Christ Church (Moscow, ID)

Preacher: Joshua DockterText: Romans 8:1–10

Preacher: Toby SumpterOne of the most important factors in establishing fellowship in a family is the fellowship of husband and wife. As you welcome children into your home, you are either welcoming them into a healthy fellowship and warm friendship or else you are bringing them into the middle of controversy, striving, bitterness, and rivalry. This is how children can either be a great blessing or a great curse – depending on how they are received. Children are usually multipliers. They multiply what you already have in your home.

Preacher: Douglas WilsonText: 2 Thess. 2:1–12And now we come to the challenging passage, the one I have been warning you about. Who is the man of sin? What temple are we talking about? Who is the one who prevents this from happening? Good questions all.SUMMARY OF THE TEXTPaul pleads with the Thessalonians in the name of the Lord’s coming (v. 1), that they not be unsettled through thinking that the final events were happening right then (v. 2). The day of Christ will not come unless the man of sin comes first (v. 3). This man of sin will set himself up in the Temple as God (v. 4). Paul had already explained all this to them (v. 5). Some mysterious power is holding this lawless one back (vv. 6-7). Then the lawless one will be revealed in order to be destroyed by the Final Coming of Christ (v. 8). He will be destroyed despite his ability to work miracles (v. 9). Those who love the truth will be saved in the truth, and those who love the lie will be damned in the lie (vv. 10-12).THE CHALLENGESThe description here appears to include the Final Coming of Christ, which is still in our future. The coming of the Lord (parousia) could be His coming in judgment on Jerusalem, except that the phrase “our gathering to him” is used. And the man of sin who exalts himself as God will be consumed by the Spirit of the Lord’s mouth and destroyed by the brightness of the Lord’s coming. All this certainly sounds like the final eschaton.But then what is the temple of God here? The Jewish temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. So if the man of sin set himself up there, then these events would be in the distant past and not a description of the Final Coming. This is one of the reasons why dispensationalists argue that the Temple must be rebuilt. Another argument is that the Temple is the Christian church, and that this false teacher who claims to be God is something like a wicked pope.A BASIC PATTERNRealize that Paul is telling the Thessalonians not to think that these events are right on top of them (v. 2). Don’t be unsettled, he says. A number of other things need to happen first. There needs to be an apostasy, a falling away first (v. 3). There needs to be a miracle-working false teacher (v. 9), one who claims to be God (v. 4). He needs to be enthroned in the Temple (v. 4).At the same time, Paul argues that the spirit of all such things is already at work in his day (v. 7). He says that there is an unnamed external power that is restraining the outbreak of this lawless one (vv. 6-7). He says that the mystery of iniquity is already at work (v. 7), and is pushing against that which restrains it.So here is my understanding of all this (the third option in the previous message). The events that happened just a decade or so before this, when Caligula attempted to set up a statue of himself in the Temple, was the kind of thing Paul was talking about, but was not the event itself. It was the spirit that was already at work, but was not the final convulsion of mankind’s sin. That is yet in our future, and Paul teaches us that it will run along the same lines. The advance of the kingdom of God is all part of the same long war. It is a protracted conflict, and it is all the same conflict. We are two thousand years after this prediction from Paul, but when Jesus preached to the spirits who were rebellious at the time of Noah (1 Pet. 3:19-20), He was 2400 years after the Flood. And it was all still relevant.History is a river, not a string of ponds.GOD-GIVEN DELUSIONThe issues are therefore perennial, and they come down to every man and every woman, every boy and every girl. Those who have their pleasure in unrighteousness, and who reject the truth because they did not love it, are going to be sent something that lines up with what they love and hate. This passage says that God will send them a strong delusion so that they should believe a lie. And why is this? It is because they loved the lie. It is because they did not love the truth. Salvation is a function of loving the truth. Damnation is a function of loving a lie, preeminently the lies you tell yourself. Self-deception is the prince of all deception, and so God sends all such a strong delusion. The wrath of God is seen in this, when God gives people over to what they have loved all along.And the one who causes delusions to evaporate is a preached Christ. And He is a preached Christ only because He is a crucified Christ, and a buried Christ, and a risen Christ. He is the truth, and He is preached. Do you love Him? If not, then the strong delusion is already resting upon you. If so, then you are loving the truth, by which you are saved.

