Month: February 2026

               Just before leaving on a brief vacation last week, I finished reading Isaiah, my favorite Old Testament book. I read the entire Bible systematically each year in addition to my other readings for sermons, and of course, the Sunday scriptures read with the congregation. Perhaps you have noticed I often choose passages from Isaiah which means I lost track of the number of my trips through this great Old Testament prophet long ago.

               Each time I read, it is refreshing as I understand the current readings better than I did before. This is not peculiar to Isaiah as the Bible is not a novel you can read, put back on the shelf, and mark as done as you move on to the next. Familiarity is fast fading. I attended a conference twenty years ago that had a featured guest who had memorized the entire New Testament and good portions of the Old. We listened to him quote 1 John which is a short epistle, and this served as proof of his uncommon ability and dedication to the task. Obviously, the conference did not ask him to quote Matthew or Acts because after about five chapters we would ask him to stop and tell him we got the point. Only the rarest few memorize the entire New Testament and are a walking-Bible. We will read countless times and still need to go back to refresh even small portions.

               I am not sure I want such ability. In my daily reading, there is satisfaction in sitting on my cozy couch after dinner and then opening my soft leatherbound copy of God’s word and letting the cover and pages fold out gently on my lap. Sometimes the fireplace is burning, and the soft glow of the lamp sets an atmosphere for blessing. I have been sad for quite some time, and this is the reason I did not think of my absence last week as truly a vacation. It was to assuage the grief with hopes I could do a better job of moving on. I read in Isaiah about Christ’s coming kingdom and the majesty of the sovereign King who rules by the power of His word. He promised to gift us with a kingdom in which we will rule and reign with Him. Beyond the millennial kingdom is the New Heaven and New earth, a place our present minds cannot comprehend.

               While I read Isaiah, I also remembered my daily devotional from December which spoke of having all tears wiped from our eyes and seeing God face-to-face. It noted that without explanation of how this happens, we will see the incarnate Christ and the Godhead Himself. How we will comprehend Him is not as important for us now as knowing it shall be. I will leave you with this quote that profoundly impacted whether I should live in the past or rest in the hope that nothing is better than what God prepared for me in the future: “…we must understand that in some marvelous way, we will see not only the glorified incarnate Christ but also the Godhead Himself. The text does not go into detail regarding how this will be. Theologians such as Jonathan Edwards have suggested that this vision will not be seen with our physical eyes but that God will somehow grant our minds and souls an immediate apprehension of His deity. That may well be true, but the important thing to note is that our seeing God, otherwise known as the beatific vision, will bring us complete satisfaction. We grow weary of gazing on even the most lovely things on this earth, becoming bored and moving on to other concerns. But we will never tire of looking upon God. He is so beautiful, so fascinating, so marvelous, so deep, so fulfilling, that seeing Him will never grow old. Indeed, we will find ourselves moving from glory to glory as we look on His face, knowing Him more and more while always discovering something new as He enthralls us for all eternity.” (Tabletalk, December 29, 2025).

Pastor V. Mark Smith

               Today as I sat at my desk, the task before me was all too familiar. A few years ago, a group of church members commissioned the printing of a volume containing approximately seven hundred bulletin articles written over a period of ten years. Kyle Wells was the editor who occasionally asked questions but successfully managed to keep me in the dark about the project. Recently, a second volume clandestinely produced showed up with another two hundred articles. The production quality is admirable but may be a deceptive representation of the quality within.

               Nevertheless, after these many years and hundreds of articles, I feel the necessity to continue with what I have said before is the hardest part of my work week. This week I wrote my third sermon in our return to the Gospel of Mark series next month which brought me across Mark 13:12. The end of the verse says, “…but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.”  My thoughts then turned to endurance. I think of the term in the sense of general endurance not specifically the kind Jesus speaks of in the passage. He deals with end times and the difficulty of holding out faithfully against the hatred and oppression of satanic evils. I am thinking more about making it through the day and another week and the expectations of those I serve.

               The bulletin articles are an item on my weekly task list. It is number 9 coming after sermon composition and a subsequent outline needed for presentation of the sermon. Rarely, truthfully never, do I keep the task list order. The last number on the list is that everything I have worked on during the week I must upload to the cloud for Donna Miller in Idaho so that you can see what I have been up to all week. The last number is always in order since I cannot send what I do not have. In a sense, Donna is the one who keeps pressure on me. She may not like to read this, but you have her to thank that I get my work done.

               Since this month is December, there is much more on the ministry calendar than in other months. Next Sunday, I will preach a Christmas sermon and then the following Wednesday is our yearly Christmas Eve Candlelight service. Although we have had a music coordinator in the past, for the last twenty-seven years I have determined or given permission for each song we sing. The only part of music outside my purview is Alexander’s masterful job of choosing music for offertories and for pre and post service times.

               This brings me to the impetus for all this information. It is endurance. What is the reason to do these many tasks week after week? Often, I think I should retire. Much has happened this year to make me think I cannot endure more. There are a host of subplots that drive me to continue my position, some of which would surprise you. I believe the main reason should not surprise you at all. I come back for the word of God. Berean does not offer the aesthetical showmanship of worship found in other churches. We do not pretend to or hope to. I am privileged to preach the word of God. I keep the task list going forward for without the sum of the tasks the opportunity for preaching in this setting in the Lord’s church disappears.

