life, Strong God appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 49 – Eternal Treasure appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 34 – We Are Invited! appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 29 – The Voice of Power appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 123 – Turning Our Eyes appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post Psalm 9 – Give Thanks to the Lord appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post 1 Samuel 18-20 – The Commitment of Friendship appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post 1 Samuel 17 – Faith of a Champion appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Print PDF of Bulletin

The post 1 Samuel 16:14-23 – Two Kings appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post More Than Meets the Eye – 1 Samuel 16:1-13 appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin.

The post 1 Samuel 15 – Hearing and Obeying appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.

Download PDF of Bulletin

The post 1 Samuel 14 – Like Father, Not Like Son appeared first on Christ the King Presbyterian Church.