Mark Scholten

You’ve Got a Heart Problem

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Sin is a matter of the heart before it is ever an issue of our behavior. Tis means that your and my biggest problem in life exists inside us and not outside us. It’s the evil inside me that connects me to the evil outside me. So I must confess that I am my greatest problem. And if I confess this I am saying that I don’t so much need to be rescued from people, locations, and situations. I am in desperate need of the grace that is alone able to resue me from me. I can escape situations and relationships. But I have no power to escape me. Ths is exactly why David prayed in Psalm 51 that God would creaet a clean heart in him. God’s grace is grace for the heart, and that is very good news.
Paul David Tripp, New Morning Mercies, March 7.

Got Friends?

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The Bible’s first pages show our inescapable need for relationships. Several times the creation story in Genesis 1 repeats the phrase “and God saw that it was good” (1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). It climaxes with the seventh occurrence: “It was very good” (v. 31). Then in chapter 2, we read of one thing that is not good: “It is not good that the man should be alone” (2:18). Adam, the first human, lives, but he lives in isolation. And that’s a problem. As Martin Luther put it, “God created man for society and not for solitude.”[1]Thus we can each make this statement our own: it is not good that [your name] should be alone.
God announces Adam’s problem and then parades the animals before him. Why this, and why now? So that Adam might feel his need for community. The animal parade made a point: apparently, pets alone won’t do. Even “man’s best friend” passed by without special notice. This was because Adam didn’t need a pet; he needed another person. Animals are special, but human friendship is of a higher order.
This takes place before sin enters the world. That’s significant. Satan has not yet slithered in, the forbidden fruit has no fingerprints, and Adam’s conscience remains clear. The first problem in human history, the first problem on the pages of Scripture, the first problem in any human life, was not sin—it was solitude.
This means that the not-goodness of Adam’s aloneness was not a result of his fallenness. Adam stood there in Eden without fault, yet he also stood alone and therefore incomplete. He was missing something essential enough to warrant the divine declaration of “not good.” Adam, untouched by sin, needed a friend. Every soul reverberates with the echoes of this Edenic ache for friendship. It’s an ancient and primal longing. We are inescapably communal.
The opening chapters of Genesis cast a vision of the good life, full of shalom—a Hebrew concept referring in its fullest sense to flourishing, joy, and harmony. And this shalom exists between God, humanity, and creation. Each sphere of the physical world—land, sea, and sky—teems with life. Yet Adam stands in the middle of this exuberant wonder world—alone. Adam has life, and that’s a start. But he also needs community.
Drew Hunter

An Encouragement for Disciples to Study

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An encouragement for disciples to study? That title is redundant. A ‘mathetes’, the Greek word for a disciple, is a learner. A disciple of Jesus Christ is committed to following him and his teaching. As Christians, we submit to Jesus and the Word that proclaims him. To be a disciple, a ‘mathetes’ is to study, to learn. Jesus in Matthew 11:29 commands us to “take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.” John 6:45 tells, “It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” To be a disciple is to be a learner, to be a student.

The truth as it is in Jesus has never been more accessible to the church and perhaps never more neglected by the church. Neil Postman writes about the “Low Information – Action Ratio,” or LIAR for short. We are bombarded by so much trivial information that we cannot act on any of it. We are progressively trained not to act on what little we learn.  We can drink from the firehose of knowledge and get very wet but stay very thirsty. The information is out there and the truth of Jesus is available.  But our problem, I think, is the opposite. We are not drinking from a firehose, although it is accessible, we are merely dipping our little toe into the ocean of knowledge.

Do you, as a student, a disciple, have a plan or a purpose in your study of God, his Son, and his Word?  Much of our learning program as Christians, if we have one at all, is rather spontaneous, haphazard, and random. We listen to our pastor once a week, and Christian radio during the week; that is nourishment enough, we think. What is your plan to grow as a disciple, a learner of Jesus?

