Pastor’s Blog – November-December 2021

The months of November and December are generally a very busy and relatively hectic season of the year with the series of holidays on the calendar. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic at least, the few weeks from Thanksgiving through New Year’s are extremely busy and full of events, lots of fun and fellowship, lots of good food, and a special sense of warmth and good will. During 2020 of course, this season was dampened by the pandemic – and the uncertainty of things will probably have some impacts on this year’s activities during the upcoming holiday season.

 Regardless of what we face in 2021, as individuals or as a community and country, there are some aspects of the upcoming season that we should all keep in mind. Even in the midst of a global pandemic, complicated economic times (low employment, shortage of labor to fill open jobs, supply chain delays, inflationary pressures, etc.), political divisions and unrest, spiraling rates of violence, widespread hatred and prejudice toward people who are different from us, and on goes the list of challenges, we are still very much a blessed people. We have much for which to be thankful for in this season of 2021. Let me point out the facts of these blessings – and I note that this blog will by no means cite all the blessings that we have received.

Let me name a few of these blessings:

• God has saved us by His grace through our choice to receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. He accomplished this by the substitutionary death of His “only begotten Son,” Jesus Christ, on the Cross at Calvary and by His resurrection power. In that instant of our salvation experience, we have received His gift of His Holy Spirit who is with us and indwelling in us at all times. Praise God.

• God has blessed us with our spouses, our children, our grandchildren, and, yes, some even have been blessed by the birth of great-grandchildren. Next to our love of God and being a follower of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, we are to love our spouses and families who are great blessings indeed.

• God has given us the ability to get an education, to work and make a living, to live in a good community where we have good friends and neighbors. He has generally given us good health although we all have, or will, encounter those times in our lives when we will encounter illnesses and challenges along the road of life.

• God has blessed us with good friends and colleagues along the way. I have been most blessed by having had the opportunity to have a number of very close and very good friends.

• God has blessed us to be a part of a very loving and compassionate church family known as Saloma Baptist Church. I am most thankful for this church family.

• God has blessed us with the call to be “salt of the earth” (preservative) and “light of the world” (by which we demonstrate the transforming power of Jesus Christ by our words, deeds, actions, attitudes, etc.).

I think you get the point. Regardless of the circumstances of the pandemic and the times in which we live, we have much to be thankful for as the Thanksgiving and Christmas season approaches. Above all, we should remember with thankful hearts and with words and songs of praise and wonder, that God sent His Son to earth to be born in a lowly manger in an inconsequential place called Bethlehem, born to peasant parents, living the life of a carpenter’s son, to become the Savior and Lord of the world by His sacrificial death death at Calvary and His glorious resurrection from the dead, His ascension into heaven where He sits and intercedes for us right now with God the Father, and His gift of the Holy Spirit to be with us and in us! Praise be to God!

Pastor’s Blog - September - October 2021

These two verses from Romans 12:1-2 served as the scriptural basis for a recent two-month sermon series I presented on renewal of the church: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

What is renewal? The basic definition of renewal that I used in this sermon series was “to restore or to make new…” It means to restore to freshness. Another traditional term in evangelical Christianity that may be interchanged with renewal is that of “revival.” We sing the old gospel hymn “Revive Us Again.” Regeneration is another term that may be used somewhat interchangeably with renewal in the context of my sermon series. Note the key phrase from Romans 12:1-2 that undergirded each of the sermons: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

In a series of nine messages, I preached on the spiritual struggle that is encountered in the pursuit of renewing the church. A basic premise of the sermon series is that you and I must cooperate with God the Father who would prune out, or cut out, those branches (our attitudes, our ambitions, our actions, our sins), that are hindering our testimony and holding us back in our service to carry out the mission of Jesus Christ – holding us back in bearing much fruit for God the Holy Spirit.

Renew, our church, O Lord! That should be our prayer – for Saloma Baptist Church and for all churches in 2021. In Romans 12, Paul outlines the nature of the struggle that the church in Rome was involved in – the struggle of conformity to the world or transformation according to God’s will. The burning question in 2021 is this: what will we do with the church in general? Will we attack it, will we criticize it, will we neglect it, will we quit it? Our prayer should be that of Frances of Assisi when he knelt in the empty and forsaken chapel by San Damiano – “Renew my church, o Lord.”

Just a few weeks ago, we thought we were emerging from the worse of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now we are going through what is proving to be the very worst, at least for many areas of the country, of the pandemic with the rapid spread of the Delta variant. It seems that all ages are being threatened, and once again, we are facing major dangers to our public health and safety. This creates additional pressure and challenges for the church. Now is the time for the church to be the church – to allow Jesus to reign as the rightful head of His church – to put aside our petty differences and divisive rhetoric – and let the indwelling Holy Spirit infill us each and every day. Come, Holy Spirit. Renew us, infill us, revive us! The world must witness the love and grace of God in His church and His people as we move through these challenging times.

As I shared in the very first sermon in this series, “Time is short because the church is losing spiritual sensitivity. Time is short because Jesus is coming again. Time is short because people die without the gospel in their hearts. I have hope for the church because our hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ. As he is, so are we in the world. The time is now that we are to present ourselves to him for his usefulness. If we will build the altar, He will send the fire!”

