Hearing from God

By Pastor Josh Wamble

If you are like me, you sometimes wish you had lived during the days of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) or the days of the prophets (Moses, Ezekiel, Isaiah, etc.).  Wouldn’t it have been neat to have walked with Jesus as one of His disciples?  In John 21:25, John tells us that Jesus did and said lots of things that did not make it into the gospel accounts.  In fact, he says that if everything he did and said were to be written down, there would not be enough books in the world to contain it all.  Wouldn’t it have been great to have witnessed and heard all that Jesus said and did?

If you are like me, you may sometimes think that life at those times was more connected to God and that he was communicating to his people much more commonly than today.  I mean just look at some of the events of the Old Testament.  God walked with Adam and Eve.  He appeared to Noah and Abraham multiple times.  He led his people with a could of smoke and a pillar of fire.  He spoke to prophets like Moses and gave them messages directly to the people.

In the New Testament times, angels appeared to Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth and Zechariah.  Jesus did many wonders and miracles.  He spoke with very words of God authoritative and true.  The Holy Spirit appeared in such a clear way that He was seen physically in a dove or in tongues of fire.  He allowed people to preach and hear in their own languages so that the gospel message would spread quickly among the people and nations present at Pentecost.

We sometimes look back on these events from our vantage point with envy wishing we could have the same kinds of experiences with God that people of other generations had.  Thinking like this shows that we misunderstand how God has worked throughout history.  This misunderstanding goes in two directions.

First, we overestimate how often people heard the voice of God in the past.  We often collapse the OT history into a much shorter time frame than it actually happened in.  We think that God speaking was much more common than it actually was.  In the first chapters of 1 Samuel, we read about God calling Samuel toward the end of Eli’s life.  In 1 Sam. 3:1, it says “the word of the Lord was rare in those days.”  God wasn’t always speaking during the OT history.  In fact, there were years and decades that passed between the times that God spoke to different leaders and prophets in the Old Testament.  The period between the Old Testament and the New Testament lasted for about 400 years.  In those 400 years, God did not speak once!

Secondly, we underestimate how often people hear the voice of God today.  Samuel says that the word of the Lord was uncommon in his day.  Today, it is so common that it is often taken for granted.  Today God is continually speaking to his people from His word.  If we want to hear a word from the Lord, we just need to open our bibles and start reading.  We may be tempted to think that having a first-person encounter with God is better than reading a book that is hundreds of years old.  Peter didn’t think so.  He was one who walked with Jesus and sat at His feet as He was teaching.  In his 2^nd letter, he reminded his readers that he was there with Jesus.  He says that he saw the Lord Jesus in the fullness of his glory on the mount of transfiguration, and he heard the voice of God the Father announcing that this was his Son and that He was pleased in Him.  Peter says that he had this first-hand, eye-witness experience.  But, Peter says there is something better than his own experience—the prophetic word which is even more true or more fully confirmed.

The word of God recorded in the words of Scripture are better than personal experience with God for several reasons:

1. It is always there and always available. We can hear from God anytime we want to or need to.  All we have to do is pick up our Bible.
2. It remains the same. There is not a chance of misremembering what God actually said as with firsthand experiences.
3. We can read it and study it together, each hearing the same message from God.
4. We can trust that it is really God speaking. Satan can counterfeit experiences, or we can misunderstand our own experiences.  We can trust that what is written for us in His word is really the Words of God preserved for His people.

May we value the scriptures as God’s very word.  May we pay attention to them and treasure them just as we would if God were audibly speaking to us right now!  May we trust that the written scriptures are even better than an audible spoken word!  May we believe it to the point of putting it into practice in our lives!

Who’s Who in the Bible?

By Pastor Josh Wamble

I was so excited when I went to the mailbox one day during my sophomore or junior year of high school.  There was an official looking letter addressed to me from Who’s Who Among American High School Students.  I’m sure I thought I had really “made it.”  I was being recognized as one of the top high school students in the country—or so I assumed.  Later, I came to understand that this recognition was not very prestigious at all.  Most high school students receive these letters, and it was sort of a scam.  What this company was really interested in was getting me (or my parents) to pay to purchase a book with my name in it.

In the US, many are almost obsessed with making a name for themselves, receiving notoriety, and being recognized by those around them.  The bible gives us a more eternal perspective on our lives and our reputations and legacies.  James tells us that life is like a vapor.  It is here for a moment and then vanishes.  From the perspective of history, our lives only last a brief moment.  Hopefully we make an impact on those around us, and those who care about us will remember us when we are gone.  However, for most people, after a generation or two, we will be forgotten along with almost every other person who has ever existed.

I thought about this recently while reading some of Paul’s letters.  He mentions several individuals as he writes to the churches.  In Romans, he mentions Phoebe, Prisca and Aquila, Epaenetus, Mary, Andronicus, Junias, Ampliatus, Urbanus, Apelles, and many others.  In his letters to Corinth, he talks about Apollos, Stephanas, Fortunatus, Achaicus, and others.  He refences Epaphroditus in Philippians; Aristarchus, Epaphras, Luke, Nympha, Archippus, and Demas in Colossians; Artemas, Tychicus, Zenas the lawyer, and Apollos in Titus; Mark and others in Philemon; and Crescans, Alexander the coppersmith, Onesiphorus, Erastus, Trophimus, Eubulus, Pudens, Claudia, and others in 2 Timothy.  Some of these people are mentioned multiple times in multiple letters and some only once.  Some are called fellow workers.  One is said to have risked his neck to save Paul’s life.  Some are listed as people to be avoided and watched out for.  Demas is called a “fellow worker” in Colossians and Philemon but is said to have fallen in love with the world toward the end of Paul’s life in 2 Timothy.  Peter, John, and Jude mention people by name in their letters as well, and Acts is full of names of people we only read about once.

