This Sunday's Worship Materials can be found in the "Featured Sermon" below. We meet in person at Harper Park Middle School, and the service is also livestreamed on our YouTube channel.

The Advance of the Kingdom (Matthew 11:11-19)

August 18, 2013 Speaker: Rev. Dave Dorst Series: The King and His Kingdom! - A Series in the Book of Matthew

Topic: Sermons Passage: Matthew 11:11–11:19

Do you ever get tired of feeling like no matter how you live or act, there will be someone to question your decision? Maybe you feel criticized by family or friends for being very strict with the entertainment choices that your family makes. But as soon as you loosen up your standards, someone will call you a permissive hedonist. If you only have 1 or 2 children, people question why you're not doing enough to "be fruitful and multiply," but if you have more kids than that, others will make snide comments about overpopulation. Maybe you feel criticized for how you dress, the car you drive, the size of your house, your family's schooling choices- there are always people who will let you know you've chosen the wrong way to live according to their standards.

We feel that with the church sometimes, too. To some people, Potomac Hills is way too intellectual and somber on Sunday mornings. Yet others have called us a "rock and roll church" and implied that we water things down for seekers. Big churches look down on small churches for their lack of relevance and attractiveness, while small churches criticize big churches for being too worried about numbers and watering down the message.

Well, Jesus knew exactly how we all feel. In the text we're going to look at this Sunday, Jesus says that John the Baptist lived a strict, isolated lifestyle and people thought he had a demon. Jesus lived the opposite way- eating, drinking and hanging out with sinners- and they called Him a drunk and a glutton. We'll take a look at the surrounding text and see why Jesus brought this up and what He intended His original audience and later generations of Bible readers to learn from that.

I'll see you Sunday! -Dave Dorst

More in The King and His Kingdom! - A Series in the Book of Matthew

October 26, 2014

The Commission of the King (Matthew 28:16-20)

October 19, 2014

The Resurrection of the King (Matthew 28:1-15)

October 12, 2014

All is Lost (Matthew 27:57-66)