Given the recent uptick accusations that have come our way, there are many exhortations I want to give you. Things like “let your reasonableness be known to all.” “rejoice not when your enemy falls.” “Vengeance belongs to the LORD.” “don’t be a hot head.” So more along those lines will certainly be coming your way. But I want to lead off with this one: 

Amid accusations from the enemy, you must keep up the full court press. 

You must keep the tempo moving. In the words of the apostle, you must be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:58). When the enemy hurls his accusations at one of the saints, one of his strategies is to get the others to flinch. And you must not flinch. He wants you to lay off, and lay low (granted, you may be in a particular season where you need to lay low in a certain regard, if that’s you then make sure you do that). But, on the whole, you must understand that the false accusations come when you have started to do something that the enemy does not like. And that is why we rejoice.

This is an exhortation particularly to those of you who might be thinking, “If this keeps up, what are they going to do my son? What are they going to do to my grandchildren?” 

This is the kind of thing that a follower of our Lord might have thought when the rumors had boiled over and out of Jerusalem that the power brokers in town were planning to kill Jesus. And imagine sitting there with our Lord only a couple days journey from that Jerusalem, and he tells you by the fire, “When I get there, I will enter the temple with a whip and turn over their tables.” “Oh,” you say, “so you will be turning the dial up, not down. I see.” 

Note well, we can turn the dial up. Because the dial we are turning up is righteousness and good works. We can keep the pressure on. Because the work we are doing is the work of kindness, godliness, indeed works of love, the work of the Lord. So don’t get in the flesh. And if the flesh is the only thing that can motivate you then you must remain unmotivated and repent.

But, don’t for a minute slow down or hesitate in your public Christian living and your bold witness, and your work of dominion. You can’t work at the plow while looking back, and our Lord has told us that such a man is not fit for the kingdom of God (Luke 9:62). 

Jared Longshore – February 18, 2024

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Let me begin with a seemingly awkward question. How do you smell? Now, before you take offense, I am speaking metaphorically. Scripturally, our bearing is likened in many places to an aroma. Steadfast faith in the resurrected Christ will be the smell of a rotting corpse to those who are themselves spiritual zombies. Whereas communing with Christ is likened to having perfumed robes, dripping with the potent aromas common in the ancient eastern cultures (Ps. 45:8).

This image is a helpfully palpable one. If you spend time in Matt Gray’s garage for a men’s forum, you’ll come home with the scent of cigars clinging to you. If you go into one of those perfume shops at the mall you’ll come out smelling French. Spend an afternoon working at a coffee shop or working in a mechanic’s garage and you’ll bear the scent of beans or gasoline. Your aroma processes before you and loiters behind.

Where you spend your time, and what you spend it around, will be discernible by those around you. If you dwell in God’s presence you will bear a sweet savour. Now, this aroma will be simultaneously offensive to those who are spiritually dead but unmistakably wonderful for those who share in the new life in Christ. However, if you live as a hypocrite, God says your offerings are a stench unto Him.

Reflect for a moment, though, as to what sort of aroma your life has borne this past week. Was it the fragrance of nearness to Christ, or was it the acrid notes of deception, manipulation, seething enmity, or simmering unrighteous anger? You cannot abide in Christ and not bear the fragrance of His presence; peoples’ response to it is outside your control. You also cannot live duplicitously and imagine it is a delight unto the Lord. So, I’ll ask again, “How do you smell?”

Ben Zornes – February 11th, 2024

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Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:17) This lack of variation or shadow due to change in God is not lifeless, static or stoic. Rather, God is so full of life and of joy that He does neither need to change nor can He change. God is such an ocean of goodness and truth and beauty that while we may exhaust ourselves in drawing from His resources, we will not even begin to exhaust Him. Therefore, He is the only One who can be infinitely giving. Therefore, as the verse says, every good gift and perfect gift is from above. This means two things for us.

First, that God is the source of all that is good. Out of His abundant treasure, He upholds our being. He gives us all things to enjoy. And when, because of our creatureliness and our sinfulness we experience need, emptiness, tiredness, loneliness, discontent, worry, sorrow and temptation, He fills us, and strengthens us, and gives us fellowship, contentment, peace, joy and victory. He is the double author of our life and of our salvation. It is because of His grace and kindness that we are gathered here today in worship.

Second, that God is the only source of all that is good. Our great sin consists in forgetting this and seeking after goodness from other sources. The heavens are shocked and appalled in cosmic dissonance when they see our sin: That we have forsaken God, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for ourselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. We languish and thirst because we do not come to the one place that can restore our souls. One of the things that our God graciously gives us is the conviction of sin. The grace of our thirst and contrition is what prepares us to receive the grace of forgiveness. And the grace of forgiveness opens the floodgates to everything else in this earthly pilgrimage under the Lordship of Christ. Leave no sin unconfessed in your life!

Samuel Davidson – February 11, 2024

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One of the ways the heresies of egalitarianism and feminism have seeped into the church has been in our assumptions about what piety and repentance look like. Frequently, we have made feminine piety and feminine repentance the rule for what real piety and repentance are. And if a man or a boy doesn’t look like a woman or a girl while repenting, we tend to be doubtful. But when men and women put off the old man and put on the new man in Christ, they ought to do so as men and women, male and female. 

Of course repentance is fundamentally just complete humility before God and so don’t overthink it. But for example, when a man humbles himself before God and repents, he begins taking responsibility for himself and others, which in some ways will make him more assertive than he was before. Humility doesn’t mean mousiness. When a woman humbles herself before God and repents, she begins caring more about true Christian beauty and hospitality than before. But of course, you might mistake the responsible assertiveness as pride in the man, and you might mistake the concern for beauty and hospitality as vanity in the woman. Of course it could be.

But for a husband who repents, putting on Christ will mean loving his wife more like Christ loves, which is truly sacrificial and efficacious, but isn’t necessarily doing whatever his wife prefers. Likewise, when a wife repents, putting on Christ means that she respects her husband, looks up to him, admires him, praises him, and maybe when it would appear to some close friends that not a lot has changed with him. But virtue and piety and repentance are not dependent on other people changing. Putting on Christ is something each individual does before God, as a man, as a woman and so you become what God created you to be, a man, a woman, male and female in His glorious image. There certainly are common elements to repentance: true hatred of sin, true sorrow over sin, real zeal for change and new obedience. But those realities will often look different in men and women, boys and girls. As God renews His image in us, He is not renewing a sexless, androgynous image. He is renewing something radically more feminine, radically more masculine than any of us can imagine.

Toby Sumpter – February 11, 2024

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