What got my attention when reading some of these names is that these are all people who were important to so many believers in the early church.  They were used in mighty ways by God during their lifetimes, but their memory has been almost entirely lost to the world.  Our lives are full of people like this.  I wish that you all could have known Walter Lockhart or Judge Homes, or Bob Barton or James and Marietta Watt or Bart Etheredge.  I wish that you all could meet Ray Van Neste or Marilyn Etheredge or Ray Van Neste or Susan Fisher or so many others—people who are gone now but the Lord used in major ways in my life.  There are former members and pastors that have left a mark on our church.  There are people who were here just a few years ago when I moved to Louisville and joined FBCF in 2005 but not now.  Many of you know them, but many of you have come to our church since they have passed away, and they are just names that you may or may not have even heard of.  In 50 or 60 short years there may not be anyone left who remembers them.

There is a specific passage at the end of Philippians that started me thinking this way.  In Phil 4:3, Paul says, “help these women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.”  Paul names these women earlier.  They are Euodia and Syntyche.  He names Clement as well.  But then he references the rest of his fellow workers.  We have no idea who he means.  He doesn’t even tell us their names, but he tells us that God knows their names.  And we can trust that God knows the work that they did for the kingdom as well!

Right now, all over the world there are pastors and missionaries and church members who are faithfully following the Lord and pouring out their lives for the sake of the Kingdom of Christ.  Most of them will never be famous.  They will serve for a short few years, and they will die their lives and even their names almost entirely lost to history, but God knows their names and their faithful labors.  Their preaching and teaching and leading and gospel conversations will not have been in vain.  The Lord is using their efforts and the Kingdom is expanding because of it.

God has used people like this in your life as well.  Take some time to remember them and how the Lord has used them to make you who you are and the impact they have had on your life as a believer.  Seek to live your life with this type of legacy in mind.  The world may not value or even remember your effort, but God sees, and He knows!

Should We Be Imitators?

By Pastor Josh Wamble

Some might say there is nothing worse than an imitator!  Often you hear siblings or other children arguing and fighting because they are copying each other.  In marketing campaigns, we are told that the original is always better.  We are urged to purchase the genuine product not a generic copy.  For a long time the Coke brand’s slogan was “It’s the Real thing.”  You may even remember the song they used—it became a gold record in the US selling more than 500,000 copies!  TV Shows like “Antiques Roadshow” and “Pawn Stars” are filled with people who end up so disappointed when they discover that the artwork or historical artifact is only a replica.  Artificial flavorings or imitation ingredients are never as good in food.

I was thinking about this phenomenon last week during our Wednesday morning men’s bible study.  In Phil. 3:17, Paul writes to the church, “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.”  This is not the only time Paul speaks like this, either.  In 1 Cor., Paul writes, “I urge you, then, be imitators of me.”  Later in the same book (1 Cor. 11:1), he says the same thing, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”

Paul puts himself in the center of a line of imitation, and it goes both ways.  He claims that he is looking backward and imitating Jesus.  He follows Him in every aspect of his life.  He also looks forward to those the Lord has allowed him to evangelize and teach and lead in the Christian life.  He tells them to look to him and imitate his life.  He says, “If you want to know what it looks like to live a life of faith and trust in the Lord, if you want to see what real belief and repentance looks like, just watch me.”  He doesn’t do this in a prideful or arrogant manner.  He knows that the Lord has worked and is working in his life.  He knows that God is using him for the benefit of the newer, less mature believers that he has an influence over.

He also knows that he is not the only one the Lord is using this way.  He tells the Philippian church not only to imitate him but also to “keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.”  I wonder if you have ever read these instructions before.  I wonder if you have ever spent much time thinking about them.  There are two questions that come to my mind when I think about these words of Paul’s and what they have to say about our church.

1.  Who are you imitating?

I pray that you are following the example the Lord has set for us in his word.  I hope that you are following the teaching and example left for us by the apostles.  The history of the church is filled with examples of faithful men and women who lived their lives as followers of the Lord.  Many of them suffered greatly for their faithfulness.  You can learn about them by reading Christian biographies, or you can find shorter articles online at sites like the ones here, here, or here.

But, I also hope that there are Christian people in your life now that you are looking up to.  Are there men and women in our church that are further along in their walk with God than you are?  Is there anyone in your life that you rely on to help you remain true to the gospel you have believed?  When you see faithfulness and humility and love and gentleness and patience and joy lived out in the lives of believers around you learn from them.  Follow their example as they follow the example of Christ.

2.  Who is imitating you?

On the other hand, are there people in your life who are newer to following Jesus than you are?  Are there younger men or women that you are helping to follow the Lord?  Do you have children?  Do you spend time with the children and young adults in our church?  Are you setting an example for them as you follow the Lord in faithfulness?

