We were blessed yesterday by the One Voice youth choir from First Baptist Church of Montgomery, Alabama. Our stage was filled with young people worshiping with us in song, dramatic reading, and a message from their youth pastor, Russell McCrory. We streamed the entire service for all to enjoy!
 For too long churches and Christians have sought to define success by external markers rather than markers which can only come from a transformed heart. Isn’t it time that the scorecard changed? Isn’t it time we began to define success in ways Jesus defines success? We will never see God and experience the manifest presence of His glory if we define eternal life by external realities alone. What we need is a new heart; something He delights to give. In today's message, we dive deeper into the meaning of the 6th Beatitude- "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Matthew 5:8 Video of Message  The reward for having a heart sprinkled clean by the blood of Jesus is the joy of seeing God face to face one day. Our reward after death is not so much the absence of pain, worry or sadness; it is the literal presence of God. But must hungry hearts wait until death to see God? Is it possible to see God this side of heaven? The answer is YES, a resounding yes, and through this morning's study of Matthew 8, Pastor Darrell explains how the pure in heart will see God this side of heaven because the pure in heart want to see God. Matthew 5:8 Video of the Message  Even though the church in Ephesus behaved right and even believed right, inwardly their hearts were cold toward God. They had lost their first love. The white hot passion for God they once had was gone. What happened to a 1st Century church can easily happen to a 21st Century church. We can find ourselves going through the motions, very busy with religious activity without ever really connecting with God inwardly. In today’s message, our guest speaker, Dave Johnson, calls attention to the Biblical warnings for believers to continually check the status of their pulse toward God. Have we lost our first love for Him and where do we go to get it back? Revelation 2:2-5 Video of the Message  Mothers have to put up with many messes in life. How does a mom handle them all? She handles them with great patience, wisdom, resilience and especially mercy. Paul tells us in Romans that mercy is a spiritual gift but to some degree all of us, mothers included, are given the gift of mercy the moment we receive Christ as Savior. God's love for us in Christ stems from His heart of mercy. And those shown God's mercy, show God's mercy. We began looking at this character quality last week from Matthew 5:7 where Jesus says Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. Matthew 5:7 Video of the message.  When we think of mercy we might tend to think of withholding judgment to someone who is guilty of a wrong. The difference between grace and mercy have often been defined this way: grace is extending kindness to those who don’t deserve it; mercy is withholding punishment to those who do deserve it. Though that is true, mercy is much more than passive restraint against injustice. In today's message from the Beatitudes, we discover that mercy is as much active kindness as it is passive restraint. Matthew 5:7 Video of Message The heart of every life-giving church is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. There can be no church without Jesus. Sometimes churches can lose their way and substitute activities for the relationship. Instead of coming to church to know Jesus, we just come to church. Instead of reading our Bibles to know Jesus, we just read our Bibles. To help us avoid that pitfall, we have begun asking members of Mountain View to share about their personal relationship with Christ. By telling us how they came to know Christ as Savior or how Jesus has made Himself real to them in recent weeks, months or years, we are reminded that church is all about Jesus. He is both the foundation and focus of church life. Their testimonies today also prepare our hearts to observe the Lord's Supper. Video of Message  In a recent article for Christianity Today, Jonathan Merritt relayed that when it comes to God, many people won’t share their struggles with their pastors or friends. Instead, they type them into Google, where they can ask with both freedom and confidentiality. One researcher sifted through a decade worth of Google searches and found that the most Googled questions about God included these: Why does God allow suffering? Why does God hate me? Why did God make me ugly? Why doesn’t God answer my prayers? Even a blind person can see the common denominator: Disappointment with God. Many of us—perhaps tens of millions—have a common experience when it comes to spirituality. We expect God to be something and then discover that He is not like that at all. Or we expect God to do something, only to realize that He seems to have other priorities in mind. So what do you do when God doesn’t turn out the way you expected? Is God cruel, impatient and unconcerned about our lives? The truth revealed in Scripture is just the opposite. The picture of God the Bible gives us is of One who has gone to great lengths to reveal His love for us. In today's message from Acts 2, we examine how God in Christ over came every obstacle to secure our highest joy in Him. Video of Message  During his earthly ministry, Jesus guided, guarded and taught His disciples how to love and follow God. As His days of ministry in the flesh came to an end, He announced that He would soon be leaving His disciples. Their mood shifted during their last week together. Trouble and sorrow filled their hearts. And yet, He promised that he would