Sometimes it’s only right to set aside our highfalutin theology and simply delight in the simplicity of seeing God at work in our kids. Don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing inherently negative about great doctrinal pursuits, but I also want to delight in the most foundational truths.

VBS 2014 has been a joy for me and for many! Thank you, God. Here are a few photos that I caught with my phone. I’m sure that better pictures are available, but you can enjoy these candid shots for now.

To see our hallways teeming with children in steadfast pursuit of the clues necessary for their “top-secret investigation” has been lots of fun indeed. Thanks to all of you who served so sacrificially to make it happen, right down to the “sidewalk soaking” event provided by our friends at the Paducah Fire Department. There’s nothing like going out with a splash!

We’ve all learned (or re-learned) that Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the reason for the hope that is in us (First Peter 3:15). Christ is who the world really needs, whether they realize it yet or not. And, my favorite part: “You don’t have to be a grown-up to tell people about Jesus!” To various and sundry degrees, our children have absorbed these eternal truths, and for this we give our Lord and Savior much praise.

We’ve screamed, danced, sung, and made a generally joyful noise. We’ve welcomed unchurched kids and church-disconnected kids. We loved on the grandkids and great-grandkids of some of our dearest senior sheep. What a treat! (I even got to dress up as “Duck Dynasty Goes California Dreamin'”!)

May our Lord add His blessings to all that has been said, done, taught, and learned in this place. Let’s praise Him for the simplest understanding of a single gospel seed grasped by the tiniest child among us.

Jesus loves me. This I know.

Click here to listen or download (Recorded live at First Baptist Paducah on June 8, 2014): 2014.06.08.SevenWordsOfHope.Exodus34.CharlesMoore

I’ve really enjoyed studying Exodus with you, but the time has come to think ahead. We’ll wrap up the Exodus series at the end of this month. What to do next?

Starting July 6, I invite you to be a part of ENGAGE. Sunday mornings at 8:30 and 11:00.

ENGAGE promises to be a 5-week inspection of our call to radical disciple-making.

How do we determine whether or not First Baptist Paducah is on the right track? Is real “success” based on Sunday morning attendance? An ever-enlarging budget? Lots of programs and activities?

There really is only one answer to the success question, but it starts with another question: What has Jesus called us to do?

Jesus promised Peter and Andrew that they would become fishers of men (Matthew 4:19). And Christ’s church has been about the business of disciple-making ever since. Matthew 28:19 is our commission to make disciples to the ends of the earth. That starts here and now. Within our local culture. And crossing every cultural barrier and boundary from here.

Beloved church family, are you and I making disciples? Really making disciples? Disciples for the long haul? (There really are no other disciples.)

Here are the national stats. After high school, I’m sad to report that half of our young people are walking away from the church. The American church is not growing, and in fact barely hanging on against the hostile onslaught of an increasingly secularized culture. The evangelical church spends money on entertainment, but generates few disciples who also see themselves as disciple-makers.

Though I pour much of my time and energy into preparing sermons, Sunday mornings are only a small part of our disciple-making enterprise. Genuine discipleship is much, much more than preaching. It is the forming of intentional relationships where spiritual passion and insight can be transferred from one person to another. From one generation to the next. It is the equipping of every believer to see himself or herself as a person “on mission for Christ” 24/7.

In this series I’ll try to help us, as a congregation, answer a very basic question: If we know that we’re to be disciple-makers, why aren’t we? We’ll talk about dying for Christ, pressing on for Christ, serving for Christ, and standing for Christ. Living for Christ!

What did Peter and Andrew have to do in order to become those fishers of men as Jesus promised? All they had to do was to follow Christ. So must we.

Ready to follow?

Click here to listen or download (Recorded live at First Baptist Paducah on June 1, 2014): 2014.06.01.WonderWorshipandWeightiness.Exodus33.CharlesMoore

Click here to to listen or download (Recorded live at First Baptist Paducah on May 25, 2014)

Happy Memorial Day weekend, church family!

This time of year draws our hearts toward gratitude to God for the freedoms that are ours in this land that we call home, as well as gratitude for all of those who have served our nation in uniform to protect our cherished liberties. If that includes you, thank you.

Katharine Lee Bates, who penned the poem that became America the Beautiful, was an English professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The year was 1893. At the age of thirty-six, on a train trip to Colorado to teach a summer session, Bates was overwhelmed by the beauty of these United States of America. From high atop Pike’s Peak, as she took in the breathtaking mountain vistas that we call the Rockies – Bates eloquently captured the grandeur of those “purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain.”

On the pinnacle of that mountain, the words came to Katharine Bates, and she wrote down the now-famous lyrics upon returning to her hotel room at the original Antlers Hotel. America the Beautiful was first published in 1904.

In July of 2011, my family and I drove cross-country and traced some of Bates’ footsteps, and – as you can see in this photo – we traveled even farther north and west to Grand Teton National Park. America is beautiful indeed! We are a blessed people.

Please take the time this weekend to thank the Lord for our freedoms and gospel opportunities. Though we’re far from perfect as a nation – and every day is a reminder that our American home is not “home home” – we have much to celebrate.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears:
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

God has promised (Revelation 21:1-7): Even the most painfully wicked, unjust, and spiritually dark dimensions of human civilization and culture will one day be swallowed up in absolute perfection for all those who put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. “The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”

The freedoms that we enjoy are ours because of Christ. They are gospel freedoms. Not privileges to squander, but sacred callings to take Christ’s light to the ends of the earth.