Do you watch the way that you talk and act and treat people and respond to stress or difficulties because you are conscious of people who are looking to you as an example?  When you are tempted to let your anger get out of control and lash out at others or be impatient with people around you or think and act in selfish ways or any number of other ways to sin, do you fight that temptation by remembering that other believers are watching you, and you don’t want to lead them astray?

Of course, none of us follow God perfectly, but you don’t have to be perfect.  You can also be an example in how you respond to your sin (as Paul and others are to us).  Are you quick to admit when you are wrong or have acted sinfully or do you dig your heels in and refuse to be humble in front of your family or your brothers and sisters in the faith?  Are you quick to repent of your sin and turn to the Lord for forgiveness?

Are you following the Lord’s example?

Are you looking to others in your church and other areas of your life to help you do so?

Are you actively recruiting newer believers that you can invest your life in helping to follow the Lord in faithfulness?

Four Ways to Let Your Pastors

Shepherd You with Joy

By Pastor Josh Wamble

Hebrews 13:17 says, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.”  This is a very serious statement.  On judgment day, you will each have to give an accounting of your life before God.  If you are trusting in Jesus, you will not face condemnation on that day—you will plead the blood of Jesus over your sins and receive mercy and forgiveness.

On that same day, pastors will give an account of their own lives just like other believers.  However, they will also have to give an account for how they kept watch over the souls the Lord has entrusted to them.  Your pastors will have to give an account for their own life and an account for your life—how they led you to follow Christ, how they shepherded you by feeding you, protecting you, providing for you, guiding you toward Christ, and how you followed that leadership.

Above, I only quoted the first half of Hebrews 13:17.  The rest of the verse says, “Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”  The relationship between pastors and their flock ought to be one of love, respect, honor, commitment, trust, affection, joy, and each of these characteristics should be mutual.  They should go both ways.  It is heartbreaking that far too often in far too many churches this is not the case.  When the Lord works this type of relationship between His church and her pastors, we should rejoice and give Him thanks.

We should also work toward making this joy present in our church.  Below, I want to suggest four ways that you can follow the instruction at the end of Hebrews 13:17—to “Let them do this with joy.”

1.  Regularly Pray for Them.

The Lord uses the prayers of His people to accomplish His purposes in the world and especially in His churches.  Pray that your pastors would remain faithful to God and His word.  Pray that we would rest in Jesus and His work for our salvation.  Pray that we would resist sin and temptation.  Pray that we would be quick to go to God in repentance when we do sin.  Pray that we would love the church fully.  Pray that we would work hard at studying and understanding God’s word.  Pray that we would preach and teach His word well and effectively and that God would use it in our church.  Pray that we would manage our time well and rest well.  Pray for your pastors’ families.  Pray for the salvation and faithfulness of your pastors’ children.

2.  Encourage Them

Just like all believers, pastors can get discouraged as well.  Sometimes we question the effectiveness of our sermons or teaching.  We question whether we are doing enough to take care of our people.  We worry about individuals in the church that we know are struggling.  Your pastors need encouragement.  There are many ways you can do that.

Don’t just pray for us, let us know that you are praying and what you are praying.  Tell us when the Lord is using His word in your life and when He is using our sermons and teachings to do that.  Be specific.  We always appreciate when someone says, “Good sermon.” but it is much more encouraging when you let us know something specific that you learned or a specific way God used the sermon or teaching to encourage you or convict you or call you to more faithful living.  You can do these things in person or through a simple card or text message.  You can also encourage your pastors by deliberately being a blessing to their wives or children.

3.  Be Present

One of the most troubling and concerning things for a pastor is when weeks go by, and we don’t see you.  All kinds of thoughts go through our minds.  We begin to wonder if we’ve done something to upset you or if you are disappointed in us or the church somehow.  We wonder if you are watching the sermons online.  We wonder if you are staying in God’s word and remaining close to Him.  We wonder if there’s something you need that we can do for you.  Something as simple as being present or letting us know why you are not goes a long way in helping us to pastor you, shepherd you, watch over your soul with joy.

4.  Follow Their Teaching

Probably the greatest joy your pastors get is to see you following the teachings of God’s word.  Of course, we don’t want you to follow blindly.  We rejoice when you study the word for yourselves and test what we tell you to make sure that it is from God.  We don’t want you just to know God’s word, we rejoice and worship God in thankfulness when we see you walking in His word, putting our sermons and teachings into practice.

In Philippians 2:1-5, Paul charges the church in Philippi with these words, “So, if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.  Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.”

Brothers and sisters, make your pastors’ joy complete.  Let us watch over you “with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage for you” or for us.

Four Reasons You SHOULD Attend Church

By Pastor Josh Wamble

Last week we published a blog article called, “Four Reasons You Should NOT Attend Church.”  Of course, we are not advocating for anyone not to attend church.  Each of those four reasons were not really good reasons for not attending church.  They were actually bad reasons for attending church.

There are many reasons believers should prioritize regularly meeting together for worship.  In Acts, we see that the earliest believers routinely gathered to worship together on the first day of the week.  In Hebrews 10:25, the author tells us not to neglect meeting together as some believers have been doing.  This principle of the importance of God’s people regularly gathering together for corporate worship is seen in the Old Testament as well.  There are many good reasons that we should prioritize regularly gathering together for worship, and we want to highlight a few of them below.