We are called to minister to the “lost and the least” with the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of Jesus Christ. As I shared in the closing message of this series, the most important quality in renewal is that of Christian love. Have we forgotten our “First Love?” That is the love of God. 1 John 4:19 says: “We love because He first love us.” It is only through Him – God the Father – that we are able to love. He loves us unconditionally, and we are called to love ourselves and all others unconditionally as well. Renew the church, O Lord. Help us to recover our First Love, O Lord. Revive us again!!!

Pastor’s Blog – July-August 2021

I shared in my prior blog plans to bring a series of sermons on the Sermon on the Mount, which contain the core of the teachings of Jesus, and which are essential for us to follow and understand if we are to fulfill His calling on our lives in the 21st century. In the course of the sermon series, I did not cover Matthew 7:24-27, which contains the story of “The Wise and Foolish Builders.”

 Let me share that text from Matthew 7:24-27: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against his house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (NIV()

 This scripture text certainly contains some very important truths for us to seek to follow in this period as we emerge from the pandemic and begin to experience the so-called “new normal.” We understand the importance of a house, and other structures, having a solid foundation. That is why core drillings are often done prior to the construction of a large building – i.e., to determine the depth of the solid rock and what type of foundation support is needed in the subterranean area. As an aside, we have seen the potential danger of a shifting foundation base with the tragic collapse of the 12-story condominium building in Miami, Florida, which may have been due in part to changing underground conditions with shifting sands, erosion due to saltwater from the ocean tides, and softened rock structures coupled with deteriorated structural conditions. The point is that a house, or other building structures, that are not built upon a solid foundation are subject to deterioration and collapse over time. Perhaps Jesus’s background as a carpenter, coupled with his followers’ familiarity with such basic concepts, was the basis for his use of such understandable images in his teaching.

 What is the application of this in our own spiritual life and Christian walk? The application is very simple. What is the foundation of our life? Have we built our life upon things of the world – the shifting sands of the world, the temporal and passing experiences of society, the disappointment that other people will inevitably bring our way? Certainly, if we build our spiritual houses upon “sand” – the rain will come down, the streams will rise, the winds will blow and beat against that structure – and our house – our life – it will fall “with a great crash.”

 In contrast, if our life is built upon the solid rock of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then it will stand and survive when the rain beats down, when the winds blow hard, when the floods surround us – we will stand firm and survive because we have Jesus Christ at the root of our daily living.

 The words of the hymn “The Solid Rock” speak to this truth. Let me share the words of the first verse and chorus: “My hope is built on nothing less, Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; I dare not trust the sweetest frame, But wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; All other ground is sinking sand, All other ground is sinking sand.

 As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and enter into a so-called “new normal” and deal with all that lies ahead, I pray that your life is built upon “The Solid Rock” of Jesus Christ!

Pastor’s Blog - May – June 2021

During the months of May and June, I am delivering a sermon series on Sunday mornings at Saloma Baptist Church based on texts from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). In many ways, the Sermon on the Mount represents the core teachings of Jesus and his principal instructions to his disciples of all ages.

Timothy Keller, writing in his most recent book titled Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter, says this about the Sermon on the Mount on page 160 of the book; “Jesus’s call comes in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’s reissuing of the Ten Commandments, in which he tells disciples how to live, how to care for the poor, how to be generous with their wealth, how to love their neighbors. If believers are a counterculture of justice and peace, they become an attractive witness to the world, a foretaste and glimpse of the New Jerusalem, when all of human life will be healed by the presence and Lordship of Christ.” The Sermon on the Mount is central to our Christian faith.I certainly ask that you remember me in your prayers and thoughts as I prepare and bring these messages.

I certainly take all of the preaching that I do very seriously, but I feel that this particular sermon series is one of the more important ones that I have prepared and planned in many years. Why? The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’s longest and most detailed teaching record that we have recorded in the four Gospels. It is a profound sermon that tells disciples and believers how to live out their faith. It remains as important and instructive to us in 2021 as it was for the disciples when Jesus spoke these words more than 2,000 years ago.

According to John R.W. Stott, “The Sermon on the Mount is probably the best-known part of the teaching of Jesus, though arguably it is the least understood, and certainly it is the least obeyed.” Scott seems to get at the real challenge we face when speaking of the Sermon of the Mount. We know where to find it in Matthew (as well as the shorter version in Luke 6:20-40), but we don’t fully understand all that Jesus has to say – and we certainly don’t seek to obey it as Scott points out. Some people even argue about the practicality of applying portions of Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount in our post-modern and humanistic society – that much of what Jesus has to say in the Sermon on the Mount, including the beautiful Beatitudes found in the first of part of Matthew 5, is simply impractical to apply in this era.

