A pundit once noted, “as long as there is farming, there is legalized gambling.”  Farming demands an irrepressible hope.  Pests, weeds, rain when you don’t want it and drought when you do are all part of farm life.  And while “nothing runs like a Deere” sometimes the Deere stops running at all.  The adversities of farm life are well known and incalculable, yet the farmer maintains hope that at the end of the season the Lord will provide a crop. 

Likewise, the Christian should live out his assurance by plowing in hope.  No matter what struggles, adversities, doubts, or sin beset us, our assurance and our perseverance is rooted not in our own spiritual strength, but in God’s promise that if we “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, … he who promised is faithful.  For indeed, “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Paul commands us in 1 Corinthians 9:10 that “plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop.”  Are you plowing in hope?

Before the days of GPS, in order to plow a straight row, a farmer found a mark at the end of the field and maintained aim toward that mark.   The Christian must do the same, plowing in hope toward the “day of Jesus Christ.”  The Christian life is a life lived in expectation of the coming of our Savior. 

As a boy, growing up under the looming threat of nuclear war with every installment of the evening news, sermons about the return of Christ were all framed in fear.  Beasts and antichrists weighed heavily.  Judgement seats and open books brought fear.  Our youth choir sang songs like, “I wish we’d all been ready.”  And signs on the interstate warned truckers and travelers, “Prepare to meet thy God.”

But the Bible exhorts us to long for the return of Christ, the Resurrection and the New Heavens and the New Earth.  Titus 2 frames our Christian lives in the here and now with the there and then, referring to Christ’s coming as the “blessed hope.”

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.  Titus 2:11-14

Luke 21:28 reminds us that even when the worlds seems to be coming apart we are to “straighten up and raise [our] heads, because our redemption is drawing near.”  And the final words of Scripture teach us to long for this blessed hope and in response to Jesus’ promise, “Surely I am coming soon” to say, “Come Lord Jesus!”

Nothing strengthens our assurance of faith like holding fast to the hope of Jesus’ return.  And so, as the Apostle John writes to the churches of Asia Minor to refute the false teachers and antichrists, he exhorts his ‘little children’ to press their fingertips and noses to the glass of time and eagerly hope in the return of their Savior.

Years ago, the group NewSong pictured this poignantly in their song, Fingertips and Noses about a teacher teaching her young students about Jesus’ return.  That song ends with an important refrain.

Where will Jesus find us when He comes again?
Will we be like little children waiting just for Him?
With our fingertips and noses pressed to the windowpanes
Longing eyes, expectant hearts for Him to come again.

Where will Jesus find us when He comes again?   With longing eyes, expectant hearts for Him to come again?   Some of the Bible’s most enigmatic and distressing passages are framed by instructions to believers to watch, wait and live expectantly, longing for Christ’s return.  Our mantra is to be maranatha or ‘Come, Lord Jesus.’   Is that your mantra?  Can you say with the Spirit and the Bride, ‘Come!’  Or is your cry, “not yet!”  

How eager are you for the return of Christ?  How convinced are you that the day of His return will be the very best day, not a day of disaster?   Will the climax of your life be the “blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us?”   

Join us as we examine 1 John 2:28-3:3 and consider the blessed hope that animates our assurance of faith.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

God’s name is more than just what we call Him. The names of God in Scripture reflect who He is and what He does.  The Biblical names of God reveal His attributes and teach us how we are to praise Him and what we are to expect of Him.  Our confession reminds us that His name is any way in which He makes Himself known to us.  Join us as Rev. Bill Holiman leads us to examine Deuteronomy 32:1-14 and Revelation 15 and consider the different expressions of God’s name.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

The recipe is simple.  Start with a soft lyrical acoustic intro.  Dash in a hard three-chord progression stirred with vocals both sung and screamed.  Season with ambiguous occult allusions. And for the main ingredient drop in an obtuse reference to beast from Revelation 13. Then as a garnish, include Vincent Price reading Revelation 13:18.

[T]his calls for wisdom; let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.

And voila! You have a classic heavy metal ballad.

Men have always speculated with fascination with the identity of this beast, This beastly man will set up the abomination of desolation in the place where it ought not be, work to cause the world to worship the ancient Dragon, make war on the saints, and exercise great power politically, militarily and economically on a global scale.  Was it Nero? Hitler? Putin? Some current or future political figure?

Paul called this man-beast the “man of lawlessness.”  And John calls him the Antichrist. The scope of his reign of terror tempts saints to fear.  We want to know who he is and when he will appear.  We secretly hope, like Hezekiah, that we will be long gone before such dreadful events transpire for fear that we might be either deceived by this Antichrist or face his wrath.