1.  You Should Attend Church Because You Have Been Accepted by God—and Changed.

We don’t attend church to try to impress God or to be accepted by Him.  There is only one reason that God accepts us and is pleased with our worship, and that is on the basis of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.  Gathering with God’s people is the result of God’s work in our lives not the cause of it!

If Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection has really had an impact on you, it will also transform you.  Paul says that believers are new creations in Christ Jesus.  He says that we’ve died to our past life dominated by sin and are now alive to a new life in Christ.

If this is true, then this new life we are living is characterized by new likes and loves—also new hatreds.  The sin that we once loved we now hate.  The things that once seemed so boring and tedious to us now fill us with joy.  Those who are truly God’s people, those who have truly been transformed by His grace, love gathering with the rest of His people.  That is one of the marks of a faithful believer—love for the brothers and sisters.

2.  You Should Attend Church to Encourage Other People.

One of the reasons for regularly gathering with other believers is to encourage them.  In Hebrews 10:24-25, we read, “²⁴ And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, ²⁵ not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”  Earlier, in Hebrews 3:12-14, we read, “¹² Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.  ¹³ But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.  ¹⁴ For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”

The Christian life is a life of fighting.  We fight against sin and temptation.  We fight against evil and unrighteousness.  We fight against all the plans and efforts of the devil and his followers.  It is critically important for us to realize that we do not fight these battles alone.  Trying to be a Lone Ranger Christian is not healthy.  God created the church for a reason.  He puts his people in local churches for a reason.  We are to help one another and fight for and with one another.

We have a responsibility for each other.  You need to be at church for the sake of your own soul, but you also need to be at church for the sake of other church members’ souls.  We have covenanted together for this very purpose, and they are depending on you being there!

You can’t encourage your brothers and sisters if you are not regularly with them.  You can’t help them to fight against sin and temptation; you can’t exhort them; you can’t labor to make sure they are not hardened by the deceitfulness of sin; you can’t fight alongside them to hold fast and not fall away if you are not regularly with them.

I hope that you consider these things as you are deciding whether or not to attend church gatherings each week.  I hope that you are considering these things as you are gathering.  Do you ever think about how your singing loudly and fully and with a full heart helps to stir up your brothers and sisters?  Do you ever think about how you can steer your conversations to stir up your brothers and sisters?  Do you ever think about how your praying and serving and visiting and card writing, and giving, and the way you live help your brothers and sisters to remain faithful to Christ?  I hope that you do.  We are in this together.

3.  You Should Attend Church Because It Makes You More Faithful.

Everything we mentioned above about your responsibilities to your fellow church members works in reverse as well.  Just as you have a responsibility to encourage and stir up the other members of our church and help them to remain faithful to the Lord, Jesus, they have those same responsibilities toward you.  They will have an extremely difficult time fulfilling those responsibilities if you are not often around.

Regularly gathering with your church helps you to be more faithful in another way also.  The whole chapter on John 17, is an extended prayer that Jesus is praying for His followers—His disciples and those who will believe what they will preach—people like you and me.  In verse 17, He prays, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”  Sanctification is the word the Bible uses to describe the process of growth in Christ—of progressively becoming more and more like Him.  Jesus prays that God will perform this work of grace in us, and He prays that God will do it using the truth—His word.

Of course, we can (and should) read and study God’s word on our own.  The Holy Spirit works in our hearts as individuals as we devote ourselves to His word, but He also works when we read and study the Bible together as a church.  In fact, God has designed it this way.  You need to be regularly hearing the word preached, and you need to be regularly involved in Bible study groups with other believers—Sunday School, men’s and women’s groups, other periodic studies that are offered at the church.  Studying the Bible with other people not only helps you to know it and understand it better but also helps you to apply it to your life better.  Often other people in these group Bible studies offer insights or ask questions that you may never have thought of on your own.

In addition to these things, you also need to gather regularly to pray with and for others and to give others the opportunity to pray with and for you.  We’ve been thinking about responsibilities that church members have for one another, and regularly praying for each other is a big one.  I hope that you make a habit of praying for other members of our church.  I hope that you regularly pray through the requests on our prayer lists, but also for different families in our church and, of course, for our church leaders.  The church directory can be a very helpful tool for this purpose.  There is great benefit in praying for one another in our private lives, but there is also great encouragement from hearing someone pray for you or to others when they hear you pray for them or a card sent telling others that you have been praying and what you have been praying for.  I hope that you make praying for the church and church members a priority in your life, and I hope that you make regularly gathering with your church to pray a priority as well.

4.  You Should Attend Church for What You Can Put Into It.

We all show up to different church gatherings hoping to get something out of it, and that is right and good.  However, you should also be thinking about what you can add to your church when we gather together.  God has given all of his people gifts—some are talents that we were created with or have learned through our life experiences, and others are spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit has given to each of His people.  God has gathered each of us together in His church.  He has gathered this specific group of people—including you—together in this particular church so that the gifts He has given to each of us can be used to make the rest of us and our church better—more like Jesus.

If we are going to follow Jesus faithfully, kill sin in our lives, resist temptation, and serve the world around us the way God would have us to, we need each other—including you and your specific gifts!

