The proverbs are proverbial.  “Actions speak louder than words!”  “If you talk the talk, walk the walk.” “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”  It is fair to recognize that words can be hollow, empty boasts, promises or threats and to believe that all that what matters most are our actions.  After all does the Proverb not declare, “Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find?”

But are our actions as loud as we declare them to be?  After all how many of us struggle with “imposter syndrome?” That feeling that despite a solid record of accomplishment or faithfulness, the next semester, the next job, the next stage of life, the next conversation will prove that we are not what we seem.  Not who others thought we were?  Not what we thought we were?

Our actions are important.  Our walk is what makes our talk real.  But assurance needs to be declared as much as displayed.   While our lives can bear the fruit of confident assurance through our orthodoxy and orthopraxy, we also need those who love us, shepherd us, and observe our lives to declare assurance to us.  When the deeds are done, we still need words.  We need to hear the assurance of pardon after the confession of sin, we need to hear the benediction, we need to hear the assuring words of faithful Christian friends declaring the reality of our faith.

The enemy of our soul is only too glad to pick apart our walk in Christ, to micro-analyze our motives, our actions, our sins, our failings, and our doubts   To magnify our sin and marginalize our sanctification, accuse us of being imposters.   And in those moments, we are unable to draw assurance from our orthodoxy or orthopraxy.  We need someone to speak those words that are worth a thousand pictures.

The enemy attacked the early churches of Asia Minor by stirring up deceivers and anti-Christs who denied the basic truths of the Christian faith and brought fear, uncertainty and division to the believers there.  As a faithful father in the faith to these churches, the Apostle John writes to them to call out these false teachers, refute their errors and comfort the faithful. 

He gently points them 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.  But he knows that more is needed than metrics.  They need the assurance that comes when their spiritual father declares in words the reality of their own faith.  The Proverb says, “a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.”   And in 1 John 2:12-14 the Apostle interrupts the flow of his epistle to give his beloved spiritual children a much-needed fitly spoken words of blessing and assurance.

Join us as we examine 1 John 2:12-14 and consider the importance of pastoral care and encouragement in providing assurance of our 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. 

How do you know that you know?  In most cases we depend upon some type of test.  How do you know you are qualified as an engineer?  You pass exams.  How do you know if a diagnosis is correct?  You have scans and tests.  How do you prove you are qualified to drive?  You pass a driver’s test.  You know you know when you pass some type of test.

Many claim to know that they know, but when put to scrutiny their confidence melts to mere presumption.  Ultimately there are tests for just about anything and everything so that we can know that we know.  But when it comes to the most important thing we need to know, the condition of our soul and peace with God, we often leave it to mere feeling or experience, content not to know that we know. Not to be sure where we stand.  

Growing up, my church depended on the “altar call” experience.  If you had come to the front and prayed the sinner’s prayer, you had made a decision.  And your decision saved you.  You wrote it the date and time in the front of your Bible because the preacher said that ‘unless you know the date and time you prayed to receive Christ you were not saved.’  All the weight of our condition rested upon personal religious experience and not the grace of God.

But inevitably, later you felt the weight of sin and conviction over some sanctifying area of your life and the enemy would whisper.  “Who are you kidding?” the accuser would say.  Our experience, our moment, our decision was not enough.  Maybe I didn’t say it right.  Maybe I was not sincere enough.  And so, we would begin to seek another ‘experience’ to give us peace and assurance.  Ah! If only there were some objective way to make our calling and election sure?  If only we could know that we knew.

This was the crisis facing John’s beloved children in Asia Minor.  Deceivers, anti-Christs, troublers-of-Israel were making inroads into the church.  Hijacking assurance of faith from confidence in God’s Word, the person and work of Christ, and transformed lives and loves.  They taught that you could know God in your own way through individual religious, mystical experience.  You could be spiritual but not religious.  You could live however you wanted and still be sure that you and God are good.  

And so, John writes to the churches and to us so we that we might know that we know that we have eternal life in Christ.  In John’s first letter he outlines simple, objective theological, moral and social tests to assist believers with assurance.  Assurance that rests on more than a feeling.  Experiences come and go.  They will never provide assurance if the gospel has not utterly transformed our life both on the mountain and in the valley.  

Do you know that you know?  What are you trusting to know the most important thing you need to know?  Join us as we examine 1 John 2:7-11 and consider the social dimension of assurance and what our relationships with others reveal about our relationship with God. 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 old adage is true.  Children are often more excited to play with the box than the shiny new toy it contains.  After all the toy with its definite shape and preprogrammed lights and sounds comes with its story already on board.   But a box!  A box has limitless stories.  It is a blank page ready to be written, painted, and repurposed by the vivid and fruitful imagination of a child.  And when one epic story ends another can begin. 