               My sincerest hope is that your motivating factor for coming back is the same as mine. We glorify God primarily through the word of God because we know nothing personal about Him except through the word He gave us. My honor is the influence God allows me to have over many who never heard the doctrines we preach, and now after twenty-three years many parts of our country have access to it. Not surprisingly, even bulletin articles are often a source.

Pastor V. Mark Smith

               Most of you are familiar with surfing the internet and following random links not knowing the place where you will stop and finally say, “It is enough.” The links I follow almost always touch theology and are too irresistible to ignore. Occasionally, I discover a golden nugget that plants an idea in my head, but it might be far away from the intent of the article. Last week I clicked and landed on the title Mirror, Mirror on the Wall.

               This time, I want to stick closely to the article’s theme and regard its usefulness to describe a similar problem. This is the mistake of looking in a spiritual mirror and seeing something much different than God sees. This original paragraph sets the tone: “Most people consider themselves basically good… When they look in the mirror, they see a good person. Not a perfect person by any stretch, but a person with a generally good heart. This natural idealistic self-perception is problematic and prevents people from coming to grips with who they really are, who Christ is, and how much they need Christ.”

               The title of the article comes from a fairy tale but there is nothing fanciful or unreal about the comparison it makes. The mirror that reflects who we truly are is the word of God. It reveals all the blemishes and no matter how much we try to convince ourselves otherwise, we need not think the reflection is better than what God sees. He sees nothing other than a fully accurate image. There is a mold called the image of God which He expects our spiritual features to match. These features are the spiritual characteristics of Jesus Christ. If we desire what Christ Himself does not desire, we are fooling ourselves if we think we look good enough, God is happy with us and does not want to fix us. “Is there any way Christ could personally be what I am?” This will tell you how God sees you. You argue to your peril to pretend deviation from the character of Christ is not sin.

               Too often we throw a cover over the biblical mirror with contentment found in personal feelings and assessments that are not the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of the image He wants us to see. We obscure the image and go on believing there are no serious flaws. Worse than this is to use a different mirror, one that has always proved distorted. This is to take the likewise deeply flawed and let them be the image and interpreters of how we should appear. The feedback is always, “Nothing is wrong. You are the fairest in the land. You are courageous. You do you.” Thus, we come full circle…this naturalistic self-perception is problematic and prevents people from coming to grips with who they really are…

               Paul’s encouragement with his personal witness before the Corinthian believers is also helpful. He held up a mirror for them, a place to look to gauge their spiritual progress: “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.” Paul asked for imitation because he was copying Christ. What if your desires were the desires of all Christians? If there is one desire that is not good for all, it is a desire that is good for none. The Christian life has one over-arching image for each of us to be. Whatever falls short of it is the flaw we must eliminate. Play act all you want. This natural idealistic self-perception is problematic and prevents people from coming to grips with who they really are, who Christ is, and how much they need Christ.”

Pastor V. Mark Smith

(This article was written for Thanksgiving 2025)

               Today we arrive for our services with the smells of tasty food wafting in the air around us. The tables are prepared for another Thanksgiving service and meal which is usually one of our favorite times of the year. This year, I am conflicted with the holidays. It is the first time to be without my wife, and she always loved this service and helping with it when she felt well enough to take part. I have trouble with her absence and memory, but I do not let it dampen my enthusiasm for the blessed privilege we have of enjoying the company of God’s people.

               I find this Thanksgiving more interesting because of our study of the 1689 London Confession of Faith. Although writing the Confession 56 years after the first Thanksgiving in America and adopting it 68 years after, the men who drafted and approved it were largely in solidarity of faith with the Pilgrims in America who came decades before them. When we were in school and play acting the meeting between the Wampanoag native Americans and their freshly arrived strange colonists, our history books and teachers said it was a time of religious refreshment and thanksgiving to God. Revisionist history books now assure us no prayer was involved but rather the food and fellowship marked a calculated political alliance between the two parties.

               Among the group of Pilgrims on the Mayflower were Baptists scattered among the larger group of Reformed Christians. In drafting the 1689 Confession, the strategy was to emphasize every doctrine of orthodoxy in which they could align themselves with the Protestant Reformers but to also show that the places of disagreement were not outside the pale of orthodoxy. Disagreements stayed within the allowance for Christian liberty when they did not oppose sound biblical principles. Thus, the framers of the document carefully supported each dissent with scripture. With this measure, they also affirmed the only authority for faith and practice is the Word of God.

               The Pilgrims who arrived in America in 1620 were largely under the duress of persecution. They were living in the Netherlands having escaped persecution in England more than a decade earlier. The men who signed the 1689 Confession experienced the same persecution for years under the Clarendon Code and only released the document after the English Parliament passed the Act of Toleration allowing for their freedom of worship.

               I combine these two stories today to show the lifeblood of the Pilgrims and the Confessors of 1689, was their belief in the one true living God who is the author and finisher of our faith and the sustainer of our existence. To think they would meet without prayer and acknowledgement of their God who led them here is a deliberate attempt to eliminate God from the founding of this country.

               Admittedly, among the Pilgrims were secular travelers but when they wrote the Mayflower Compact, they drew the language directly from the church covenants of the Puritan inspired Pilgrims. The Mayflower Compact declares the purpose of the voyage was “…for the Glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith…” Be thankful today these are the true roots of the settlement of the North American continent.

Pastor V. Mark Smith