Category: Pastor’s Notes

Article updates from the Pastors of Believers City Church, Menomonie, WI.

December 12, 2024 Pastor Jesse Moss

Recently, as I have been preaching through the Gospel of Matthew, we covered chapter 20 and I noticed a jarring reality about the actions of Jesus’s closest, most devoted and beloved followers. It had nothing to do with their impressive or radical commitment, love, and care for Christ, but instead was marked by a severe disregard and careless attitude at a time when you would expect the very opposite.

Jesus has just finished giving an urgent warning to the disciples of the dire future that awaited Him. He explained to them the excruciating suffering and even death that He was about to experience. In return we see them respond with what can only be described as selfish indifference. You would expect them to react with care and concern for Him and His wellbeing and yet, instead of being overwhelmed by the words of Jesus, this significant topic is ignored because they are unable to take their attention off themselves.

Jesus says “I am going to be spit on, suffer, be tortured to the very edge of death, and then I will be killed. By the way, I am doing this for you.” With these words, you would expect the disciples to be overwhelmed — to focus their attention on Jesus’ unimaginable suffering. But instead, what do they do? The disciples hear this stirring warning and in response, they decide that it is a great time to start demanding their place of power and importance. And this is not the only time Jesus calls their attention to Him only to be ignored. Earlier in Matthew, Jesus gave the same warning only to be followed by the disciples’ all too common argument about which one of them is the greatest.

It seems absurd, doesn’t it? How could they be so foolish? How could they be so self-focused and self-consumed in the face of Christ’s suffering? We better be careful before we go pointing our fingers in accusation because the reality is, it is really not much of a surprise. Take a look around — we live in a world that constantly pushes us to focus on ourselves: from social media to self-help culture, it’s all about “me.” People are so self-focused and self-concerned that we see little concern or thought to those around us even including the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Jesus should not have to jump up and down screaming to get our attention. Our eyes should always be locked on Him, but that would require we take them off ourselves. That is an act most seem so unwilling to do these days.

People love to claim concern for Jesus and yet their actions prove otherwise. The reality is that many professing believers show more concern for what clothes they are going to wear on any given day than for Christ and His kingdom. The disciples ignored God in the living and breathing flesh right in front of them. We still do it now by our disregard for His Bride, the church. It’s all too easy to be consumed by our hobbies, careers, and comforts. We close our eyes to the things of greater importance because we have allowed ourselves to become self-important.

Let us become like John the Baptist and say not just with our words but with our lives “He must increase. I must decrease” In short, let us get over ourselves. It would be such a shame to waste our lives away concerned with things that will only prove in the end to have been fleeting and of no real significance.

Before Jesus even left this world, people began to close their eyes to Him distracted by their own self-obsession. Jesus suffered and died for us — is that not enough to shift our focus from ourselves to Him? Is that not enough to turn your concern and attention from your own cares, desires, and purposes to the ones that He holds as important?

November 10, 2024 Pastor Jason Gilbert | Menomonie

That’s not a word we typically use. Perhaps after a really bad accident, we might say someone’s form and appearance were transfigured beyond recognition… and not in a good way. But other than that, it’s not a word we are all too familiar with. So, what does it mean? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, to be transfigured means “to give a new and typically exalted or spiritual appearance; to transform outwardly and usually for the better.” And in the bible, it is translated from the Greek word metamorphoo, meaning “to change into another form, to transform, to transfigure” (i.e., think of a caterpillar’s metamorphosis into butterfly). But even in the bible it is only used four times, twice referring to Jesus’ transfiguration, and two other times in letters to the churches by the Apostle Paul.

Christ’s Transfiguration

If you grew up in church, your likely familiar with Christ’s transfiguration. The gospels tell us, “Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them” (Mark 9:2-3). And that “He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light” (Matthew 17:2). It was a magnificent moment. And the disciples were dumbfounded.

It’s hard to imagine exactly what happened. The Gospel writers were no doubt limited by vocabulary. And artistic depictions certainly fall short (i.e., the title image). In fact, even Dallas Jenkins, the director of the acclaimed series The Chosen, said, “I have no plan to do that… depictions of angels or other glowing beings in film often fall flat… It’s just hard for filmmakers to take such an alien experience and make it feel life-like.” He is right. This was an absolutely glorious moment. And some things just can’t be faked.

The Christian’s Transformation

Which brings us to a controversial issue. The Greek word for transfiguration is used only two other places in the New Testament. And in both instances, it speaks not of Christ’s transfiguration, but of the Christian’s transformation. In the first, Paul tells the Christians in Rome, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). And in the second, he tells the church in Corinth, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18). The word transformed in each of these verses is the same word used for the transfiguration of Jesus. Imagine that. The Christian being transfigured…

Biblical Christianity is more than just a set of beliefs, or religious mores, or church participation. Biblical Christianity is a transformation, a transfiguration, of our lives.

Furthermore, Paul tells us in these verses that not only is transformation possible, but what to do and not to do in order to attain to it (see Romans 12:1-2); and where we are to look for the power to receive it (see 2 Corinthians 3:18).

