Christ Church Troy Exhortation
Why do we get tired?
On long summer days working on projects, filling the weekends with adventures and making the most of Idaho summers before school starts up again, it is inevitable that you will get worn out.
It is easy to think about exhaustion and see it as a consequence of the Fall. Our bodies break down with time, we get sick, we get tired. Tiredness is a little form of death, and every night we lie down to sleep, and we die, but like death, that is not the end. You rise back to life in the morning. Death and resurrection.
But unlike exhaustion, rest has a very different picture in Scripture. God rested on the seventh day from His work. God was not worn out and in need of a break. And man was given this pattern of six days labor and one day of rest before man fell. Work was good. And rest was good and there was no sin. The Israelites looked forward to their rest in the promised land of Canaan when their work of conquering the land was complete. The new Israel, the church, looks forward to rest in this land, when the last remaining strongholds of sin are removed. Rest is the reward. Rest is sweet.
So, when you are dead tired from long days of work well done, thank God for the rest that He gives each night. Thank God and take rest on the Sabbath. Ecclesiastes 5:12 – “The sleep of a laboring man is sweet…”
But when you are exhausted because you have been living with sin, fighting and falling to temptation, when there is no rest in your marriage, when you are filled with stress and can’t relax on Sunday, this exhaustion gives you the picture of the only place that sin will lead to death. If you want rest, if you want peace, then first go and fight the giants in the land, the giants in your house, the giants in your heart. Do not be ok with a few sins on the edges that are currently out of site and not causing trouble. The command is to kill every last one, and the God who gives the command is the same God who has promised you rest. The reward is sure.
Zach Browning – July 14, 2024
Trauma-Mongers – Christ Church Downtown Exhortation
The therapeutic worldview which prevails in our society views trauma as the operating system. Your every action is caused by underlying trauma. But the demand for trauma outstrips the supply. So, the priests of this new religion contrive new sorts of trauma. Everything becomes a tangled web of traumas inflicted upon you, and trauma for trauma you’ve inflicted on others due to your privileges.
It’s hard to keep up with such a system, because, at its core, it’s an incoherent system. It’s a system which wants any evil in you to be pinned on someone else.
But evil doesn’t come from outside you. Each of us are quite capable of innovating some of the worst scum known to mankind. Have others wronged you? Most certainly. But in your response to that wrong have you always and in every way responded with innocent motives. Have you never harbored bitterness, wishing for evil to befall those who wronged you, lusting for revenge?
God’s Word gives us an entirely different route for dealing with evil. Ironically, God calls you to pin all your evil on Someone Else. You must put all your sin on the only One who never sinned, but first you must also confess that all your sin is, in fact, yours. You can’t blame shift. You can’t pin it on your parents, your culture, your skin color, your socio-economic class, or anything other than you. Your sins, every last one, is yours, and God welcomes you to put it all on Jesus. He who knew no sin became sin, that we might be made righteous. Confession of sin, then, is taking responsibility for all the vile things you’ve done as well as all the vile things you’ve desired to do. And then Christ gladly takes it upon Himself, and pins it to His cross, that it all might die there.
Ben Zornes – July 14, 2024
Many Gifts, Much Gratitude – King’s Cross Church Exhortation
When contemplating the innumerable corruptions that exist in our country today, there are many legitimate reasons for us to be tempted to be discontent. Our society hates God, murder of babies is applauded, sexual degeneracy is promoted, inflation, wars, the IRS, and of course that presidential assassination attempt.
But despite all of these real evils in our land, we still enjoy great blessings that many others don’t. We’re here worshiping God openly every Lord’s day, we have the ability to work and provide for our families, we can give our children a Christian education, and we enjoy an abundance of comforts that we often take for granted. We have all been given much.
And even with all that we have been given, we so often can grow discontent. Discontent with what we have, or don’t have. Discontent with our job, our house, our health, or our spouse. Many times, the better you have it, the more discontent you can become.
When Jesus said “to whom much is given, of him shall be much required,” He was speaking of the reality that we will be held accountable for our use of the gifts that He has given us. There is a higher bar for those who have more. And considering the blessing that God has given each of us, this statement carries much weight.
