Here’s an article I wrote for our church’s newsletter, the Edifier:
Therefore, I hope you are full of gratitude as this year comes to an end so that we might be a people who glorify and enjoy God, forever.
by Phil Auxier
Here’s an article I wrote for our church’s newsletter, the Edifier:
Therefore, I hope you are full of gratitude as this year comes to an end so that we might be a people who glorify and enjoy God, forever.
by Phil Auxier
Here’s an article I wrote for our church’s newsletter…
by Phil Auxier
Here’s my Edifier article from the March/April 2012 Church Newsletter of Crestview:
by Phil Auxier
This weekend, in my absence at Crestview, Mickey Zimmerman preached a sermon from Romans 3 entitled Justification: Our Greatest Need. Be sure and check it out.
Also, we uploaded the July-August 2011 edition of the church’s newsletter, which features insight into my service at Lincoln Elementary in Hutch.
Enjoy.
by Phil Auxier
Here’s my article for the upcoming newsletter our church produces…
As a church, we continue to walk through the book of Colossians on Sunday mornings this year. It has been a joy to walk through the amazing language of Colossians 3 in recent weeks. We’ve seen a compelling call to seek the things that are above—where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (3:1). Clearly, we’ve been called in a compelling way to seek Him above all. Even our verse from the sermon on 8/29 says, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (3:17). Chapter 3, then, has sought to draw our attention off of our finite, little lives in this world to the all-encompassing, Christ-exalting future we have with Him.
In Colossians 3:11, we were given an amazing truth about our lives together as the visible church in the current age when we were told, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” Many times, sad to say, our corporate life together is based more on differences that the unity found in Christ. We pit the young married against the older married. Singles vs. married. Children and students vs. adults. Our lives are wrapped up in difference. We divide up based on who likes K-State and who likes KU (we especially don’t hang out with others that differ from us on game day). But, the reality that is to define us as the people of God is Christ. He is all and He is in all. He is everything.
In the verses that follow v.11, we see how Christ is everything. In Christ, we have characteristics that embody the Gospel (compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience). In Christ, we can put up with one another and forgive one another. In Christ, we have a clear idea of what love is. In Christ, His peace governs our lives. In Christ, the message of the Bible (which magnifies Him from Genesis to maps) indwells us richly and emerges out of our lives. And, really, this vision includes all the we do and say, doing it all in the name of our Lord Jesus, even giving thanks to God the Father because of Him.
Is Christ all for you? Or is your involvement and life in the local church about other things? What keeps you united others? Christ? Or the way they treat you? Christ is all, but Christ is also in the ones who trust Him.
The text gives clear remedies for discerning our hearts…
Are you grateful? Over and over again in this text, we are called to be thankful. Are you grateful for what God has done for you in the Gospel? If you are, then this grateful spirit will translate into healthy body life.
Are you united with others? If Christ is all and in all, then really, you have great reason to stand united with others who hold those same truths. Don’t major on minors. Major on the only thing that matters: Christ.
Are you relating well with others? In the coming weeks in Colossians, Paul will take this central Gospel message and expand its influence to include husbands, wives, children, parents, slaves, masters and outsiders. Is Christ seen as your all in this relationships?
Let’s glorify and enjoy God forever by being a people formed by Jesus so that it may be said of us, “Christ is all and in all.”
by Phil Auxier
From our church’s current newsletter, an article I wrote:
As a church we place God’s Word at the center of all that we are. We exist to glorify God and enjoy Him forever and we know how to do this by what God has revealed to us in His Word. During our Sunday morning worship gatherings, we have been looking at the book of Colossians which is rich in telling us much about Jesus Christ and our relationship to Him. We are looking at that section in chapter 3 about putting off certain things and putting on others. In Colossians 3:5, we read: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” For the past few weeks, we have been memorizing the Ten Commandments and the last one is “you shall not covet” (Exodus 20:17). But Paul ups the ante a bit and tells us that covetousness is really idolatry.
Many of us don’t think we struggle with idolatry. We picture some Old Testament buffoon bowing down at some golden calf or other image. But, Paul says that the problem of idolatry isn’t so much about the outward stuff as much as the inward desires and cravings or, to put it like he did, what we covet. In his recent book, Gospel in Life, Tim Keller writes: “Why do we lie, or fail to love, or break our promises, or live selfishly? Of course, the general answer is “Because we are weak and sinful,” but the specific answer is that there is something besides Jesus Christ that we feel we must have to be happy, something that is more important to our heart that God, something that is enslaving our heart through inordinate desires. The key to change (and even to self-understanding) is therefore to identify the idols of the heart.”