Four Reasons You Should

NOT Attend Church

By Pastor Josh Wamble

There are many reasons believers should prioritize regularly meeting together for worship.  In Acts, we see that the earliest believers routinely gathered to worship together on the first day of the week.  In Hebrews 10:25, the author tells us not to neglect meeting together as some believers have been doing.  This principle of the importance of God’s people regularly gathering together for corporate worship is seen in the Old Testament as well.  There are many good reasons that we should prioritize regularly gathering together for worship; we will consider some of them on this blog next week.  Below, we want to consider at least four reasons why you should not gather for corporate worship.

1. You Shouldn’t Attend Church to Be Accepted by God.

If you think regularly attending church is a way to make yourself more acceptable to God, there is a bigger conversation that we need to have.  There is only one reason that God accepts us and is pleased with our worship, and that is on the basis of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.

2. You Shouldn’t Attend Church to Impress People.

Even worse than regularly attending church as a way to make yourself more acceptable to God would be doing so to try and impress other people.  When deciding whether or not to attend corporate worship, other people should be considered, and we will think about how to rightly consider them here next week.  But, hopefully, you never make what other people will think of you the deciding factor of whether or not you will attend church.

3. You Shouldn’t Attend Church Because It Makes You Feel Good.

Often attending church does make us feel good.  We are encouraged to see one another.  Hearing one another sing the truths of the gospel reminds us of what the Lord has done for us and lifts us up.  Hearing the word preached and studying the Bible together can strengthen us as well.  These are all good things.  The Bible tells us to stir one another up and encourage one another as we meet together in worship.

However, depending on the passage of scripture that is being preached and your personally situation, leaving church feeling good might be a really bad response.  Sometimes, it might be best to leave feeling convicted or sad or motivated or any number of other emotions, and all of these emotions are good and appropriate at certain times.  You should not attend church services only to feel good.

4. You Shouldn’t Attend Church for What You Can Get Out of It (Only).

The word “only” here is really important.  You should definitely gain benefits from regularly attending corporate worship services and other activities at your church.  As mentioned above, you should be regularly encouraged, challenged, equipped for ministry, taught the Bible, and confronted with God’s love, mercy, grace, forgiveness, justice, holiness, righteousness, and etc.  You should get something out of regular church attendance.  However, that should not be the only reason you regularly attend.

In stead of being solely focused on yourself and what you get, you should also be focused on other people (your brothers and sisters in Christ) and how you can be a blessing to them—how you might encourage them, how you might stir them up to good works, how you might help them to stay faithful, how you might hold them accountable, how you might show love and forgiveness to them, how you might help them to understand the Bible, and etc.

Next week we will consider several reasons why we SHOULD regularly attend church.

Do Unto Others…

By Pastor Josh Wamble

One of Jesus’s most well-known statements is the Golden Rule found in Matthew 7:12:  “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

Most of you probably first learned this rule in a children’s Sunday School class if you grew up in church.  I remember being in Sunday School as a kid and learning this from Ms. Betty Lou Powell.  As a craft project, we took 12-inch rulers, covered them in gold paper, and wrote this verse out on them—making golden rulers.

If we are not careful, it is easy to take short concise statements like this out of context.  We can tend to look at this one command as if it stands on its own and not in relation to what Jesus has been saying leading up to this point in Matthew’s gospel.  We can understand Him just to be saying “Be nice to people.”  If we take a minute to consider the surrounding verses and chapters, we will see something much more substantive and complex.

Starting in chapter 5, Matthew has been recording a sermon that Jesus is preaching—the Sermon on the Mount.  It includes the Beatitudes, teaching about living as disciples in the fallen world, expansions and explanations about aspects of the law, hypocrisy in giving, prayer, and fasting, trusting God, and judging other people.  Now in 7:12, Jesus is beginning the conclusion of this sermon.  This whole sermon has been about how Jesus’s followers are to live in the world as citizens of the Kingdom of God.  This verse, treat others the way you want to be treated, is a summary of what this kind of life means.

I had a really good pastor growing up.  When I was in high school and our youth group would be leaving for a retreat or camp, Mr. Walter would usually be there to send us off (if he wasn’t going with us).  He would give us a speech about having lots of fun but also taking the serious things seriously.  He would usually end his speech by saying, “Remember who you are, and remember where you come from.”  This is essentially what Jesus is saying here as he sums up the Sermon on the Mount.  As you live in this fallen world, remember that you are citizens of another kingdom—the Kingdom of God!  What does it mean to live as Kingdom citizens in a fallen world?  It means that the way we think, the way we act, the things we say, the way we treat other people, everything about us should be different.

With all this in mind, then, what does it mean to treat people the way we would want to be treated?  It means not letting anger well up inside of you but being quick to reconcile with those who have done you wrong (Matt. 5:21-26).  It means letting your speech be honest and straightforward (Matt. 5:33-37).  It means not retaliating when someone treats you wrongly but seeking to serve them (Matt. 5:38-42).  It means not only loving your neighbors and those who are good to you but loving and praying for your enemies—and actually treating them as if you love them (Matt. 5:43-48).  It means being poor in spirit, mourning over sin and the fallenness around us, being gentle, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, being merciful and pure in heart, being peacemakers, and seeing harm and difficulties and persecution for the sake of Christ in the light of eternity and what those things are doing in your soul (Matt. 5:3-12)

It means being gracious and patient toward the cashier who is overworked and taking too long with the customer in front of you or with the waiter who has messed up your order or forgotten to check your drink for a refill.  It means treating the homeless person who asks for help with respect and honor.  It means being quick to forgive those in the church who have wronged you and quick to seek forgiveness when you wrong someone else.  It even means being understanding and patient with the person who stops in front of you at the round about because they are not familiar with how it works!

