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Coming soon. The Rise of the McCullah Blog.

Colossians 3 Pt. 1

I was privileged to preach on this amazing text on March 21st at Valley Church. This was a continuing series on the Book of Colossians that we started in January and will end on the 28th of March. It has been a very Jesus centered book that was a great kickoff to Valley Church.

Three weeks ago, we looked at Colossians 3:1-4 - If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

These verses set the tone for everything else that we saw in Colossians 3. Colossians 3 is full of very practical encouragements from Paul. He follows these verses up by commanding, imploring the people of the Colossians' Church to put to death sexual immorality, impurity, wrongful passion. He also encourages them to take off anger, deceit, lying, malice and slander.

Likewise, Paul encourages the church to put on compassion, kindness, humility and meekness, as well as having an attitude of forgiveness because they have been forgiven of so much. Paul connects the first 2 Chapters of Colossians with what he is encouraging in verse 14 & 15 when he says: "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts... let the word of Christ dwell in you richly..."

Paul lays out that putting to death and putting on these things, again, are works of the Spirit that prompt and compel our own willful acts. In other words, we see and experience the good love of the father and our champion Jesus Christ and in light of that, we are compelled to submit ourselves to what He asks us to kill (confess and repent of, flee from, consider of no worth or without life, decomposing) and put on knowing that these actions will bring life to the fullest and pleasing worship, not to mention the true work of the church.

If there is one thing to say about Colossians to this point it is this, it is Jesus centered. Jesus from beginning to end is the hero. He goes before us, lives in us, and is behind us. This Jesus centeredness is the foundation for what comes next in Colossians 3:18-4:1. Stay tuned for Colossians 3 Pt. 2

People Watching in Western MA

I am not sure if this creepy or not, but I love people watching. I love watching what is so important to people and how they react when those important things are challenged or threatened. The mall is the best place to people watch. There are plenty of "important" things for people to pursue and their facial expressions, body language and to a much lesser extent, their own words write the story of that pursuit. It is quite hilarious and at times really discouraging to see human depravity at it's finest.

However now, being a church planter/pastor/older creepy guy, I find the local coffee shop to be a much appreciated and richer place to watch people go about the "important" things in their lives. The coffee shop is much less

out loud and much more introspective, which is fine with me, because I get to create their inner monologue.

Unfortunately, today, their was a young woman who decided to not have a silent inner monologue, but in a tragic decision, decided to let everyone in the coffee shop know what she was thinking. It started when she walked in. She was wearing a green shirt that simply said

"Treehugger" across the front. (Ryan's internal monologue insight #1:"Sister tree's aren't the only things getting hugged by that tight shirt right now." ) She proceeds to walk up to the

counter loudly talking to her friend about "What this area really needs is...". I can't honestly tell you anything after that, because I have been conditioned by Fox News, talk radio and a history of a legalistic church to shut down upon hearing those words.

She orders her Chai tea with non-fat organic creamer and a twig from a holly bush and sits at the table next to me and begins to include all the coffee shop in the conversation she is having with her friend. The topic? I have no idea. I'm not sure there was a common thread to any of the conversation. It began with a story about seeing an ad for free massages. (Ryan's internal monologue #2: "If you see an ad for a "Free Massage" and you think, "What a great idea! I can't wait to partake of this soothing activity from a total stranger at their house out of earshot of anyone outside the house who could help me if the masseuse decides to tenderize your head with a sledgehammer", then you deserve to die a grizzly death I guess.) The girl then continued telling the story about going to the address of the ad and finding a couple who gave massages (Ryan's internal monologue #3 - All I can think of is this: Will Ferrell Hot Tub Lovers) and had lots of cats. (R I M #4 - Of course they did.)

As if this weren't enough, in the same sentence, without a break, this conversation turns to the geological make up of the mountains of Western Massachusetts. I am not kidding. There was no cheesy transition like, "Speaking of relaxing activities, I was studying the geology of the mountains of Western Massachusetts the other day to relax from a long day of being exposed to the soul stealing entities of electricity and indoor plumbing, and you will never guess what I found out, they are mining those mountains for Pixie Stix!". Nothing like that. It was as if someone just pushed the button to change the channel on the conversation in mid sentence. Free massages from a flyer one minute and Historical Geology the next.

However, the most random and telling thing happened after the tight-shirted treehugger's (R I M #5 - I don't say "treehugger" in a Fox News/Rush Limbaugh derogatory way. I refer more to the self-labeling and circulation challenging t-shirt) friend left the coffee shop and she was left alone. As they were settling into their table, the tree hugger stood up quickly and announced that she needed sugar in her organic, chai, rosebud flavored tea. However, as she stood up, she glanced at her friend, saw that there was something wrong and then sat back down just as quickly and said, "Silly me, I am drinking chai, you don't need sugar for chai." The conversation about the massage and the rocks then took place and about 20 minutes later, the tree huggers friend left the coffee shop. As soon as the door closed, the tree hugger went over to the condiments table and dumped sugar into her tea, drank two sips and poured it out.