Click here to to listen or download (Recorded live at First Baptist Paducah on May 18, 2014):

2014.05.08.APlaceOfRest.Exodus31.12to18.CharlesMoore

The Gospel Call

So you and I get to share with others the power of Christ’s gospel. That’s what the church is all about! For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16) …

I’ve blogged before about the “bad news” of the gospel (we’re all sinners). That part has to come first in our articulation of the gospel message. But the time comes when we get to share the good news (Jesus is the perfect Savior). We get to issue the gospel call!

Not that you and I are the Holy Spirit. We know that He alone issues the call that infiltrates the soul (we can’t do that). God’s Spirit alone can ignite faith in the human heart. But God uses us to say the words (Romans 10:17). This “universal call” of the gospel is the general call of the gospel that you and I offer to all people (Proverbs 8:4; Matthew 22:14). But our call can’t save without the Spirit.

You and I can think of ourselves as the matches, but it’s the Spirit who makes the strike that ignites the flame!

We should have no hesitation inviting anybody and everybody to trust in Jesus Christ because we know that God can fire up faith in anybody! It’s not our strength that we’re relying upon. We should never allow the doctrine of election – yes, that is a Scriptural reality – to get in the way of evangelism. Paul never did. We’re to call all people – everywhere – to repent and believe the gospel! But we understand that to repent and believe is impossible apart from a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. So we rely on God’s power, and we pray our hearts out (Romans 8:30; First Corinthians 1:9). God achieves the transference from spiritual darkness to spiritual light (First Corinthians 2:14; Colossians 1:13-14).

We’re saved by faith alone. Not of ourselves (Ephesians 2:8-9). A free gift. The Welsh medical doctor-turned-preacher David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899 – 1981) said it like this: “Faith is not the cause of salvation. Christ is!”

So what does saving faith look like?

First of all, it includes a knowledge (Latin notitia) of the facts about the historical Christ: the significance of His death, burial, and resurrection. A learning of the actual information that God reveals in His Word (the Scriptures). Faith cannot act upon information that it does not have, because the act of trusting itself is of no value if the object of faith is not the real Jesus. That’s why you and I have to be clear, Biblical, and Christ-centered in our presentation of the good news.

Secondly, genuine faith includes assent (assensus). There must be sincere agreement that what God has revealed in Scripture is indeed true. The believer must really believe that what God has said about Christ is absolutely and objectively true.

And lastly there must be volition (fiducia). This is a personal trust in, and appropriation of, the truths of the gospel of Jesus. This is the act of the will that embraces Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. You and I might think of this dimension of faith as a “soul surrender.”

So now that we know what we’re about, let’s go love people into Christ’s kingdom – not resting until we see many lives transformed by the power of His gospel of amazing grace!

Click here to to listen or download (Recorded live at First Baptist Paducah on May 11, 2014):

2014.05.11.LordOverLowerTown.Exodus31.1to11.CharlesMoore

It’s All Relative. Not. Really Not.

If it’s O.K. with you, I’ll revisit the problem of moral relativism.

I believe that there exists a rather insidious form of relativism (I would describe relativism as both a spiritual and an intellectual problem) that can most properly be described as “cognitive” relativism. Sometimes we get so lazy that we stop thinking as deeply as we ought, or we conclude that others are the experts – so we should just get on board with the majority opinion on a given subject. Not a good move. Not a wise move. Acts 17:11. We’re always to be looking at the world through the lens of a solid Biblical and Christ-centered worldview.

When cognitive relativism sets in, we fall into the mistaken belief that there is no standard of truth, and that therefore there is no God of absolute truth. How could a professing Christian ever embrace such an illogical pattern of thinking (really non-thinking)? By slowly buying into the lie – which our culture most regularly dispenses – that rational thought can’t discover and verify truth. In other words, we morph into believing that absolute truth can’t be found. Objective truth is a misnomer. An illusion.

When we go there, we’ve swallowed a form of practical atheism, believe it or not (pun fully intended).

So how does the lie of cognitive relativism gain strength?

1. We can fall into the false assumption that science is always an exact science! I think that you and I can observe more and more evidence that “science” is often riddled with politics and self-interests these days. Just a word of caution about science and every other subject: Be a Berean. Keep looking at that Bible plumb line.
2. We can subtly buy into the theology (yes, theology, which is in fact anti-theological) of evolution, whereby a Sovereign God is pushed more and more out of the picture. Without God as the determiner of right and wrong, we’re left to do “what is right in our own eyes.” If you’ve read the Book of Judges, you know that moral relativism never ends well.
3. We can take far too many of our cues from the popular media. I mentioned the false, seldom-questioned, and pervasive notion of “diversity” in my last blog post. Be very careful about who (and what) you allow to inform and shape you.

So how do we counter relativism, in our own thinking and in others?

With reason. God-given reason!

Try these truths on for size …

If all truth is relative, then the statement “All truth is relative” would be absolutely true. If it is absolutely true, then not all things are relative and the statement “All truth is relative” is false.

The statement “There are no absolute truths” is an absolute statement, which is supposed to be true. Therefore, it is an absolute truth so “There are no absolute truths” is false. If there are no absolute truths, then you cannot believe anything absolutely at all, including that there are no absolute truths.

If “what is true for me” is that relativism is false, then is it true that relativism is false? If you say “no,” then what is true for me is not true and relativism is false. If you say “yes,” then relativism is false. If you say that it is true only for me that relativism is false, then I am believing something other than relativism, namely, that relativism is false. If that is true, then how can relativism be true?

If we cannot know anything for sure, then we can know that we cannot know anything for sure?

To say that “relativism is true” is an absolute statement, which would mean that the opposing view that “relativism is false” could not be true, which would mean that relativism is not true since it states that all views are true.

It’s all relative! Yeah, right.