Month: January 2024

This morning, we are happy to return from our vacation to enjoy the fellowship of our own church. Visiting other churches while traveling is a good time to help us remember the many reasons we love our church so much. Other churches may offer more programs, they may have more professionals on staff, and they may have better aesthetics than we experience here. The major truth about their superlatives is that these peripherals are not what makes a church. The church consists of people who love each other and are common in their commitment to serve the Lord in their community. A beautiful building is not integral to this experience. Pastor Wilson Maungo, our missionary in Kenya, selects a tree and gathers the church under its branches to hear the word of the Lord. New churches do not come with new buildings. If a building could do the trick, none of the members who moved from here would achieve anything but success in finding not one church but many. Sadly, their nearly unanimous experience is weeks, months, and maybe a lifetime finding nothing like what they left. My point is we enjoy hearing the word in other churches, but none, as good as they may be at many things, is as good as home.

I wanted to say this to you before reaching the purpose of this article. Four weeks ago, the bulletin article paralleled the sermon I was to bring on that day. Instead, Pam went to the hospital, and I had to postpone the sermon until now. I find myself in need of a new article for the same sermon. We will discuss parables today as Mark chapter 4 records four parables Jesus used to teach His disciples. We note these parables were not easy illustrations that everyone could understand. Jesus explained them to His disciples privately while He offered no explanations as He taught publicly. Jesus told His disciples He intended the truths taught in the parables for them and for no others. Quoting from Isaiah, Jesus said the people would see but not perceive and they would hear but not understand. Because they rejected Him so often, He turned off the light of spiritual understanding and left them in the dark. We might not like the implications, but we cannot deny the results. He said it Himself. He did not allow their conversion nor the forgiveness of their sins.

The import of His actions shows that salvation is not possible unless God grants repentance and faith. The person who hears the gospel should not mistake that he cannot at any time he chooses begin to follow Christ and obey His teachings. The first problem is that no one wants God’s ways. Secondly, no one loves God. Thirdly, no one listens to God in a way that makes a salvific change in him. Fourthly, salvation comes at God’s decree and by God’s choice not ours. Clear examples of this are Jesus’ quotation from Isaiah and the message a few weeks ago from Ezekiel. The prophet stood before a valley of dead dry bones and told them to hear the word of the Lord. It will not happen until the day and hour that the Holy Spirit uses the word to penetrate the spiritual darkness that blinds everyone to the truth. It will not happen until the Spirit breathes spiritual life into those dead in sin and dull in their understanding.

The parables in Mark 4 make sense to you because you have heard them many times. Theologians write books to explain them. Read a few of them and you will discover widespread disagreements. The truth remains that Holy Spirit guidance is still necessary. Only God can open the sinner’s eyes to perceive and his ears to understand. When He grants perception and understanding, the result is always conversion and forgiveness. We are pleased Berean teaches these truths when so many do not. It makes all the difference in which church we want to attend.

Pastor V. Mark Smith

Fourteen years ago, I decided to write a weekly article for our bulletin. You are aware that in 2019, several of our families secretly conspired to compile these articles and publish them in a beautiful volume of over 700 pages. The book was a surprise gift and I placed it prominently among far lesser works on my bookshelf. This volume is the product of hours and weeks of labor which continues as you read this article. Discovering my subjects is often difficult and so it is today as I began the week with a migraine headache on Sunday night which still abides on Thursday afternoon. Concentration is difficult and keeping thoughts in order is challenging. This happened to me in 2020 while video recording a sermon during the church shutdown. To my dismay, I had my Bible upside down while trying to read which was more than a little confusing. I am sure you often think this must be my problem. Today, I see words backwards and cannot keep my hands in the proper position on the keyboard. All this makes for great difficulty completing this article. Ah, but I made the commitment, and I must.

As I thought about this, it drew me to the subject of last week’s sermon. I spoke and wrote on the valley of the dead dry bones in Ezekiel 37. I compared this to the spiritual condition of every sinner who without divine power has no ability to hear Christ, understand Him, and come to Him. He is no more capable than a body left to decay over many hot summer days in the blazing desert sun. All flesh has rotted from the bones. Wild animals scattered them, disjointing them without a complete skeleton found among them. The picture is stark and the comparison frightening.