Preacher: Douglas WilsonText: 1 John 5:10–13Last week you were exhorted to be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is in you. But whenever we give our testimony, we will be cross-examined by somebody, and we will be asked, “How can you be sure...?” Perhaps you sometimes ask yourself these questions. And so we come to the matter of assurance.SUMMARY OF THE TEXTWe can see from John 3:32 that the Son of God has the testimony (marturia). When we believe His testimony, we are acknowledging that He speaks the truth (v. 10). And so what is the testimony that He gives? It is both objective and subjective. This is the record (marturia)—God has given us eternal life, and has done so through His Son. Note that God’s testimony lands in our inner life. The objective side of it is that all life in in His Son (v. 12). If you have the Son, you therefore have life. If you do not have the Son, you do not have life. These things were written, not so that we might be tormented with uncertainty, but rather so that we might know (assurance) that we have eternal life, and that we might know this because we believe on the name of the Son of God (v. 13).TWO EXTREMESNow if it is true that not every person baptized into the visible church is saved, and that istrue, then the obvious question becomes “how can we tell the difference between those who truly have the testimony, and those who simply say that they do?” It is a most reasonable question, but that has not kept many people from doing many unreasonable things with it.There are two extremes to avoid—one is to assume that if your baptismal papers are in order, then you are automatically in, as though the kingdom of God were like a purebred line of golden retrievers. The other extreme is to flinch whenever sin is mentioned and question your salvation at every little thing. And often, ecclesiastical professionals will manipulate both tendencies for their own profit. Don’t give way to either temptation.THAT YOU MAY KNOWGoing back to 1 John 5:13, if we have the Son, if we have eternal life, God wants us to know that we do.DOUBTS AND QUESTIONSThere is a vast difference between doubts and questions. Doubts can never be answered in principle because they are phrased like this: “What if . . .?” Questions have answers. They can be posed, you follow it out, and you learn something. Here is the difference. Suppose a happily married woman suddenly has a panic attack out of nowhere. “What if my husband is cheating on me?” The only appropriate answer to this is “what if he isn’t?” That is quite different from a wife asking “who is the blonde in the red convertible out front, the one who is honking for you, who is that?” That’s a question.BIBLICAL MARKS OF REJECTIONWe are not to over-engineer this. In the context of a biblical community, the burden of proof is on the one who insists upon excluding himself. Note two things about a particular way of living “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these . . . they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:19, 21). It is manifest who will not inherit the kingdom.BIBLICAL MARKS OF ADOPTION We are supposed to make our calling and election sure (2 Pet. 1:10). We are supposed to examine ourselves to see if we are truly in the faith (2 Cor. 13:5). This can be done without morbid introspection. But how? Keep in mind that in all that follows, it is not so much what you look to as the way you look to it. Baptism, Bible, etc.We saw in 1 John 5:13 that we are to believe on the name of Jesus. We are to hold fast to Jesus Christ (Rom. 10:9). This is the foundation of everything else. Do you trust in Jesus?“Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:13). The Spirit is given as a guarantee (Eph. 1:13-14; 2 Cor. 5:5-6). The Spirit is given to us as an assurance. How do we know we have the Spirit? He grows things (Gal. 5:22-23; Eph. 5:9). He kills things (Rom. 8:13).“We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death” (1 John 3:14). What is your attitude toward those you know love God? Do you want to be with them, or are you repelled by them?“And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3). Jesus says that a mark of true conversion is humility of mind, becoming like a little child.“As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious” (1 Pet. 2:2–3). A marked characteristic of life is hunger—in this case, hunger for the Word.“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). There are two kinds of people in the world—those who are perishing and to whom the cross makes no sense, and those who are saved, to whom it does.“And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3). Here is another explicit statement of how we know. We know because we obey Him.“For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Heb. 12:6). But the previous mark should not be clutched in a false perfectionism. We do still sin. But what happens then is another mark of true conversion.THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTERWhat is the conclusion of the matter? We are saved by the grace of God in Christ, plus nothing (Eph. 2:8-9). We are not saved by good works. But we are saved to good works (Eph. 2:10).

