Each Lord’s Day the Word is preached at Pleasant Springs Church. Here we keep those messages — written out in full, with Author and Audience context and links back into our Discipleship School — so the testimony can be read again, shared, and handed on to the next generation. Use the date list to browse by year and month.
Conquering Divisions
Ephesians 4:1–6 • Matthew 28:19–20 • 1 Corinthians 4:5 • Matthew 18:15–17 • Philippians 2:3–5 • Ephesians 6:12 • Galatians 5:17
For nine weeks the battlefield was outside the camp, then inside our own chest. Here it is the pew beside you. Christ creates the unity and the Spirit establishes it; what is left to us is maintaining it — and the same moment of choice that decides a temptation decides an offence. On the destructiveness of assuming we know why someone did what they did, on going to the source and asking rather than accusing, and on the uncomfortable possibility of being right about the argument and wrong in the spirit we carried into it. Division is rarely conquered by winning; it is conquered by crucifying the flesh.
Read the Sermon →The Choice
1 Corinthians 10:13 • Galatians 5:17 • James 1:13–15 • Joshua 7 • Genesis 3:1 • Hebrews 12:1–2 • Philippians 4:13 • Hebrews 4:15 • John 15:4–7
Last week the battlefield moved inside us. Here it narrows to a single moment — the one between the temptation and the transgression. Temptation is not the sin; it is the presentation of a choice, and the enemy who sets it before us cannot make it for us. On Achan pausing over the spoil, on the serpent’s first move being a question rather than a lie, and on the promise that with every temptation God provides a way of escape — which turns out to be not a technique but a Person.
Read the Sermon →Conquering the Flesh
Galatians 5:16–25 • Ephesians 6:12 • Mark 7:21–23 • Romans 13:14 • 1 Peter 2:11 • Luke 4:1–13 • 1 John 2:16 • 2 Corinthians 10:3–5 • Titus 2:11–12 • Hebrews 4:15
For seven weeks the Conquering King has taken ground outside the camp — Jericho, Ai, the kings of the south. Here the battlefield moves, and no wall needs to come down. Joshua shows the enemy in front of Israel; Ephesians 6 shows the powers behind him; Galatians 5 shows the one we carry in our own chest. On Achan’s longing, the idol the flesh builds without carving a stone, and why Paul will not let us manage what he says belongs on a cross — we do not crucify the flesh so that we can belong to Christ, we crucify it because we do. With the three temptations in the desert answered by the Word, and the fruit that grows when the Spirit, not our willpower, is in control.
Read the Sermon →I Will Fight for You
Joshua 10 • Genesis 11:7 • Deuteronomy 32:8–9 • Ephesians 6:12 • Colossians 2:15 • 2 Kings 6:17 • 1 Samuel 17:47 • Exodus 14:13–14 • Matthew 28:18 • Luke 22:42 • Luke 9:23 • 1 John 5:14 • Romans 8:31–39
Five kings march on Gibeon, Gibeon sends for help, and Israel marches all night to get there — then the sky joins the battle. Hailstones out of heaven, and the sun and moon held in place until it is finished. On the nations divided at Babel and handed over in Deuteronomy 32, on Joshua’s name being the name the Greek Old Testament gives to Jesus, and on the two things verse 14 will not let us separate: Joshua asked, and the LORD fought. God never promises there will be no battle — He promises you will not fight it alone, and He still expects you to march.
Read the Sermon →Deception
Proverbs 14:12 • Joshua 9:7–16 • Deuteronomy 7:1–2 • Deuteronomy 20:15 • Proverbs 3:5–7 • Genesis 3:6
Israel has just beaten Jericho and Ai. The next enemy does not come with an army — he comes with worn-out sandals, mouldy bread, and a story that checks out. Joshua 9 is the one chapter in the conquest where Israel loses without a battle being fought, and it happens because the wrong thing looked right. They looked, they questioned, they examined, they reasoned, they made a decision — but they never asked God. On deception that looks reasonable, discernment without dependence, and the grace that works through consequences we wish we could take back.
Read the Sermon →Altars of Worship
Joshua 8:30–35 • John 4:24 • Mark 7:6–9 • Matthew 22:37–40 • John 13:4–15 • Romans 12:1
Israel has just come through judgment and then victory. The first thing Joshua does with the peace is build an altar, write the Law on stones, and read every word of it aloud to every person in the camp — men, women, children, and the foreigners living among them. Three sacrifices run through this sermon: Joshua’s altar, Christ’s cross, and our own lives offered back. Worship is not something we invent when we feel like it; it begins with God, is governed by His truth, comes from the heart, and is expressed through obedience — and it does not end when the service does.
