Victory Endorsed

We are not to regard the cross as defeat and the resurrection as victory.  Rather, the cross was the victory won, and the resurrection the victory endorsed, proclaimed and demonstrated.


John Stott --From "The Cross of Christ" (Leicester and Downers Grove: IVP, 1986), p. 235.

Congregational Letter

Here
(going out USPS this week)

Light and High Beauty

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

Book VI, The Land of Shadow

JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

pray for new Children's Director

Stacey Davis has served our church so well for the past two years.  Her counseling practice has grown to the point that it demands more attention.  Please be in prayer for this vital part-time position.  If you have someone to suggest, or want to inquire yourself, please contact Frank Matthews in the church office.  379-4949

Pointing to God

Every beautiful satisfying created thing is designed to be finger pointing you to the God who alone can satisfy your heart.

--Paul Tripp

August 7, come work a while

On August 7 there will be a work day.  We are cleaning up the property and doing some small tasks to help make our church home as welcoming as possible as we head into the Fall.

Come when you can, leave when you want.

Every hour helps.

Pray for our Mexico Team

We've got 5 of our peeps serving in MX until Friday. Keep 'em in your prayers.

1.Foul; 2.Beyond Understanding; 3.Free

There are three final lessons which I learned from the cross.  First, that my sin is foul beyond words.  If there were no way for our sins to be cleansed and forgiven but that the Son of God should die for them, then our sins must be sinful indeed.  Secondly, I learn that God's love is great beyond all understanding.  He could have abandoned us to our just fate and left us to perish in our sins.  But he didn't.  He loved us, and he pursued us even to the desolate agony of the cross.  Thirdly, I learn that salvation is a free gift.  I do not deserve it.  I cannot earn it.  I do not need to attempt to procure it by my own merit or effort.  Jesus Christ on the cross has done everything that is necessary for us to be forgiven.  He has borne our sin and curse.  What, then, must we do?  Nothing!  Nothing but fall on our knees in penitence and faith, and stretch out an open, empty hand to receive salvation as a gift that is entirely free.

--John Stott, From "Suffered Under Pontius Pilate"  From the Episcopal Series (Atlanta: The Episcopal Radio-TV Foundation, 1962).

Pakistan

From: Steve Timmis

Tragic killing of Acts 29 pastor in Pakistan for preaching Jesus. Please pray for his family & assailants http://ow.ly/1qIZHg

Schedule Change August 22

We are on a mission to make disciples and THAT has led us to change our Sunday AM schedule.

For the glory of God, we need to:
--Create more space for guests we'll invite
--Broaden & Deepen our training & education of adults, youth, and children

Change always creates opportunities, good and bad. It would be very helpful and encouraging to see an army of people trusting God that He will use our sacrifices to accomplish the mission He's given.

--

sermon outline handout

HERE

SAVED FOR GOD’S GLORY by Phil Ryken

In the book of Exodus, the Israelites had only one thing going for them,

and that was God himself. What Exodus shows is that their God

had one overriding purpose: namely, to glorify himself. The book of Exodus

is so rich that it is hard to reduce it to a single theme or emphasis. Different

commentators have made various suggestions about what ties the whole

book together, and some have doubted whether there is anything to unify

the book at all. However, the theme of Exodus is very simple — so simple

it can be expressed in four short words:

                                                 saved for God's glory.

 

In one sense, of course, God does everything for his glory. In his famous

"Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World,"

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) wrote, "The great end of God's works, which

is so variously expressed in Scripture, is indeed but ONE; and this one end

is most properly and comprehensively called THE GLORY OF GOD."

The chief end of God is to glorify himself in all he is and all he does. But

this is especially true of the exodus. One of the most glorious things God ever

did was to save his people out of Egypt. The exodus was for his glory. As

the psalmist wrote, "When our fathers were in Egypt . . . he saved them for

his name's sake, to make his mighty power known" (Ps. 106:7, 8).

God makes his glorious purpose known throughout the book of Exodus.

Whenever Moses told Pharaoh to let God's people go, the reason he gave was

so they could glorify God. Pharaoh heard it over and over again: "Let my

people go, so that they may worship me" (e.g., Exod. 9:1). But Pharaoh

would not let God's people go. From the human standpoint, this was because

his heart was hard. But from the divine perspective, God hardened Pharaoh's

heart so that he could glorify himself. Three times God promised to gain

glory for himself through Pharaoh: "The Egyptians will know that I am the

LORD when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen"

(Exod. 14:18; cf. Exod. 9:16; 14:4, 17; Rom. 9:17).