In summary, Jesus is telling us how to be Christians in the Sermon on the Mount – salt of the earth and light of the world. He gives a detailed explanation and application of the Ten Commandments. Jesus shares some of the most difficult instructions in all of the Bible – to “love your enemies” and “to be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect.” He tells us to love Him and to love each other. There is a detailed explanation in the Sermon on the Mount on how to pray (we sure need this in 2021), including the Lord’s Prayer/Model Prayer. He discusses the topic of wealth and where is our treasure? Jesus reminds us to not worry about things in this life and says that God knows our needs. We are told to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Instructions are given on how to ask God for help. Jesus closes out the sermon by teaching disciples on how to make proper choices and warns us against the teachings of false prophets. He declares that not everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven – which is a very stark way to end the sermon.

The great New Testament scholar, William Barclay, stated: “One great scholar called the Sermon on the Mount ‘The Ordination Address to the Twelve.’ Just as a young minister has his task set out before him, when he is called to his first charge, so the Twelve received Jesus their ordination address before they went out to their task…All are agreed that in the Sermon on the Mount we have the essence of the teaching of Jesus to the inner circle of his chosen men.”

I would state that the Sermon on the Mount is just as important for us today as it was for the 12 disciples when Jesus first presented it. It is our “call to discipleship” and our “call to action” as his 21stcentury disciples and witnesses. Pray for me as I prepare and present these messages in May and June. My goal is to impart to all the basic teachings of Jesus in this section of the Gospels and to help us better understand what we are called to be doing in 2021 and beyond.

Pastor's Blog - March-April 2021

The months of March and April, in the year 2021, bring to our minds some significant moments in time. Let me share some thoughts on these matters.

First, it has now been one year since we first began to deal with the COVID-19 global pandemic. No event in our life times has brought about such dramatic change in such a relatively short period of time. In the course of one year, our lives and culture have been changed tremendously and permanently. Over 510,000 Americans, and around 2.5 million people worldwide, have passed into eternity with COVID-19 - with over 28.5 million having tested positive in the United States (around 115 million worldwide) - our country has more deaths from COVID than any other country in the world yet we supposedly have the most advanced health care system. COVID has brought to the surface the disparities in healthcare outcomes - with Blacks and Hispanics having substantially higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and death.

Every institution of life has been impacted - the church, education, business and industry, government, nonprofits, etc. We have witnessed the greatest economic dislocation since the Great Depression. On a positive note, treatments have greatly improved for the virus, and the numbers of people who have been vaccinated are increasing. We are hopeful that the worst may be over by late spring to early summer - yet we are now hearing of numerous variants of the virus that are spreading at a much more rapid pace and may be somewhat resistant to the vaccines.

We are all exhausted from the pandemic - we all know of multiple people who have passed away with COVID - most all families have had at least one family member to have tested positive. There are post-COVID-19 complications that we are only now beginning to understand in terms of long-term and debilitating health effects. While the infection numbers and positivity rates are going down, the numbers of those passing away are increasing. Here in Kentucky - more than 400,000 have had COVID and over 4,600 have passed away. Taylor County continues to be in the "at highest risk" category, according to national designations, as this blog is prepared in late February.

Second, even in the midst of all the darkness of this one year anniversary of COVID-19, there is another journey that we are on during this period - the Season of Lent. Beginning on Ash Wednesday and continuing through the Saturday before Easter Sunday, this 40-day season is a time in which Christians spend time in self-reflection, repentance, prayer and meditation, Bible study and prayer, self-denial, and renewed reflection on the passion of Jesus in his sacrifice for our sins. While Lent may seem to be somewhat "dark" in itself because of the emphasis on moving toward the Cross and what Jesus went through, there is "light" - even in the darkest of moments as Jesus hangs on the Cross - pointing toward the hope that is to come.

Holy Week is a very important part of Lent beginning with Palm Sunday on March 28 and concluding on Holy Saturday on April 3. Good Friday (April 2) is the day that we remember Jesus actually experiencing the pain and agony of the crucifixion on the Cross. If you are following my sermon series on "Christ Speaks from the Cross," you have a good idea of the fact that even in the time of Jesus' pain and suffering, He was expressing forgiveness for those who were crucifying Him and showing concern and love for others. It was on the Cross that He took upon himself the sins of all humanity and was in that moment separated from God the Father - for the first and only time in all of history. He died. His body was placed in a tomb. And on the third day, He arose from the dead. The tomb was empty. Jesus arose and thereby conquered death - making provision for our salvation once and for all. And He ultimately ascended into heaven where He sits at the right hand of God the Father and from where He will return one day for His church. But He did not leave us without hope - God's Holy Spirit has come to us and is in us! Praise God. What a powerful message in an age of darkness and death as we have experienced over the past year of the COVID-19 pandemic! Amen!!

Third, the spring season is a time when we witness the bursting forth of God's creation - as the flowers bloom and trees put forth leaves and the beautiful colors are so abundant. Spring is a physical representation and reminder that God is our creator - and of how he renews our lives in Jesus Christ. Again, when we have experienced a year of pandemic, and as the pandemic continues at some level, God is using Easter and the spring season as a time of renewal and recommitment for His people! Can you sense it? I do. I need it. We all need it. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. May this be a season of renewal, hope, and reminder that God is in charge and that there is always hope in Jesus Christ.