In seminary, pastors were encouraged to study God’s Word in a devotional manner.  We must feed our own souls first before we could prepare a meal for others.  One student read through bible commentaries for his devotions.  Another pursued Systematic Theologies for fun.  Others devoured technical treatises for their growth in grace.  Now, we are not all pastors or teachers, and I am not encouraging my brothers and sisters to study in that manner.  But there are hundreds of good, godly, and edifying Christian books designed to assist you as a disciple of Christ. Do you read them? any of them? Are you consistently and fruitfully studying the Word of God? Not merely reading it, but studying it, and growing the fruit of the Spirit because of it?

As a young Christian when I read the Bible or other Christian books I would circle the words and concepts that I did not understand.  And then, I would study until I figured it out.  So my encouragement to you, as a fellow disciple of Jesus Christ, is simply this – study to know God better. Find the time. Have a plan. Read the Bible. Begin to chase down the knowledge of God. For some, “have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus (Ephesians 4:19-21).

Don’t know where to begin to be a disciple? Pray. Read the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John.  Need more? Ask your pastor for a book. It will make his day!

Knowing God Encourages Better Friendships

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If God can make friends of us, we can make friends of anyone! We are better friends and we seek deeper friendships because we have a friendship with God. Exodus 33:11, “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” 2 Chronicles 20:7, “Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend?” The Covenant of Grace has been called the Covenant of Friendship by some.  God, through the Gospel, has made us his friends.

God has also made us friendly. He has given us the tools to make friends with anyone – even the worst.  Jesus has even lead by example by befriending us. God has befriended us in this fallen world and has called us to make friends with others.

How does the gospel of grace make us better friends?

We know ourselves. We freely acknowledge our weaknesses and needs. We are finally honest with ourselves. The problem isn’t out there somewhere, but in here somewhere. And the gospel solves the problem. Through God’s grace, we begin accurately to understand our broken nature. We don’t hide the truth about ourselves from ourselves or others anymore. Knowing truth allows us to be honest, to be correctable, to drop our selfish emotional walls and phony self-protection. We can be open and brutally forthright about who we really are because we are forgiven and accepted in Christ – and he knew the worst about us. That honest self-scrutiny helps us to form better friendships in a fallen world.

We know the truth of the human condition. Fallen human nature does not surprise us because we acknowledge our own fallenness and sin.  We know that everyone struggles to live uprightly, to do the right thing, and to fight against temptation. Children of Adam know God but they selfishly suppress that knowledge and then live in fear that their sins will find them out. Their conscience speaks, somewhat accurately, and they can’t live up to its dictates let alone fulfill the law of God. Therefore, as redeemed sinners ourselves, we expect to find dirt, struggle, pain, and remorse in everyone that we meet. We can meet friends in their brokenness and need and “paraclete” them. (Paraclete is a Greek word that means to be called alongside to help, as the Holy Spirit has done for us).

We know where the medicine is found.  We are very much like hungry beggars showing other hungry beggars where to find bread.  We don’t have it all together either but we know where help resides. We are starting to heal from our brokenness and sin and we can lead others to the hospital of grace.

We don’t need a friend, so we can be a friend. Because we have found a perfect friend in Jesus, we don’t ‘need’ or crave another one.  We can be friends with anyone but we don’t need to be friends with anyone else. We don’t require co-dependents because we depend on Christ, and he is enough. To be a friend means to give yourself away in self-sacrificing love. And Christians have experienced that love in Christ and have an ever-increasing capacity to show that love to others.  We are no longer needy, so we can meet the needs of others around us.

When two growing, maturing Christians begin a friendship they can go really deep.  Mutual, self-giving love is the best soil to grow a deep and satisfying friendship.  “Iron sharpens iron.” “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” “…There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 27:17; 17:17; 18:24).

So, dear Christian friend, you have experienced a perfect friendship, and you have the tools to form deep, abiding, eternal friendships, and, because your needs are all met in Christ, you can make friends of the friendless and needy. Through the Covenant of Friendship, we can make friends. 