 

God did gain glory for himself — at Pharaoh's expense! And as soon

as his people escaped from Pharaoh's clutches, they glorified God. The crossing

of the Red Sea was followed immediately by the Song of Moses, in

which the people praised God for being "majestic in holiness, awesome in

glory, working wonders" (Exod. 15:11). As the Israelites traveled farther into

the desert, they saw "the glory of the LORD appearing in the cloud" (Exod.

16:10). Finally they arrived at God's holy mountain, where they again witnessed

God's glory in thunder and lightning (Exod. 24:15-17). They also heard it in the words of the covenant, which were given to help them glorify God.

 

Tragically, while the Israelites were waiting for Moses to come back

down the mountain, they started dancing around a golden calf. God was so

angry with them that he was ready to destroy them. Why? Because although

they were saved for God's glory, they were not giving him the glory. But

Moses interceded, asking God to have mercy on them, and he made his

appeal on the basis of God's glory (Exod. 32:11-14). If God destroyed the

Israelites, Moses argued, then the Egyptians would not glorify him as the

God who saved his people. Afterward Moses went back up the mountain, and

there he asked to see the glory of God (Exod. 33:18-23). And see it he did,

glimpsing the back of God's glory. When Moses came back down from the

mountain, he himself was glorious, radiating with the brightness of God's

glory (Exod. 34:29-35).

 

The last chapters of Exodus contain detailed instructions for building the

tabernacle. Rather than being irrelevant to the exodus, as some have thought,

these chapters explain the whole point of the adventure. We are saved to

glorify God, which means worshiping him the way he desires to be worshiped.

Concerning the tabernacle, God said, "the place will be consecrated

by my glory" (Exod. 29:43). Thus the climax of the whole book comes at

the very end: "Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of

the LORD filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting

because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle" (40:34, 35).

 

From beginning to end, the exodus was for the glory of God. The whole

glorious adventure shows that the God of Israel is the God who saves.

Anyone who wants to be saved may call on his name and on the name of

his divine Son, the Savior, Jesus Christ. This is what the psalmist did at the

end of Psalm 106, the "Exodus Psalm." After recounting the entire epic —

explaining how God saved his people out of Egypt in spite of their sin —

the psalmist invites us to call on God for our own salvation: "Save us, O

LORD our God, and gather us from the nations" (v. 47a). We do not deserve

to be saved from sin any more than the Israelites deserved to be brought out

of Egypt. But God saves us for his glory, so "that we may give thanks to

[his] holy name and glory in [his] praise," saying, "Praise be to the LORD, the

God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting" (vv. 47b, 48a).

What must you know?

I've really been struck by how closely Heidelberg Catechism, Question 2 mirrors the book of Exodus.

Exodus shows misery of our sin and slavery, the drama of our freedom--purchased by God by the blood of the lamb-- and then leads us to His 10 words/commandments---as a path for us to know how to live the free life in gratitude for such redemption.

 What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?

Answer. Three things: first, how great my sin and misery are; second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery; third, how I am to thank God for such redemption.

There's a big difference

Jesus has promised to meet your needs. He hasn't promised to supply all those cravings you've mistakenly told yourself are needs.

--Paul
Tripp

Ten wonderful folks

Just completed great "next step" seminar with 10 folks who'd make great members.

Jesus, the Exodus, and us (Already, Not Yet--again)

"In one sense Christ fulfilled the Exodus during his earthly ministry. In another sense, Christians today experience life as a wilderness wandering looking to the future for the rest that comes at the end of the Exodus (Heb. 3:7- 4:13), the entering of the Promised Land (heaven)."

--from Tremper Longman & Ray Dillard Introduction to OT

more here

multi-tasking, internet skimming, social-media addiction, etc

Woody Allen highlights this in a scene from the movie "Manhattan." A man speaks into a tape recorder about the idea for a story about "people in Manhattan who are constantly creating these real unnecessary neurotic problems for themselves because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe."

that is a tease for what you'll find in this helpful but very challenging article by Justin Taylor as he quotes PASCAL

The issues of multi-tasking, internet skimming, social-media addiction, etc. is only going to become more acute. So it's helpful to remember that, on a certain level, there is nothing new under the sun. I thought it might be helpful to repost a couple of blog entries on distraction and the heart—written hundreds of years before the Age of ADD.

Pascal, to my mind, has written the most profound reflections on God, man, and "diversion." I'd recommend getting Peter Kreeft's edition, Christianity for Modern Pagans, Pascal's Pensees Edited, Outlined, and Explained, where the relevant thoughts are all gathered in one section (pp. 167-187). Kreeft writes that when he teaches this material, his "students are always stunned and shamed to silence as Pascal shows them in these pensees their own lives in all their shallowness, cowardice and dishonesty."