Treating people this way is a tall order.  It is difficult to do at times.  But, we are to live this way because we have been made citizens of a new Kingdom—a Kingdom founded on love and grace and mercy.  The One who has made us citizens is also making us into the kind of citizens that He would have us to be—citizens who reflect the truths of the Kingdom and live like the King—people who remember who we are and remember where we come from!

Why is it Good that God is Three in One?

By Pastor Josh Wamble

Last week we spent some time thinking about what the Bible says about God’s nature.  That blog post can be read here.  The Bible says eight things about God that can be summarized by the statement “God is three in one.”  This is the doctrine of the trinity.  God exists as one God in three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).

We might be tempted to think that it would be easier for us to understand if the doctrine of the trinity were not true.  We might even think that it would be better if God were not a trinity.  There are several reasons why it is good for us that God is a trinity.  Below we will briefly look at three reasons why.

1.  The Trinity Makes Full Revelation Possible.

God is transcendent.  That means that He is separate from us.  He is different from His creation.  He is far removed from us.  He is high and lifted up.  We cannot approach Him.  If we are to know anything about God, it is only because He has made Himself known.  He has spoken to us in ways that we can understand while at the same time remaining separate and removed from us—transcendent.

God has revealed Himself in a few ways.  He shows Himself in creation and the conscience (what is often called general revelation because it is available to all people in all places at all times), but He has also revealed himself in more specific ways.  Sometimes this is called “special revelation” because it is only available to certain people in certain places at certain times.

There were specific times when God spoke directly to specific people in specific times.  Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and others come to mind.  He has also revealed Himself in His word.  He did this through prophets and apostles.  The Bible says that the Holy Spirit was actively involved in this process.  1 Peter 1:21 says, “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

The Bible says that God has revealed Himself even more fully in His Son—Jesus.  God has told us about Himself in His word, but Jesus is the “exact imprint of His nature” (Hebrews 1:3).  In John 1:14, we are told that God has actually taken on humanity and became one of us.  In John 1:18, we read that “no one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”

God can remain transcendent and yet reveal Himself to us fully as the Father remains in heaven, the Holy Spirit inspires writers of the word, and the Son, Jesus, takes on humanity so that we can see and know God, Himself, in the flesh.

God can make Himself fully known because He is three in one!

2.  The Trinity Makes Salvation Possible.

That God is three in one also makes salvation possible.  It is absolutely true to say that God saves us.  It is also absolutely true to say that the Father saves us, the Son saves us, or the Holy Spirit saves us.  God in His fullness as Father, Son and Spirit accomplishes the work of salvation.  However, the Father, Son, and Spirit do not do the same things in the work of salvation.  The Father didn’t die on the cross for us.  The Spirit didn’t plan the work of salvation or elect those that He would save.  (In fact, there have been some serious heresies that have arisen at different points in church history by people who have gotten some of these things wrong.)

In Ephesians 1 and other places, we see clearly that the Father planned salvation.  Paul wrote, “³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, ⁴as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.  In love ⁵he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, ⁶for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved.”

Of course, we know that the Son, Jesus, accomplished the plan of salvation by living a perfect holy life so that He could be the perfect, effective sacrifice taking our guilt on Himself and giving us His righteousness/obedience.

The Holy Spirit applies this work of salvation to us by convicting us of sin, waking us to the truths of the gospel so that we can respond in faith and repentance, giving us new life in Christ, transforming us, sanctifying us through His word, and eventually glorifying us as He makes us fully like Christ.

Because God is triune—three in one—the Father can send the Son, the Son can take on humanity, and offer his life to the Father, and the Holy Spirit can apply the Son’s work to our lives.  If God were not triune, salvation could not work this way.

God can work for our salvation mercifully and graciously forgiving us while remaining holy, righteous, and just because He is three in one!

3.  The Trinity Makes a Relationship with God Possible.

As we mentioned above, God is transcendent.  He is separate and different and far removed from us, but He is also immanent.  He is near to His creation and especially to His people—His children—His church.  He can have a real and true relationship with us, but how can this be?  How can God be transcendent and immanent at the same time?  It is only because of His trinitarian nature.

We can come to know God as He reveals Himself to us in His word and have a relationship with Him as He speaks to us there and we speak to Him in prayer, but we can come to know Him even more fully as we come to know Him in Christ.  When God entered into our world and our experience of life through the incarnation, we can come to know Him even more fully and relate to Him—and with Him—in a more experiential way, but that was not to last.  In an almost unbelievable statement, Jesus told His followers, “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away …” (John 16:7a).  But, how can that be?  Jesus is God Himself with His people.  How can it be to their (and our) advantage for His to go away?  Jesus answered that question in the second half of that verse.  “for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” (John 16:7b).

Jesus was “God with us” (Immanuel), but the Holy Spirit is God in us.  Now, we can have an even more intimate relationship with God!  The Holy Spirit dwells within us.  Now God Himself relates to us as closely as possible leading us, guiding us, encouraging us, convicting us, strengthening us, and helping us.  Paul even says, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26).

We can have this close, intimate, immanent relationship with the transcendent God of the universe because He is three in one!

