Christ Church (Moscow, ID)

<p>The last several years Christ Church has tried an experiment in grace and has not charged for the Grace Agenda conference. In keeping with this spirit of grace, we are accepting free will donations at <a href="https://www.graceagenda.com/donate" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.graceagenda.com/donate</a> to help cover conference costs.</p>

<p>Preacher: Douglas Wilson<br><br>The gospel advances through a cloud of misunderstanding. Whenever a remarkable event happens, including events of any spiritual significance, rumors start to fly, people start to talk, and the inaccuracies start to multiply.</p>

<p>Preacher: Ty Knight<br><br>Want a clue of what your idol may be? Consider what you have to keep propping up. What keeps toppling over and you have to—1, 2, 3,—hoist up your public image back on its pedestal, self-brag about your grades or your business success, prop up your kids sporting ability, that might be your idol.</p>

<p>Speaker: Douglas Wilson<br><br>The last several years Christ Church has tried an experiment in grace and has not charged for the Grace Agenda conference. In keeping with this spirit of grace, we are accepting free will donations at <a href="https://www.graceagenda.com/donate" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.graceagenda.com/donate</a>.</p>

<p>Preacher: Ben Zornes<br>Text: Luke 12:32<br><br>Where do you find comfort? Distraction? Netflix serves up a seemingly endless supply of that. More data? Every day there’s a new study warning of this or that danger related to the pandemic, or brain eating amoebas. Politics? Well there was a food fight on national TV the other night, a Supreme Court vacancy, and a president fallen ill. Booze? The end of the bottle will come sooner or later. Where is your comfort?</p>

<p>Speaker: Gary DeMar<br><br>The last several years Christ Church has tried an experiment in grace and has not charged for the Grace Agenda conference. In keeping with this spirit of grace, we are accepting free will donations at <a href="https://www.graceagenda.com/donate" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.graceagenda.com/donate</a>.</p>

<p>Preacher: Toby Sumpter<br><br>Worship piles up. Worship grows in concentration of spiritual force. Blessings multiply like compound interest. Worship is our battering ram, and every Lord’s Day we take another swing at the gates of Hades. But every swing is actually heavier, every swing is pulled back a little further. This is because our worship includes the worship of all the saints. From the worship of Abel to Abraham to Israel at Jericho to David to Paul to Augustine to Calvin to Bunyan to Bonhoeffer to our own parents and grandparents, and all of it is offered up in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus.</p>

<p>Speaker: Dr. Gordon Wilson<br><br>The last several years Christ Church has tried an experiment in grace and has not charged for the Grace Agenda conference. In keeping with this spirit of grace, we are accepting free will donations at <a href="https://www.graceagenda.com/donate" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.graceagenda.com/donate</a>.</p>

<p>Preacher: Aaron Ventura<br>Text: Deut. 21:10–14</p>

<p>Preacher: Ben Zornes<br><br>Families accumulate habits like a magnet sweeping over metal shavings. When a baby is born—or a child is adopted—into the family, they immediately begin acclimating to those customs. A wise family should be able to point at their traditions and give a good reason for why they do it. Parents should always be ready to give an explanation of the customs to curious minds, and encourage cheerful participation in family customs. All those mottos, chants, and traditions should reinforce unity and loyalty. But they aren’t the source of the unity.</p>

<p>Speaker: Douglas Wilson<br><br>The last several years Christ Church has tried an experiment in grace and has not charged for the Grace Agenda conference. In keeping with this spirit of grace, we are accepting free will donations at <a href="https://www.graceagenda.com/donate" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.graceagenda.com/donate</a>.</p>

<p>Dr. Ben Merkle preaches our midweek message from Psalm 23.</p>

<p>Speakers: N.D. Wilson and Toby Sumpter<br><br>The last several years Christ Church has tried an experiment in grace and has not charged for the Grace Agenda conference. In keeping with this spirit of grace, we are accepting free will donations at <a href="https://www.graceagenda.com/donate" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.graceagenda.com/donate</a>.</p>