He continues: “We often don’t go deeply enough to analyze our idol-structures. For example, ‘money’ is of course an idol; yet, in another sense, money can be sought to satisfy other very different idols. That is, some people want money in order to control their world and life (such people usually don’t spend their money, but save it), while others want money for access to social circles and for making themselves beautiful and attractive (such people do spend their money on themselves).” Richard Keyes in his essay The Idol Factory notes, “All sorts of things are potential idols… if this is so, how do we determine when something is becoming or has become an idol?… As soon as our loyalty to anything leads us to disobey God, we are in danger of making it an idol… An idol can be a physical object, a property, a person, an activity, a role, an institution, a hope, an image, an idea, a pleasure, a hero…
• Work, a commandment of God, can become an idol if it is pursued so exclusively that responsibilities to one’s family are ignored.
• Family, an institution of God Himself, can become an idol if one is so preoccupied with the family that no one outside of one’s own family is cared for.
• Being well-liked, a perfectly legitimate hope, becomes an idol if the attachment to it means that one never risks disapproval.”
To help identify idols in our lives, on top of the above info, Keller gives the following questions: 1) What is my greatest nightmare? What do I worry about the most? 2) What do I rely on or comfort myself with when things go badly or become difficult? 3) What makes me feel the most self-worth? What am I the proudest of? 4) What do I really want and expect out of life? What would really make me happy?
There are various ways to deal with idols, but the Gospel solution is the only one that will produce lasting change. Simply repent and rejoice. Repent or turn from that idol and rejoice or delight in the all satisfying-ness of Jesus. In The Expulsive Power of a New Affection, Thomas Chalmers writes, “The only way to dispossess the heart of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one… It is when admitted into the number of God’s children, through the faith that is in Jesus Christ, that the spirit of adoption is poured upon us—it is then that the heart, brought under the mastery of one great and predominant affection, is delivered from the tyranny of its former desires, and is the only way in which deliverance is possible.” Let’s escape covetousness, which is idolatry, then, by clinging to the greatest of all possible good – Jesus Christ our Lord. “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:20-21).
by Phil Auxier
Here’s the newsletter article I wrote for our church’s newsletter, the Edifier, coming out this weekend:
I love the book of Hebrews. Much like Colossians (which we are currently going through on Sunday mornings) the book of Hebrews is on a campaign to demonstrate how Jesus is better than anything. He’s better than angels, Moses, Melchizedek, the Old Covenant and anything else we could dream up. The truth that Jesus is better than everything is easy for us to mouth a confession to in the church. What becomes really difficult is living out the ramifications of what that means.
In Hebrews, for example, after a compelling picture of Jesus’ greatness for twelve chapters, chapter 13 begins by saying: “Let brotherly love continue.” In the bigger context, we read in Hebrews 12:24, of Jesus, who is the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. You remember that story don’t you? Abel and his brother Cain both were children of Adam and Eve. Abel kept sheep; Cain was a worker of the ground. Abel brought the firstborn of his flock as an offering to God. Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but not Cain’s. Cain was angry and his face fell. And God said to him, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:6-7). It is on the heels of this that Cain and Abel go the fields and Cain kills his brother.
Back to Hebrews, when the writer says “Let brotherly love continue” there must be something that would provoke this urging. In the immediate context of Hebrews 13:1, at the end of chapter 12, we read that we should “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:28-29). What is all of this getting at? Here are some things…
To continue in brotherly love, we must fight sin. Sin is in all of us. We all have sinful tendencies. Maybe some are more outrageous or easily seen than others, but we are all tempted with sin. It’s easy for us to hate our brother because they seem to be “blessed” with something more than we are. When we get in this trap, we are skidding down the slippery slope Cain experienced. Therefore, let’s fight sin. Sin is crouching at the door to pounce on us and master us. But we must rule over it. By God’s grace, let’s fight sin.
To continue in brotherly love, we must worship God properly. We forget that we are always before the face of God (we live coram deo). If we understood who God is and thought more about Him than our selfish desires, we wouldn’t drift into hateful attitudes and actions towards others. When the vertical relationship is proper, horizontal relationships will be right. Remember who God is and let that inspire your love for others.
Finally, to continue in brotherly love, believe in Jesus. We are so quick to forget who we are in Christ. We forget the sin that characterized our life before Him and how we have been rescued. Remember in Hebrews 12:24 & Genesis 4 that God was pleased with Abel’s sacrifice, but Jesus’ blood speaks a better word than Abel’s. If God was pleased with Abel, using the logic of the writer of Hebrews, He is ecstatic with the sacrifice of Jesus. To continue loving people as God intended we must center who we are in Jesus and the Gospel.
Therefore, let’s glorify and enjoy God, forever, by continuing in brotherly love.