Read the Sermon →Testimonies of Triumph
Joshua 8:1 • Joshua 7:6–15 • Hosea 2:15 • Romans 8:28 • 1 John 1:7–10 • Joshua 8:30–31
Ai was a defeat — thirty-six men dead, an army running, and a commander face-down in the dust wondering what had gone wrong. By the end of chapter eight, that same name is attached to an altar. From the Valley of Achor to Mount Ebal, through exposure and judgment and mercy and recommissioning: God does not relocate us to a better valley, He renames the one where the worst thing happened. And He never intended our victories to become monuments to ourselves — He intended them to become testimonies of His faithfulness.
Read the Sermon →Stronger Than Us
Psalm 93:4–5 • Genesis 1:2 • James 1:14–15 • Deuteronomy 32:8–9 • Mark 1:40–42 • Mark 4:39–41
Stand on a balcony in Florida and look at the ocean long enough and it will tell you the truth about yourself: it is bigger than you, stronger than you, and there is no end of it in sight. Scripture uses that sea as the picture of chaos, death, and the rebel nations — everything that will not be tamed. From the surf line to Achan’s tent to a leper’s knees to a boat on the Sea of Galilee, the same answer waits at every stop: whatever is stronger than us has already been put beneath the feet of Jesus Christ.
Read the Sermon →Our Words Show Our Character
James 3:1–12 • James 1:19–27 • James 4:11–12 • James 5:12 • Matthew 12:34–37 • Proverbs 18:21
A bit in a horse’s mouth, a rudder on a ship, a spark in dry grass — Jacob, the half-brother of our Lord, reaches for three small things to make one large point: the smallest member of your body steers your whole life and broadcasts what is actually in your heart. “No human being can tame the tongue” — so the cure is never at the mouth. Fix the spring and the bucket comes up clean. With a full history of Jacob after the sermon: his name, his church, his martyrdom, and how this letter came to us.
Read the Sermon →Hidden Things
Joshua 7:1 • James 1:14–15 • Mark 7:21–23 • 1 John 1:8–10 • Ezekiel 33:11
Jericho has fallen, but at little Ai, Israel is routed and thirty-six men lie dead — and the reason is buried in the ground beneath one man’s tent. The anatomy of hidden sin: how it grows in the dark (first he saw, then desired, then took, then hid), how the unseen powers exploit it, and how the God who exposed the accursed thing still brings hidden things to light — not to condemn, but that we would turn, confess, and live.
Read the Sermon →Conquering the Heart
Joshua 5:13–15 • Ephesians 6:10–18 • 2 Corinthians 10:3–5 • 1 Peter 5:8 • John 15:1–10
Joshua stands before Jericho, and a Man appears with His sword drawn: “Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?” — “Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.” The battle behind the walls is in the unseen realm, against principalities and powers; it is not won with earthly weapons, but on our knees with the sword of the Spirit. And every battlefield finally leads back to one — the human heart.
Read the Sermon →Holy Surrender
Joshua 3:5 • Joshua 5:2–15 • Leviticus 20:26 • Ephesians 2:8–9 • Romans 12:1–2
Before Israel draws a single sword to take the Promised Land, God gives one command: sanctify yourselves. A sermon on holiness and surrender — the cleansing that comes before the conquering, the neglected covenant sign renewed, and the moment Joshua falls on his face before the Captain of the Lord’s host on holy ground. The question is not whether God is for us, but whether we are for Him.
Read the Sermon →Born From Above
John 3:1–8 • Ezekiel 36:25–27 • Genesis 2:7 • 2 Corinthians 5:17 • Titus 3:5
There is a way to describe how a mind is made — guess, error, correction, repeat — that is also a fair description of a human life. It built the best-tuned man in Jerusalem, and Jesus told him it was not enough: “that which is born of the flesh is flesh.” The machinery of the soul, why the loop cannot save itself, and the new birth the Spirit alone can give. With a 20-minute companion lesson in the Discipleship School.
Read the Sermon →Spiritual Formation of our Third World Souls
Proverbs 20:12 • Leviticus 25:10 • Colossians 2:13–14 • Mark 13:32 • Ephesians 4:32 • 3 John 2
Your soul is a hidden country — real, unseen, and, left to the world’s forming, impoverished. From the ancient world where no gift was free, to the God who gives His supreme Gift to the unworthy and cancels the debt, to the renovation of the heart and the forgiveness that overflows onto everyone you know — because you cannot share a person you have not met. With a full companion research brief in the Discipleship School.
Read the Sermon →The Stones of Remembrance
Joshua 3:10–13 • Joshua 4 • Hebrews 12:1–2
Israel stands at the flooded Jordan as the Ark goes before them, and God commands twelve memorial stones at Gilgal — built not for themselves but for their children. A walk through the crossing, the living-stone testimony of God’s people, and the greatest Stone of Remembrance: the empty tomb.
Read the Sermon →More sermons will be added here each week. In the meantime, keep growing through the Discipleship School and the Lesson Archive.
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