Preacher: Shawn PatersonDo you wish to see God’s goodness in your life—upon your work, in your family, and in this church? Then pursue first a greater fear of the Lord, so that He may indeed visit you and your household with blessing.

Preacher: Chase FluhartIn times of great learning, when the Lord pours out on His people a hunger for knowledge, it does not take long before seasons of great pride follow closely behind.

Preacher: Toby SumpterText: 1 Pet. 3:15-16The message today is on being ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you, and in particular, being ready to give your testimony. By God’s grace we are seeking to live together in this place and time such that we provoke questions and accusations, and we want the center of our answer to be a testimony of Christ in us.Summary of the TextThe first task of preparing to give your testimony is to sanctify the Lord God in your heart (1 Pet. 3:15). You most revere God there. You must honor Him as Your Lord and Master. It is that reverence that drives you readiness to give an answer (1 Pet. 3:15). Notice that the center of our answer is a “hope” that is in us (1 Pet. 3:15). Christian hope is not light and fluffy optimism. Rather, Christian hope is a joyful, gritty patience expectant for glory (Rom. 5:1-5, 15:4, 13). The answer we give is to be done with meekness and fear, which is what grows when you set the Lord apart in your heart (1 Pet. 3:15). Having a good conscience doesn’t mean sinless, but it does mean forgiven, clean, and put right (1 Pet. 3:16). And you know you’re doing this correctly when their accusations only fall back on themselves in shame (1 Pet. 3:16). If you are feeling shame, either you don’t have a clean conscience or else you don’t understand how God makes you clean (1 Jn. 1:9). And remember “a good conversation in Christ” has never stopped people from making false accusations (1 Pet. 3:16). Jesus said that the false accusations come precisely because you follow Christ (Mt. 5:11, Jn. 15:18-21).Sanctify God in Your HeartAs you know, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19). It is holy space because God lives there. But our bodies are not generic temples, they are unique and varied. And think about your body as the shape of your entire life. That shape comes from God working particular stories of grace in each one. This is Paul’s testimony: “And last of all he [Jesus] was seen of me also, as one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Cor. 15:8-10, cf. 1 Tim. 1:14-16). The first task of sanctifying God in your heart is simply submitting to Him as a holy God, admitting your sin, and turning to Christ in principle. But then you have to do the same thing in particular with everything in your life: your parents, your childhood, your vocation, your spouse, your children, and everything else, including your failures, weaknesses, trials, and sin. Your testimony is telling how the holy God has been at work, how you have contributed sin, how Christ has forgiven and restored, and all by His grace in order to display His grace in you.In Praise of Boring TestimoniesYou have heard us say before that we are aiming for boring testimonies for our children in our community. What we mean by that is that by the grace of God, we want our children growing up in the faith of their parents and embracing it, with faithfulness passing from generation to generation like runners in an Olympic relay race. By faith and God’s great grace, we want our children growing up in Christ, which will often mean that they don’t remember the exact moment when they first trusted in Him. And by that same grace, we pray that our children will never know a time when they were not walking with God. It is glorious to always walk with God, to have no rebellious phases. Some Christian traditions so emphasize the dramatic conversion story (biker gang rebellion followed by Damascus Road experience), that it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. And kids who grow up only hearing those kinds of conversion stories wonder how they could possibly be a Christian since they haven’t even started selling drugs yet. But Scripture is full of ordinary covenant conversions: John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit in his mother’s womb (Lk. 1), David learned to trust God on his mother’s breast (Ps. 22:9), Samuel came to know the Lord as young boy (1 Sam. 3), and Timothy was taught the scriptures from his youth (2. Tim. 3:15). We want a culture of cultivating and encouraging faith.But Not Really BoringNevertheless, and even celebrating the ordinary “boring” testimonies of our children, we really must run back around the other side and insist that there are no boring testimonies. This is because amount of sin is not what makes a testimony amazing or powerful, but rather, the amount of grace. How much grace was needed for your salvation? Every son or daughter of Adam deserved death and Hell, and therefore, every Christian was purchased with the infinite price of the blood of Jesus. There is nothing boring about that. And when we say “grace,” we mean the presence of the Father beaming at the work of His Son in you, sealed and secured by the Spirit. The Triune God is the most extravagant, adventurous, creative, brilliant, gracious Being of all. If He is present, nothing is boring, nothing is ordinary. To sanctify this God in your heart is to see the presenceof this God in your life. Every salvation is also a salvation to an unspeakable glory. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has prepared for those who love Him (1 Cor. 2:9). The process of a Red Wood sapling growing up into a towering tree may not look explosive, dramatic, or glorious in any given snapshot, but if you could see the whole thing from God’s perspective – all the atoms firing over decades, it would make you close your mouth with awe. And that is the hope that is in you.ConclusionEveryone in this room who knows Jesus has a testimony of His grace. For many of you, it is a testimony of growing up surrounded by the grace of loving parents, sibling, teachers, and friends. But do not take that grace for granted. Perhaps you do not remember when you first believed, but you should absolutely remember times when you have believed more. Maybe you don’t remember the first time you were forgiven, but you absolutely should remember many subsequent times when you were convicted of sin, confessed, and were cleansed. Maybe you don’t remember the first answered prayer, but do you remember the many others? Maybe don’t remember the first time His word encouraged you or helped you during a trial, but do you remember many others? That is your testimony, that is the hope that is in you. Christ is in you.

