Bulletin for February 9, 2025

The Armor of God in Exodus

A couple weeks ago, I preached through Exodus 28 on the priestly garments. You can listen to that sermon here. One thing I didn’t mention is that this chapter has strong connections with another New Testament passage: Ephesians 6. You’re probably familiar with that passage where Paul describes the armor of God. Most commonly, people will note that Paul is borrowing his image from the armor of the Roman soldiers who he frequently interacted with. But it also seems that Paul is drawing from another image: the priestly garb of the Old Covenant.

This begins when we notice the connection between the breastpiece of judgment in Exodus and the breastplate of righteousness in Ephesians. These are very similar phrases, indicating that these two items serve similar purposes. Once you see this connection, several other things fall into place.

The breastpiece of judgment helps the priest hears God’s verdicts; the Christian’s breastplate is a sign of God’s righteous judgment for the believer. The ephod is an apron that prepares the priest for service; the Christian serves by having the belt of truth bound to himself. The bells of the robe announced to the people that the priest was at work; the shoes of gospel readiness help the believer carry the announcement of our high priest’s work to the ends of the earth. The crown of the priest marks the priest as “Holy to the Lord;” the Christian dons the helmet of salvation, and salvation itself is about the Lord’s dedication of his people to himself.

Of course, these connections are a bit tenuous, and we could break things down in slightly different ways. But one thing I think we can say for sure is that the priest of the Old Covenant is a kind of divine warrior, foreshadowing the great high priest who rides his white horse in judgment on the earth. It is also the case that the soldiers of Christ are priests themselves unto the Lord. They don’t merely fight to defeat Satan, but as the priests ministered God’s presence to Israel, the Christian serves as a liberation fighter, who seeks to free sinners by the proclamation of the gospel.

Updates

1. Be sure to bring your soup for our Soup-erbowl fellowship lunch this coming Sunday!

2. The next Sunday, February 16, is communion Sunday. I’ll make an announcement in worship, but go ahead and be thinking about how to prepare your heart to receive the sacrament.

3. Mark your calendars for March 7-9. Rev. Ron Horgan, our presbytery church health coordinator who visited us in the fall, will be back to do an evangelism seminar on the morning of Saturday, March 8th. He will also preach on March 9th.

Your friend in Christ,
Reid

Bulletin for February 2, 2025

Updates from Presbytery

Last weekend, several of us attended the 32nd Stated Meeting of the Gulf South Presbytery at Grace Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, LA. The presbytery has a number of responsibilities. Some of them are mundane and administrative, but if you ever attend presbytery, you’ll notice that the bulk of our time is focused on supporting the ministry of the church, both at home and abroad. Here are some of the things you may be interested in:

1. We heard reports from our World Outreach Committee about ongoing work in Sierra Leone and the Middle East. The EPC is in fraternal relations with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Sierra Leone and has been engaged in mission work there for many years. The main thing we do is support Christian schooling in rural communities as an avenue for the gospel. So far, 6 churches have been established, 22 missions have been established, and the EPC of Sierra Leone has the goal of establishing 30 particular churches by 2030. If you would like to support this work, visit this webpage.

2. The EPC also has a small team that has been working in the Middle East for many years. They are connected to an evangelical church and school and focus particularly on reaching refugees from places like Syria. This is a very difficult place to work, and recently, our missionaries have been displaced by the Israel-Hamas war. In recent months, they have been furloughed in the United States, but now they are in the process of returning to the field. As a presbytery, we received one of the missionaries as a candidate under care. He is at the beginning of seminary, and our hope is that he will eventually be able to serve as a pastor in this region. You can support the work of this team at this link. (Since these missionaries are in a particularly dangerous place, they are only referred to as “G and E.”)

3. Most relevant to our congregation, the presbytery examined three men for examination, including me! We were all received unanimously in the presbytery. Eddie Ramer is a prison chaplain in the Louisiana prison system and serves at Grace Church in Alexandria. Jason Gregory is a navy chaplain who has recently been stationed on the Gulf Coast. He and his family attend Westminster in Gulfport. Both of these men will be endorsed as chaplains in the EPC. And of course, I was approved to serve as your pastor! This coming Sunday, a presbytery commission will be with us to officially ordain and install me.

