Associate Pastor Brian Hall

Youth Pastor Ethan Waud

 Hard times were coming for Israel; big needs, big challenges to come. They desperately needed help. Enter Isaiah - a prophet with a word from the Lord. What will it be God? After all, in the past, there were 10 plagues and the parting of the Red Sea to get us away from Egypt. There was that time when the wall around the city of Jericho fell down so that Israel could just rush in and take it. There was that time that an angel entered the camp of the Assyrians and killed 185,000 of them. What will it be this time, God?

Something quite unexpected… “Unto us a child is born. Unto us a SON is given”

Here is God: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father. Prince of Peace. But not in a great wind. Not a pillar of fire. And he's - a BABY??

Israel needed help. Humanity needed help. And what do we get? A Destroyer of Worlds? A Knight in Shining Armor? No. We get a SON. A Son who started out small.

I wonder if this was a letdown for the people of Israel when Isaiah delivered it. I mean it STARTED well enough: Matthew 4 repeats this prophecy to show how God fulfilled His promise, not just in Isaiah's time, but with the birth of Jesus.

In just a few short days we will celebrate Thanksgiving Day. It is a shame that we have only one day set aside each year to give thanks to God as a nation. We should have some time set aside each day, to give our praise to Him who has blessed us so richly.

As God's people it is fitting that we should focus our thoughts, not only now but often, upon the goodness of God and offer our gratitude to Him for who He is and for all He has done for us. Thus, today focusing on this theme of Thanksgiving.

Remember the mirror? How God's Word is a mirror for each of us individually? Remember how much courage it takes to stand there, allowing God to show you what needs to be changed? Well, did you ever think that maybe churches need mirrors as well? We have come to a short passage where we get to hold a mirror up to us as members of a church body.

It's amazing how many different experiences people have when they start connecting to a church. I believe people tend to show up when they are genuinely seeking some sort of spiritual fulfillment. Maybe they're coming back after a long absence. Maybe they're at a stage of life when it's important to them to raise the children in a church. Some folks are just connection-less and are seeking what's missing in their lives.

And so they come - for various reasons…and what they find in the gathering of the people of God is sometimes good - and sometimes shockingly bad! Especially if their interest is, as I said, genuine; they are REALLY looking for a place where they can ask questions, find some answers, and find a group of grace-filled people who are willing to share the journey with them.

And what they find, again, amazes me — both the good and the bad. I'm SO encouraged whenever someone tells me that as they attend PBCC, they're finding it almost like "home." I like that. It was the word I thought of when my dad asked what word would I put up on the outside of our church. And I'm amazed at the openness and welcoming atmosphere that has been created here.

But then I hear of horror stories of churches. People who claim to be religious, and yet don't act ANY different from the people outside the church (and sometimes WORSE!). Folks truly searching for something significant and different sometimes just find the same ol' same ol' - judgmentalism, hypocrisy, isolation, people pretending to have it all together. Not much different from what's out there in the world today, really.

So what are people looking for when they connect with a church community? Are they looking for a place of perfection? Probably not. Are they looking for a place to fake it? I highly doubt it.

I think what MOST people are looking for in a church connection are people who are sincerely making an effort to grow in their faith; people who want to be authentic about their spiritual journeys - weaknesses and quirks and mistakes and all - BUT who are actually finding true, real life-change in a community that is there to help them thrive.

This morning I wanted to use this time together to really highlight the Perspective course coming up in the first part of 2025, and to encourage all of you to prayerfully consider making that gutsy call to step forward and put yourself out there and take the course.

Perspectives is a globally-focused discipleship class that is hosted in churches and universities around the world. It's a 15 week experience that will expand your vision of God and your worldview. And though we typically think Perspectives is this Missions class, it really is one of the best tools for launching folks into ALL SORTS of ministries.