It follows, then, that as we have been given much, it is required of us that we not only use our gifts well, but also that we have much gratitude for them. Much thankfulness for them. When we’re discontent, it’s because we think too highly of ourselves. We’re quick to protest against government entitlements, yet at the same time feel entitled ourselves to bigger and better handouts from God. You look upon another’s talents or position with envy, not because you don’t have it, but because you don’t realize what you do have. The remedy for this discontentment is found in Psalm 144:
LORD what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! or the son of man, that thou makest account of him! Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away.
When you’re discontent, ask yourself the question; who am I? Who am I? My life is a breath. I’m made out of dust. Who am I to receive such blessing from God?
When you consider the insignificance and unworthiness of yourself, it will magnify your perception of God’s goodness toward you. Even the recognition of how unworthy you are, is not natural to you, but it is a pure gift of His grace.
Think about this: God knows all of your sins, your failures, and your weaknesses. And He still loves you. He still floods you with more heavenly and earthly blessings than you can count. We don’t comprehend how extraordinary this is.
Meditate on this, remember this. Discontentment will die, and gratitude will rise.
Mike Niam – July 14, 2024
Christ Church Troy Exhortation
“You are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”
Ephesians 2:19-22
Jesus Christ is the cornerstone and on him the apostles and prophets laid the foundation upon which saints of the church in Ephesus were put into place. And you saints of Christ Church Troy, 2000 years later are being built into that same building. But examining Paul’s description, our stone in the wall does not rest directly on the cornerstone. The building does not consist of just your stone on top of Jesus. No. just as the Ephesians were built on the apostles so we are fit together, chosen by God in our place in history. Down below us in the wall are the saints in Ephesus, Galatia, and Corinth, above them those in Constantinople and Rome, then above and to the side are Canterbury, Wittenberg, Geneva, Westminster, Northampton, and right below us you would find saints in Christ Church, Moscow Idaho, those who have laid the mortar on which we stand. Now these stones are being fit together by the Spirit lest anyone should boast that man did this. But likewise, the Spirit uses men and women throughout history to build his church lest anyone should think we arrived at the truth apart from the faithfulness of others. Man’s pride can find a pothole in any road. Are you different from other believers? Does Christ Church Troy have its own distinctives? Is it in a different part of the wall? Are we above some stones and below others? Maybe a different shape? If you have ever taken the time to look at a stone wall built by a master craftsman, you would see how rocks of all different shapes are perfectly placed. No two stones could be switched out without the wall losing integrity. But what foolishness for one stone to boast to another about its shape or placement or worse yet to think that it could stand as a wall by itself. If you are to boast, boast in this, that your cornerstone is Jesus Christ. That the Spirit took you, all of grace, and formed you and fit you into place together with all the saints into the temple of the living God.
Zach Browning – July 7, 2024
Honoring Our Fatherland – King’s Cross Exhortation
We just celebrated our nation’s birthday this last week, and this conjures up many mixed feelings and questions. How do we celebrate a nation that has murdered babies by the millions? How do we celebrate a nation full of corruption and lies and scandals? And on the other hand, should Christians even celebrate our nation, since our citizenship is in Heaven and the Kingdom of God includes many nations?
The short answer is that is a Christian duty to honor and celebrate everything good about our nation, as an extension of our duty to honor our father and mother. Just as we are to honor the law of our father and mother, and not remove the ancient landmarks established by our fathers, so too we are to honor the biblical laws of our land, as well as the good customs and traditions and true virtues of our history and people. And it is this honor and love of our particular fathers that teach us how to honor other people and nations. We can rightly love other families and nations only when we have learned to love our own. We love our neighbor as ourselves.
The root of the word “patriot” or “patriotism” is “patria,” which comes from the word for “father.” Patriotism is love of fatherland. In other words, the root of Christian patriotism is honoring fathers. It is no accident then that as we have become a fatherless nation, our nation has reached a crisis. You cannot despise and hate the fathers in your family and church and then magically end up with faithful fathers in the public square. You get faithful fathers in the public square and a virtuous fatherland worth honoring because family fathers and church fathers faithfully lead and lay their lives down for its virtue. It is only by honoring father and mother that it can go well with us in our land.
So we do not honor the corruption in our land, and understood rightly, every lawful means of resisting that corruption is actually true Christian patriotism. A true Christian patriot hates the evil in his nation because he loves what she ought to be. Likewise, we do not honor the failures and sins of our fathers and mothers, but we remember and celebrate all the good things in faith, asking God that it may go well with us in the land.
Toby Sumpter – July 7, 2024
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