Updates

1. Now that we have presbytery’s approval, we will have a service of ordination and installation this Sunday at 5PM. Members, especially, need to be present so that you can take your vows. And of course, we’ll have a celebration immediately following the service.

2. Next Sunday, February 9, our worship service will be followed by our Soup-erbowl lunch. Be sure to bring enough of your favorite soup for your family plus one. We would also encourage you to bring a special benevolence gift to support our missions partners.

Your friend in Christ,
Reid

Bulletin for January 26, 2025

This weekend, I and several of your elders will be in Alexandria, LA, for the Gulf South Presbytery meeting. As we go, please pray for safe travels. Please also pray for me and the two other men who are going to be examined for ordination, Ed and Jason.

Then, this Sunday, Rev. Ro Taylor will be preaching for us. Ro is in the very earliest stages of planting a new church in Hattiesburg. So be sure to give him a warm welcome!

Finally, keep in mind that next Sunday, February 2nd, at 5 PM, we’ll be having an ordination and installation service. Then, the next Sunday, February 9th, we’ll have our Soup-erbowl Sunday lunch.

Your friend in Christ,
Reid

Bulletin for January 19, 2025

Updates

1. Rev. Ro Taylor, our presbytery’s Hattiesburg church planter, will be preaching for us on January 26th.

2. A Service of Ordination & Installation for Reid Roberson is scheduled for February 2nd at 5 PM. We’ll have a reception with a meal afterward.

3. Soup-erbowl Sunday is February 9th. Bring enough of your favorite soup to feed your family plus one!

Bulletin for January 12, 2025

Bulletin for January 5, 2025

Happy New Year!

It’s the time of year again when people start thinking about getting back on top of their Bible reading, so I wanted to make a couple of suggestions if you’re looking for a plan.

One of the most popular Bible reading plans available is the Robert Murray M’Cheyne plan. M’Cheyne was a Scottish Presbyterian minister in the 19th century, and he wrote this plan for his congregation at St. Peter’s in Dundee. You can find this plan in various formats at this link.

Another option is simply to start reading! Matthew Everhard has created this document with no dates to help. This is my personal practice. As long as I read the whole thing, I don’t get caught up in doing things on particular date.

In addition, it’s a good practice to include a cycle of psalms each month. The psalms help us guide and inform our prayer. If you read five psalms per day, you’ll finish the psalter in a month. You can find a calendar for one- or two-month reading here.

Finally, if you’re looking for something more comprehensive, I’ve put together a liturgy for family and private worship. It’s essentially a simplified version of our Lord’s Day service for use in your home. At the end, you’ll find a weekly guide for reading (or even memorizing) the Westminster Shorter Catechism and a full copy of the M’Cheyne plan. If you’d like a print copy, let me know.

Psalm of the Month

This month, we’re going to learn a new psalm together. Psalm 103 is very familiar to many of us, and I often use it as our assurance of pardon during worship. The tune we’ll use is “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.” Listen here.

Updates

There are several things coming, so pay attention to the bulletin! For those of you that are interested in joining the church (either youth or adult), let me know as soon as you can so we can start working on getting the process going!

Your friend in Christ,
Reid

Bulletin for December 29, 2024

Bulletin for December 22, 2024

Coming Up This Week

This Sunday, we’ll be meeting twice on Sunday. First, we’ll have a lessons and carols service in our normal morning worship slot. Then, we’ll gather again at 5 PM to watch the chlidren perform their Christmas pageant. Light refreshments will follow!

Your friend in Christ,
Reid

Bulletin for December 15, 2024

Gospel Hope

The past few questions, being all about sin, have been quite negative, but now, in question 20, there’s a turn to the solution to this problem.

Q. 20. Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery?
A. God having, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a redeemer.

God, of course, would have been perfectly just to leave us to perish in the estate of sin and misery, but God is not merely a God of justice. He is also a God of mercy. The catechism, quoting Ephesians 1, reminds us that God acted to save “according to the good pleasure of his will.” Because of the goodness of God, he saw fit to offer salvation.