So, if you’re like most of us, and struggling to see such a transformation in your life, let us ask some poignant questions after reviewing these verses:

  • What are we presenting our bodies to?
  • How are we allowing ourselves to be conformed to this world?
  • How can we go about renewing our mind?
  • Where are our eyes? What are we looking at, honestly?

How we answer these questions is critical if we are to experience a transformation, a transfiguration, of our lives.

Gang, just like Christ’s transfiguration, our transformation cannot be faked. No amount of acting will be convincing. It will simply fall flat. But we have been given the keys to unlocking a true, genuine transformation in our life. May we follow the instructions given us to attain it. May we look unto Jesus for the power to receive it. And in so doing, may we genuinely reflect the glory of the Lord to the world around us.

July 9, 2024 Pastor Tim Dodson | Menomonie

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

Attributed — Sir Francis Drake — 1577

July 6, 2024 Pastor Jesse Moss

Back home in Wisconsin I never really wondered if I would get a flat tire. I never worried whether or not the water heater would be broken. I took a lot of everyday things for granted. Today marks exactly one year of living in the Philippines. It has been a year of ministering in new ways to new people, complete with all the joys and challenges. It’s been one year of meeting new friends, one year of making a fool of myself trying to live in an unknown culture, one year of insane traffic and frustrating inefficiency. It’s also been a year of being (in some ways) distant from the church that I had loved and committed myself to. That distance has allowed me a perspective that I may never had known otherwise.

The phrase “absence makes the heart grow fonder” can be traced all the way back to authors in the 1600s. At this point I believe it’s true. I am currently 7,906 miles away from the church that showed me what Christianity really was and gave me a group of friends that were closer to me than I honestly would have thought possible and I am probably more thankful to the church than ever.

I can also say that this distance has revealed how easily I took the church I loved that totally changed my life for granted. And if you are taking the time to read this blog you probably do to. What once was a cause for great excitement, joy, devotion, and love can all to easily become a source of apathy and inspire only half-hearted commitment. Eternal gratitude fades to a complacent attitude of taking it all for granted.

When you take something for granted you don’t strive for it anymore. If I take my marriage for granted, I assume it will remain healthy no matter what I might do. If you take your job for granted you don’t put forth your best effort as an employee, because you believe your job is secure either way. When we start to take the church for granted, we will expect it to continue to function as God has instructed with no effort put in on our part. We assume the Church will evangelize the lost, but we don’t tell anyone about Jesus. We assume that lunch will be served after church, but we aren’t bothered to step up in our commitment to service. We assume that preaching will be Biblically accurate and move the hearer to obedience, but we can’t be bothered to obey ourselves.

What Believers church strives to be as a church is rare. In the last year I have visited my fair share of churches and I wouldn’t want to join any of them. Be thankful for the work that God is doing, the people He is doing it through, and the community He has called you into. Don’t allow familiarity to breed complacency, because from what I see, Believers church is something special. And if you assume that it will remain the “Biblical, Missional, Radical” community that God desires with no effort on your part, you just might be taking it for granted. Be thankful for what it is, and let that gratitude motivate you to fight for it.

June 8, 2024 Benjamin Morrison

(*The following is an excerpt from Kevin DeYoung’s book “The Hole in Your Holiness.”)

Some Christians make the mistake of pitting love against law, as if the two were mutually exclusive. You either have a religion of love or a religion of law. But such an equation is profoundly unbiblical. For starters, “love” is a command of the law (Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:36–40). If you enjoin people to love, you are giving them law. Conversely, if you tell them law doesn’t matter, then neither does love, which is the summary of the law.

Furthermore, consider the close connection Jesus makes between love and law. We’ve already seen that for Jesus there is no love for him apart from keeping the law (John 14:15). But he says even more than this. Jesus connects communion with God with keeping commandments. When we keep Christ’s commandments, we love him. And when we love Christ, the Father loves us. And whomever the Father loves, Christ loves and reveals himself to them (John 14:21). So, there is no abiding in Christ’s love apart from keeping Christ’s commandments (John 15:10). Which means there is no fullness of joy apart from the pursuit of holiness (v. 11).

God’s law is an expression of his grace because it is also an expression of his character. Commands show us what God is like, what he prizes, what he detests, what it means to be holy as God is holy. To hate all rules is to hate God himself who ordained his rules to reflect his nature. The law is God’s plan for his sanctified people to enjoy communion with him. That’s why the Psalms are full of declarations of delight regarding God’s commands. Even with the passing of the Mosaic covenant, surely the psalms set an example for us. The happy man delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night (Ps. 1:2). The precepts and rules of the Lord are sweeter than honey and more to be desired than gold (Ps. 19:10). Yes, the law can incite the natural man to sin (Rom. 7:7–11). But God’s people rejoice in his statutes and behold wondrous things out of his law (Ps. 119:18). They long to be steadfast in keeping his statutes (v. 5). In the eyes of the believer, the law is still true and good; it is our hope, our comfort, and our song.

