Orange Hill Baptist Church

How do we hold the line? How do we stay the course? How do we press on in the face of what seem to be hopeless odds, so many hapless conditions, and our own helpless weaknesses? Despite the often crushing insinuations of circumstance and appearance, is there anything that will enlarge our vision, stiffen our resolve, put steel in our backbones, grit in our gut, and fire in our hearts for the long haul in the real world? Yes there is! Take a look

This week’s message (24 JAN) is up on our page. Hope you’ll listen in.

Why do we find it so hard to trust in God when things get tough, when the way gets hard, when the future looks bleak, when the promises seem empty? Could it be, as J. B. Phillips once said, that our God, the one we conceive of, is too small; or as J.D. Greear put it more recently, that he’s not God enough? Without even meaning to, or realizing it, have we diminished God in our thoughts to the point where we have no real expectation of help from and hope in him? Let’s see what remedy the prophet offers us here

The longer we live, it seems, the more we’re confronted with disappointment, persistently and convincingly, and hope starts to look just naïve and silly. We get disappointed in our ideals, in romance, in our careers, in people we trusted, in ourselves and we start talking in terms of sheer desperation. So what are we to do when all human hope has let us down? Well, ironically, that’s when we’re finally ready for the only real hope there is.

Who’s in charge here? Who’s in control of the world? Is it God? Is it us? Is it one political party or another, one nation or another? Is it the Devil? Who’s in charge in the world today? As we try to think rightly and Christianly about such things, and they’re crucially important questions, we first have to ask, What do the Scriptures say? As we said last time, we’re resolved to believe God’s Word, to obey God’s Word, to tell God’s Word to the world, and then to wonder, treasure, ponder, and praise God for the truth. So, let’s hear God’s Word on all of this.

Perhaps never before has a heart of wisdom been so needed as now, in these strange and ferocious days. We live in times of a great lack of focus and a fundamental loss of center. One social analyst has labeled this the confetti era, where all events, ideas, values, people are the same size and weightjust pale pink and green, punched out, die-cut wafers without distinctionfluttering down each on our own erratic course, none joined to any other, none connected. It’s a disturbing picture largely because there’s so much truth to it. Oh, what can break the deadly spell constantly being cast by the spirit of this age, guide and guard us on our journey, and nurture a heart of true wisdom in our lives all along the way? Well, only one thing

This week’s message (27 DEC), from Ken Stockdell (one of our elders), is up on our page. Hope you’ll tune in!

The world outside us, and something in us as well, is always whispering, like the Tempter in the Garden, that God’s a bad risk, that what he says may not be true, that he doesn’t have our best interest at heart, and that he won’t be there when we need him. And too often we listen and hesitate, we delay, we get stuck and stagger. Are we safe with God alone? Are we rich with God alone? Can we trust God’s way with us in everything? Let’s look at this

We’d all like to just go to sleep some time and then wake up spiritually mature. Go to sleep and just wake up profound. Go to sleep and just wake up in the morning skilled in ministry, and spiritually acute, and wise. We’d like to wake up tomorrow and be able to apply all spiritual truth to all dimensions of our life. But it just doesn’t work like that. The truth is that none of those things is the result of wishing or wanting or hoping or thinking or imagining or of even positively confessing! Each is the result of something more basic. Let’s see

Did Jacob have a ladder? Did he climb it? Are we to climb it? Could we? In this startling story, even Jacob’s sins couldn’t separate him from the loving presence of God, nor could they prevent him ultimately from inheriting what God had promised. Not Jacob, but the grace of God ultimately triumphs in his life. Though his sins had serious and lasting consequences, the promise is ultimately fulfilled because of God’s faithfulness, and in spite of Jacob’s unfaithfulness. Let’s see what Jesus himself has to say about all of this.