Here is one line from Pascal (from #136) that it worthy of a lot of meditation::

I have often said that the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

Kreeft's restatements and commentary are also worth reading. For example, here is an excerpt from pp. 167-169:

We ought to have much more time, more leisure, than our ancestors did, because technology, which is the most obvious and radical difference between their lives and ours, is essentially a series of time-saving devices.

In ancient societies, if you were rich you had slaves to do the menial work so that you could be freed to enjoy your leisure time. Life was like a vacation for the rich because the poor slaves were their machines. . . .

[But] now that everyone has slave-substitutes (machines), why doesn't everyone enjoy the leisurely, vacationy lifestyle of the ancient rich? Why have we killed time instead of saving it? . . .

We want to complexify our lives. We don't have to, we want to. We wanted to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very things we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hold in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it.

So we run around like conscientious little bugs, scared rabbits, dancing attendance on our machines, our slaves, and making them our masters. We think we want peace and silence and freedom and leisure, but deep down we know that this would be unendurable to us, like a dark and empty room without distractions where we would be forced to confront ourselves. . .

If you are typically modern, your life is like a mansion with a terrifying hole right in the middle of the living-room floor. So you paper over the hole with a very busy wallpaper pattern to distract yourself. You find a rhinoceros in the middle of your house. The rhinoceros is wretchedness and death. How in the world can you hide a rhinoceros? Easy: cover it with a million mice. Multiple diversions.

Douglas Groothuis (Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary) has written wisely on these issues. In his essay "Why Truth Matters Most: An Apologetic for Truth-Seeking in Postmodern Times" (JETS, September 2004) he takes his cues from Pascal:

In the middle of the seventeenth century in France, Blaise Pascal went to great lengths to expose those diversions that kept people from seeking truth in matters of ultimate significance. His words still ring true. In his day, diversion consisted of things like hunting, games, gambling, and other amusements. The repertoire of diversion was minute compared with what is available in our fully-wired and over-stimulated postmodern world of cell phones, radios, laptops, video games, omnipresent television (in cars, restaurants, airports, etc.), extreme sports, and much else. Nevertheless, the human psychology of diversion remains unchanged. Diversion consoles us—in trivial ways—in the face of our miseries or perplexities; yet, paradoxically, it becomes the worst of our miseries because it hinders us from ruminating on and understanding our true condition. Thus, Pascal warns, it "leads us imperceptibly to destruction." Why? If not for diversion, we would "be bored, and boredom would drive us to seek some more solid means of escape, but diversion passes our time and brings us imperceptibly to our death." Through the course of protracted stupefaction, we learn to become oblivious to our eventual oblivion. In so doing, we choke off the possibility of seeking real freedom.

Diversion serves to distract humans from a plight too terrible to encounter directly—namely, our mortality, finitude, and failures. There is an ineluctable tension between our aspirations and our anticipations and the reality of our lives. As Pascal wrote,

Despite [his] afflictions man wants to be happy, only wants to be happy, and cannot help wanting to be happy. But how shall he go about it? The best thing would be to make himself immortal, but as he cannot do that, he has decided to stop thinking about it.

Pascal unmasks diversion as an attempt to escape reality, and an indication of something unstable and exceedingly out-of-kilter in the human condition. An obsession with entertainment is more than silly or frivolous. It is, for Pascal, revelatory of a moral and spiritual malaise begging for an adequate explanation. Our condition is "inconstancy, boredom, anxiety." We humans face an incorrigible mortality that drives us to distractions designed to overcome our worries:

Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our author and our end. Now what does the world think about? Never about that, but about dancing, playing the lute, singing, writing verse, tilting at the ring, etc., and fighting, becoming king, without thinking what it means to be a king or to be a man.

Pascal notes that "if man were [naturally] happy, the less he were diverted the happier he would be, like the saints and God." Diversion cannot bring sustained happiness, since it locates the source of happiness outside of us; thus, our happiness is dependent on factors often beyond our control, so that we are "liable to be disturbed by a thousand and one accidents, which inevitably cause distress." The power may go off, the screen freeze, or the cell phone connection may break up. Worse yet, our own sensoriam may break down as sight dwindles, hearing ebbs, olfactory awareness fades, and all manner of bodily pleasures become harder to find and easier to lose. As the Preacher of Ecclesiastes intones, "Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, 'I have no pleasure in them' " (Eccl 12:1).

Diversions would not be blameworthy if they were recognized as such: trivial or otherwise distracting activities performed in order to temporarily avoid the harsh and unhappy realities of human life. However, self-deception often comes into play. In the end "we run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it." According to Pascal, this condition illustrates the corruption of human nature. Humans are strangely not at home in their universe. They cannot even sit quietly in their own rooms. "If our condition were truly happy we should feel no need to divert ourselves from thinking about it." Woody Allen highlights this in a scene from the movie "Manhattan." A man speaks into a tape recorder about the idea for a story about "people in Manhattan who are constantly creating these real unnecessary neurotic problems for themselves because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe."