When we first arrived in Western MA, we were introduced to the culture by a variety of sources. A couple of women who had just recently graduated from Mount Holyoke College took us around campus and explained how it is common for women to arrive on campus and change their identity a full 180 degrees just to fit in. These changes usually take many forms and some much more drastic than what I saw this morning, but it was a great reminder of who we are ministering to. And it also was a blast to watch.

"My hypocrisy knows no bounds."

Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday, Tombstone

Achan in Our Bones. Pt. 2

This happened. Jesus happened. Jesus paid the debt that was and is owed. He satisfied the wrath of God forever. All of God’s wrath was poured out at the cross. Just listen to these verses:

I Corinthians 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Romans 5:9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

Romans 3:21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Hebrews 2:17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

I John 2:2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

I John 4:9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

To sum up all of these verses again, God didn’t change. He is a Holy God who still demands a sacrifice for transgressions against Him and mistrust in His character. However, this is a Holy price that we are incapable of paying. In fact, Paul says that the law, the Old Testament rules and regulations by which Israel lived and which Jesus fulfilled were given to prove we are incapable.

Enter Jesus. All of history is HIS Story of redemption. All history is His Story of rescue and propitiation, taking on what He wasn’t guilty of to pay the high price of the guilty, which includes me, you, everyone of us who have ever lived the Bible says.

But wait a second. When we examine Achan, you have to point out that he really Sinned, with a capital “S”. This was a big deal. 1.8 million dollars? From God non the less. That is a big time crime. Granted. It was a big deal.

But are we really any different than Achan. Look at what Achan took from God: His gold and silver.

Who is responsible for providing for you? Who gives good gifts to His children and provides for their every need? Biblically, all of our life and everything in it is God’s. He deserves it all. Do we withhold even a portion of it? Do we take from His “first fruits” to do the things we think we want and need because be believe if we don’t we will not be taken care of? Do we date and do relationships the way we want because doing the way God wants is too constricting and not nearly as fun? All of these steal from Him. All of these are acts of worship of us. In each case, we tell God we are better god than He is. That is no different than what Achan has done.

What about that “goodly Babylonish garment”? Wearing or even owning this Babylonian robe would have given Achan or anyone who owned it status, great status. For a Jew to have it and wear it around would have been saying, “Look what I have now! Look what I did! I defeated the Babylonians!” It is saying, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Simply, Achan’s sin is the foundational sin of all other sins I believe, pride. Achan, like us wanted this garment to wear and gain status with whoever would recognize it and admire it and in turn, admire him for having it. Babylonian garments are not quite as chic as they used to be, but many other things certainly are. Certain technology, the right car, clothing, style or look and even the right cause to support all serve as pride boosters for us. We cloak ourselves in these things to gain favor from others. We gain status by owning them and using them. Again, we are no different than Achan.

Some of you may be hearing this and saying, sure I do those things, but I do these other things to make up for it. I am saving the planet or I treat others with respect at all times or I even read my Bible a lot. The Bible calls this philosophy religion. Jesus doesn’t think to highly of it and Paul call your own “earned righteousness”, a bloody tampon. (Take it up with Paul.)

We cannot earn our way back to God. Achan could not “do” anything to satisfy God’s righteous wrath. He sinned against God. Done deal. He was doomed. He couldn’t take it back, give it back, say he was sorry in a real sincere tone, wax the Ark of the Covenant and be OK. Being right with God doesn’t work that way.

Only through the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ can we be right with Jesus. Only through what this bread and this cup signify is true life found. On the night before Jesus was brutally murdered as the last and only complete sacrifice, He took bread like this and said, “This is my body, given for you.” He is pointing to being that sacrifice for us that we cannot pay. Also that night, He took the cup and prayed over it and said, “This is my blood of the covenant poured out for many…” He again pointed to this being a covenant between His Father and us. This covenant like the covenant Dan talked about last week has God’s roles and our roles spelled out. God’s role; to come, live a perfect life, die a horrible death, raise from that death on the third day and then give us forgiveness and life from our past sins, current sins and future sins. Our role: Believe, follow, and allow His light to shine in us for His glory and our perfect good.

For many of you today, accepting this gift of salvation and no longer being responsible for the curse and penalty of your sin is as simple as praying to God and asking His forgiveness and accepting this grace. Remember when Joshua told Achan to “give glory to the God of Israel and give praise..”? This is what you have a chance to do this morning. Pray this to Jesus. Tell Him you have sinned and need His rescue now. Then, step out this morning and partake in this communion. There is nothing magical about this bread or this juice (It was probably bought at Big Y and their aren’t many magical things there.), however, what it represents is supernatural. Jesus did die for your sins and is offering you salvation this morning.

