We were fortunate enough to hear from Reverend Andrew Chambers this morning, a friend of Pastor Josh’s who pastors the Blackfalds Faith Community Church. Tune in to here as he preaches the Gospel to us from the book of 1 Kings that morning.

Tune in to hear Pastor Josh preach from Hosea 8&9 this morning:

“Many think they know God, but do not because their knowledge is derived from human opinions and is not informed by the whole counsel of God’s word…So what is our application today?  We have not (to my knowledge) bowed to a golden calf or applied to Egypt or Assyria for political gain…God is gracious to us church. He does not allow other things to fulfill the desire that we have for him who is the giver of all good things…These are the things we need to check ourselves in: Am I content with what God has provided through all the means he has granted to be at my disposal?  Is discontentment revealing that I am not finding my joy, hope and fulfillment in Christ?  When we look to other functional saviors, it reveals the deeper heart issue of things we have not truly believed in the gospel.  What is it about Christ that you have not found to be good? As Augustine famously wrote: You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

Tune in to hear Pastor Josh teach from Hosea 6-7 this morning:

“Israel was in danger of losing - and indeed had lost their unique identity as God’s people…The inhabitants of the land are characterized by infighting, foolishly seeking foreign help, priestly plots, negligent leadership and false repentance. These have left Yahweh with no recourse but to announce the advent of his judgement - but he does so with great pain and no joy…At many times, and in many ways, Israel has rebelled against God and broken his covenant.  They have been faithless and loveless, both to God and each other.  But all of these things he would forgive.  What is damning, what will ultimately result in total judgment, is what they do not do: they do not confess and repent…The root of idolatry is believing a lie about God. Israel has believed the lie that they can sin without consequence….

And so today we must ask: What lies have we believed about God?  In what ways have we accepted false teaching or just filled in the blanks about God when we haven’t been taught the Scriptures.”

Tune in as Pastor Josh preaches from Hosea 5:8-6:6 this morning:

“…For God to say ‘I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings,’ is not to say that he no longer required obedience in the sacrifice and burnt offerings of the old covenant, but that those things had become distorted when they replaced knowledge of God and the real practice of ḥesed - the steadfast love of God. Without this relational aspect of their worship, their rituals became transactional or coercive towards God; a means of inducing him to act. This was one of the ways that Canaanite religion had corrupted the worship of God, that the worshippers thought that they could relate to God through sacrifice in order to obtain what they wanted without the loving and compassionate heart that comes from a transformational life with God.”

Tune in as Pastor Leighton teaches from the Gospel of Mark this morning:

“Our passage today is found right in the middle of this week in Jerusalem. Having been put in their place by the parable of the wicked tenants, the elites now send wave upon wave of their most intelligent representatives, their most adept thinkers to defeat Jesus in his understanding of the law. Mark chapter 3 tells us they just really wanna kill him, but I think it shows their pride and arrogance that they should want to intellectually humiliate him first. As in their day, and perhaps even now, the highest calling of Jewish wisdom was to be able to know the law and be able to defend it. So to all onlookers, it becomes no small thing that this formally uneducated man from the sticks of Galilee, would even engage the ruling’s lead lawyers, let alone best them at their zenith. But in the next three or four interactions that’s exactly how things play out. Jesus meets the Jewish leadership day after day, in unfair argument, and beats them on their own turf.”

