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Greetings All, Matt Stagemeyer here, stepping in for Dale with the Touchpoint this week. While I’m certainly not at Dale’s level, hopefully you can find some value here. My topic this week is: Approaching Scripture as a Mirror. Anyone who listens to the word of God, but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like (James 1:23-24). This has multiple applications, but I’ll focus on only a few. First, how do we see our own behavior reflected, or even modeled, by characters in Scripture? Secondly, what does Scripture reflect to us about ourselves? And finally, why does it matter? How we see our own behavior reflected and modeled by characters from the Bible…... Keep Reading

Hello, Oak Hills! I’m honored to step in this week as a Touchpoint “guest blogger” during Pastor Dale’s well-earned sabbatical. —Michael Buckley Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night (Ps. 1:1-2). Have you ever been discouraged while reading Psalm 1? If I’m being completely honest, I have been, especially about the word “delight.” As I meditated on the first psalm while writing this essay, I wasn’t sure why the word delight should be particularly discouraging to me. After all, not standing in the way of sinners, or not walking in the counsel of the wicked, or not sitting in the seat of scoffers is very, very hard. Avoiding sin is, in fact, impossible but for the grace of God. Yet, the second verse asks something which appears to be even harder; it commands not just obedience in action, but also a right affection, that of delight. Perhaps you’re like me and you don’t usually associate “the law of the Lord” with “delight.” I certainly read scripture and agree that the law of the Lord is good, but who can conjure any affection in one’s heart? Aren’t we told by the world that affections and emotions well up in our hearts naturally, even mysteriously, and that we cannot control when emotions come and go? And surely delight is one of the most impossible-to-fake of all emotions? So, if we are blessed by delighting in the law of the Lord, who then can be blessed? What is more, we read that this seemingly impossible delight in scripture remains even after days and nights of meditation! Though I know and believe that God’s commands are not burdensome (1 John 5:3), my own experience usually falls so short of the psalmist’s delight that I am tempted to be discouraged by this fact.... Keep Reading

The first Sunday after John Calvin returned to Geneva from temporary exile in his native France, he is said to have returned to preaching from the precise point in the scripture text where he had left off prior to his fleeing the Swiss city-state some four years earlier. That’s one long, “Now…where WERE we?!” Calvin strongly believed in the power of the “ordinary means of grace,” such as the preached word, the sacraments, and prayer. These are called the ordinary means because, well, they are the normative ways the Church is to be nourished in our faith. Since Calvin’s time, many churches, Oak Hills included, have engaged in what I like to call, ‘extra-ordinary means’ to help edify the Church. One of those extraordinary means is our Adult Christian Education classes (aka Sunday School for a fair number of you). ACE is an opportunity for us to take a moment to delve into the riches of God’s Word and see more closely and learn more about the Word we hear preached each Lord’s Day, and hopefully that you are imbibing on a regular basis in your own personal devotional studies. It’s also a great way for you to get to know some of the folks you sit next to on Sunday mornings and to hear and learn from their questions and grow through their engagement with scripture in a more focused setting.... Keep Reading

This past Sunday we listened to the warning of the author of Hebrews about the weakness of the human heart and the strength of sin. It’s a somber and humbling warning about our situation. But the author does not leave us without hope. He also speaks about how the power of the gospel rescues us from the dire consequences of a hardened heart. One of the avenues that God extends the power of the gospel to his people is through the command, “Exhort one another every day.” The church community is one of God’s means of grace to guard his people from the “deceitfulness of sin.” I didn’t have time on Sunday to explore the implications of this command for our church community. Let’s do that here.... Keep Reading

In Sunday School the past few weeks, Pastor Dale and I have making our way through the Book of Job. Talking with a couple of folks from class, we all agreed; Job is a book we don’t tend to read very often. To be honest, it’s a bit depressing, and if you’ve read even the first two or three chapters, you know it starts out grim and just goes downhill from there…until the end, of course. In between the ‘bookend’ chapters recounting the troubling circumstances (to say the least!) of Job’s predicament and its resolution at the very end of last chapter, there are about 39 chapters of poetry to wade through. Poetry! Ugh! The Book of Job raises some of the “Big Questions™;” ‘Why do we suffer?’ ‘Is God in control of all things in our lives?’ ‘Why do wicked people seem to prosper and good people go about as paupers?’... Keep Reading

Early in the life of Abraham, when he was still ‘Abram,’ and Sarah was still ‘Sarai,’ we read about Abram’s call by God to “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1) In the great “Hall of Faith” chapter of the New Testament, we read that, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise…” (Hebrews 11:8-9a). Elsewhere in the New Testament, we read how Abraham is the Father of the Faithful. Paul puts it famously: “In the same way, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God. What’s more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would declare the Gentiles to be righteous because of their faith. God proclaimed this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, “All nations will be blessed through you.” So all who put their faith in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith.” (Gal. 3:6-8 NLT) One of the things I love about the Bible, especially the Old Testament, is how the characters of the great men and women of the Bible are real, living people like us. ... Keep Reading

Every other week, usually on a Friday or Saturday evening, Mrs. B & I and often my mom, and Cody, and even Kacey, trek down to the church to get the place spiffed up for Sunday morning worship. Everyone gets to work as soon as the doors are opened. We flick on the lights, one of us sets up some tunes, or tunes in the Royals game, and we all grab a mop, or a broom, or vacuum, and head to our respective ‘areas.’ When we first come in, it’s usually pretty dark. But even after the lights are mostly all on there are still a few dark corners, especially the hall behind the pulpit. There just aren’t many lights there. Funny thing is, the vacuum’s always the noisiest when you go over the carpet in those areas. You can tell debris collects here because it’s hard to see unless you turn on a light, or shine one there, or run a vacuum. That got me thinking a few weeks back while working in one of those places. How many ‘dark corners’ do we have in our little worlds that we inhabit? You know the places. It’s all that stuff we’re talking about when we get to the section of the Sunday morning service where we confess our sins.... Keep Reading