<p>"This whole life is the winter before planting season. We are germinating in little dixie cups on a windowsill looking out the back porch of God’s universe. We haven’t even been outside yet. At death, we go into the ground. At death, we get planted outside. And then, having been planted, we can finally come up alive. We haven’t even come up yet. We are people in seed form. We are the seeds of real people. In Christ, we are real people seeds." – Toby Sumpter<br><br>The last several years Christ Church has tried an experiment in grace and has not charged for the Grace Agenda conference. In keeping with this spirit of grace, they are accepting free will donations at <a href="https://www.graceagenda.com/donate" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.graceagenda.com/donate</a>.</p>

<p>Pastor Toby Sumpter preaches our midweek message from Isaiah 11.</p>

<p>The last several years Christ Church has tried an experiment in grace and has not charged for the Grace Agenda conference. In keeping with this spirit of grace, they are accepting free will donations at <a href="https://www.graceagenda.com/donate" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.graceagenda.com/donate</a>.<br><br>For more resources, please visit <a href="https://www.christkirk.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.christkirk.com</a>.</p>

<p>Preacher: Ben Zornes<br>Text: Zephaniah 3<br><br>The early portion of Zephaniah’s prophecy is dark, heavy, and full of the thunderings of the law. But only those who are stubborn and stiff-necked need to be fearful of these thunderings. The proud only hear the fire and thunder of God’s just anger over their sin. But the meek are given news ears. They don’t hear the tumult of God’s wrath; they hear the sweetest song. A song that all the most gifted composers, if they worked together for a thousand years, would be unable to compare with.</p>

<p>"You can’t fight a culture war without a culture to fight with, and you cannot build a culture without worship at its center. The only question is what will the object of our worship be? What will orient all that we do? We are building households that make people who will live forever. And those people were made to worship the Triune God. So we worship, build, and plant; we feast and we laugh until the earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." — Pastor Toby Sumpter<br><br>Full exhortation: <a href="https://www.tobyjsumpter.com/a-culture-to-fight-with/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.tobyjsumpter.com/a-culture-to-fight-with/</a></p>

<p>"Man is a glory seeking creature. Everyone in this room has an appetite, a thirst, a hunger for glory." – Aaron Ventura</p>

<p>Preacher: Ben Zornes<br>Text: Zephaniah 2<br><br>Postmodernism is like a swamp, in which all sorts of toxic algae can flourish. Christians who swim in those waters will invariably come down with the side-effects of those poisoned waters. One of the primary consequences of imbibing postmodern thought is that of thinking of the God revealed in the Bible as an isolated deity. But God is the God of the whole world, and every turn in earth’s history proves this to be true.</p>

<p>Pastor Toby Sumpter preaches our midweek message on Psalm 11.</p>

<p>Preacher: Ben Zornes<br>Text: Zephaniah 1<br><br>The prophetic ministry is not an extra-curricular activity of some believers. Rather, preaching is a part of our corporate worship. We affirm that in the reading and explanation of God’s Word, we are hearing God speak to us. But man would rather reach for the volume knob of his distractions. But God will be heard, and if these are the echoes of His ways, what will you do when He thunders?</p>

<p>Preacher: Toby Sumpter<br>Text: Proverbs 22:6<br><br>One of the great mistakes of parenting is to get the stages of parenting backwards. When children are young, they need significant guidance and discipline and a very narrow, black and white path. But as children grow older, they need to internalize and love the standards and exercising them for themselves. Another name for this process is discipleship in Christ.</p>

<p>Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4).</p>

<p>Deut. 20:1–20</p>

<p>Midweek message on Hebrews 5:7– from Pastor Toby Sumpter.<br><br>"Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him; Called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec. Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."</p>