Who did God see fit to save? The elect. We’ve talked about this doctrine in previous questions, but God, from all eternity, elected some to eternal life. Notice the catechism says that God elected out of his mere good pleasure. That means there was nothing in us that God considered in his election; it’s all on him. This is clearly taught in Ephesians 1:4-12.

It’s become very common in recent times for people to argue that God’s election is on the basis of foreseen faith. The idea is that God looked down through time to see who would believe in him and elected those people. But this view has no biblical evidence in support of it. Furthermore, think about what that would mean for our salvation–it would mean that our salvation is somehow dependent on us. And what a sorry state we would be in if it depended on us!

This leads us to the second question: how does God save his elect? Even though God elects some for salvation, there’s still this lingering issue. There is nothing in man that warrants salvation. We are dead in sin (Ephesians 2:5) and the thoughts of our hearts are only evil continually (Genesis 6:5). There’s an impenetrable barrier between God and the sinner, so God provided a way through the covenant of grace. In this covenant, he provides a redeemer, Jesus Christ, who paid for the sins of the elect in order that they might be justified before God. More on that in question 21!

Finally, what is the result of this covenant of grace? We are both delivered from the state of sin and misery and brought into an estate of salvation. Through our redeemer, Jesus Christ, we are freed from the sin and misery we talked about previously. Now, some of that is immediate (justification) and some is gradual (sanctification), but sin has no dominion over us (Romans 6:1-14). We are freed to stand before God and to be cleansed by the blood of Christ applied by the Holy Spirit.

Updates

On December 22, we’ll be meeting twice. On Sunday morning, our Lord’s Day service at 11 AM will be a Lessons & Carols service. Then, on Sunday evening at 5 PM, the children and youth will present a Christmas Pageant. Be sure to join us for both!

Your friend in Christ,
Reid

Bulletin for December 8, 2024

The Misery of Sin

When Adam fell, he fell into an estate of sin and misery. Question 18 focused on sin, and question 19 goes on to discuss misery. Remember that sin is about being and doing; in other words, it affects our nature and actions. When we talk about misery, we’re talking about the effects of being sinful and doing sin.

Q. 19. What is the misery of that estate whereinto man fell?
A. All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.

The first consequence of sin is our disfellowship with God. This happens automatically. What was the first thing Adam did after he sinned? He hid from God. Their relationship was broken. All other effects are downstream from this.

In particular, the relationship is broken because the covenant was broken. Covenant is God’s gracious way of meeting with his people, but when we turn aside from God, we lose access to his presence. This is also why Adam was under the wrath and curse of God–because under the covenant of works, there is penalty for law-breaking.

The first penalty of law-breaking is that life gets hard. This is the core of the curse on Adam in Genesis 3:

“And to Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’” (Genesis 3:17-19)

Any difficulty in this life ultimately stems from this curse. When your joints ache, when you get the flu, and when money’s tight, you can always find the source in the curse on Adam.

Even worse, we are liable to death, “for the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Humans are not supposed to die. Death is bad; it’s a curse. Often, we try to convince ourselves that death is somehow a good thing, and certainly there are good results (like going to heaven). But death was never supposed to be a part of human life. It’s a result of sin. Finally, since we have immortal souls, we are not only liable to temporal death, but eternal death (Matthew 25:41-46). Because we owe God an infinite death, we are liable for infinite judgment.

But again, just as the nature of sin teaches us about the work of Christ, so does the nature of misery. When Jesus took on flesh, he took on this curse. In every respect, he was tempted. He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Ultimately, he was crucified, dead, and buried, and he descended into hell. Why? Because he was suffering for us. He suffered humiliation with us, so that he could redeem us from misery.

Updates

1. Don’t forget our congregational meeting immediately following this Sunday’s worship service.

2. We’ll have a Lessons and Carols Sunday evening service on December 22 at 5 PM. We’ll hear Scripture about Christ and sing some Christmas carols together.

3. The children are preparing to give a presentation on Christmas Eve.

Your friend in Christ,
Reid

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