October 2024 – Tri-Valley Baptist Church

Saved by the faithful effort of the One who Loves Us!

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Oct 292024

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “Saved by the faithful effort of the One who Loves Us!”

The USS Astoria was a heavy cruiser that saw duty during World War II’s Battle of the Coral Sea and at Midway, then was sunk in August of 1942 at the Battle of Savo Island. On board in the fight for Savo was Signalman 3rd class Elgin Staples. Sometime around 2 a.m. on the ship’s final day, Staples was blown overboard when one of the Astoria’s gun turrets exploded. In the water, wounded in both legs by shrapnel and in a state of near-shock, Staples was kept afloat by a narrow lifebelt which he had activated by a trigger. In his book, The Grand Weaver, Ravi Zacharias tells the fascinating story of what happened next. Four hours after being blown into the Pacific, Staples was picked up by a passing destroyer and returned to the Astoria. Even though the cruiser had been severely damaged, her captain was trying to beach the ship in order to save her. When his attempts failed, Staples found himself back in the water. By now, it was noon. This time it was the USS President Jackson that plucked him out of the water. On board, Staples studied that little lifebelt which had saved his life twice that day. He noticed the belt was manufactured by the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, and carried a registration number. Allowed to go home for a visit, Staples related his story to the family and asked his mother, who worked for Firestone, the purpose of the registration number on the belt. She pointed out that the company was holding employees responsible for their work in the war effort, and that each worker had his/her own number. Staples recalled everything about that lifebelt, including the registration number. As he called it out, his mother’s eyes grew large. She said, “That was my personal code that I put on every item I was responsible for approving!” His mother had made the belt which had saved his life twice. Ravi Zacharias concludes, “The one who gave him birth and whose DNA he bore gave him rescue in the swirling waters that threatened to take his life. If an earthly parent playing the role of procreation can provide a means of rescue without knowing when and for whom that belt would come into play, how much more can the God of all creation accomplish?” I like to think of such accounts as a miniature photo of the Heavenly Father caring for His own. God said, “But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel, ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you… I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake; and I will not remember your sins.’” (Isaiah 43:1-2,25)
Our Lord Jesus said, “When (the shepherd) puts forth his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice… I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep and am known by my own. As the Father knows me, even so I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.” (John 10:3-4,14-15)

I didn’t want to end this article with that story, as excellent as it is. This lesson needs a little more to “set” it. So, after combing through the books on various shelves of my office, I turned to Mark Buchanan’s Things Unseen, where he tells this story:

William M. Dyke became blind when he was ten. In his early 20s, attending grad school in England, he fell in love with the daughter of a British admiral and they planned to marry. Her father, however, agreed to the marriage only if Dyke would submit to surgery that could possibly restore his sight. He agreed, on one condition. He did not want the gauze removed from his eyes until the moment he met his bride at the altar. He wanted her face to be the first thing he looked upon with his new sight. There was the risk, of course, that the surgery would fail and he would see nothing. He was willing to take the chance. After the surgery, the day of the wedding came. As the parents led the bride and groom together at the altar of the church, William’s father removed the gauze from his eyes. Until that moment, no one knew if the surgery had worked.
When the last strand of the gauze was taken away, William Dyke was face-to-face with his bride. The wedding party was speechless and breathless. Then William spoke: “You are more beautiful than I ever imagined.”

Buchanan writes, “One day that will happen to us, only the roles will be reversed. ‘Now we see but a poor reflection in a mirror,’ Paul says, ‘then we shall see face to face. Now I know (Him) in part; then I shall know (Him) fully, even as I am fully known’ (I Corinthians 13:12). One day, the Bride of Christ, near blind now, will stand before her Bridegroom at the Wedding Feast, and the veil will be removed, the scales will fall away, and we will see Him face-to-face and know Him even as we are fully known.”
“And He will be more beautiful than we ever imagined.” AMEN AND AMEN!