Let’s not be afraid to land on law—never as the means of meriting justification, but as the proper expression of having received it. It’s not wrong for a sermon to conclude with something we have to do. It’s not inappropriate that our counseling exhort one another to obedience. Legalism is a problem in the church, but so is antinomianism. Granted, I don’t hear anyone saying, “let’s continue in sin that grace may abound” (see Rom. 6:1). That’s the worst form of antinomianism. But strictly speaking, antinomianism simply means no-law, and some Christians have very little place for the law in their pursuit of holiness. One scholar says, about an antinomian pastor from seventeenth-century England, “He believed that the law served a useful purpose in convincing men of their need of a Saviour; nevertheless, he gave it little or no place in the life of a Christian since he held that ‘free grace is the teacher of good works.’”8 Emphasizing free grace is not the problem. The problem is in assuming that good works will invariably flow from nothing but a diligent emphasis on the gospel. Many Christians, including preachers, don’t know what to do with commands and are afraid to talk directly about obedience. The world may think we’re homophobic, but nomophobia (fear of law) may be our bigger problem.

The irony is that if we make every imperative into a command to believe the gospel more fully, we turn the gospel into one more thing we have to get right, and faith becomes the one thing we need to be better at. If only we really believed, obedience would take care of itself. No need for commands or effort. But the Bible does not reason this way. It has no problem with the word “therefore.” Grace, grace, grace, therefore, stop doing this, start doing that, and obey the commands of God. Good works should always be rooted in the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection, but I believe we are expecting too much from the “flow” and not doing enough to teach that obedience to the law—from a willing spirit, as made possible by the Holy Spirit—is the proper response to free grace.

For as much as Luther derided the misuse of the law, he did not reject the positive role of the law in the believer’s life. The Lutheran Formula of Concord is absolutely right when it says, “We believe, teach, and confess that the preaching of the Law is to be urged with diligence, not only upon the unbelieving and impenitent, but also upon true believers, who are truly converted, regenerate, and justified by faith” (Epitome 6.2). Preachers must preach the law without embarrassment. Parents must insist on obedience without shame. The law can, and should, be urged upon true believers—not to condemn, but to correct and to promote Christlikeness. Both the indicatives of Scripture and the imperatives are from God, for our good, and given in grace.

May 10, 2024 Pastor Jason Gilbert | Menomonie

Enduring…

Recently some discussions around the church have been about continuing on, not giving up, not throwing in the towel, but enduring to the end. Some of the verses in discussion have been:

“Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.” – 1 Timothy 4:16

“But the one who endures to the end shall be saved.” – Matthew 24:13

But how do we continue? How do we know we will endure to the end?

The Word…

What does God say will endure to the end? Both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, God declares,

“All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” – Peter 1:24 (see also Isaiah 40:6-8)

We see an example of the word of God relating to our endurance in the parable of the sower. In it, Jesus defines the seed as the word of God. In some cases, the word was carelessly lost because of a hard heart (i.e., hard soil). In other cases, the word was deemed insufficient to handle the trials and difficulties of this life. And in other cases, the word, was choked out by the cares and desires of this world. It was only the heart that nurtured for, provided for, and prioritized the word of God that endured.

King David…

In the Old Testament, King David had a lot of ups and downs. From being a young shepherd, to triumphing over Goliath. From being an outlaw, to king over Israel. From conquering enemy nations, to committing adultery with another man’s wife. From being a murderer, to repenting, and being declared a man after God’s own heart. Very few have had as many highs… and lows… as King David. Yet what kept David through it all? How did he continue on, and endure to the end?

In Psalm 1, we read of David,

“But His delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night.  He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither.” – Psalm 1:2-3

David’s “leaf” did not “wither”, because his delight was in the “law of the LORD”, and he meditated on it day and night.

In Psalm 119, David uses 8 Hebrew words for the “word of God”. They translate into our English as laws, words, testimonies, ordinances, commands, promises, statutes, and precepts. To see just how vital the word of God was for David, see Psalm 119:15-16, 27, 31-33, 40-41, 54, 93, 105, 118, 133, 141, 147-148, 155, 159-160, 162, 170.

Us…

What about us? We too have our ups and downs. From victories over sin and mountain-top experiences, to shameful thoughts and wicked deeds. How might we continue on, and endure to the end?

Certainly, church participation, discipleship classes, fellowship with Christians, serving others, giving charitably, reaching out to those around us, and overseas missions endeavors are all good. But none of those things promise to keep us to the end. In reality, they are just the externals of our faith.

What is inside is the seed, the word of God, implanted in our hearts. That is what matters. Without it, there is no lasting spiritual life. Without it, nothing we do will survive the tests of time. The only thing that will endure forever is the word of God.

Is the word of God in us? Are we nurturing it? Are we providing for it? Are we prioritizing it? Are we delighting in it? Do we meditate on His word? How often? With what focus? For how long? To what extent? Are we getting our sustenance from His testimonies? Are we receiving our directions from His precepts? If not, perhaps it is time to repent, and to renew our delight in God’s word. Perhaps it is time to turn again to God’s word, and to meditate on it, that we might be “like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither.”