Pastor’s Corner is a new column from Pastor Wynter Sturtevant III of the Mariposa Reformed Baptist Church. The church is located at 4994 11th Street in Mariposa, California in the Seventh-day Adventist church building. Services are held on Sunday mornings at 10:00 A.M.
November 15, 2018 - Perhaps you all have heard of or have been hurt by people in the church. I’m talking about when the damage done was true and the cut was deep. There are people who in interaction with the church (universal band of Christian brothers and sisters) have been broken by it. That is hard to read, I know. I love the church and I love preaching God’s Word. It is all too easy for we pastors to take the hate that people have for the church and then think that what they are really attacking is Christ himself! To be lovers of truth we must admit when the church has done wrong whether in the large picture (every denomination has skeletons) or in the local area.
In the acknowledgement of these skeletons is also the acknowledgement of how we have transgressed against God. How we are habitually law breakers. It’s in these moments that we Gospel preachers should remember the words found in 1 John that tell us that, “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” And that is the message that we should hear every Sunday. Instead of pietism and legalistic preaching we need the message of Jesus Christ and how he saves us from our transgressions against God. This is the message that agrees with those that have been broken by those in the church. Yes, the church is filled with wretches. It is an infirmary filled with the dying but the good news is that through Christ, the Great Physician, we are forgiven.
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