SERMON: THE PATH OF WHOLLY SANCTIFICATION
I Thessalonians 5:12-29

I. THE MATURITY OF SANCTIFICATION
II. THE MINISTRY OF SANCTIFICATION
III. THE MARKS OF SANCTIFICATION

The Church’s Last and Lasting Promise

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Oct 212024

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: The Church’s Last and Lasting Promise

The names Saipan, Iwo Jima, Samoa, Guadalcanal, Bataan, Corregidor to name just a few, meant very little to Americans in the early 1940’s. They were just some God-forsaken pieces of real estate somewhere in the South Pacific! But they would soon become household names all across the free world. We were having the time of our lives in this God-blessed America. The Depression was over. We were enjoying all that the world had to offer in this new age of electronic gadgetry. We had new automatic washers and dryers; new toasters; new Sunbeam Mixmaster’s we used to mix our margarine, after dropping in the orange food coloring ball to give it it’s yellow color, and make It look like butter. We had new automobiles that looked like boats on wheels, with huge long fenders, and men were on the street corners saying, “If the fenders get any longer one of these days, they are going to be one great big fender! I’ll go as far as to say, one of these days they are going to take those running-boards clean off!” We didn’t care about Europe; Germany; or a man named Hitler. We didn’t care about Italy or a guy named Mussolini; We didn’t care about Japan, and a guy named Hirohito. We still had vivid memories of the “War to End All Wars”, and we did not intend to get involved in any new global conflicts!

We watched as the Netherlands fell; we watched as Poland fell; We watched as Neville Chamberlain and the Allies signed Treaty after Treaty with Hitler, and He broke Treaty after Treaty! Chamberlain made so many concessions with Hitler that his name became a synonym with “concession”. When he invaded France, we watched with worried eyes fearing that sooner or later we would become involved, but we were definitely opting for “later”. But December 7,1941, a day FDR said “would live on in infamy” elements of the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked our Naval Base at Pearl Harbor destroying 15 ships, killing 2,402 Americans, and wounding 1,282, while simultaneously attacking the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Attacking us and the Philippines they “kicked the sleeping giant” and our President declared war immediately! Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was made the Commander and Chief over our forces in the European theater, while Gen. Douglas MacArthur was placed over the forces in the Asian theater. The Japanese proved themselves strong as our forces met defeat on the Island of Bataan. Bataan fell and we moved to Corregidor, that Island nicknamed “the Crimson Island” due to the 1,000’s of gallons of American blood spilled on it. When things did not go any better on Corregidor MacArthur, at the command of Roosevelt, decided to go to Australia to regroup so that he could come back and win the war in “American fashion” in a day and age when we fought wars to win wars! But it was a sad, sad day when we left the Philippines! The Filipinos watched as we prepared to leave. Their eyes were fixed on that Great Benefactor, who represented everything that was good, from that Utopia called America. Surrounded by terrified Filipino soldiers, who feared the worst, and would not be disappointed, MacArthur stepped up on the ladder of that DC3 plane, turned and spoke the words that would become “household words” all over the free world. He told them- “I WILL RETURN!” The day he left was March 11, 1942.

After we left the Filipinos suffered greatly at the hands of the Japanese over the next two- and one-half years. They were imprisoned. They were tortured. They were made to march the Bataan death march where over 60,000 died. They kept watching day after day. Waiting day after day for the promise to be fulfilled. One day off in the distance, they heard the rumbling sound of thunder. The skies grew dark. It was the rising crescendo of deliverance. The sun was blotted out with the planes that filled the sky. Those planes had the red stars and blue stripes! Suddenly the skies filled with paratroopers over the islands of the S.Pacific. Soon they heard the words of that great General-“I HAVE RETURNED!” The day was October 22, 1944. Their deliverer had kept his promise and returned in victory.