The simplest toys are often the most beloved.  For me it was a cardboard box filled with nondescript, unpainted, smooth wooden building blocks.  I have no idea where they came from, but they were a fixture of my childhood.  I can still smell them and feel them in my memory.   Many happy hours were spent sprawling on the floor imagining and reimagining, constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing this and that.  Houses, forts, towns, airports, ships.  And of course, towers!  I learned about planning, design, foundations, balance, interleaving, functionality and aesthetics.   Things that have served me well in life.

Choosing the right blocks at the start is always the path to a solid structure.  And what is true of child’s play is equally true for all areas of life; our vocation, our relationships, our finances, or our spiritual life.  Starting with the wrong blocks can create a structure with poor foundations, balance, usefulness and beauty.  This is equally true with our faith.  If we start with the shaky foundations of our own piety or works or spiritual experiences or theological speculation, it will take very little to shake us when circumstance or skepticism rock our world.

So, what are the solid building blocks for a healthy, growing faith?  And perhaps more critical, how can we grow in our assurance that our faith is real, solid, and lasting?   In the letters of 1, 2 and 3 John, the ‘beloved disciple’ and apostle, writes to his beloved ‘little children’ in the churches Asia Minor to answer these questions.   Their assurance has been shaken by the religious influencers who have declared another Jesus and another gospel.  One without sin or sacrifice.  One that denies who God is and who we are.  One that promotes personal religious experience over sanctification.  The same lies that shake and unsettle our assurance today.

John’s response is immediate and decisive.  In a letter with no niceties, no greeting, no personal notes, the Apostle gets right to the point to show his beloved little children that their assurance begins with the building blocks of faith in the person and work of Christ and the loving obedience that faith produces.  And in doing so he speaks to us today to address our struggle with assurance.

Join us as we examine 1 John 2:1-6 and consider the first building blocks for the assurance of our 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. 

Solomon pegged it.  “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”  Every generation claims to have found something new about the human condition.  We give it a new name, new jargon. But all that’s new is the label. 

In our contemporary, hyper-divisive public discourse the pundits have coined the phrase “fake news” to describe reporting that lacks editorial scrutiny but brims with bias and anger.   My generation called it spin, but it is hardly new.  “Fake news” is as old as The Fall.  Satan, the Father of Lies, was its first reporter.

He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” -Genesis 3:1-5

Fake news is never harmless.  By labeling lying as  ‘fake news’ or ‘spin’ we lose a sense of caution, thinking we can isolate or tame it.  Or that it is not a threat.  But our fearful, deceitful hearts drink in lies like the earth takes in rain. And those lies become a deadly toxin that deceives us and tempts us to echo the voice of our Enemy, saying, “did God actually say?”  Or Pilate’s plaintive words, “what is truth?”

All untruth is dangerous, but none is more deadly than lies about God’s holy nature, our sinful condition, and how sinful men are reconciled to a holy God.  In their New Testament letters, the Apostles were constantly refuting lies and silencing liars regarding these precious truths which are at the heart of our faith. 

Liars were always troubling the church, stealing the hope of the faithful, pointing them away from Christ.  The Galatians were troubled by legalism.  The Corinthians by a denial of the Resurrection.  The Thessalonians were told they had missed the return of Christ.  The Hebrew Christians worried that they should return to the once for all finished Old Covenant sacrifices.  The Colossians were deceived by the lure of mysticism.  And the churches of Revelation by the threat of persecution. 

In Ephesus, John’s beloved “little children” were being told that fellowship with God was possible without confession, repentance, and the shed blood of Christ.  And that Jesus was not really who and what the Apostles had said he was.   They had a “new word” from the Lord and led many away from the communion of the saints who had “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”  They offered a Christless Christianity.  A Christianity that made no spiritual and moral demands on them.  They could know God and continue to live as they always had.

Nothing is more deadly than a Christless Christianity.  Yet this lie persists to this very day.  The same lies and liars are alive and well today, declaring the fake news that there are multiple ways to God.  And that we are not really all that bad.  That God does not judge us for our sin.  In fact, our sin is just dysfunction, poor decision making, or the understandable outcome of our difficult experience.  Or perhaps it is just who we are.   So, there is no need for all that talk about the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus, no need for us to trouble ourselves.  After all, “did God really say?  Surely we will not die!”

John’s response is immediate and decisive.  In a letter with no niceties, no greeting, no personal notes, the Apostle gets right to the point to expose the deadly fake news of the ‘anti-Christs’ who are troubling the faith of his beloved congregations.    And in doing so he speaks to us in our day to expose the same fake news.