<p>As we look at the state of the culture around us, we sometimes feel like we are locked in the graduate school of sin, in what appears to be some kind of demented calculus course. Believers look at this in dismay, thinking that we somehow need to come up with some sort of super-wise, uber-godly biblical answer to all of it. We want to come up with our own righteous calculus course, one where the answer key is most tidy, and entirely correct. But this is an optical illusion—what we actually need to do is take all our so-called urbane sophisticates back to kindergarten, and teach them all to draw a straight line between the carrot and the bunny. And before that can ever happen, we must come back to mere gospel. It must be a gospel with blood in it, and sap, and salt.</p>

<p>Midweek message on 1 Corinthians 9:24–27.</p>

<p>James 4:1–6<br><br>You should recall that at our previous joint worship service earlier this summer, the emphasis was on two kinds of unity. The first is a unity that we are given by grace, and are called to preserve (Eph. 4:1–3), and the second is a unity that we are called to establish or build (Eph. 4:11–13). We preserve the existing unity by dealing with sin properly—resisting temptation, seeking forgiveness, and extending forgiveness. The second kind of unity is the maturity that the Holy Spirit is in the process of bestowing on us as He grows us up into the perfect man.<br><br>In the message today, we need to drill down into some of the issues surrounding that first kind of unity. And that means we have to talk about sin. But I want to focus on a particular kind of sin, the kind that consistently thinks of itself as always somehow in the right. You know, sins that are common in church. This kind of sin actually causes a lot of havoc in conservative churches—far more havoc than selling cocaine does, or running a brothel, or robbing banks.</p>

<p>Dr. Ben Merkle delivers our midweek message on Proverbs 6:12–15.<br><br>"A worthless person, a wicked man,<br> goes about with crooked speech,<br>13 winks with his eyes, signals with his feet,<br> points with his finger,<br>14 with perverted heart devises evil,<br> continually sowing discord;<br>15 therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly;<br> in a moment he will be broken beyond healing" (Prov. 6:12-15).</p>

<p>Pastor Doug preaches our midweek message on Romans 13.</p>

<p>Matthew 18:23–35<br><br>Certain people have the uncanny ability to drive you crazy. It’s tempting to box them out of our lives, so we won’t have to deal with their antics. Forgiving someone again & again is an unappealing course of action as it means they’ve offended you again & again. However, there’s someone you’re very good at forgiving & treating with great delicacy even though they’re a good-for-nuthin’ scoundrel. That someone? Yourself!</p>

<p>Pastor Kirk Brower (Bridge Bible Fellowship) delivered our midweek message on Mark 8:22–26.<br><br>Join the #SamePageSummer Bible Reading Challenge: <a href="https://biblereading.christkirk.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://biblereading.christkirk.com</a>.<br><br>For more resources, please visit our website: <a href="https://www.christkirk.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.christkirk.com</a>.</p>

<p>Eph. 4:1–3, 11–13<br><br>As the church of God grows and increases in the world, there will be problems that are associated with that increase. You cannot have growth in this fallen world without having the associated growing pains.</p>

<p>Titus 2:11–15<br><br>If you were to pick a word to describe the current state of affairs, what would it be? Disorder? Chaos? Fear? Confusion? A big mess? <br><br>What about the current state of your own soul? Could you describe yourself as peaceful, full of joy, at ease in your conscience? Or is your inner man a hairball of guilt, shame, disordered desires, and fear of judgment? It is clear that all around us and within us things are all out of order. The nub of the matter is: how do we get things back into order?</p>

<p>“When you come to the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me,’ you shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses; one from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. But he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, for the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall not return that way again.’ Neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; nor shall he greatly multiply silver and gold for himself.<br><br>“Also it shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book, from the one before the priests, the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted above his brethren, that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, and that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children in the midst of Israel” (Deut. 17:14–20).</p>

