When Is The Age of Accountability?

Recently, in one of our Sermon Extras, Pastor Adam talked about the “Age of Accountability”, the idea that there is a certain age at which a person becomes responsible before God for their own actions and must make their own eternal choice to have faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins or to reject God’s free gift for their own rebellion.

Does such an age line exist? Is it found in the Bible? What about me or my kids? Hopefully this short video helps answer some of those questions.

A Sermon Extra from Faith on Hill

Online Only This Sunday

This Sunday we are online only because no one can get into the parking lot. We are finally getting some long awaited construction projects finished but that means we will be online only 9/22/24.

Lawn Chair Church

Just a quick reminder that Lawn Chair Church starts this Sunday. We will be out in our field with pop-up tents for shade. Bring a lawn chair, beach blanket, camp chair or whatever else you want. Its super fun and super chill and we will start a news series about the prophet Elijah.

Prophets and Weathermen

Pastor Adam gives a quick update on local weather conditions and a promo for our new study in the Book of the Revelation.

No matter what the weather is, we are always online Sunday mornings at 10:30 am here at Faith On Hill

See the update HERE

A Word From The Superintendent

Our church is part of the Pacific Conference, a family of churches in Oregon and Washington. Our conference Superintendent Brian has a new blog post talking about the revival going on right now in Kentucky and an encouragement for us here in Oregon.

Read his thoughts HERE

Palm Sunday

Our Palm Sunday 2022 Message

Short Study- The Lord's Prayer

In this short study we take a deeper look at the Lord’s Prayer

Give Me Shelter

I’m more a of Beatles guy than a Rolling Stones fan. But I’ve always loved the Stones’ song “Give Me Shelter”. If I was going to make a short film about Jonah chapter 4, this is definitely the song I would use in the background of the montage as Jonah builds his shelter: “Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city.” (Jonah 4:5). 

You might remember that in chapter 3, Jonah preached God’s message of warning to the people of Nineveh and they had repented before God. But this isn’t good news for Jonah and instead of spending time with this newly repentant group of people, he heads to the wilderness outside of town and builds a shelter to cover himself from the sun and hot wind as he keeps his vigil. Just as the repentant people hope that God will turn away his judgement; Jonah hopes that he won’t.

But apparently Jonah wasn’t very good at making shelters because God “provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant.” (4:6). But the next day “at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.” (4:7-8). 

If Jonah’s shelter was effective, he would not have needed God’s provision of the leafy plant for shade. Later, when God caused the plant to wither away, shouldn’t Jonah’s shelter have been suitable to live without this leafy expression of God’s grace?

Over the years, people have understandably made parallels to Adam & Eve. In the third chapter of Genesis, after Adam & Eve had sinned it says that they “realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” (3:7). Now, I’m no green thumb, but I’ve read enough to know that fig leaves are itchy and not something you want covering up the “naughty bits” as my British friends would say. So Adam and Eve were bad at making clothes and Jonah lacked basic construction skills. 

Although I understand the parallels, I think the two stories are actually very different. Adam and Eve were doing what all of their descendants have done: tried to cover up their shame with the work of their own hands. We try to be good enough, moral enough, ethnical enough. But Jonah wasn’t trying to cover his sin; he was mad that God wasn’t judging the people of Nineveh for their sins. Adam and Eve were trying to be “moral heathens” but Jonah was living in judgmental religious superiority! Jonah wanted “those other people” to be judged. 

Many Christians today fall in this same trap as Jonah. Some believe that God should judge Hollywood or San Fransisco. Other christians believe the real problem is Texas or Florida. Some christians pray “send a revival to the godless secular colleges” while others pray “Lord, lead Liberty University to repentance.” It might be different sides of the coin; it’s the same coin! We want judgement to come on “the other person” without recognizing our own issues.

How many Christians today are living in unnecessary misery because they are living in the “shelter of judgement” that they’ve made with their own hands instead of the comfort of “God’s grace”? Jonah’s own country, the northern kingdom of Israel was led by King Jeroboam who “did evil in the eyes of the Lord” and was full of people given to idolatry and violence of their own. Jonah wanted God to judge Nineveh but ignored the sin of his own people. 

I think one of the great challenges and opportunities facing Christians today is finding a way to reject sin and still embrace grace. There’s a whole bunch “Adam and Eve’s” out there who are trying (and failing) to cover their own sin. There are a whole bunch of Jonah’s out there sitting in their judgement shelters, mad at everyone and everything. Both sides are miserable. Both sides can find freedom in Jesus!