Tune in as Pastor Josh teaches from the book of Hosea this morning:

“This is our second foray into the section we visit this morning in Hosea 4:1-5:7.  Last time we ended with v.4:9, like people, like priest, which for Israel was a disaster - as we saw and will continue to see in our passage - but for those adopted as God’s people under the new covenant, like people, like priest is a great and eternal hope! Because our Great and High Priest is Christ Jesus himself.  We are ‘predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s Son.’ (Romans 8:29)”

Tune in as Pastor Leighton continues to teach from Mark this morning:

“Here’s the crassest way I can put it: the rulers could no longer make money at the temple if John’s giving forgiveness away for free. The temple was already a pile of rubble, the custodians just didn’t know it yet…The old covenant systems had to be fully dismantled, because the coming Messiah would be bringing such a radically different covenant, that no structure from before could stand. And this Gospel is so beautiful…”

Pastor Josh preaches his first sermon from Hosea 4:1-5:7, covering the first nine verses of Hosea 4 this morning:

"...Like people, like priest, is the ancient version of the modern Western Saying: like father, like son or like mother, like daughter.  It is a very important piece here, because the priesthood are a subset of the corrupt people and vice versa. Both the priesthood and the people are estranged from God and both will incur the same judgment. And it is not as though the priests were more corrupt than the common man, they were the common man in a position of influence and authority!  It is not as though Israel was invaded by a sect of immoral priests and leaders.  These were those who had risen to the top, the cream of the crop so to speak. When the moral corruption of a nation reaches the pinnacles of power, it should not be surprising; the true values of the people are on display...Ungodly leadership is a natural consequence of rebellion against God.  The nation cannot reject God and his commandments and then hope that godly leadership will somehow rise to the top for their benefit.  The leaders will be a reflection of the people they govern and in turn the sin of the leaders will be reflected upon the population.  For Israel, this meant that the priest brought disaster to the land….

Where can we find a better priest?  Let me point you to Jesus. Like people, like priest is eternally good news for those whose High Priest is Christ our King."

(Corrupted audio from ~17:00-17:18: transcript of corrupted portion: “All of the inhabitants of Israel will be held accountable for their sin and rebellion against God, but here Hosea begins by saying, essentially, to the priesthood, ‘Don’t bother pointing fingers anywhere else; you, O priest, are the problem.’ Our entire passage focuses around an indictment of Israel’s religious leadership. The priest and the prophet, key ministers of the law and word of God, have destroyed the nation (their mother) and the net result is that the inhabitants of the land are not the children of God, but will be forgotten.”)

Tune in to hear Pastor Leighton preach from Mark 11 this morning, the fruitless fig tree and the cleansing of the temple:

“The tree advertised life and fruit, but it had none. The temple advertised life and fruit to a dead and hopeless world, but it had none either. And I’ve done the same.  You and I have done the same. In fact, the mainstay, the call sign, the common thread linking all lukewarm Christianity that I have ever seen (or perpetrated), practices this same crooked theology; saying I know what I’m doing is wrong but… I’m basically a good person. or…I know it’s a sin, but let me have this one vice. or: I know it’s wrong, but God will give me a pass, God’ll just forgive me later.  We conveniently misunderstand the word grace to mean God will let it slide. And like Joab we hold onto the horns of the altar and falsely trust that because we say you can’t get me here, we think we are safe. It’s a lie as old as the devil in the garden. But grace isn’t a den for foxes. It’s not a refuge if it’s used as a shield against God. It’s not a sanctuary to hide our sins in. No, It’s a full force burning away of our sinful selves. The grace of Christ Jesus, bought at the cross, is the source and wellspring of our salvation and sanctification. Grace is getting what we don’t deserve - trading sin and death for new life and holiness.”

Tune in as Pastor Josh continues to teach us from the prophet Hosea this morning:

“Don’t miss the impact of this story: an adulterous woman — a prostitute, is married to this prophet. And then she has children outside of this marriage, which he calls ‘Not Loved’ and ‘Not Mine’. And everyone looking at this story, this real life situation, would think ‘there is no more tragic family circumstance imaginable’…And yet, the loyal love of God, working in his servant Hosea, creates one of the most beautiful pictures we could ever imagine. By taking on himself the full cost of this relationship,… Hosea takes this woman,…and he says now I would like to marry you again…you are the one that I want…your children from other relationships, let’s call them now ‘Beloved’ and ‘Mine’…because that is what they will be. This is what God has done with us…”