Two thousand years ago, another General stood on the Mt. of Olives. He too was leaving. His troops, the disciples were surrounding Him. They too feared the worst and they too would not be disappointed. They would suffer at the hands of a Nero-led Roman world. They would be crucified. They would be beheaded. They would be set-afire as candles to light the gardens and racetracks as Nero would race his chariots. They would be boiled-to-death in hot oil. They would be chained together and forced to walk into the Mediterranean to their death for their faith. He looked into their terrified eyes and spoke the words, “Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, Believe also in me. In My Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go away, I WILL COME AGAIN, AND RECEIVE YOU UP UNTO MYSELF, THAT WHERE I AM YOU SHALL BE ALSO”. (John 14:1-3). Over the years we too have suffered. The Church has been persecuted and prospered. But the hope of every generation, as our eyes watch the skies, and we wait with great anticipation has been for our Deliverer who promised us that Blessed Hope of returning to keep His promise for us. The verses are many. The Scripture says, “In a little while He that shall come, will come” (Heb. 10:37). “The Lord shall descend from Heaven with a sound of a trumpet, and the voice of the archangel, and the dead in Christ shall rises first, and we who are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet Him in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (I Thes. 4:12-18).
It says that, “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in the twinkling of an eye, when this mortal shall put on immortality” (I Cor. 15:51). It says we are “citizens of Heaven, from which we look for our Savior who shall transform our lowly bodies, and fashion them like unto glorious body” (Philippians 3:20). We wait for that “Blessed Hope and Glorious Appearing of our Great God and Savior the Lord Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). That next event on the prophetic calendar is what we are waiting for. When Jesus the Bridegroom left us here, He promised, as all espoused grooms of His day did, to go to the Father’s house-prepare the place-when ready come back and claim her to Himself! That event is called the Rapture. That is what our subject is today. It is closer than we can imagine. As we watch all of the events that will be actualized during the tribulation and precede His second coming with HIs Saints, we cannot help but realize that at least 7 years prior to that He will come for His saints, (the Church). Jesus said, “when you begin to see these things come to pass lift up your heads for your redemption draweth night and watch and pray that you might be counted worthy to escape ALL these things that shall come upon the earth and stand before the Son of Man”.
(Luke 21:28 & 36)

Even the French Scientist Pierre Berchelt, over 150 years ago, recognized the signs of the times when he said, in his book Re-Entry,” In side of one hundred years of physical and chemical science, man will know what the atom is. It is my belief, that when science reaches that stage, God will come down to earth with His big ring of keys, and say to humanity, ‘Gentlemen, it’s closing time!'” Before that time comes the Church, who was told by Jesus, their groom, to “occupy til I come” i.e. “carry out business, needs to heed the words of Vance Havner, “It does no good to revel among the clouds of prophetic truth if it stir us not to practice it on the cobblestones questing for souls…prophetic truth , like all other truth, should be fuel for the fires of evangelism…It is not enough to lament the apostasy so vividly described in the book of Jude. It is not enough to build ourselves up in the faith; it is not enough to pray in the Holy Ghost; to keep ourselves in the love of God; to look for the mercy of the Lord. There is further duty-“and of some have compassion, making a difference…saving them with fear, pulling them out of the fire…hating even the garment spotted by the flesh” (Jude 23).

SERMON: DUTIES OF LAST-DAY CHILDREN OF LIGHT
I Thessalonians 5:1-12

I. WAKE UP
II. WALK RIGHT
III. WITNESS LOUD AND CLEAR

Dorian Gray: Portrait of A New Creation?

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Oct 132024

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “Dorian Gray: Portrait of A New Creation?”.

