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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Then Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord I am not eloquent, neither before nor since you have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. So, the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord?

Exodus 4:10-11

The exhortation this morning is an encouragement to this congregation to continue to serve God with singing. Become skilled at it. Learn the songs, understand the theory, and when you sing unto the Lord sing with all your being. 

We have a wonderful music leader in Mr. Bonet and we have skilled musicians accompanying us in worship. But it is not enough to just be here and soak it in, and even if this singing is new to you and all you can do is mumble and bumble along with your song packet, that is fine if that is you today. But take heart and look up ahead to where you are going. 

Singing appears over 400 times in Scripture with a direct command to sing given over fifty-times. Both the opening passage and psalm this morning exhorted us to sing to the Lord. 

So as Christians, we don’t have the option not to sing. And you don’t have the excuse that you are not very musically talented. As the Lord said to Moses, “Who has made man’s mouth?… Have not I, the Lord?” Lord has called you into His choir, and He knows every bit about you. 

But why singing? What is God doing with Music?

Think of the children of Israel singing on the banks of the red sea. Think of Moses singing on edge of the promised land. Think of Deborah, David, Zacharias, Mary, the heavenly hosts over Bethlehem, the greeting of the saints in Ephesus and Colassae.

Singing is words said victoriously. 

Singing is the rightful response to God’s victory in our lives and in this world. 

And Song is powerful. Song is warfare. Both against sin in our lives and sin in the world.

So be thankful to be in such a musical community, but do not allow yourself to be satisfied with where you are today. Remember you will be singing before the thrown into eternity. So as the saying goes, further up and further in. Praise the Lord, for His mercy endures forever.

Zach Browning – February 11, 2024

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