But there is a greater danger for God’s people that lurks in immediate the present.  For the Apostle John reminds us that “the spirit of antichrist which you hear was coming … is in the world already.”  “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.  Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.”  Indeed “it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.”  

The church faces a great threat when it is so preoccupied with the future coming of The Antichrist that it fails to guard against present antichrists who bring division, deception, and deny the faith, theologically and practically.  Our ancient enemy, Satan, is subtle, appearing as an angel of light.  And his servants, the tares planted within Christ’s Church, appear as brothers and sisters all while creating division, deceiving through false teaching and denying the faith in their lives and conversations. 

This has been the case since the beginning.  And so, the beloved Apostle, John, writes to his little children in the faith not to be so distracted looking for the Antichrist that they are unaware of the “many antichrist” that have already come.  He writes to warn them of this present danger, instructing them to recognize these antichrists and to respond to their threat to the communion of the saints.

Join us as we examine John’s warning in 1 John 2:18-27 and consider how we can recognize antichrists and respond to the threat they bring to fellowship within the church.   We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

God’s name is more than just what we call Him. The names of God in Scripture reflect who He is and what He does.  The Biblical names of God reveal His attributes and teach us how we are to praise Him and what we are to expect of Him.  We are encouraged to hallow His name and not take it in vain.  Our confession reminds us that His name is any way in which He makes Himself known to us.  Join us as Rev. Bill Holiman leads us to examine Psalm 29 and Matthew 6:5-15 and consider the significance of God’s name.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

Presumption and assurance, courage and recklessness are sets of fraternal twins.  In many ways they look and act alike.  But they are very different.  Recklessness looks like courage on the surface.  But courage sets aside caution only for costly conviction, while recklessness heedlessly jettisons prudence just for bragging rights.  We all admire the off-duty firefighter who rushes into danger to save a child from a burning house.  But the bungee jumper accomplishes nothing more than an adrenaline rush.

Likewise, presumption and assurance bear remarkable resemblance.  They are both confident.  Both speak and act out of solid certainty.   But there are significant distinctions.  Assurance rests in the object of its faith, while presumption faiths its own faith.  Assurance is vigilant and wary of threats, within and without.  While presumption thinks itself bullet-proof, invincible, and unbreakable.  Like the simpleton of the Proverb 14:15, presumption’s self-confidence allows it to “believe everything, [while] the prudent gives thought to his steps.”

Assurance and presumption are not the same thing.  The Bible calls us to have assurance of our faith.  But it also warns us to be vigilant and wary of threats, without and within.  Jesus destroyed the works of the devil and conquered sin and death.  Indeed, we can rejoice in the admonitions of the Apostle John to us.

I am writing to you, little children,
    because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake.
I am writing to you, fathers,
    because you know him who is from the beginning.
I am writing to you, young men,
    because you have overcome the evil one. -1 John 2:12-13

And yet we also read, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8) Presumption throws off all sober-minded, watchfulness, confident that it is enough to simply declare our faith in a decision card and then live life however it comes. 

Assurance, however, comforts the doubtful, fearful saint, but warns us to be sober-minded and watchful.  Though we cannot fall from our Heavenly Father’s grip, we can still get tripped up and wounded by the enemy of our soul as he tempts us to love our sinfulness and sin more than our Savior.  And so, assurance and caution are not logically incompatible.

In discussing free will, the Westminster Confession notes.

When God converts a sinner and translates Him into the state of grace, He freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and, by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so as that, by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly, nor only, will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil.

-Westminster Confession of Faith 9.4, “Of Free Will”

In 1 John, the beloved Apostle, is writing to the churches of Asia Minor to comfort them with a sermon on assurance.  Anti-Christs, deceivers, and false teachers were denying the importance of the Apostolic witness, the nature of the person and work of Christ, the reality of a transformed life, and importance of loving one another in the church.  They taught “another gospel” of being spiritual but not religious, of knowing God but loving the ways of the world. 

So, John writes to gently point his little children back to the person and work of Christ, to the sanctifying, transformative work of the gospel in their lives, and their love for one another as metrics for authentic faith and fellowship.  He gives them a bold declaration of assurance and a variety of simple, practical tests to gauge their assurance.  But he also warns them what is not compatible with assurance.   

In his short letter on assurance, filled with reassurances of God’s love and exhortations to love one another, the Apostle warns the saints only once what they are not to love, writing “[d]o not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

Join us as we examine 1 John 2:15-17 and consider John’s warning not to love the world and how that warning impacts our assurance.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube.