Oak Hill Baptist Church

Jesus is for everyone

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “But the angel said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all people. Today in the city of David a Savior is born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Luke 2:10-11 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Jesus is for everyone”

During his decades of ministry Billy Graham came to know many famous people, including the movie director Cecil B. DeMille. DeMille, who was a pioneer in the early days of Hollywood during the silent film era, not only made some of the first movies ever, but he made the first movie about Jesus. The title was “The King of Kings” and it was a silent film.

By the time Billy Graham knew him, Cecil B. DeMille was a very old man and the art of movie-making had advanced far beyond silent films. Not only had sound long since been added, but so had color. Billy asked DeMille why he had never reproduced his greatest film, “The King of Kings” with sound so people could hear the words of Jesus. DeMille responded, “I will never be able to do it, because if I gave Jesus a southern accent, the northerners would not think of Him as their Christ. If I gave Him a foreign accent, the Americans and the British would not think of Him as their Christ. As it is, people of all nations, from ever race, creed, clan, can accept Him as their Christ.”

While history has proven that DeMille was wrong about the danger of adding a voice to the character of Jesus in a movie, his point is still well-taken. Jesus is for everyone, and Cecil B. DeMille didn’t want to do or say anything that would take away from that important truth. He is not a white Jesus, or a black Jesus, or an American Jesus, or a European Jesus. He is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came to us from heaven to live among us and to one day pay the penalty for our sins. As the angel said to the shepherds in Luke 2:10-11 (above), this is good news of great joy for “all” the people. Jesus is for everyone. That means that Jesus is for you. He is yours if you want Him. God sent Him not just to save the world, but to save you. The Incarnation is personal for each of us.

Tonight, at Oak Hill Baptist Church, we will celebrate the great truth of the Incarnation with a Christmas Eve candlelight service at 5:00 Central time. We hope you will join us in person. But if you can’t, then I encourage you to join us online as we also livestream the service on our Facebook page.

Jesus is for everyone, and that includes you.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

God’s love is beyond measure

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “God’s love is beyond measure”

John 3:16 is probably the best-known verse in the Bible. It’s certainly the most repeated. Even non-Christians have heard it and seen it repeatedly. In fact, I think for some people, even for many Christians, the verse is so familiar that it has almost become too familiar, to the point that we take it for granted and don’t give serious thought to what it means and what it tells us about God.

It begins with the phrase that God so loved “the world” … That term was not meant to describe the world as a planet but the world as in the people who make up the world. God loves the people who live here. All the people who live here. As 2 Peter 3:9 makes very clear, it is God’s will that none should perish, He wants all to come to faith in Christ. “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

The verse also reveals that His love for us is so complete, so over-whelming, that Jesus came to earth on a rescue mission to seek and to save those who are lost (all of us), and to bring us to the Father in heaven who loves us that much. The rest of the verse then explains that whoever will believe this to be true and place their faith in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, will have eternal life. This is what God wants more than anything. It’s His most earnest desire, for people to be saved and to spend eternity with Him.

This is something people need to know about God. People need to understand the scope, the depth, the overwhelming magnitude of His love for us. And it’s up to us, those who have already accepted the invitation of John 3:16 and who are now experiencing that great love of the Father, it’s up to us to tell others about it.

That is what we will be doing on Christmas Eve at Oak Hill Baptist here in Crossville, TN. At 5:00 on Christmas Eve we will hold a Christmas Eve candlelight service to celebrate the great love of the Father as demonstrated by the Incarnation of Christ. We invite you to join us. And if you cannot be here in person, then join us for the livestream on our Facebook page beginning at 5:00 Central time.

God’s love for us is beyond measure. The Incarnation proves it.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

The Incarnation is a bridge to so much more

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and incomprehensible things you did not know.” Jeremiah 33:3 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “The Incarnation is a bridge to so much more”

Jeremiah 33:3 is a revealing Old Testament passage which teaches us a lot. First, we read that God wants us seek Him and to call out to Him. Second, we discover that when we do, He will answer us. And third, as a reward for desiring, seeking, and calling out to Him, He will reveal to us deep spiritual truths that we did not know before we came seeking and calling.

It has always been God’s desire for His people to know Him, and He has always provided ways for that to happen. That’s been true in many varied ways down throughout the course of human history, and it’s especially true now, in the New Testament Age. Through the person of Jesus Christ, God has shown Himself to us to in a way in which we can immediately relate to and understand. He then used that human body of Jesus to live-out His attributes on the human stage for us to see.

The Incarnation of Christ actually serves as a bridge to help us understand deeper spiritual realities that we could not fully comprehend or appreciate in other ways. It’s one thing for God to tell us in writing (the Bible) that He loves us, it’s another thing for Him to show us that love by suffering and dying to redeem us. It’s one thing for Him to tell us in writing that He cares for us and will provide for us, it’s another thing for us to see Him doing those things as Jesus, as He lived and moved among real people just like you and me.

When we embrace the reality of the Incarnation of Christ and understand that we’re seeing God in action as a result of it, that then becomes a spiritual bridge we pass over that leads us into a deeper knowledge of God and His ways, and it brings us more fully into relationship with Him.

I don’t think it can be said too often that if you want to know God you must study Jesus, because Jesus is God in a human body. The Incarnation is our bridge to understanding so much more about God.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

We don’t need idols

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “Do not make an idol for yourself, whether in the shape of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. Do not bow in worship to them, and do not serve them.” Exodus 20:3-5 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “We don’t need idols”

Right off the bat in the Ten Commandments God instructs us that we are not to create idols for ourselves that serve as gods, represent gods, or in any way supplant the One True God. But why would we be tempted to do so to begin with? What’s the attraction of an idol?

Although we can make an idol out of anything and give it the place and priority that essentially makes it a “god” in our lives, traditionally and historically an idol was something created by human hands to represent a deity, and it was then worshiped. The reason this has always been true is because as Solomon taught in Ecclesiastes 3:11, “God has placed eternity in the heart of man.” In other words, God created human beings with an innate understanding that there is more than just this life; there is a spiritual world and there is a God; and we yearn to know that God and to have life after death. So, in an attempt to fulfill that yearning deep in the human heart, from the beginning of time humans have created idols to represent their understanding of God, and they then worshiped those idols.

To deal once and for all with this deep yearning in the human heart, God came to us in the person of Jesus Christ. This is what the Incarnation is all about. Immanuel, God with us. By showing Himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ, God addressed and resolved the human desire for idols which are intended to represent God, or a god. As A.W. Tozer noted in his book, “The Knowledge of the Holy”, “If we insist upon trying to imagine Him, we end with an idol.” That’s true because our imagination will naturally lead us to create a god for ourselves who satisfies our own ideas of what God should be like.

But Jesus changed all that. Through Jesus we see God as He wants to be seen. This is why deep and careful study of the Gospels is so vital to our spiritual growth. Again, quoting from Tozer, “The yearning to Know what cannot be known, to comprehend the Incomprehensible, to touch and taste the Unapproachable, arises from the image of God in the nature of man. Deep calleth unto deep … the soul senses its origin and longs to return to its Source. How can this be realized? The answer of the Bible is simply “though Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Because of the Incarnation of Christ, we don’t need idols. If we want an image of God, we only need to look to Jesus.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

Jesus is the exact expression of God

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature …” Hebrews 1:3 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Jesus is the exact expression of God”

As we begin Christmas week and the celebration of the Incarnation, I want us to think more about how it is that Jesus is the exact expression of the nature of God. He was God in a human body, showing us the love, kindness, compassion, and mercy of God in a way we can easily understand and relate to. This was one of the things God accomplished while living among us as Jesus, and it’s vitally important that we learn to think of Him in that way.

To help us appreciate the importance of studying Jesus so we can know and understand God better, I’m going to continue sharing some thoughts from the book by A.W. Tozer “The Knowledge of the Holy”. Tozer was one of the many great Christian thinkers who reminded us that “What comes to our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” One reason that is true is because “We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.” We’ve talked about this. What we believe to be true about God will play a big role in shaping our own character and personality. Because, “The man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems.”

That’s true. Being in a healthy relationship with God cleans up a lot of problems in life. Therefore, “That our idea of God corresponds as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us.” It’s of immense importance to God too. That’s precisely why He wants us to see Him in the person of Jesus. And that being the case, as Tozer wrote, “The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him.”

Yes, it is the responsibility of the Church to purify and elevate the way in which God is taught and presented so that Christians will come to a better understanding of who God is and what He is really like. This goes beyond simple discipleship and moves us into serious and deep spiritual growth. That was the object of our Christmas sermon yesterday at Oak Hill Baptist. It was about the theology of Christmas, and it was an attempt to paint the big picture of what God was doing for us by means of the Incarnation. If you would like to watch that sermon you can do so on our website (oakhillbaptist.net) or on our Facebook page.