In his book, Death In The City, Francis Schaeffer, in 1969, saw with an accurate prophetic eye, what we are living out today. He begins his book with these words-“We live in a post-Christian world!” He details the enormity of what this means, and then says, “Do not take this lightly! It is a horrible thing for a man like myself to look back and see my country and my culture go down the drain in my own lifetime”. He declared the West was in the process of abandoning its spiritual heritage and is now wallowing in sin, immorality, and apostasy. (I would love to hear his opinion of where we are today). He continued, “The only perspective we can have of the post-Christian world or our generation: an understanding that our culture and our country is under the wrath of God. This is serious business. Do you think a country can throw away its Christian base and remain as it has been? Jeremiah would say, ‘you should be crying!’ ” Ravi Zacharias has picked up the mantle of Schaeffer, and in his book Deliver Us From Evil, warns of the same calamity, and tries to show us how to recover from this Evangelical disaster, though he is not optimistic that it will happen. In that book Ravi names one of the popular influences that contributed to the collapse of the Christian moral point of view. It is the book by Oscar Wilde titled The Picture of Dorian Gray. The book was written in 1890, but it still having a detrimental effect upon our culture. Zacharias says, “If there is an image that mirrors the mind of the West today, it is strikingly reflected in… The Picture Of Dorian Gray”. This familiar story describes an exceptionally handsome young man so physically captivating that he drew persistent and awe-stricken adulation of a great artist. The artist talks him into being the subject of a portrait, saying he had never seen a face more attractive and pure. When the picture is done and presented to young Dorian, he is so fixated and enraptured with his own looks that he expresses the longing to live any way he pleases, utterly abandoned to any passions and desires, without restraint, and without consequences! Any disfigurement from such a dissolute life, he wished would mar only the picture, leaving his pristine face unblemished! Like Faust of old, Dorian gets his wish granted. He launches off into a life of uncontrolled wickedness. The details of the novel shocked the Victorian culture of the 1890s both in England and France! He plumbed the depths of sin and wickedness, sensuality and even murder! All his vices left his physical appearance completely untainted. One day, he encounters that portrait he had hidden away, only to discover it bore the horror and scars of a life scandalously lived! Being afraid that someone else might see the portrait, and discover his hidden life, he buried it among goods he kept in the attic. But one day, his artist friend discovers it. Overcome with grief the artist confronts Dorian and implores him to turn from his wasteful life and seek God’s forgiveness! The artist tells him, somewhere it says, “Come let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be white like wool.” In a fit of rage Dorian grabs a knife and kills the artist, silencing his convicting voice! The story reaches an emotional climax when, Dorian, no longer able to stand the indictment of the picture, reaches for the knife once more to destroy the portrait and remove the only visible reminder of his wicked life! The moment he thrust the knife blade into the canvas the portrait returns, miraculously, to its pristine beauty, and Dorian Gray himself lay stabbed to death on the floor. The ravages that marred the picture now disfigured his own countenance that he was unrecognizable to the servants who heard the scream of death and came rushing in to help!

The power of this book lies in the question: Can an individual or society live with complete disregard for the moral and spiritual laws that God has placed within His creation without paying the ultimate price? Can the soul of a people abandon God’s laws without paying a high price? As much as we may wish we can abandon all restraints, and go our own willful and sinful ways, calling black white and white black, there is still a high price to pay. There is a high cost to low living, our generation has even rejected the message of Oscar Wilde in this book, and lived more according to the life Wilde lived early on. Wilde is famous for advocating living however one wants to live. He said, “nothing succeeds like excess”, and “nothing is good or bad, only charming or dull”. He said, “I can resist anything…but temptation!” That kind of life left him dead at the age of 46, dying ten years after his masterpiece! What most people do not know is that Oscar Wilde, before he died, is said to have repented of his wicked ways, sought to join the Church, and was refused because of his famous wicked past! He is quoted as saying, “Ah! Happy day they whose hearts can break, and peace of pardon win! How else may man make straight his plan, and cleanse his soul from Sin? How else but through a broken heart may the Lord Christ enter in?” His prayer? “Come down, O Christ, and save me, reach thy hand down for I am drowning in a stormier sea than Simon on thy lake of Galilee”. He had made several trips to the Holy Land and was amazed at the accuracy of the Gospel stories and their accuracy concerning Christ. In one of his children’s books he tells the story of a giant whose life becomes only winter. One day a child comes and invites him to come to a garden of paradise that is Spring returned. When the giant questions who this child is, he discovers this is a child who has nail scars in his hands…and those scars are the price paid to enable the return of Spring and Paradise. Oscar Wilde wanted to write a fifth Gospel story to elaborate on the truth of that message. He never lived long enough to write that book. Maybe the miraculous restoration of the picture of Dorian Gray was parable of the picture of one Oscar Wilde finding restoration in becoming renewed in Christ? God only knows. Ephesians 2:8-9 says “We are saved by grace, through faith, it is the gift of God, not of ourselves lest any man should boast.” We seldom read Ephesians 2:10. It says, “for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works”. The word “workmanship” is the word “poema”. It means “masterpiece”. Our saved, redeemed, restored souls and lives are God’s eternal artwork and masterpiece. When we see our own portrait, and that of our society marred by unbridled sin and wickedness, bearing the high price of low living…the only hope for our generation is a new portrait, one bearing the marks of our Savior’s transforming touch. The Portrait of a New Creation! Let the new painting begin! Our world desperately needs His artistic touch! We all need to be transformed by the Love of God, from the God of Love. What a Loving Portrait He makes of us!

SERMON: READY FOR LIFTOFF
I Thessalonians 4:12-18
I. DEFINITION OF THE RAPTURE
II. DISTINCTION OF THE RAPTURE
III. DETAILS OF THE RAPTURE
IV. DUTY OF THE RAPTURE

PLOWING THE SEA OR EVERLASTING SPLENDORS?

