Salem Presbyterian Church
Sermons from Salem Pres, a PCA church in downtown Winston-Salem.
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Sermons from Salem Pres, a PCA church in downtown Winston-Salem.
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Humans often inflate our own capacity to fix ourselves while also shrinking God down to a coach we call in when self-help stalls out. Malachi calls that out. And challenges us to identify ourselves on a list of sinners in 3:5 we'd rather not claim. In this sermon Austin Pfeiffer traces how a holy God who could rightly consume us instead sends his Son as both the refining fire and the sacrificial lamb, so that in Christ we're not just spared the heat — we're brought inside it. SMALL GROUP QUESTIONS: 1. Malachi's list of sinners in 3:5 can catch us off guard. Do you find yourself insisting "I th
"Have we not all one Father?" Malachi's third dispute isn't really about worship rules or marriage ethics. It's about Israel forgetting who God is and the character of his love — and how that rot shows up in their worship and their marriages. This sermon walks through what it looks like to bring God our leftovers while insisting we still love him. And despite that, God doesn't fix our half-hearted faith by asking us to try harder. He fixes it himself in Christ. SMALL GROUP QUESTIONS: 1. Where does this passage challenge a false belief you hold about God or what he calls us to in scripture? 2.
Malachi opens with God saying "I have loved you," and Israel firing back, "How have you loved us?" It's the question we ask too. When the evening doesn't go how we pictured it, when scrolling makes everyone else look more loved than us. Austin Pfeiffer looks at our spiritual distress coming from measuring God's love by present circumstances instead of remembering His record. God chose Jacob before he'd earned or lost a single point and he has done the same for all those in Christ. Malachi underscores that the love holding us was never ours to win or lose. SMALL GROUP QUESTIONS: Where do you ca
The human heart is constantly revising its own narratives for self-preservation. What feels safe, staying inside our own stories, is actually what hides us from the truth. 1 John 1 argues that we cannot diagnose darkness in darkness. John insists God is light: outside us, moving toward us, hitting us from the outside like sunlight we sense and feel. Confession is how we let the outside in. Out of the cold of our sin, confession moves us into the warm light of Christ.
A feedback loop amplifies whatever is fed into it. In Galatians 6, Paul describes a community where the Spirit dwells and grace is produced, ever increasing — but only when the self gets out of the way. Austin Pfeiffer looks at specific ways the self breaks the loop: through self-righteous wish dreams of community, through a la carte theology, and through expecting to be served rather than to serve. The answer isn’t a program or a principle. It’s the cross — where Christ let go of his throne, poured out his blood, and adopted us as sons and daughters of the King. Small Group Questions: Where d
Paul tells the Galatians to "walk around in the Spirit" but his point is that the Spirit is more than a means to something better. The Spirit is the source itself. Walking through Galatians 5 we see a life where believers walk about unshackled, out of chaos we receive one fruit, and we are walking toward Eden. Along the way we see the sin we rarely admit: trying to "program our way out of our flesh" through accountability and discipline. But because of Christ's finished work, we don't live in chaos, fear, and self-destruction. We do not need our own self-will. We are free and even better, we a
The French Revolutionary Jacques Hébert called for a system of zealous perfection. Eventually that standard consumed everyone, including himself. For us, we follow Christ's teaching on forgiveness until it is personal. We affirm his ethic on generosity until it costs us something real. Whether it's the legalism of the Galatians or our own selective faith, both confess the same thing: that Christ is not sufficient. This sermon works through Galatians 5:2-15 to show what falling away from grace actually looks like — and how the Spirit frees us to run to him with empty hands.
Paul the apostle tells two stories in parallel: the children with no future and the children of the promise. Contrasting tales of children of a servant with no future security and children of a covenant promise whose future is secure unfold in the history of Israel. Paul maps these on to the lives of the Galatians to remind them of their inheritance in Christ, something they have quickly forgotten. And something we are quick to forget as well. Discussion Questions for Small Groups: 1. Where do you see yourself returning to futile and temporary things because it is easier than remembering the p
Why did God give the law if his plan was always to save by grace through faith? In this sermon on Galatians 3:15-29, Austin Pfeiffer follows Paul as he steps back and re-explains the covenant from the ground up. From Abraham to Moses to now, God has had one unbroken plan: to redeem his people. The law was never a rival to that promise. It was always a servant of it. And in Christ, the inheritance that promise always pointed to has been purchased and given freely to everyone who belongs to him — no exceptions, no prerequisites.
In this sermon on Galatians 3:1–14, Austin Pfeiffer brings application Paul's ongoing, urgent plea to the Galatians and to us. That plea is to stop trying to earn our own way, when in Christ we have already received what we really need. Looking at Abraham's story in Genesis 15 and the image of a lighthouse guiding ships to harbor, the sermon diagnoses two forms of pride: striving to prove we are enough, and quietly trying to make God conform to what we want him to be. The wage we have actually earned, every one of us, is the same sentence handed to Adam: return to dust. The Gospel answer is no
Austin Pfeiffer continues in Galatians 1, posing the question: have you ever tried to describe a place so beautiful that words feel inadequate? That's Paul's challenge in Galatians 1. He's not interested in debating the Gospel. For Paul, it is a reality he is documenting. And more than that, it is a reality that seized him and turned his entire life upside down. Galatians 1 explores what it looks like when the Gospel stops being an idea you hold and becomes a power that holds you.
In this opening sermon of an eleven-week series through Galatians, Austin Pfeiffer unpacks how Paul is fired up! Writing without his usual warm greetings, Paul blurts out his astonishment. The Galatians are making a trade they do not realize is terminal: exchanging the grace of Christ for a "different gospel." This list of obligations cannot do what grace does. Even hardworking, well-meaning people are vulnerable to it. And it misses that the answer to our sin and guilt is not trying harder. It never was.
This homily is a Maundy Thursday meditation on John 13:1-20 by Rev. Austin Pfeiffer. From the outdoor pavilion downtown, we explore whether Jesus knew about empires, about betrayal, about us? The answer—he does. And this makes his act of footwashing so startling. Like Paul writing to the Galatians, Jesus refuses to be distracted by the world's tumult, offering instead something smaller, but more radical: a towel, a basin, but ultimately a table, a meal, and his very own body and blood.
Rev. Austin Pfeiffer explores the Transfiguration of Jesus in Matthew 17, where Peter's anxious chatter and the disciples' frozen silence reveal how easily we sort Jesus into a manageable category. A good teacher, a moral example, someone worth honoring, but not the God worth falling on our face before. When the Father interrupts with "This is my Son, listen to him," Jesus speaks the full claim of the text: that the Ancient of Days himself has come down the mountain, to the cross, to reclaim the Peters and the quiet ones alike. Not because of anything we do, but because he keeps speaking a bet