<p>We ascend into the heavenlies in our worship and meet with our God there (Heb. 12:22). But this heavenly worship is not something that has fearfully run away from the enemy on earth. Rather, as the book of Revelation shows in great detail, the worship of the saints in heaven accomplishes God’s judgments on earth. The twenty-four elders worship God in heaven (Rev. 4:10), and the seven seals are opened in heaven (Rev. 5:5). But this does not leave the earth untouched or unaffected.<br><br>If you want to fight the culture war, you have to fight from the high ground. The only high ground we can successfully fight from is the high ground of Heaven, where our Lord Jesus is seated at God’s right hand.</p>

<p>A midweek message on Matthew 5:5 from Shawn Paterson.<br><br>Join the #SamePageSummer Bible Reading Challenge: <a href="https://biblereading.christkirk.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://biblereading.christkirk.com</a>.</p>

<p>We assemble here week after week to worship God in the name of Christ in the power of the Spirit. This is what we do. But it is also important for us to understand what we are doing, and why we are doing it. Otherwise we will drift into a mindless routine—which is quite different from a Spirit-led routine.</p>

<p>People, being at root self-idolaters, think they can worship God on their terms, rather than worshiping Him as He has instructed us to. The difference between right worship and wrong worship is the difference between smoked brisket and burnt hair. If you don’t believe me just ask Cain, or Nadab and Abihu, or Ananias and Saphira.</p>

<p>A midweek message from Pastor Toby Sumpter.</p>

<p>What do Christians do when the world around them seems to be coming apart? We wait on God, our salvation, and we think and live in light of His promises. And in particular, we think and live in light of His promises to forgive our sins and the sins of the world.<br><br>The prophet Micah ministered in the southern kingdom of Judah towards the end of the 8th Century B.C. He ministered during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah (Mic. 1:1) when the northern kingdom of Israel/Samaria fell to the Assyrians in 722 BC (2 Kings 17). In other words, Micah was watching the disintegration of his nation. Despite the deep darkness in his day, his prophecy is full of light and hope for us.</p>

<p>"Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24).</p>

<p>Today we celebrate Pentecost, the ancient harvest festival of the Jews, the great day on which the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church, and three thousand souls were harvested into new life. This giving of the Spirit was a great event in the history of the church, but the gift of the Spirit also has great significance for each individual believer. Today we are going to consider three important activities of the Holy Spirit in the life of every believer here.<br><br>For more resources visit <a href="https://www.christkirk.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.christkirk.com</a>.</p>

<p>One of the great difficulties that modern Christians have is that we do not let the two testaments inform one another. Because of this neglect on our part, we miss many visions of coming glory that the Old Testament prophets set before us. And as a people starved for glory, we ought not to miss any of it when God offers it.</p>

<p>The lock down orders that have been imposed all over the country have revealed to us a number of things—outside the church, in the relationship of the church to our broader society, and within the church. The thrust of this message has to do with the latter. What have we learned, if anything, about true Christian fellowship, true Christian koinonia, true Christian community?</p>

<p>In times like ours, there is a lot to worry about, is there not? If we are not worried about the coronavirus killing us dead, we are worried about panicked overreactions to the coronavirus killing our businesses dead. And so we like to think that our situation is somehow unique. We live in the modern age, and so our worry or anxiety is somehow justified. But it isn’t.<br><br>Across many historical studies, before the modern era about a quarter of all children did not survive their first year. Another quarter of them did not make it past puberty. And from around 1500 to 1800, general life expectancy was somewhere between 30 and 40 years old. So tell us some more about your great troubles, Methuselah. You might not make it to a thousand?</p>

<p>A mid-week sermon from Pastor Toby Sumpter.</p>

<p>This psalm is the first in a series of fifteen psalms, called from ancient times psalms of ascent, or psalms of degree. What this means is frankly lost to us, but there have been reasonable speculations. John Calvin thought it had to do with the musical pitch of the psalm. A medieval rabbi said that the temple had fifteen steps, one psalm per step. I favor the view that argues that these are pilgrim psalms. When Israelites went to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple, they were going up (Ex. 34:24; 1 Kings 12:27).</p>

<p>A mid-week sermon from Dr Ben Merkle.</p>