Pastor Blake Burrough delves into Luke 2:8–20, highlighting how God fulfills His ancient promise by revealing His glory in the birth of Jesus, not to the powerful or polished, but to unlikely outsiders like shepherds, showing that Christmas is for sinners and the overlooked. The angelic announcement and singing heavenly army proclaim that Jesus’ birth is God’s decisive invasion against sin, death, and the serpent, pointing to the greater glory of God dwelling with His people in the incarnation. As Pastor Blake emphasizes, when God’s glory is revealed in Christ, fear turns to joy, and those who behold Him are transformed to worship, treasure, and proclaim the good news.
Pastor John Murphy emphasized that God repeated the same promise for thousands of years, and in the first Advent of Jesus He fulfilled it, proving His perfect faithfulness. He explained from Isaiah 11 that God would send a Spirit-filled, just, and righteous King who brings new life out of what feels like a “stump,” and Jesus is the One who fulfills every part of that promise. Because God kept His first promise in Christ’s coming, Pastor John reminded us that we can trust Him to keep every promise still to come—including Jesus’ return.
Matt Murphy begins our Advent series 'Faithful Promises' and invites us to step into the ancient longing of God’s people, remembering what was lost in Eden and how sin fractured every part of life—yet even in humanity’s rebellion, God moved toward us with the first promise of redemption. That torch of hope carried through generations until Jesus, the true serpent-crusher, came in the fullness of time, His heel bruised at the cross and His victory secured in the resurrection so that we could be forgiven, restored, and welcomed home. Now we live in the “already but not yet,” interpreting our stories through God’s faithfulness, naming our pain without losing sight of His victory, and waiting with hope for the day He makes all things new.
Daniel 11 shows us the real nature of the world—earthly powers rise and fall, suffering is inevitable, yet nothing can overturn what God has decreed, and Jesus has already overcome it. Daniel 12 anchors our endurance in the promise of resurrection: God will rescue His people not by escape from hardship but by raising them to everlasting life in the world Jesus will remake. And like Daniel, even when we don’t understand everything, we are called to trust God, stand firm in faith, and live in hope because Jesus rose—and we will rise with Him.
Daniel 8–10 pulls back the curtain to show that behind every kingdom, cultural moment, and experience of human evil is a real but unseen spiritual war. Daniel sees that dark powers influence earthly empires, yet God limits and overrules them. In chapter 9, Daniel demonstrates how God’s people engage this battle—not through control or political power, but through humble prayer and repentance, which become acts of spiritual warfare. Even when answers feel delayed, heaven is already fighting on behalf of God’s people. Ultimately, Daniel’s visions point forward to the Anointed One whose death and resurrection delivered the decisive blow against the powers of darkness. At the cross, Christ disarmed spiritual rulers and guaranteed their destruction. So as we live in the “already/not yet,” we fight with spiritual weapons, stay alert and humble, and hold fast to the hope that Jesus’ victory is final and His kingdom will reign forever.
Pastor John Murphy’s sermon on Daniel 7 marks a transition from historical narrative to apocalyptic vision, shifting the focus from the earthly courts of Babylon and Persia to the heavenly courtroom of God. He explains that apocalyptic literature unveils truth through vivid imagery meant to inspire faith, not to decode future timelines. Daniel’s vision of four beasts represents recurring beastly kingdoms—empires and ideologies that promise good but dehumanize and ultimately fall. Yet amid chaos, the Ancient of Days sits sovereign, judging every power. The “Son of Man,” identified as Jesus, receives eternal dominion and establishes a kingdom of peace and restoration that will never end. Unlike beastly kingdoms that demand worth, Christ grants worth and shares His reign with His people. The sermon calls believers to place their allegiance in Christ’s unshakable kingdom, finding hope and endurance in His victory and reign forever.
Acts 9 reveals that faithful presence begins with being attuned to Jesus, who meets us in ordinary moments and invites us into His redemptive work. Like Ananias, we’re called to listen for Jesus’ voice and follow Him with courage, even when it leads into uncomfortable spaces. As we abide in Him through prayer, openness, and awareness, we begin to see that every ordinary place becomes holy when Jesus is present there.
Matt Murphy’s sermon on Soli Deo Gloria teaches that all things—creation, salvation, and life—exist from Him, through Him, and to Him for God’s glory alone. He urges believers to see God’s infinite worth and beauty revealed in Jesus, where divine majesty becomes mercy at the cross. Our response is to acknowledge His worth, exalt Him above ourselves, and rejoice that salvation begins and ends in God’s work alone.
In his sermon “Sola Fide – Faith Alone,” Aidan Sims teaches that righteousness before God is not achieved by works but is declared by God through faith in Jesus Christ. Drawing from Romans 3:22–28, he emphasizes that all people have sinned and are justified freely by God’s grace through Christ’s redemptive work. Faith, a gift from God, unites believers to Christ and His finished work, making them righteous in God’s courtroom—an imputed, not earned, righteousness. Sims contrasts this biblical view with the Roman Catholic idea of infused righteousness and situates sola fide within the broader Reformation recovery of the gospel. God’s declaration is final and transformative: believers live in obedience not to earn righteousness but to grow into the reality of what God has already declared true of them—saved by grace through faith alone.
In Pt. 4 of the Faithful Foundations series: The Solas of the Reformation, Pastor John Murphy taught that salvation is not something we can earn or deserve—it is entirely a gift of God’s grace through the finished work of Christ. From Ephesians 2:1–10, he reminded us that apart from Christ we are spiritually dead, enslaved to sin, and unable to save ourselves—dead people can’t fix themselves. But God, rich in mercy and great in love, made us alive with Christ; we are saved by grace, not by our works. Pastor John warned that both religious performance (“I can earn God’s favor”) and self-sufficiency (“I don’t need grace”) reject the gospel’s core truth. Salvation is a free gift to be received, not achieved. Grace produces humility, worship, and obedience—not to earn love, but in response to the love already given. As Pastor John concluded, “Grace isn’t opposed to effort, it’s opposed to earning.” We are God’s workmanship, saved by grace alone to display His immeasurable kindness and live lives of grateful worship.