God promised Abraham a son. And then God gave Abraham a strange command concerning this son, the son whom Abraham loves. And there in the land of Moriah, Abraham learns a great deal about promise and fulfillment, faith and obedience, rest and hope. And, of all things, Jesus tells the Jews of his day, speaking of this very event, that your father Abraham was overjoyed to see my day, and he saw it and was glad (John 8:56)! What is going on here? Let’s look

What in the world is going on in Genesis 15? God and Abram and promise, deep sleep and dreadful darkness, and what seems to us a bizarre ceremony of animal sacrifice and a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch! Is this really God’s Word? Does this have anything at all to do with the God of the New Testament and the gospel of grace in Christ Jesus? Any good news for us here at all? You’d be surprised! Let’s look

What’s your testimony? What are you convinced of concerning the certainty of your salvation? What do you fear may interfere? What enemy do you cower before in doubt and confusion. What ought to be your testimony, and mine, given the great truths of the gospel? Let’s see

Paul asks a series of unassailable questions in this passage, the last of which is, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? And the answer is No one nor anything ever that can even be imagined could do such a thing. And then he sets out a long representative list just to make his point concrete. But that’s just the negative side of his answer to the question. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? No one, nothing! But now he adds a positive side: but or rather in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us! Conquerors? Really? Yes, really! Let’s take a look

Paul starts Romans 8:31 by asking, What, then, shall we say in response to this? That is, what’s there to say in light of the whole case he’s set forth since chapter 5? And he answers in vv. 3136 by posing five great questions, questions that really are show-stoppers! Paul just fires them out there, one after another, boldly and defiantly, before the universe and challenges anybody to respond and deny the truth they set forth! Let’s look

What is the significance of this golden chain in Romans 8:2930 that charts God’s purpose from his foreknowing you all the way to his glorifying you? How do you, as a believer, know that all is working together for your good? It’s through knowing who God is, what God has done, what God is doing, and what God is going to do in and for you for his great glory. This is deep truth, I know, and it’s strange to hear it even mentioned in these self-centered, gimmick-geared days. But here it is as plain as day before our wondering eyes, written in the Word of God. And Paul is teaching us that this great truth lies foundationally under any real and true abiding assurance we may ever have in the world.

[Note that there was no video recording this week.] It’s a strange sounding text. This plain declaration of Scripture runs head-on into our own experiences, which are filled with unexplained suffering and pain and sorrow and evil, and we want to cry out, How can this be? How’s it possible that God is working out good when the world’s filled with so much hatred and evil, and when decent folkshard-working and well-meaning and helpfulsuffer every day? When there’s so much apparently gratuitous evil? So, is this really true?

Is this Jesus, revealed here in this Bible, just one more option among many, just one more therapeutic alternative, just one more motivational example, life-coach, personal guru for success and happiness? Or is he the answer, the only true and real provision for all of our deepest and direst needs, the only Savior you and I really, desperately need?

Evidences of a living faith and new life in our lives are encouraging, and we should look for them, but the foundations of our assurance don’t lie in ourselves and certainly not in our circumstances. They’re to be found only where God says they are. Where is the foundation of our true hope and assurance laid?

In a fundamental sense, the ministry of the Word is the ministry of perspective. The ministry of the Word helps us look through all the fog, the distortions, the lies, all the distractions that Vanity Fair dangles before us, so that we can see things as they truly are. In its teaching, its rebuking, its correcting, its training in righteousness the Word of God opens our eyes that we may see, gives us vision beyond the moment, clears up the unfocused blur of circumstances, and shapes our whole view of life and the world as it sharpens our perspective.

To the prophets, to the apostles, to the Lord Jesus Christ himself, matters of truth are of the highest priority. And at the heart of it all, of course, is the truth about Jesus himself. What you believe about Jesus is the most important thing about you, because what you believe about Jesus determines your life here and hereafter, in this world and in the world to come. That’s why the danger of drifting away from the truth, and so losing the truth, cannot be treated too seriously. If we drift and lose the truth, in the end, we lose ourselves as well.

These are days, in our culture, where the mournful questions plaguing not only the centennial generation, and the millennial generation, but also the Gen X generation, and the baby boomers, and even many traditionalistsi.e., everybodyare What is truth? and What is real? Increasingly in the last 100 years, the foundations of truth and reality have been washing away! So, we now live in a time and place where five generations are on the scene at the same time and are less sure of anything than probably ever before. And one of the saddest, most troubling, and dangerous results of it all is this proliferation, this mass production, of idols in our lives.