not leave them as orphans; He would come to them, abide with them and actually live in them. As part of the Father’s great plan, Christ's exit from Earth meant the entrance of Holy Spirit, another Helper just like Jesus who would guide their way. What Holy Spirit did then, He continues to do today in every heart that embraces Christ as their Savior. John Chapters 14-16 Video of Message  "The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most important doctrines of the Christian faith." - Wayne Grudem. Far from being an obscure doctrine, the Trinity is essential - without it you don't have Christianity. In this message, Pastor Charles unpacks Scripture from Genesis to Revelation to show how the Bible reveals God to be one Being in three Persons, and how several important applications to our lives flow from this doctrine. Pastor Charles has also written a document that goes into more depth for further study. Click here to download. Video of Message  One of the marks of a healthy church is its desire to pass on the faith to younger generations following them. To make sure that our experiences with Christ and understanding of His gospel does not end with us. We are like runners in a relay race who are passing the baton to those coming behind us. Josiah Oldham is one of several runners at Mountain View getting ready to receive the baton of leadership. As a young man feeling called to international missions in East Asia, we are blessed to have the privilege of helping train and release him into the greater stream of God’s purposes. In today's message from Psalm 34, Josiah reminds us of three important elements of genuine worship. Psalm 34:1-10 Video of Message  What kind of person does God use to bring His kingdom to earth? That is the question we have been asking in recent months and according to Jesus in the Beatitudes, it’s the kind of person who measures success much differently than the world. Its the kind of person who measures success by begging dependence, genuine transparency and true humility or meekness. Ultimately, it’s the kind of person who gets their worth and value from whose they are rather than what they do. As we look at the 4th Beatitude today, we also see that it is the person whose soul's hunger and thirst cannot be satisfied with anything less than Jesus. Matthew 5:6 Video of Message  If you knew in advance which college basketball team was going to win the national championship next month, which team would you pick to win?If you knew in advance which company was going to triple its value in 2019, which company would you invest in? If you knew in advance which career path was going to provide the most joy and fulfillment, which career would you choose? We can’t always predict who the winners in life will be. We don’t know the future but Jesus does and in Matthew 5, Jesus tells us who the real winners will be when everything is said and done. Jesus tells us in advance who gets to inherit the best His new world has to offer. We resume our study of the Beatitudes today by considering how meekness is both displayed and derived. Matthew 5:5 Video of Message  “Acres of diamonds are near you. Every child in our land has access to these age old words that are rich gems available at any moment. Men and women who face frustration and confusion and despair can reach into this treasure chest and come out with the answer that is so desperately needed." So begins Kyle Yates commentary on the book of Psalms, a book filled with precious truths just as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago. In today’s message, our guest speaker, Andrew Rogers, Assistant Professor of Biblical Counseling at Boyce College, unearths the precious treasure of repentance found in Psalm 32. Whoever said the God of the Old Testament is not a kind, compassionate and forgiving God has never read Psalms. For in Psalm 32, we find the gracious nature of God on full display. Psalm 32 Video of Message Psalm 107:1-2 reads, “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, For His lovingkindness is everlasting. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so…” (NASB) Notice that the Psalmist doesn’t say-"Let the redeemed of the Lord think so" or "pray so" but rather, "say so." In other words, let it out! Confess publicly what the LORD has done for you personally. Today we get the wonderful privilege of hearing how the Lord Jesus did a mighty work of grace in the lives of 3 individuals among the Mountain View family. Their confessions of faith help remind us that church is first and foremost about Jesus. Video of Message  Imagine you are part of a group tasked with hiring men to be bodyguards. What if on the reference form, you saw these words written in the comments section-“Bill would make a great bodyguard; he is a very meek man.” Our immediate reaction would probably be, "Nope, don’t want a body guard who is meek; we want someone who is brave and strong." We tend to think this way because we equate meekness with weakness. Some dictionaries even define meekness in these terms. But is meekness weakness? We turn our attention to the 3rd Beatitude today- Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:2-6 Video of Message  In his commentary on the Beatitudes, Joy Comes in the Mourning, David Johnson refers to how one Bible student describes the Beatitudes like this: “It’s as if Christ walked into the display window of life and switched all the price tags on the merchandise. He envisions Christ saying, ‘The things you thought had value-don’t have value. The things you care about the most, you should care about the least. The things you are striving for- are not worth striving for. The things you’re trying to avoid at all costs are