Parenting by Grace

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Parenting by Grace

It’s done every day in Christian homes around the world. W

ell-meaning parents, zealous to see their children doing what is right, ask the law to do in the lives of their children what only grace can accomplish. They think that if they have the right set of rules, the right threat of punishment, and consistent enforcement, their children will be okay. In ways these parents fail to understand, they have reduced parenting to being a law-giver, a prosecutor, a jury, and a jailer… In their zeal to control behavior, they look to the tools of threat, manipulation, and guilt.

 

This way of thinking denies two significant

things that the Bible tells
us. The first is that before sin is a matter of behavior, it is always a matter of the heart. We sin because we are sinners… The second is that if threats, manipulation, and guilt could create lasting change in the life of another person, Jesus would not have had to come. (They) really do ask the law to do what only god in amazing grace is able to accomplish. 

Thankfully, God hasn’t left us to our own power to change. He meets us with transforming grace and calls us to be tools of that grace in his redemptive hands. He lifts the burden of change off our shoulders and never calls us to do what only he can do. So we expose our children to God’s law and faithfully exercise authority while we seek to be tools of heart change in the hands of a God whose grace is greater than all of the sin we’re grappling with.

Paul David Tripp

Communion Meditation July 2021

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Matthew 11:28  Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

1) Here we have an invitation from the ruler of the heavens and the earth.

Come to me. Approach me. Trust in me. Believe in me. Follow me. Come to me. Draw on my strength. Live in my wisdom. Come to me. 

He is offering rest to the weary and burdened.

2) We have the description of those invited to come to Jesus.

All who labor and are heavy laden. ESV

All you who are weary and burdened. NIV

Weary and burdened with what? Sin, self, life in a fallen world, heartbreak, sadness, pain, confusion.  I don’t think we can limit it to one or two things.  

Jesus invites all who are weary and burdened, but he invites only those.  Those who are proud, self-sufficient, content with their own power and resources, those who are not weary and burdened with sin and shame, are not invited to Jesus, and they are not welcomed to this table.

Only those who know they need Jesus and trust him can come to this table.

3) We have a promise from the great shepherd of the sheep, Jesus.

I will give you rest.  Rest, from your weariness, rest from your burden. 

He is not promising a vacation by the beach. 

He is promising to remove your weariness and your burden; 

he will take it from you are bare it himself, it will bear it away. 

Leaving you nothing but rest. 

He will refresh you, by taking away the burden of sin.

That is what Jesus is offering at this table. Rest. Come to me. Rest in me. 

I have completed the work, I have paid for sin, I have borne your burden. I have the strength to exchange for your weariness. 

I have died; and yet I live.  I offer you life; my life, my blood, my body, my strength, my victory.  I offer you rest.  The work is finished. I have earned your salvation and it has already been accepted. You can enter into rest; now. Today.

O Christian, are you weary, seeking rest? Come to the Savior now.

Communion Meditation July 2021

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God, in speaking to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, gave fallen mankind their first promise of grace.

In Genesis 3:15, He said this, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall strike his heel.”

God speaks of the perpetual warfare, the division, and the enmity that will exist between the people of God and the children of the serpent.  We see the world in vastly different ways – the children of God wish to follow the Lord, and the children of the serpent want to be gods themselves. We have vastly divergent perceptions of the world; different world-views.  There is no common or middle ground, no possible compromise between the two warring humanities and their competing visions for life.  So, they are at odds, over everything.

And God wanted it this way.  He put the enmity, the division, between them.  There is a great difference between the Children of God and the Children of the Serpent, a chasm separates them – and we see that division in the Lord’s Supper.

This Supper is given only to the Children of God, to believers, to those who call Jesus Savior and Lord and really mean it.  If you don’t follow Jesus as Lord, you are a Child of the Serpent and you have no place at this table. Don’t come.

But when the Children of God partake of this table we remember two things: the crushed head and the bruised heel.  

Jesus has crushed the head of the serpent. Sin has been paid for, death has been defeated, rebellion has been put down.  Jesus lived and died to defeat the serpent and his influence on the Children of God. His head is crushed.

We also remember the bruised heel.  Jesus suffered.  He became sin. He absorbed the full penalty for sin. He bled and died that we might have life.