There are other reasons that it is good for us that God is three in one.  In fact, everything that God does, He does as a trinity.  All three persons of God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are involved in all of His actions.  They are unified in their purposes as the one God while they are diversified in their individual actions to accomplish those purposes.  Creation is this way as the Father is speaking the world into existence, the Son is the Word of God accomplishing that work, and the Holy Spirit is hovering over the waters of creation sustaining it and making order.

The doctrine of the trinity is confusing and hard to understand, but we should expect it to be so.  God is so much greater and higher than us that it would be surprising if we were able to fully understand His very nature.  It is not only true that God is three in one; it is also good for us in so many different ways that He is three in one.  In fact, it is not an overstatement to say that all the good that we experience from God is due to his triune nature—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit working together for our benefit and our advantage!

What Does the Bible Say About the Trinity?

By Pastor Josh Wamble

Much of the Bible is simple and easy to understand even if it is often hard to do.  When Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves, that may be a hard to do (especially without the work of the Holy Spirit inside of us), but that statement is not hard to understand.  The same is even true for the Bible’s instruction for us to be holy as God is holy.  So much of what the Bible says is this way—be known by humility; love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength; trust in Jesus alone for salvation, don’t try to earn it; and much more.

While most of the Bible is easy to understand, there are other parts that are more difficult.  Peter even said as much about some of Paul’s writings in 2 Pet. 3:15-16.  Many times, these difficulties come as we are trying to understand how different parts of the Bible fit together.  The Bible says that God is sovereign even over salvation and that we make free decisions.  Those truths are easy to understand on their own, but we have some difficulty understanding how they fit together.  How Jesus can be both fully God and fully man fits into this category as well.  While there are others, we could think about, I want to look at the idea of the trinity—one God in three persons—here.  The Bible says eight things about God that help us to understand (or at least believe) this doctrine.

1. There is Only One God.

The Bible says this in several places, and this is one of the main differences between Christianity and many other religions.  For example, Deuteronomy 6:4-5 say, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”  This is only one place where we see this truth—Is. 45:5-6, 45:21-2, 44:6-8, Ex. 15:11, and many others.

No matter how we end up understanding the trinity, one thing is certain—there is only one God.

2. The Father is God.

This truth goes almost without saying.  Most of the time when the Bible uses the word “God,” it is a reference to the Father.  Of course, there are some places that are more explicit than others.  In Matthew 6:9, Jesus teaches us how to pray and tells us to address God as “Our Father in Heaven.”  In John 6:27, John tells us that “God the Father” has set his seal on the Son of Man.

It is clear that God the Father is God.

3. The Son (Jesus) is God.

The Bible teaches that the Father is God, but just as clearly, it also tells us that the Father has a Son.  God the Son who has always existed entered into time and creation and became Jesus the Christ.  In the opening verses of John’s gospel, he tells us that this Son or Word was with God the Father and was Himself God.  Later in John 20:28 when Jesus appears to Thomas after his Resurrection, Thomas proclaims, ‘My Lord and my God!”  Jesus does not correct him or challenge him (the way that angles and others did in similar situations) but allows this statement to stand.  In Revelation, we see several times where Jesus receives worship alongside the Father.

It is clear that the Son (Jesus) is also God.

4. The Holy Spirit is God.

While we don’t read as much about the Holy Spirit in the Bible as we do the Father and the Son, we are explicitly told that he is also fully God.  One of the places where this is made most clear is Acts 5:3-5.  There two early followers, Ananias and Sapphira, had given an offering to the church, but they lied about it.  In verse 3, Peter asks Ananias how he could do such a thing as lie to the Holy Spirit.  In the very next verse, Peter tells him that in lying to the Holy Spirit he has not lied to men but to God.

It is clear from this passage that the Holy Spirit, too, is fully God.

5. The Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit.

6. The Son (Jesus) is not the Father or the Holy Spirit.

7. The Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son (Jesus).

These three truths go together.  This is where we begin to have some difficulty—in understanding how the Father is God and the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God and how they are all one God and not three.  However, the Bible says all of those things, and we must try to understand how all four of those truths can be true at the same time.

Throughout history, some in the church have tried to explain this by saying that God is like an actor in a one-man play.  Sometimes this one God plays the part of the Father and at other times he plays the part of the Son or the Holy Spirit.  He doesn’t really exist as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they say, these are just ways that He presents Himself to His creation at different times.  This is one way of trying to understand what the Bible says about God, but this understanding doesn’t fit with everything the Bible says.

God doesn’t just act like the Father, He is the Father.  God doesn’t just act like the Son or the Holy Spirit at other times, He is the Son, and He is the Holy Spirit.  The Bible makes this clear in several places.  In Revelation, we see the Father and the Son both in Heaven at the same time.  When Jesus was on earth, the Father was in Heaven.  Now that Jesus has ascended back to Heaven with the Father, the Holy Spirit is acting in and among His people here on earth.

There are a few places where the Bible makes this truth explicit as well.  Often in the gospels, we see Jesus praying to the Father.  He is not talking to Himself; He is talking to His Father.  Jesus told his disciples that when He went to Heaven, He would send the Holy Spirit to be with them.

In Luke 1:35, an angel appears to Mary and tells her that she will conceive a child.  He says this will happen when the Holy Spirit comes upon her.  He tells her that the power of the “Most High” (the Father) will come upon her, and the child she carries will be called the Son of God.