In the days to come, as we prepare to celebrate the Incarnation, give some serious thought to what God was teaching us about Himself by coming to us in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

Tell of His greatness

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “They will tell of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might, so that all men may know of your mighty acts and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.” Psalm 145:11-12 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “Tell of His greatness”

Here are a couple more quotes from A.W. Tozer’s book, “The Knowledge of the Holy”, “The decline of the knowledge of the holy has brought on our troubles. A rediscovery of the majesty of God will go a long way toward curing them.” And, “If we would bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God more nearly as He is.”

Early in this devotional series I noted that one of the reasons Jesus came to earth was to show us what God is really like. Jesus was God in a human body. He was God showing Himself to us in a way we can easily relate to and understand. The reason God did that (in addition to the obvious and primary reason of one day dying on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins), was so we would have a visual image of Him and He could then show us more clearly what He is like. So, if you want to know God you have to study Jesus because Jesus is God in a human body. That’s what the incarnation of Christ means and it’s what we celebrate at Christmas.

This Sunday at our church (Oak Hill Baptist), the Christmas sermon will be focused on the theology underlying the incarnation. We will consider how those theological truths played themselves out over the course of Jesus’ life, and then down through the course of human history and on into eternity. It’s the theology of Christmas.

Considering the Christmas story from a theological perspective, and following the story through to its ultimate conclusion, will help us to better understand exactly what God did for us by the incarnation of Christ. It will also help us to see the bigger picture and thereby gain a fuller sense of the awe and majesty of God.

I hope you will join us at Oak Hill Baptist for this special Christmas service. Sunday school is at 9:00 and the worship service will begin at 10:00. After the service there will be a Christmas party for all ages complete with food, fun, and fellowship. We would love to have you join us. If you can’t be with us in-person, then please join us online. The service will be live-streamed on our Facebook page. Through the theology of the Christmas story, we will tell of the greatness and the awesome majesty of our God.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

We must recapture a sense of His majesty

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “O Lord my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty.” Psalm 104:1 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “We must recapture a sense of His majesty.”

Yesterday I introduced you to A.W. Tozer’s very important little book, “The Knowledge of the Holy”. This morning I want to share some additional thoughts from it regarding the damage being done in our churches (and therefore in the Christian community at-large), by the diluted and distorted image of God that’s being embraced by so many Christians.

“With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience life in the Spirit.”

Now read these next words with our modern-day mega-churches in mind (and smaller churches which feel they have to mimic what takes place in mega-churches): “This loss of the concept of majesty has come just when the forces of religion are making dramatic gains and the churches are more prosperous than at any time within the past several years. But the alarming thing is that our gains are mostly external and our losses wholly internal; and since it is the quality of our religion that is affected by internal conditions, it may be that our supposed gains are but losses spread over a wider field.”

Ouch. Tozer was referring to churches that seem impressive simply because they are large, or because they offer many programs, or they are hipster and have the reputation of being cool. How many church facilities do we have in our country that are so big they look like “Six Flags over Jesus”? They have rock bands and lights and smoke; they have a menu of programs and activities that is pages long; they have a fleet of buses and vans; (and in at least one case, an indoor heated swimming pool). And how many smaller churches stress themselves out trying to mimic that? Is this what God really wants from us? Nice church facilities and lots of activities are not necessarily bad things unless … unless they distract us from the most important thing – from the most important One.

What was true in Tozer’s day is even truer in ours. Too much of what takes place in our churches today is little more than Christian entertainment and therefore we have lost the sense of God’s majesty. We must take steps to recover it and one way to accomplish that is by making an effort to come to know God as He really is.

Tomorrow I want to offer you a sneak-peak at the Christmas sermon I will preach in our church on Sunday. It pertains directly to this subject of coming to know God as He really is.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

Something essential has been lost

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “Therefore, dear friends, since you know this in advance, be on your guard, so that you are not led away by the error of lawless people and fall from your own stable position. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 3:17-18 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Something essential has been lost”

In 1961 A.W. Tozer published a little book with the title, “The Knowledge of the Holy”. It quickly became a Christian classic and is still widely read today. The book is all about the attributes of God and its purpose is to give the reader an accurate understanding of who God is and what He’s really like, according to Scripture rather than myth and popular folklore.