The compulsive search for diversion is often an attempt to escape the wretchedness of life. We have great difficulty being quiet in our rooms, when the television or computer screen offers a riot of possible stimulation. Postmodern people are perpetually restless; they frequently seek solace in diversion instead of satisfaction in truth. As Pascal said, "Our nature consists in movement; absolute rest is death." The postmodern condition is one of oversaturation and over-stimulation, and this caters to our propensity to divert ourselves from pursuing higher realities.

 

Sunday's Scripture

I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.

--Exodus 6:6-8

--

Lanya Olmsted is serving in Malawi this month

Prayer Study for tonite's officer meeting

Newer to Christ Community?

If you are newer to Christ Community, let me strongly recommend coming along to our Next-Step Seminar.

Friday 7-9pm
&
Saturday 9-Noon

This seminar will help you understand more of the doctrine and philosophy of Christ Community while helping you get to know some other folks.

The seminar takes place in the church office.

Exodus

This Sunday, July 18, I will preach an overview type sermon on the book of Exodus.

Then, August 22, I will start preaching through the book.

"In Exodus we begin face to face with a sheer mystery.  We are never told why the sovereign purposes of God required that his people should go down to Egypt or why, having pledged them his presence in that alien land (Gn. 46:4), his care of them should take the strange form of persecution (Ex. 1:8-10), cruel sorrows (1:15-16) and threatened genocide (1:22).  The early narratives of Exodus make us face the fact that 'days of darkness still come o'er me; sorrow's path I often tread'.  Yet the chapters are equally clear that there is a mystery of care parallel to the mystery of suffering, a secret power of preservation and increase which proves greater than the power of the enemy (Ex. 1:12).  The chosen agents of infanticide proved to be moved by a spiritual fear that turns them from their grim task (1:17) and, marvel of marvels, out of that hostile, genocidal royal house, there emerges a tender-hearted princess, moved by an infant's tears (2:6).  Exodus 1–2 are fully a match for the book of Esther in its understated theology of the hidden providences of the God of Israel."

--Alec Motyer

Alec Motyer's Outline of Exodus

I. Israel in Egypt: The Savior (1-13)

II. Israel at Sinai: The Companion (13-24)

III. Israel around the Tabernacle (24-40)

Will add details later, this is bones of it

Fire & Exodus

"Fire is a pervasive motif in Exodus, playing a significant part in each division of the book. Throughout the Bible 'fire' signifies the active holiness of God, holiness not as, so to speak, merely a 'passive' attribute but as the active, menacing hostility of a holy God to everything that offends His holiness."

--Alec Motyer

Go Down Moses

two (2) things:
1.) This is a wonderful rendition of the Negro Spiritual "Go Down Moses".  A scene from a movie I've never heard of before.
2.) I would give anything to be able to lead a service like that just ONE sunday morning!

Faith

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

One word identities

I just realized that I have a child who has entered the rarified air of folk who are known by only one name: Madonna, Bono, Pele, and now----Joppa!

Good Stuff on Faith

from the Heidelberg Catechism

Q & A 21

Q. What is true faith?

A. True faith is
      not only a knowledge and conviction
      that everything God reveals in his Word is true;^1
   it is also a deep-rooted assurance,^2
      created in me by the Holy Spirit^3 through the gospel,^4
      that, out of sheer grace earned for us by Christ,^5
      not only others, but I too,^6
      have had my sins forgiven,
      have been made forever right with God,
      and have been granted salvation.^7

   ^1 John 17:3, 17; Heb. 11:1-3; James 2:19
   ^2 Rom. 4:18-21; 5:1; 10:10; Heb. 4:14-16
   ^3 Matt. 16:15-17; John 3:5; Acts 16:14
   ^4 Rom. 1:16; 10:17; 1 Cor. 1:21
   ^5 Rom. 3:21-26; Gal. 2:16; Eph. 2:8-10
   ^6 Gal. 2:20
   ^7 Rom. 1:17; Heb. 10:10

Q & A 22

Q. What then must a Christian believe?

A. Everything God promises us in the gospel.^1
      That gospel is summarized for us
      in the articles of our Christian faith—
      a creed beyond doubt,
      and confessed throughout the world.
   ^1 Matt. 28:18-20; John 20:30-31

Pray for the work of the Holy Spirit

"The Gospel, without a deep recognition of personal need, devolves into a heart-hardening, pride-building system of theology and rules."
--Paul tripp

RP: the difference is the power and presence of the Spirit. Pray for His work in you, your family, and CCC

Great time with the fellas

8 guys enjoyed carb-loading together @ Perkins' this AM.

Join us August 5 at the next one!