Central Presbyterian Church of Haverstraw

09/15/2026

Community Giveaway: Thursday, Sep. 17, 4 PM

09/13/2026

https://cpchaverstraw.org/sermons/a-holy-and-hidden-grace

From "A Holy and Hidden Grace," the sermon for September 13, 2026:

In that sense Joseph is a forerunner of Jesus. That same dynamic that we see play out in Joseph’s life—human betrayal becoming the very means of divine salvation—happens not only in Egypt but also on a lonely hill outside Jerusalem. For Jesus, too, was forsaken by those closest to him, was also falsely accused, and also suffered unjustly. And yet Christ’s suffering is the salvation of us all. This is why we can call the day on which he was crucified “Good” Friday. It’s good not because he suffered but because through that suffering and in the midst of that horror a hidden and holy grace was at work.

All the evil that Jesus endured in the final twenty-four hours of his life—his friends forsaking him, the religious authorities accusing him, the civil authorities condemning him, the soldiers mocking him, the crowds jeering at him as he hung on the cross—in God’s hands becomes the means of salvation for the whole world.

And that same transformative grace is at work even now, in your life as well as mine. Lord knows it’s not always readily apparent. The grace of God is not always easy to recognize when we’re hurting, when we feel betrayed and abandoned. Even for Joseph, his awareness of God’s hand upholding him was something that he came to only gradually. And so, what I say to you now I say not only because it’s comforting but because it’s true. Amid whatever you may be struggling with—health concerns, money concerns, loneliness, strained relationships, a crisis of faith, or something else—know that you are in the hands of a loving and gracious God who never allows suffering and death to have the last word.

God redeems evil , transforming it—through God’s mercy, grace, and love—into blessing.

09/07/2026

https://cpchaverstraw.org/sermons/blessed-are-the-dysfunctional

From "Blessed Are the Dysfunctional," the sermon for September 6, 2026:

God doesn’t need us to have our lives all sorted out in order to use us to work God’s good purposes. God doesn’t call the morally perfect because such people don’t exist. God calls sinners. Sinners like Jacob, who played favorites with his children. Sinners like Joseph, who lorded his favored status over his brothers. Sinners like Joseph’s brothers whose envy of their brother was all consuming.

The pattern continues into the New Testament. Jesus doesn’t call as his disciples those who would have been regarded as the most righteous of their day—the chief priests, the scribes, and the Pharisees. No, Jesus chooses people like Peter, who will one day deny him. He chooses James and John who will seek their own glory above all else. He chooses a sinner like Judas, who will betray him. He chooses Thomas, who will doubt him. And he chooses you and me, even though we’ve done all of the above and then some. And that right there is the good news. Our dysfunctions, no matter how deep, no matter how many, do not disqualify us from God’s grace.

God doesn’t need us to have our lives all sorted out in order to use us to work God’s good purposes.

09/05/2026

08/30/2026

https://cpchaverstraw.org/sermons/wrestling-with-god

From "Wrestling with God," the sermon for August 30, 2026:

In your own life you may be wrestling with God right now, perhaps waiting and waiting and waiting for a prayer to be answered. Or wrestling with an uncomfortable truth that God wants you to face. Or wrestling with what feels like God’s absence.

But know this: the place in your life where you feel most vulnerable, the place where you feel alone, the place that seems like it’s just a constant struggle—that is the very place where God meets you, just as God met Jacob. That is the place where God is at work and where God’s blessing is felt—right there in the thick of the struggle.

And it is also the place where you are given a name just as Jacob was. But whereas Jacob was renamed Israel, the one who struggles with God, in Jesus Christ we are named “God’s beloved,” not because we have won the struggle but because in the midst of it we are held in the arms of a God who loves us.

The place in your life where you feel most vulnerable…is the very place where God meets you, just as God met Jacob.

08/24/2026

https://cpchaverstraw.org/sermons/when-jacob-met-racheland-leah

From "When Jacob Met Rachel...and Leah," the sermon for August 23, 2026:

The family line from Jacob to Jesus has its fair share of miscreants and malcontents before finally culminating with the Messiah. Its origins are tangled in a family’s dysfunction, with members deceiving, exploiting, and competing with one another. And yet through it all the Lord was indeed present, even if not specifically mentioned. God was working through the overlooked Leah, the lesser sister with weak eyes. Through her would come salvation, not only for Israel but for you, for me, and for the entire world.

For Leah, all of this was occurring unbeknownst to her. Leah, I suspect, was looking for love, not to participate in God’s plan of salvation for the world by being the 42nd great grandmother of the Messiah. But that is how God often works in our lives, quietly, off camera, behind the scenes. We often associate the presence of God in Scripture with cinematic moments—a catastrophic flood, a burning bush, the divided waters of the sea. But God appears not only in the miraculous but also among the mundane. Amid the daily dysfunction of flawed families and imperfect people.

God appears not only in the miraculous but also among the mundane. Amid the daily dysfunction of flawed families and imperfect people.

08/19/2026

To a native English speaker, the English language feels intuitive, but learning English as a foreign language can be quite challenging. For example, try to explain how “TOUGH,” “THOUGH,” “THOUGHT,” and “THROUGH” have virtually the same spelling but sound completely different. Or why ...

08/18/2026

Community Giveaway:
Thurs., Aug. 20, 4 PM

08/16/2026

https://cpchaverstraw.org/sermons/no-ladder-just-a-cross

From "No Ladder, Just a Cross," the sermon for August 16, 2026:

The gospel isn’t, “Try hard enough for long enough and you will eventually get there.” The gospel is simply, “Your sins are forgiven.” All of that other stuff—praying, attending church, reading Scripture, loving God and neighbor—follows from the glorious good news that your sins are forgiven. All you have to do is accept that good news with joy and gratitude.

*****

God with us always, not only in our best moments when we’ve got it all sorted out and we’re feeling good about ourselves. But God with us when it feels like everything in our lives or in the world around us is falling apart. God with us not only on holy ground but in the hole in the ground that we can’t seem to climb out of.

And as this Genesis passage teaches us, even that hole in the ground is holy ground. Jacob wakes from his dream and declares, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” The place that Jacob had stopped for no other reason than that he was tired and it was getting dark, he now recognizes as holy ground. The place where he sought momentary rest and refuge while trying to outrun his past, he now recognizes as the house of God and the gate of heaven. And so he calls the place Bethel, meaning house of God.

Whether we live in Haverstraw or Stony Point or a surrounding town, we are all residents of Bethel because wherever we are, we are in the presence of the living God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God made known to us in Jesus Christ. This God does not wait for us to scale the sacred mountain, ascend the stairway to heaven, or climb the ladder of spiritual success but comes down and meets us among the sacred and the profane, the miraculous and the mundane. Wherever we find ourselves, we are on holy ground.