In the introduction Tozer wrote, “I refer to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men … The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us.”

Please note, that statement was written more than sixty years ago when the USA was still the home of Andy of Mayberry and Leave it to Beaver. How much more does Tozer’s sad lament pertain to our society today? Non-believers, and many Christians too, have invented an image of God that bears little resemblance to the God of the Bible. And yes, it is the cause of a thousand lesser evils in our land.

This is why we’re conducting this devotional study about knowing God as He really is, and this is what Peter was writing about in 2 Peter 3:17-18 (above). We must be on our guard against the lies, deceptions, misrepresentations, and false images of God that are promoted in our society and in many of our churches. Instead, we must apply ourselves to growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (who is God incarnate). We must know Him as He really is – as He is revealed in Scripture.

As we continue with our devotional study of knowing God, we’re going to go a little deeper into our exploration of the attributes of God as revealed in Scripture. As Tozer noted more than sixty years ago, something has been lost in our understanding of God and it’s essential for us to recapture it. We must know God as He really is.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

God is closer than you think

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” Galatians 2:20 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “God is closer than you think”

This morning I want to return us to a devotional thought that was shared by Jane Thibault in the book, “Pilgrimage into the Last Third of Life”. Sadly, at all stages of life, we can get so wrapped up in the cares and distractions of life that we miss God’s presence with us. The Biblical truth, and the spiritual reality, is that God is closer than you think. Jane writes:

“How odd it is that we so often think of the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit as being “out there” somewhere, distant or at least external to ourselves. We pray to God “in heaven” as though heaven were some far-distant place. We pray and ask God to be with us, yet God is with us, within us, throughout us!”

This is what the Apostle Paul was teaching when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”

God is so close to you that His Holy Spirit actually lives in your heart. That being the case, we should know Him pretty well. He is closer to us than anyone else, and there is never a time when He is not with us and that close. Think about that. God loves you so much, and He wants to have such a close and personal relationship with you, that He has actually moved in and set up house in your heart.

This is why it’s so important for us to spend time every day cultivating that relationship with Him. Prayer, Bible reading, just sitting quietly with Him and thinking about Him, these are the things that help us to get to know Him as He really is, and to be comfortable with Him.

I encourage you to spend some time this morning just sitting quietly with God, thinking about Him, sensing His presence with you, and getting to know Him better.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

Relax and live

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “But we encourage you, brothers and sisters, to do this even more, to seek to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, so that you may behave properly in the presence of outsiders and not be dependent on anyone.” 1 Thessalonians 4:10-12 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Relax and live”

This morning’s devotional is similar to one from last week. The reason I’ve chosen to revisit the lesson this morning is because it’s so important, and it’s something so many of us struggle with. Many of us have a wrong perception of God. We believe things about Him that simply are not true nor are they fair. We think God expects more from us than He really does.

God is not a harsh taskmaster. He has not constructed a rigid set of rules, regulations and expectations that He demands we adhere to. Instead, God is exceedingly kind and gracious with us, and He gives us lots of liberty to relax and enjoy life.

One of the best illustrations I’ve ever heard regarding this came from Dallas Willard. Dallas explained that when his children were young, he used to send them out to play in the fenced-in backyard. Once they were out there, they were free to play in the sandbox, swing on the swings, play catch, sit under a tree and read, or virtually any other activity they chose for themselves. The only requirement was that they behaved themselves according to the standards of conduct established for them by their father, and they had to stay within the boundaries of the fenced-in backyard. Beyond that, they were free to relax, enjoy, and choose their activities for themselves.

That’s how our Father in heaven deals with us. In the Bible He has given us the standards by which He wants us to live. Those are the boundaries within which we have to stay. But beyond that, for the most part (unless He has a special and specific task for us), we’re free to just go out and enjoy life, making our own choices. God’s expectations of us are not complicated, nor are they demanding or unreasonable.

This is the picture the Apostle Paul was painting in 1 Thessalonians 4:10-12. He was telling us that all God requires of us is to live a simple life that honors Him and blesses others, then relax and enjoy life. That’s our thought for today and it’s my encouragement for you. God isn’t expecting you to jump through an endless series of hoops. Just honor Him, bless others, then relax and live.

God bless,
Pastor Jim