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Oct 062024

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “PLOWING THE SEA OR EVERLASTING SPLENDORS?

The story of Esau, what an encouragement to all of us! When God asked him, what is your name? It must have been with great apprehension and disappointment he could only say, “Jacob”. But the Angel of the Lord told him no longer! “Thou shall be called Israel”. He who now moves forward, not in his own power, but by the power of God. The new name that God named Jacob, by the power of God He was able to make him. He promises the same thing to us. Philippians says, “He who began a good work in you will continue to perform it unto the Day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace you have been saved, not of yourselves, not of works, lest any man should boast”. Then verse 10 says it all, “for we are His workmanship, created unto good works”. The Greek word for “workmanship” is the word “poema” from which we get our word “poem”. The idea is we are God’s work and masterpiece. Just wait until you see His completed product.
Sometimes as Christians we get discouraged with our progress. One writer said, after reviewing his life, “that his efforts had been sown in an environment where they could not grow and not even the furrow would remain. He felt as if he was one ‘plowing the sea’ “. (Van Wyck Brooks). The great Irish poet W.B. Yeats, in his book Reveries, wrote “All life, weighed in the scale of my own life, seems a preparation for something that never happens!” Os Guinness said, in his book The Call, says most Christian’s lives are “an incomplete story, if not a story of incompletion”. G.K. Chesterton, in his Magnus Opus, Orthodoxy, wrote “To the question ‘what are you’ I can only answer ‘God knows’. Most Christians do not answer so humbly and perceptively today. We often answer that question with arrogance specifying our calling and accomplishments in a single sentence, and pronouncing our life’s accomplishments with such confidence as if they were things we could pile on a little red wagon and trundle them to God to solicit His approval and to the pride of our achievements! Such arrogance overlooks the fact that God alone must do the work in us and that is a mystery at the heart of our calling and identity. Os Guinness puts it succinctly, “God calls us and just as we hear Him, but do not see Him on this earth, so we grow to become what He calls us, even though we don’t see until heaven what He is calling us to become.”
No one has captured that better than George MacDonald in the sermon “The New Name” from Unspoken Sermons. He writes “Jesus promised us a white Stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it”. Then MacDonald pointed out, in good Biblical fashion that “the true name is one which expresses the character, the nature and the meaning of the person who bears it. It is the man’s own symbol, his soul’s picture, in a word a sign which belongs to him and no one else. Who can give a man this? So describe his nature? God alone! For no one but God sees what that man is.” Then he goes even further, “It is only when the man has become his name-that God then gives him the stone with the name upon it, for then for the first time can he understand what his name signifies. It is the blossom, the perfection, the completeness, that determines the name, and God foresees from the beginning because He made it so; but the tree of the soul, before its blossom comes, cannot understand what blossom it is to bear and could not know what the word meant, which in representing its own unarrived completeness, named itself. Such a name cannot be given until the man has become all the name means that God has given him. He will then be what God had in mind when He first created him-in His thoughts. To tell the name is to seal the success-to say in thee I am well-pleased”.
So don’t be discouraged or frustrated because you have not “grown into the name” that will be you in that day! We can live frustrated by the gap-the veritable Grand Canyon between our vision and our accomplishments. We are too easily depressed by the pages of our lives that are blotted with compromises, failures, betrayals, and sins. Yes you have had your say. Others have had their say. But make no judgments and draw no conclusions until the scaffolding of history is stripped away and you finally see what it means for God to have had His say! Wait to see how He makes you what He called you to be!
C.S. Lewis, has probably said it better than anyone. “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses (he means people being conformed to the image of God through Christ), to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you may talk to may one day be a creature, which if you saw them now, you would be strongly tempted to worship them, or such a horror and corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. In light of these possibilities…there are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal…only immortal horrors or everlasting splendors!” (Weight of Glory).

SERMON: THE TESTIMONY WALKING THE ENOCH WALK
1 THESSALONIANS 3: 1-12

I. WALK IN HOLINESS (3: 1-8)
II. WALKING IN HARMONY (3: 9-10)
III. WALK IN HONESTY (3: 11-12)