Some sins are out in the open, and everybody in the church knows that they are sins. I am thinking about theft, drunkenness, adultery, and the like. But there are other sins that are harder to identify, and because of this they can even function openly in Christian circles. I am thinking here about things like desire, envy, competition, and ambition. Now there are some situations where some of these are perfectly fine, but they are still dangerous. For example, consider desire—the quarry from which many sins are hewn. This is a word which, thankfully for the writers of rock ballads, rhymes with fire. Perhaps we would be better occupied with that which gives desire that sinful crackle. This is what our spirits’ desires naturally run to, and so what we are investigating is the sin of envy (Jas. 4:1-3, 5-6).THE TEXT“A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but the fool’s wrath is heavier than them both. Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?” (Prov. 27:3-4).SUMMARY OF THE TEXTThe writer of Proverbs begins with an illustration. A heavy stone is hard to pick up (v. 3), and the same thing is true of sand (v. 3). And when a fool gets angry, that is heavier than both or either of them. You should rather have your pick-up truck filled with wet sand than to encounter an angry fool. Then, building on that first thought, since we are now at the next level, wrath is cruel (v. 4). The synonym anger is outrageous (v. 4), but envy carries everything before it. Envy is therefore a formidable sin. It is the full bloom of folly’s rose.DEFINITIONSJealousy is to be possessive of what is lawfully your own. Because we are sinners, we sometimes give way to jealousy for wrong causes, or in a wrong manner, but Scripture is clear that jealousy is not inherently sinful. Our God is a jealous God; His name is Jealous (Ex. 20:5; 34:14). Simple greed or covetousness wants what it does not have, and wants to have it without reference to God’s conditions for having it. The thing that it wants may have been seen in a store, a catalog, or a neighbor’s driveway. This sin is tantamount to idolatry (Eph. 5:5), putting a created thing in place of the Creator.But envy is more than excessive jealousy, and is far more than simply a lazy or idolatrous desire. Envy is a formidable sin, as our text shows, because it combines its own desires for the object (status, money, women, whatever) with a malicious insistence that the other person lose his possession of it. In two places Paul puts malice and envy cheek by jowl (Rom. 1:28-29; Tit. 3:3), and this is no accident. In the Bible, when envy moves, violence and coercion are not far off (Acts. 7:9; 13:45; 17:5; Matt. 27:18). Envy sharpens its teeth every night. We may therefore define envy as a particular kind of willingness to use coercion to deprive someone of what is lawfully his. Of course an envious man may be a coward as well, and so fall under Pope’s condemnation—“willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike.”THE NATURAL CONDITION OF MANWe see in the letter of James that the spirit within us “lusteth to envy” (Jas. 4:5-6). This is our natural tendency; it is a universal problem. We should see also that a recognition of our complicity in the sin is the way of escape. That recognition is called repentance, and can only be found in Christ. This is because outside of Christ, envy is the natural condition of all mankind. Before we were converted, what were we like? “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another” (Tit. 3:3). That is what we are like. “Being filled with all unrighteousness . . . covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder . . .” (Rom. 