Join us as we examine 1 John 1:5-10 and refute the most insidious mantras of Christless Christianity while rejoicing in the grace of God given only through the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ.  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. 

It looks so easy.  And every parent is an expert, coaching their 8-year-old up the beginner’s wall at the climbing gym.  On belay? Belay on. Climb on! And they are off.  Reach right.  Left foot up.  A little higher.  Stretch for it.  They get stuck and then with youthful flexibility and balance find a path and surge to the top to ring the bell.  You are so proud. 

Then comes the dread invitation.  “Your turn Daddy!”  And quickly you learn that what looked simple from observation is suddenly stymied from the get-go as you struggle to just to stay close to the wall, find the first handhold and stretch for the first leg up.  Knowing where to start the climb is daunting.  But a believer’s climb to navigate assurance of faith and Christian community can also be overwhelming. 

No dimension of our Christian journey may be more challenging to navigate than ‘assurance.”  Our Westminster Confession of Faith acknowledges that,

…infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith but that a true believer may wait long and conflict with many difficulties before he be partaker of it.   …True believers may have the assurance of their salvation divers ways shaken, diminished, and intermitted. –WCF 18.3-4, Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation

And yet it also teaches that,

… faith is different in degrees, weak or strong; may be often and many ways assailed and weakened but gets the victory; growing up in many to the attainment of a full assurance through Christ, who is both the author and finisher of our faith.  –WCF 14.3, Of Saving Faith

So, what is the first handhold on the climb to assurance? To be sure there are many false first steps.  Trusting in our own righteousness or good works.  Boasting in our spiritual progress.  Triaging sin to appear less sinful.  Resting in outward piety.  Simply trying our best.  Or tethering our assurance to the people we follow or the teachers we love.  But these are all false handholds. 

Even during the lifetimes of the apostles, the churches we read about in the New Testament struggled with all these same false handholds.  ‘Fierce wolves, deceivers, false prophets and false teachers’ supplanted the simplicity of the gospel with speculative philosophy, rigorous asceticism, and both rigid legalism and permissive liberality.   And these crises are not limited to the First Century.

In the little letter of 1 John, the beloved disciple writes as a seasoned pastor to distressed congregations he has shepherded.  More like a sermon than an epistle, John unmasks false teaching and shows his ‘little children’ how to navigate the path to assurance of faith and authentic Christian community.   And this is instruction we desperately need today.

Join us as we begin an examination of 1 John and consider the source, character, and impact of a believer’s growing 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. 

A good story leaves you wanting more. “Happily-ever-after” never satisfies.  Even our children know this and ask, “but what happened next?” The suspense does not end when the narrative does.  Like our own stories, a tale continues to unfold beyond its telling.  And we want to know how.  What became of the hero?  And the villain?  Did the cast of characters find love, peace, redemption, prosperity, or despair? 

A good ending leaves lots of questions.  Questions about the story’s characters.  And questions about ourselves. Movies sometimes ease this tension, providing closure through a postscript of silent, black and white slides before the credits roll.  They give snapshots of the ‘rest of the story.‘  And tease us with the ‘other’ stories begun in the chapter just finished.

John’s gospel holds a surprising ending for its reader.  The story of Jesus appears to end in John 20 with an invitation to the skeptical to examine the strong evidence for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and a final summary of Jesus’ life and work,

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” John 20:30-31

Then, unexpectedly, we find a postscript.  One more vignette of the risen Jesus with his disciples.  Its point is not to further prove the reality of the resurrection, but to answer the question “What’s Next?”  How does the resurrection powerfully change the lives of those who believe in it?  What does following Christ mean in light of the resurrection?  What does it look like to experience life together?

John’s gospel showed us what Jesus has done to offer us real and eternal life.  But this final story gives us a picture of what that life looks like.  A life described throughout the remainder of the New Testament.  In John 21 we see Jesus preparing the disciples for a new life together.  Until this time, Jesus had been with them himself, but now he will be with them through the ministry of another comforter, The Holy Spirit.  Their life together is moving into a very different phase. 

He has finished the work of redemption.  Destroyed the power of sin and death.  He is raised from the dead and so our faith is not in vain. But now before He ascends to the Father and sends the empowering of the Holy Spirit, he takes time with the disciples to instruct them on “What’s next?”  What will their life look like because he is raised from the dead?  And what will our lives look like because he is raised from the dead?

Join us this Lord’s Day as we examine John’s postscript and consider what it looks like to live in light of the resurrection.  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.