2025 Week 13
Hello, Springers!
This week will bring a special guest preacher to the pulpit at Valley Springs, Jim Jessup, the Director of Church Relations at Jessup University just 15 minutes from our front door. Jim is the grandson of William Jessup, the university’s founder. (Read a little of the Jessup Legacy here.) I’m excited for you to meet him and hear him bring the word for us during the third Sunday of Lent.
On another note regarding Jessup University, I’m spending four Tuesday evenings at Jessup attending a community class led by Dr. Max Botner part of Jessup’s New Testament faculty and director of their Center for Bible Study. These classes are given to share the wealth of teaching from the faculty with the Christian community in our area. It has been informative, inspiring, and encouraging for me. The topic this time around? It’s the New Testament book of Hebrews and Dr. Botner comes as a subject expert.
Valley Springs is a partner church of Jessup University, along with several other congregations in our area.
During our Listen and Learn time this past Wednesday at Dinner BELL, we looked further at the book Repentance by Jack Miller.
We discussed how the cross gets bigger throughout a Christian’s life. Repentance is not just for the time when someone converts to Christianity. Martin Luther said, “Repentance and faith is the whole of the Christian life.” So how does that work? How does the cross “get bigger” in a Christian’s life?
Jack Miller said, “The motivation for changing one’s mind and life-direction is the lordship of the crucified Savior.” His book explains that when people get a bigger vision of who Christ is as the King of the cosmos it moves them toward repentance. They see the depth of their sin.
When Peter preached Christ as the crucified and risen king in Acts 2:36-38, the result was the crowd crying out, “What shall we do?” because they were cut to the heart. Understanding Christ as king drove the crowd to repentance. We talked about how at the beginning of the Christian life we recognize “branch sins” but as time goes on we grow in recognizing “root sins.”
Branch and root sins are a way of talking about sins that are obvious and ones that are under the surface, just like the branches of a tree are visible but the roots are not. That’s how it is possible to meet a rather moral person who is a Christian who will say, “The longer I’m a Christian, the more I realize how sinful I am!” It’s not false modesty. It’s sincere honesty about root sins vs. branch sins.
We used this chart to talk about how the cross gets bigger.
The more we recognize the depth of our sin and the more we recognize the royal kingship of Christ, then the more we see how much love Jesus showed to us in his death and resurrection to deal with our sin by the sacrifice of himself (cf. Hebrews 9:26).
We’ll meet the next two Wednesday nights to finish the book together. Why not come for dinner and then stay to listen and learn with us?
in Christ,
Pastor Tag