Again, in Matthew 3:16-17, we read about Jesus’s baptism.  At that event, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all three in the same place at the same time.  Jesus (the Son) is being baptized.  When He comes out of the water, the Father speaks saying “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”  At the same time, Matthew tells us that the Holy Spirit descended upon Him like a dove.

God doesn’t just play the roles of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; He is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

8. God Has Always Existed This Way.

God never became the Father (or the Son or the Holy Spirit).  He has always existed as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  The Father has never not been the Father.  The Son has never not been the Son, and the Holy Spirit has never not been the Holy Spirit.  God has never not been God.

The trinity is a difficult doctrine to understand, and we may not ever be able to fully understand it.  But, this shouldn’t be that surprising to us.  When we are thinking about the trinity, we are thinking about the vey nature of God.  No wonder we are not able to fully understand!

Over time, believers have come up with a summary of what the Bible says about God—a summary of these eight truths.  There is only one God, and He exists in three persons.

Next week (5/2), we will publish another article helping us to think about why it is good for us that God is one and three.  You can read that post here.

Three Reasons to Prioritize Sunday Evening Worship

By Pastor Josh Wamble

It seems like families these days are busier than they have ever been before.  With so many activities and teams and groups for kids to be a part of, not to mention schoolwork, it is not uncommon for families to only have one or two nights a week at home with no responsibilities—some weeks there may be no free nights.  For this reason and others, many churches these days have discontinued their Sunday evening service.

At FBCF, we have had several conversations over the years about what to do on Sunday evenings.  We value family time and rest for individuals.  We take several Sunday evenings off during the year including each Sunday in July.  But, we have also decided to continue with a Sunday evening service for several reasons.  We have people who are not able to attend on Sunday mornings because of work or for other reasons, and the Sunday evening service allows them to participate in worship and hear the word preached.  We have several men in our church who are able to preach, and the Sunday evening service provides them opportunities to do what God has called them to do.  Having a Sunday evening service also allows for our students to meet together another time during the week to receive teaching, mentoring, and fellowship.

As busy as you and your family are and as little time our families have these days, I want to ask you to consider prioritizing Sunday evening worship anyway.  There are at least three reasons that I would like you to consider.

1.  To Receive a Blessing. Sunday evening worship is another time during the week for you to hear the Bible preached and applied to your life.  John 17 is an extended prayer that Jesus prays for his disciples and for those who will believe their message—us.  In verse 17, he says, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”  God’s plan for making His followers like Jesus is by using the reading and reflecting on and preaching of his word.  The more opportunities you give yourself for hearing the word preached, the more the Holy Spirit will use it in your life.  The Sunday evening service is another opportunity each week to hear the word preached.  I hope that you will prioritize that.

Our evening service is structured a little differently than our Sunday morning service.  Preaching the Bible is the main thing that we do on Sunday evenings, and it takes up the most time, but we do other things as well.  Each week, we sing together, we take some time to openly encourage each other, and we spend an extended time sharing concerns and worries that we have and praying for one another.  I hope that you will prioritize these things as well.

2.  To Extend a Blessing. Another reason for prioritizing the Sunday evening service is because it provides another chance for the kids in our church to interact with the Bible and with other believers.  While the adults are worshipping together in the sanctuary, there are groups and classes for children to take part in.  The middle school and high school students spend the hour with seasoned mature believers studying the Bible together.  This is an informal time where the boys and girls are split up and spend time with mentors.  Students in younger grades also have a time of Bible study, fellowship, and fun with other kids and adult leaders.

Years ago, we had a home-made poster hanging in the youth room.  It simply had a fraction written on it—1/168.  This was a reminder that there are 168 hours in the week.  If students attended the youth group meeting every week, that would be only 1 hour that they were being discipled in the things of Christ.  167 hours out of each week they are being discipled by the ways of the world.  This poster was a reminder for students to be praying and reading the Bible on their own throughout the week and not only relying on the weekly meeting.  The Sunday evening service time is another hour each week for the children of our church to hear the word and being discipled by older believers.  I hope that you will prioritize this time for the children of the church as well.

3.  To Give a Blessing. A third reason for you to prioritize the Sunday evening service is because it is a chance for you to bless other people.  The way that the Sunday evening service is structured, gives you several opportunities to bless your brothers and sisters in Christ.  Each week, there is a chance for you to share with other church members how the Lord has been encouraging you, which is also an encouragement to them.  There is an opportunity for you to share with other church members what impact the Sunday morning sermon had on you.  There is also a chance for you to bear other believers’ burdens by praying for them and committing to pray for them throughout the week.  You can also share the things that are weighing on you giving them the chance to bear your burdens.  I hope that you will prioritize these things.

There is also a unique way for you to encourage and bless specific church members.  As mentioned above, there is a group of men who are called to preach who do not have regular opportunities for doing so.  You attending on Sunday evenings gives them that chance.  It is a blessing for you to hear different people preach, but it is especially a blessing to them to have someone to preach to!  I hope that you will prioritize blessing your brothers in Christ in this way.

I don’t want you to think of the Sunday evening service as something that you must participate in.  I don’t want it to be a burden to you or your family or for you to feel guilty about not attending.  But, I do hope that you will take some time to make a thoughtful decision.  I hope that you will not automatically make your decision based on what is easiest.  I hope that you will think through and decide what is best—best for you, best for your family, and best for your brothers and sisters in Christ.