God has a heart for every people group on this planet. Read the Book of Revelation - you'll see that John saw in his vision there around God's throne were people from EVERY tribe, tongue, and nation. How does that happen? Are you one that doesn't even THINK about that? Or one that just presumes that other people are going to get that done?

Perspectives helped me understand why God even WANTS all of that around His throne, and how God has called ME to be a part of seeing that future promise become reality.

What’s the first thing you do when you get up in the morning? Whatever it is, it’s probably the same thing every day. Everybody seems to have their own morning rituals to get them going.

Some part of everybody’s morning ritual is coming face to face with the mirror.

Most of us probably get our first look at ourselves while we’re still pretty scary looking. Our eyes have that bleary, dazed look; hair is sticking out in strange places… Ugh. Not a great experience, right?

Here's the bad thing about mirrors: they're too honest. Unless you have one of those carnival fun-house mirrors that distort things… What you see is what you get!

Mirrors don't flatter, they don't gloss over the junk we have stuck between our teeth or the make-up that's been smudged. They don't try to tell us we look better than we really do. Every wrinkle, gray hair, blemish — they're ALL there staring back at us.

So, the question is…why do we even HAVE mirrors in the bathroom? And why the bathroom???

Well, because as unpleasant as it may be, the reality is: if we DON'T take a look at ourselves and (most of the time) make *some* kind of adjustment (sometimes MAJOR adjustments), then the rest of the world will have to deal with THIS!

And so we figure it's better to face the truth and do what we can to not scare everyone else off!

Today we're looking at a passage in James 1 that likens God's Word to a mirror. Not a mirror for our physical appearance, but a mirror for who we REALLY are, deep down where it really counts. 

John Adams, in a letter to the Massachusetts militia, dated October 11, 1798, said this: Because we have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion, avarice, ambition, revenge, and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

What Adams was expressing was this idea that Constitutions such as the United States of America has only work when those who live under it can exert a strong degree of self-control.

Adams wasn't alone in this view. To our Founding Fathers, it was “self-evident” that a democratic republic could only be sustained by those who were able to be self-controlled. Reflecting that thought, a contemporary German author and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stated: “What is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.”

A later prominent 19th Century minister, Henry Ward Beecher, simply said: “There is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves.”

Self-governance consists of self-regulation of attitudes and actions. In keeping with this philosophy, the Founding Fathers believed that the success of our nation, our culture, hinged on both individual and community virtue - that is, moral character.

This morning, we are still in the first chapter of James (wow!). And the text we are looking at is short - again, just three verses long, but HUGE in its impact. Because what we are going to see is the key, according to James, to being the people God has called us to be. 

Opening up a can of worms this morning. Gonna talk about something that I haven't heard much about from the pulpit in my life. Gonna talk about addiction, which is something very easily demonized by good Christian folk. Too easy to think it's not a problem because it's not a problem for YOU. It's on THOSE people, in your opinion. They made their bed so to speak. Or maybe too easy just to say it isn't a problem because you don't want anyone finding out that it IS a problem for YOU!

Why do we do that? Pretend that we're okay when we're not? I bet that if most people were honest with themselves and really understood the power of the sinful nature, we would realize how easy it is for anyone to find themselves trapped in sinful addictions.

You'd think that once we give our lives over to the Lord, then sin and addiction shouldn't come into play anymore, right? That "good Christians" don't deal with addiction. And yet, that's not what we find. The Bible tells us that there is a spiritual war we enter when we step from the darkness into the light. And the enemy isn't one to just give up ground in this war. The power of God is there to free us from the punishment of sin - but it's also there to free us from the power of sin and one day free us from the presence of sin as we step into eternity.

Now here's a disclaimer this morning: addiction is a big issue, and this is merely an overview and a look at addiction from a biblical perspective. And that's good and necessary. BUT…if you think you have an addiction, it would be wise to also seek out other avenues of support and accountability, Christian counseling and other support programs. MY job today is to tell those struggling with addiction that God is for you and gives us some valuable wisdom in dealing with this battle.