With more thought, my current state of mind supplies another example of helplessness. I cannot think straight with this headache. Pain strains my cognitive abilities (more than usual). Like disjointed bones, I struggle to connect thoughts. This is also the condition in which Christ finds the sinner. Do you recall in your lifetime rationalized denial of incontrovertible facts as if centuries of human advancements have disappeared? Yesterday, my wife found a man in the women’s restroom at Kaiser—discovered by seeing feet turned the wrong way underneath the adjoining stall.

Is this normal? Well, yes, in a sense it is. It is normal for a reprobate mind. It is normal for skulls with brains dried up from roasting in the overglow of hell. Mutilating bodies, gender switching, pride in perversion, pedophiles cross-dressing for the entertainment of preschool children—it’s all normal for the crowd that will populate the underworld.

So, I sit, and I write, and I think my confusion from a headache is not normal for me. I cannot think very well because of a medical condition. I will get over this, or at least from experience I believe I will. However, I know from God’s word that these others who see the world opposite of the way God created it will never recover. They have never been right and never will be unless awakened spiritually and remade with fresh brains, with bones connected and flesh covering them and operational as they should be. For too long, the skull connection was at the wrong end of the body. This much I can clearly perceive.

Pastor V. Mark Smith

I remember writing an article a few years back about the advantages of a long tenure as pastor of the church. The average pastorate today is only about 2-3 years, and I am happy to have met and exceeded that statistic many years ago. In 21 years, I have ministered to hundreds of people. As you see, most have moved on, but I am pleased to report their absence is not mostly because of dissatisfaction with the church. Death claims some, politics takes others (California’s not ours), retirement, job opportunities, economic conditions, fear surprisingly—there are many reasons. I hope and pray those still living remember me teaching them the word of truth. If this is the case, God deserves the glory.

Most of these relationships are memorable. Except for a few in the beginning who never took hold in a meaningful way, there is hardly anyone I have forgotten. There are only a few the church is better off without but that assessment is ultimately God’s not mine. Again, happily, I call those who left, friends, and I hope in glory to reunite with them, if not before.

Another great blessing of lengthy ministry is the volume of sermons prepared and preached from this pulpit. The number is better than 2500. You would scarcely think I would preach this many messages and not deal with the same subject many times. I certainly have and continue to. This is the nature of teaching scriptures. I must bring you back to the same fountain many times. God designed His word with repetition in mind. You cannot read it once, hear it once, study it once, and expect to keep it in memory. If you could, we would have exhausted the value of the Bible in a few short years. Rather, this fountain is deep and wide. We could apply verses from Ezekiel 47 to describe it—waters to the ankles, waters to the knees, waters to the waist, waters deep enough to swim in, and finally, a river impossible to cross.

All this brings me to my point—2500 sermons and 2499 forgotten. I am pleased if you have remembered last week’s exposition. With so many forgotten sermons, I am free to repeat. I chose to do this today. I have favorite sermons on which you may not concur (honestly, you don’t remember). This one from Ezekiel takes me back too many years. Hundreds, or more like thousands of preachers have preached from this unusual text. It is a passage with wonderful spiritual applications apart from the literal past partial fulfillment and the still yet future perfect fulfillment. One day, Christ’s literal glorious Kingdom will come to this earth. No one will need to move then for any reason. The entire world will be a Garden of Eden with every need met and universal happiness. Groaning creatures will groan no more. Ezekiel 37 predicts the reunification of Israel’s kingdom with the restoration of the Davidic throne. David’s last and everlasting descendant will sit on it.

The spiritual application is my subject today. Spiritually, we are born dead. We are as dead as bleached dry bones left under a hot burning sun. No life, no ability, no thoughts, no activity, no hope of understanding who, why, and what we are. In other words, we are nothing, we have nothing, we expect nothing. The only way we do is by the power of an external, eternal living being. He gives us life. This is what I hope to show you today. When I am through, I hope you say, “Blessed be God for Jesus Christ!”

Pastor V. Mark Smith

              In today’s message, I will give you an introduction to parables. This message precedes a series of five messages on the parables of Mark chapter 4. Some parables are simple enough on the surface, but only because we are already familiar with them from other studies. However, some are quite difficult, and their meaning is the subject of much debate. I suppose the worst abuse of parables is interpretive abuse. This often happens in eschatological debate, especially among those who try to prove millennial positions with them. Too often they read meaning into the parable that is more than the original intent.