1:29).When we are brought into Christ, this does not grant us automatic immunity to this sin—we must still guard ourselves. We have to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, and that includes death to this sin. For example, the godly have to be told not to envy sinners (Prov. 3:29-32; 23:17-18). And we have to guard ourselves against sanctimonious envy, the kind Judas tried to display in his false concern for the poor (Mark 14:5,10; John 12:3-6).THE INVISIBLE VICEIn striking contrast to many other sins, nobody readily admits to being envious. Envy is petty and malicious. Envy is unattractive to just about everybody, and in order to operate openly in the world, it has to sail under false colors. Envy is clandestine; envy is sneaky. To admit to envy is to admit self-consciously to being tiny-souled, beef jerky-hearted, petty, and mean-spirited, and to admit this is dangerously close to repentance. To be out-and-out envious is to be clearly in the wrong.And so envy often decks itself out with the feathers of admiration, and tends to praise too loudly or too much. One writer said to “watch the eyes of those who bow lowest.” The praise can come from someone who does not yet know his own heart, or it can come from someone who is trying to position himself to get within striking distance. Guard your heart; don’t allow yourself to become an unctuous or oily flatterer.Envy occupies itself much with matters of justice, and becomes a collector of injustices, both real and imagined. Since envy cannot speak its own name, the closest virtue capable of camouflaging the sin is zeal for justice. And since true Christians should be very much concerned with genuine justice, be sure to run diagnostics on your heart as you do so. This is because our modern political tangles are a veritable festival of envy, everywhere you look. Trying to find envy in our political disputes is like trying to find some beads at the New Orleans Mardi Gras parade.And envy gets worse as a person’s gifts get greater—when dealing with talent, artistic temperaments, and great intellectual achievements. We sometimes assume that we can “cultivate” our way out of the temptation, which is the reverse of the truth.HEADING IT OFFBecause we are all a bit naive about this sin, in ourselves and in others, we glibly assume that if God only blesses us a little bit more, that will make it clear to everyone that we are nice people and that there is no reason to envy us. But of course, this only makes everything worse. Should the “neighbor” in the tenth commandment assume that if God only gave him a bigger house and faster car that this would somehow resolve the problems of his green-eyed neighbor next door? Is he serious?Many of you are at the beginning of your lives, your careers, your accomplishments. And you need to know that when marked success comes to some of you, the poison will start to flow. Even in the church? Yes, even here, but if we take note of our hearts now, if we internalize these truths now, we are laboring for the peace and purity of our congregation—one of the things we are covenanted to in our membership vows. When James takes aim at conflict in the church, he takes aim at envy. So remember that the love of Christ is forever, and envy is transient. Speaking of the earthbound, Solomon says, “Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun” (Ecc. 9:5-6).Gore Vidal once said, “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” In stark contrast, the apostle Paul said, “Love does not envy” (1 Cor. 13: 4).

This is session 5 of 6 in our Discipleship Series on Parenting Little Ones.

Preacher: Ben ZornesA polluted land must be cleansed.