Jesus speaks life to us at this table.  Real life, spiritual life, and eternal life in fellowship with Him.  We come to the table to enjoy that fellowship of life.

Session Summary July 2021

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Your session met on Tuesday, July 13 from 5:30 to 8:30 pm.  Ed Payne encouraged us to see the greatness of God, known through Scripture, and described in the Westminster Confession of Faith, as a great aid to our worship. We gratefully received a $500 gift from Lakemont PCA for our hosting their VBS in June. We transferred two families to Christ Church Presbyterian at their request.  We received Ella Kate into communicant membership after hearing her profession of faith. Bryan gave a brief report of a long, but good, General Assembly Meeting. Pastor Mark will attend the Presbytery meeting in Lyons on Saturday. We will contract with Followers in Fellowship to allow the Classical Conversations group to meet at our church on Fridays during the school year.  We discussed a new prayer initiative, the Walk Thru the Bible seminar, mercy ministry, shepherding concerns, Covid-restrictions, and the Sunday Evening Prayer meeting.  We will restart the Usher Ministry, passing the plates for our collection, and our pre-Covid communion procedures beginning August 1, 2021. We will have a fellowship meal on July 18 to hear from Rev Andy Lee and welcome our new members from the last year.  A special Sunday School class for our new members to grow in our knowledge of our church, God, and one another will begin sometime in August.  Pastor Mark will guide the class.  Our financial transition to Queenborough Bank has gone smoothly and we altered our phone service to update our ancient equipment. It is one of the greatest gifts from God for us to find a home, a welcome, and a family in the church fellowship. Westminster is such a home and a blessing for many.  Pray that God would add to our numbers and deepen our fellowship with God and with one another.

News from the Session

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Your session met three times last month.  Two times we gathered to receive new members; Scott and Chris Harris, and John and Vanessa Etheridge. We met once to discuss Stewardship and increasing our giving to missions.  So, here are a few things that we are working on.

 

We are considering a new proposal to increase our giving to missions through special offerings and thereby adding to the number of missionaries that we support.  This is a work in progress but we will have a missionary visit on July 18 to discuss his future work. Also, we are seeking to reinvigorate our ministry teams.  Covid produced something of a parenthesis year and we would like to get things cranked up again. And finally, we are in the final stages of promotion for the Walk Thru the Bible presentation called OT live for July 24.

 

The Marriage Supper of the Lamb

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“Then I (John) heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, 

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

    and his Bride has made herself ready;

it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” 

And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” Revelation 19:6-9

 

God made marriage to be a reflection of the love that Jesus has for his bride, the church.

Marriage in the ancient world had three steps.

First, the parents signed the marriage contract for the bride and the groom and the dowry was paid.  The couple was officially betrothed; we would say engaged.

Second, the groom would prepare a place for his bride.  Usually, he would add a room unto his father’s house to be his new home.  

Third, when he had prepared a place for his bride, he would travel with his male friends to the bride’s home at midnight to announce the marriage supper/celebration.  And they would parade to the new home and celebrate the wedding for several days.

For the church, the bride of Christ, the marriage contract was signed in eternity past; theologians call it the counsel of redemption. God has chosen a bride, the church, for his Son. There is a contract.

The Son, Jesus, is now preparing a place for his bride, and preparing the bride for his place.  He is gathering, and perfecting his church from every tribe, tongue and nation. “The fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.”

In this time of preparation, we come to the Lord’s Supper. We are engaged to be the Lord’s and we are walking with him, growing in maturity, and eagerly anticipating the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

Then, finally, the marriage supper of the Lamb shall come. Jesus will return to claim his bride and bring her to himself for the never-ending celebration of marriage.

The marriage celebration is by invitation only. The invitation comes to all who believe the gospel. If you are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb, you are invited to come to the Lord’s Table today. If you are a living part of the bride of Christ, if you have faith, and have joined with a Bible-believing, evangelical church, come to the table.  If you do not believe, or if you have not made a public profession of faith in Jesus Christ, don’t come.

You are engaged, you belong to the Lord. You are preparing yourself for the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Come, for all things are now ready.