              I want to focus in this article on interpreting the Holy Scriptures and the abuse of them. Whether parables or any other literary form in the Bible, we are not free to attach any meaning we like. Indeed, this is the claim of many who reject the truths of the Bible. They say, “Well, that’s your interpretation, and here is what I think.” What either of us thinks is not the question. We want to know what the Bible says. What ways can we avoid this claim, that is, the claim of those who have self-serving interpretations? How do we avoid mistaken interpretations of scripture used to support false doctrines? We ought not to believe it is not a problem, hence the reason we still have the name Baptist on our sign. The name should distinguish our doctrinal interpretations from those with differing viewpoints of scripture.

              The best approach is to let the Bible speak for itself. Read the text and look for the obvious. Often, reading more than one verse helps because a verse taken out of context can fit with self-serving doctrines. We more often find the explanation in the surrounding text; thus, we cannot overemphasize reading within the context. The Bible is a marvelously complicated book only understood by those with Holy Spirit enlightenment. It is certainly smaller than an encyclopedia of religion. It is a volume with more intricacies and essential connections than any book or books written by the most prolific authors. It is small wonder that theologians have written many commentaries with multiple multiplicities to explain it and yet I assure you tomorrow will bring another one.

              For you, it seems a daunting task. We need not believe we can approach the Holy Writ casually with little effort and come away with its truths. Even the fundamentals are the subject of vast controversies. For now, as we look at this literary form, parables, in scripture, be aware of forced overbearing interpretations. We run into trouble when the only support for our pet doctrine is a scrambled parable with a forced unintended meaning. If you have the right interpretation, it will not force other scriptures to fit with it. God is too great to make the mistakes we make with His word. Johnny Cochran, by no means a theologian, said, “If the glove doesn’t fit…” You know where to take the analogy from there.

Pastor V. Mark Smith

Today the church is privileged to sit at the Lord’s Table for our last observance of the year. Another year of remembrance is past and reminds us of our connection to the first church that observed what Christ would do, not what He already had done. The first Supper began as the Passover meal. The disciples practiced and attended these each year since they were children. Although they walked with Jesus for three years, they were mistaken and unaware of the meaning of what He told them so many times before. In Mark 10:33, Jesus said, “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles:And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him: and the third day he shall rise again.”

In Mark’s narrative, it seems the disciples took little note of this as James and John preferred to discuss their desires with Jesus. Instead of agonizing with the same agony in their spirits as He did in His, they asked for better positions in glory. How Jesus would achieve this glory was either a small matter or completely missed by them. The cruel suffering of the cross was unimaginable. If they could know it by experience, all they would know is what criminals went through as they as mortals suffer and die. No one knows the compounding of suffering Jesus experienced. Placed on Him were the sins of generations of sinners and the aggregate suffering they would endure in the fires of infinite eternal hell. This measurement lies outside the realm of human understanding. Though we should live a million years in heaven, we will never fathom what Jesus went through.

Jesus told them only briefly at the last Supper. As He held up the bread, He said, “Take eat, this is my body.” And then the cup, “This is the blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.” Startling words but not enough understanding for them to inquire more deeply. He finished by telling them each would take offense because of Him, and they would flee from Him. More demonstrably, Peter would deny Him three times before the night was through.

Despite their protests to the contrary, they proved their weakness when they followed Him to the Garden of Gethsemane. He asked them to sit and wait while He went off by Himself to pray. He returned to find them asleep. He went off twice more and returned to find the same result. “Could you not watch with me one hour?” How could they go with Him on the cruel journey He was about to make? While they slept, He prayed in agony so great His Father dispatched an angel to keep His body from expiring before the cross.

As we sit at this table today, we scarcely have more understanding than theirs. We partake of the symbols of body and blood but there is no reenactment of the scene. We do not crucify Christ again. He asks only our faith that He did all His Father needed from Him. Though each of us must have extreme gratitude for His incomparable sacrifice, we will always fall short of knowing its unmeasurable value. For this, Christ says to return here often enough to refresh ourselves in what little we can understand. We purposely limit our approaches so as not to become too familiar and rote in its observance. We should look forward to it with hope and expectation that the Lord who died for us will soon return for us.

On that night, Jesus told His disciples, “I will come again, and receive you unto myself: that where I am, there you may be also.” Let us partake with this sincere promise fresh in our minds as the anchor of our faith.

Pastor V. Mark Smith