the things you need to move into because that’s where the life of God can be found.’” It's an appropriate description of the upside-down values Jesus brings to earth. We resume our study of the second Beatitude today- "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." Matthew 5:4 Video of Message  Nearly 26 years ago, a dedication service was held in our auditorium for the buildings that then made up the gathering place for a new congregation in Layton known as Mountain View Baptist Church - a congregation previously known as First Southern Baptist of Clearfield. The pastor of the church during the transition was Bill Lacey, and during the dedication service he spoke of Mountain View becoming a regional church called to develop new missions and strengthen existing churches along the Wasatch Front. The call to be a church planting church is rooted in Scripture and provides the backdrop for today's service where we commission several Mountain View members to help Jeff and Tonya Winters plant a new church in West Haven, Utah called Sojourn. Acts 13, Luke 10 Video of Message  On the surface, putting the words blessed and mourning together doesn’t make sense. We don’t naturally associate mourning with blessing, unless maybe you work for a mortuary. Typically, those experiencing great grief are not considered blessed, especially when the word for blessed carries the idea of fulfillment or a life worth envying. Here again we see how the Gospel of Jesus is counter intuitive to our natural reasoning. Happy are the sad? This doesn't make sense and yet, it is what Jesus clearly taught. The question we must ask then is this: In what way is it true that people who mourn are people who are blessed? Matthew 5:4 Video of Message  The Beatitudes begin one of the most well-known teachings of Jesus in all of the New Testament, a teaching known as the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is also one of the most misunderstood teachings of Jesus. Some believe the Beatitudes are the New Testament version of the 10 Commandments; that one must obey these words in order to become Christian. But neither the 10 Commandments nor the Beatitudes were given as a set of rules to keep in order to go to heaven. The best way to see the Beatitudes is by recognizing the number of times one phrase is used repeatedly in Matthew’s Gospel- “kingdom of heaven.” Jesus will refer to the kingdom of heaven no less than 31 times in Matthew, 8 times in the Sermon on the Mount and twice in the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes begin and end with the kingdom of heaven. So the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes in particular help answer the question: What kind of person does God use to bring His kingdom to earth? Matthew 5:1-10 Video of Message  What if your value system was skewed and you were pursuing things that were taking you further away from God’s blessing and purposes? If that was true, would you want to know it? We begin a new series today looking at a teaching of Jesus recorded in Matthew’s gospel that is, in many ways, the foundation of the Christian life. If we don’t understand this message and know how to apply it to our individual and corporate life as a church, we are going to miss God’s best for us. This teaching is known as the The Beatitudes. Matthew 4:23-5:10 Video of Message  "You make me so mad I could...." Ever said those words? We have all said something similar, if not those exact words. But the truth is, no one has the power to make you mad. We choose to get mad and more often than not, our anger is not justified but rather a condition of our sinful hearts. In fact, most of our troubles in life stem from unresolved issues of the heart rather than the words and actions of others. We are our own worst enemies at times, a reality that our special guest speaker focuses upon in today's message from James 4. Dr. Wayne Vanderwier is the Executive Director of Overseas Instructions in Counseling, an international ministry dedicated to helping Christians apply God's word to everyday life struggles. Dr. Vanderwier helps us begin the new year with practical truths from God's word that apply to all Christians. Video of Message As we have done for the past few months, whenever we have Lord's Super, we allow three of our members to give a testimony of how God has been working in each of their lives. Today we will hear from Michaya Snell, George Henney, and Terry Graham.  Much has been said in the Bible about the connection between the condition of our hearts and the quality of our lives and one of the best examples of this in the New Testament is the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus. In Luke 2, we read of Mary’s reflection upon the extraordinary events surrounding the conception and birth of Jesus. We also read how she deposited these events into her heart for safekeeping. Mary's pondering reminds us that the heart can hold what the hand cannot. All the more reason to make sure what we are depositing into our hearts is actually giving us life. Luke 2:15-20 Video of Message  Through the life of Moses, we have begun identifying 7 patterns of God's activity among His people. We can find these principles at work in Moses but what about the rest of the Bible? Do we find evidence of these 7 patterns in the New Testament-specifically in the story of Christ’s birth? In fact we do and in Luke 2, the inspired author gives us an account of an event in the life of shepherds that point to our 7th and final reality of experiencing God: We come to know God by experience as we obey Him and He accomplishes His work through us. Luke 2:8-20 Video of Message |
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