In Solus Christus – Christ Alone, Aidan Sims reminds us that our salvation rests entirely on the finished work of Jesus, not on anything we can add. Like a rider who must keep their eyes fixed on where they want to go, the Church must keep its gaze on Christ alone, lest we drift toward “Jesus and…”—Jesus and good behavior, and religious observance, and social causes. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture reveals that God’s plan of redemption is fulfilled in Jesus—the promised Seed, the true Tabernacle, the eternal King. Fully God and fully man, Christ lived in perfect obedience, bore our sin, and rose to reconcile us to the Father. Through the Spirit, we are united to him so that his story becomes ours—his death our death, his resurrection our life. Salvation is wholly God’s work, accomplished by the Son and applied by the Spirit. When we look at ourselves, we see only our unworthiness; but when we look at Christ, we see the unshakable assurance that we cannot be lost.
In this message from the Faithful Foundations series, Pastor John Murphy unpacks the first cry of the Reformation: Sola Scriptura—Scripture Alone. He shows why God’s Word is sufficient, inspired, and authoritative, contrasting it with the dangers of adding to it or placing ourselves above it. From Luther’s stand at the Diet of Worms to Paul’s words in 2 Timothy 3, the call is clear: Scripture alone must anchor what we believe and how we live. More than information, it leads us to transformation as it points us to Christ.
Pastor John Murphy began a new series 'Faithful Foundations' on the Solas of the Reformation, reminding us that without an anchor we drift, just as the church did before the Reformation. From Romans 1:16–17, he highlighted Martin Luther’s discovery that salvation is not earned by works but received as a gift of God through faith alone—a truth that opened the “gateway to paradise.” The five Solas remind us today that according to Scripture alone, salvation is in Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, for the glory of God alone.
Pastor Donnie Griggs, preaching from Acts 9:31 and Hebrews 10:24, encouraging us to trust God for a season of peace, strengthening, and multiplication. He explained that peace is both God-given and something we must actively preserve, creating space to build up the church through deeper discipleship, care for the vulnerable, a culture of serving, and the raising of strong, godly men. Multiplication flows from God but requires gospel ambition, prayer, and dependence on the Spirit, as the early church lived with holy discontentment, generosity, and faith, seeing God do remarkable things again and again.
Pastor John Murphy’s sermon on Daniel 6 teaches that prayer is the true battleground of life, as Daniel’s lifelong habit of faithful prayer sustained him even under threat of death. It warns us not to put our hope in “weak kings” like politics, money, or relationships, but instead to trust God’s strength to deliver. Ultimately, Jesus is the true and better Daniel who faced the lions of sin, death, and Satan on our behalf, so we are called not to strive to be like Daniel but to trust the One who delivers us.
In Daniel 5, the fall of Belshazzar shows that human kingdoms built on pride and blasphemy cannot stand, but God’s holiness and justice endure. Just as Belshazzar was weighed and found wanting, so too are our own attempts to build lasting kingdoms, yet God has not forgotten His people. In Christ—the true King who was weighed in our place and not found wanting—God establishes an eternal kingdom that cannot be shaken, offering hope and life to all who belong to Him.
In Daniel 4, Pastor John Murphy reminds us that God often gives a “check engine light” in our lives—warning us about the danger of pride before it destroys us. Pride hides in many forms, whether through self-glory, self-sufficiency, comparison, or ignoring God’s Word, and Nebuchadnezzar’s fall shows how God always humbles the proud. Yet his restoration points us to Jesus, the true King who humbled Himself, was exalted, and now calls us to repent, confess our pride, and look to Him for mercy.
This sermon by Matt Murphy unpacks Daniel 3 around Nebuchadnezzar’s golden statue, showing how the pressure to bow—through authority, conformity, spectacle, and fear—mirrors the idols and cultural pressures we face today. Just as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship Babylon’s false gods, we too are called to resist modern idols of self, wealth, politics, sexuality, and nationalism. Every false god either consumes us or abandons us, but the living God meets His people in the fire, rescues them, and proves Himself faithful. Our hope is not found in grit but in grace—Jesus took the ultimate furnace of judgment in our place and now stands with us in every trial. Because of this, we can live day by day with quiet faithfulness, refusing to bow to lies, and trusting that we are never alone in the fire.
Pastor John Murphy reflects on what happens when human wisdom fails, using both the folly of modern “experts” and Nebuchadnezzar’s dream as examples. In the passage, Babylon’s wise men admit they cannot interpret the king’s dream—highlighting that human wisdom overpromises and underdelivers—while Daniel turns to God, who alone reveals truth. The dream points to a succession of earthly kingdoms that will all fall, but also to a divine kingdom, established through Jesus Christ, that will never end. Pastor John urges listeners not to build their lives on unstable human ideas or fading powers, but to anchor their security, identity, and hope in Christ, the cornerstone, whose unshakable kingdom will one day fill the earth. The right response, like Daniel’s, is worship, humility, and trust in God’s wisdom.
Pastor John Murphy opened the Faithful Exiles series by showing how Daniel’s story teaches us to trust God’s control, favor, and sustaining power even when we feel like outsiders in a culture that pressures us to compromise. He reminded us that Daniel’s faithfulness points beyond himself to Jesus, the better Daniel, who was faithful for us. Through communion and baptism, we declare that our hope and allegiance belong to King Jesus, not to the world around us.