From Pastor Andrew’s Desk

Hello FCCB’ers!
Happy New Year to you!
I hope that the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017 has been a great one for you. I was thoroughly blessed by Christmas at FCCB for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day – thanks to all who came and prayed! The Lord was on the move in our midst. I hope Santa gave you everything you wanted for Christmas too :).

As many are aware, Becky and I and the kiddos headed down to Northern Virginia to visit family and friends on Monday, December 26th. I am sorry to report that our ride down was far more challenging than we had hoped as the traffic was horrendous! What was everybody doing on the roads on the 26th?!?! I guess doing what we were doing – oh well! Anyways, it took over 13 hours and Juliette really did not enjoy the last two hours of the trip to all of our peril :). But hey it’s all good and we made it safe and sound and that is ultimately what matters – thanks be to God for His traveling mercies! We stayed with Becky’s parents for the first few days. It was so good to see them and Becky’s two sisters (Cathy and Sarah) and their families. The time was too short, but it was great.

 Then we had a wonderful time with my parents and my sister, (Emily) and her family. Again, too short but a blessed time. Then my folks hosted a big Open House for friends on January 1st. We saw so many good friends who have meant so much to us! We were super grateful for that time. One other highlight –  I went to an NBA basketball game to see my hometown Washington Wizards play the Brooklyn Nets. My friend Morgan and I had amazing seats and the Wizards won- so it was a great time! We also bumped into a guy at the game that we know named Chris Young. Chris happens to play baseball for the Kansas City Royals and he pitched in the World Series a few years back. He married a good friend of ours from high school and my dad officiated the wedding. He is also 6″10 so he should have suited up to play in the Wizards game as well!

Becky and I and the kids returned last night and I am happy to report that it only took 11 hours this time and little traffic– thank you Lord! The kids all did great and were very patient. Everyone misses the grandparents, but it’s good to be back home in Boxford! And hey, the parsonage turned 200 years old while we were gone– wow, pretty cool! I so appreciated Taylor Robinson preaching for me on the 1st and I heard he blessed many of you with the words that the Lord put on his heart– thank you Taylor!

While I was home I felt a prompting from the Lord, while praying, to read Matthew, chapter 5. In all honestly, before I turned to the chapter I did not recall what was in it. Yet, when I opened up the Word and turned to Chapter 5, I smiled. It is beginning of the most famous speech in human history….the “Sermon on the Mount”!

I read through the sermon and as in the first time I read it, I was utterly astounded by it. It’s been a long time since I read and meditated on the sermon so what a joy (and challenge) it was to read again. What kept coming to me as I read back over the sermon for about an hour was this phrase:
“this is God’s perspective.”

The Sermon on the Mount is God’s perspective on life and faith and everything in between. The Sermon on the Mount is our Lord’s longest recorded message and gives us clear insight into what He thinks about how we live out His call on our lives. Thinking through this was incredibly freeing for me. Up until reading the sermon that day I felt that I was keyed up by many matters and part of the issue is that I was trying to “figure out” all these things on my own. I was not fully asking the Lord for His insight on life and situations and so it was so refreshing to be reminded again of how He views things. And since I didn’t have a January and February sermon plan developed yet I thought that this would be good timing to go over this amazing sermon by our Lord!  January and February will be under the big theme of: “His perspective” and as we seek to better understand His wisdom on everything through His words in the Sermon on the Mount. I anticipate that this sermon series will be about 7-8 weeks and will encompass Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7 which is the length of the sermon. About halfway through the series I’ll evaluate where we are and where to go next. I find with all the “noise” in our society and in our lives currently, the need to distill down His viewpoints is truly critical in matters mundane and vital and everything in between!

This week we will begin the sermon series on the Sermon on the Mount by looking at the beginning of the sermon in chapter 5:1-12. The setting of the sermon begins in v. 1-2 when Jesus and His disciples sat on a hillside. Google “Sermon on the Mount location” and you’ll see some good archeological information showing where the sermon may have, in fact, happened. One of the fascinating dynamics of preaching and teaching in that day and age is that it was almost always done sitting down. We see in v. 2 this was the posture that our Lord took. We get a better context for this message.

The sermon begins in verse 3 with
“blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 
What does poor in spirit mean? Does it mean materially poor? Poor in spirit most often means “need for God.” So it could be contextualized for our modern parlance to “blessed are those who see their need for God.” I love the words “poor in spirit” because they acknowledge that apart from Christ we are all poor in spirit desperately in need of the Lord. Therefore, blessed are those who acknowledge this need…and therefore inherit the kingdom of heaven due to His grace. In the context of a new year do I acknowledge my need for the Lord? To see anything amazing through Him this year, we have to start here. Otherwise, we’ll try and accomplish “new year’s resolutions” in our own strength. We need to start with acknowledging Him and our desperate need for Him! We don’t need to curry favor with Him, but rather acknowledge our utter spiritual bankruptcy apart from Him and our full reliance on His grace!

Verse 6 states

“blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Madison Avenue does a great job of addressing hunger, i.e., “if you eat this, buy this, wear this, drink this, etc, etc….you will be happy, you will be filled.” The world wants to satisfy hunger and over promises and definitely under delivers. The Gospel of Matthew reminds us that if we seek the Lord and His righteousness we will be filled and deeply satisfied! Think about the last time you were really hungry for food. You knew you needed to eat or the hunger pangs would continue. The Lord wants us to have that same perspective toward the Word and His presence. If we have been away from seeking Him for awhile or even for a day, may we hunger and thirst for Him and His righteousness!

Lastly, in v. 11 it states,

“blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”
Really?!! That doesn’t sound too blessed! But remember it is His perspective. Even if we suffer as a Christian (and if we walk with the Lord we will), He is with us and loves us through it! His perspective has the potential
to change the way we live and
how we respond to every situation.
Here is my proposal statement for 2017: “May 2017 be the year we began
to seek His perspective more deeply in each and every situation and find great joy and peace in doing so, even if it doesn’t make sense and runs counter to everything the world says we should be and do.” 
 
Lord, we pray for your wisdom and perspective in all these matters! Amen. 
Hope to see you Sunday!
Pastor Andrew