For those of you who have been rearranging your flesh to do the good things and stay away from the bad things in hopes of earning enough God points to be OK, repent of your religion. Pray that Jesus would forgive you for being self-reliant and for not submitting yourself to Him. Come and take this communion and remember that the cross only gives us freedom to live, love and worship.

For those of you who are living in this grace and mercy now, let this again remind us of the greatness of our Savior King. Respond to this message again in a fresh way by going crazy as you sing to your Savior this morning. Take the words to these songs and put deep inside of you and let them explode out as you sing. Worship out loud this morning for the glory of our King Jesus.

We all share in Achan’s sin. We are all guilty of the same pride that he had which God took issue with, however, we are now offered the love of a Savior Who has loved and rescued us from our own death.

Achan in Our Bones. Pt. 1

This is the rather long manuscript from my sermon I was blessed to preach at MERCYhouse last Sunday. Thanks Robert for the opportunity!

Get Real: Joshua Chapter 7

For those of you who don’t know me, I am Ryan McCullah and I am the planting pastor of Valley Church, a church that is a church plant from MERCYhouse and part of the 2020 Vision.

We are currently hosting 3 House Churches in the South Hadley and Holyoke area right now and our Leadership Team is meeting weekly to pray and prepare for our official launch in April. It has been an amazing year here at

MERCYhouse and I anticipate the launch with an equal amount of excitement and sadness because we know we will not be able to see many of you on a weekly basis like we get to now. However, we are clear about what God is doing and we believe He is using us to speak to the dry bones of the Pioneer Valley like God asked Ezekiel to in the book of Ezekiel.

We have been studying this amazing book of Joshua for 8 weeks now and I hope that you have been as encouraged, blessed and challenged as I have by this amazing book and the messages that Robert and last week Dan have brought from this book. I hope to continue representing this text authentically and in a way that will continue to encourage, bless and challenge.

I have been in ministry now for 13 years and one of the most difficult parts of teaching the Bible is dealing with scripture like we will find in Joshua Chapter 7. Before we begin, let’s pray and read the scripture.

READ Joshua 7

Last week, Dan taught on the miraculous events surrounding the fall of the great walled city of Jericho. God provided the victory through some very specific means and had very specific desires about how the city was to be left after it’s defeat. Like Dan said last week, God knew His role and commanded that Jericho be fully destroyed and it’s gold, silver and other vessels of bronze and iron be taken into the treasury of the Lord. He expected the Israel to know it’s role and obey. However, we will see this week that this didn’t happen.

After Jericho was defeated, Joshua set his sights on the small nearby city of Ai. Ai was a much smaller and less fortified area than Jericho, but sat up much higher in elevation than Jericho, which was believed to be some 750 below sea level. This is kind of like conquering the mainline United States, but falling in defeat to the state of Hawaii. (Don’t laugh, those coconuts and pineapples hurt if you get hurt with them. You have to be trained to know how to defend yourself against passion fruit.) However, when we compare and contrast the attack of Jericho with the attack at Ai, we see a few things emerge.

First, nowhere do we see God tell Joshua to attack Ai. Neither do they ask God whether they should or not. This seems to be a result of a Jericho victory hangover. It seems as if these are quite the over confident actions. In fact, Joshua only sends a small group of 3,000 men to attack Ai.

Second, notice how Chapter 7 begins. “But the people of Israel broke faith…”. The whole nation was is in the path of God’s anger. We see that the perpetrator of these actions that have caused God’s anger is one man, Achan.

God rightly commanded that the whole city of Jericho be burned and the gold, silver and vessels of bronze and iron be brought into the treasury of the Lord. This was a common practice when a land was defeated to take the “spoils” of the first city and put them within the treasury of the Lord. Basically, this was a war chest of all the gold, silver and precious items from the first fallen city of every land. These items were brought together and everyone recognized that they were set apart for the Lord. They were the Lord’s. The items or spoils from the rest of the cities of the conquered lands were then given to the people. We later find out that Achan had stolen some of the spoils and hid them in his tent. It was one man’s actions; however, the whole nation is culpable and must suffer the consequences. They collectively are all guilty of breaking the covenant they made with God.

They then suffer by experiencing an embarrassing defeat at Ai. They suffer by not moving fully into the promise of what God had promised them.

They suffered by not being OK with God.

Joshua came mourning before God and asking why this happened. God spoke very clearly when He said that the reason for this defeat was that sin had come to people of God. Sin was the problem. Sin needed to be dealt with.

God then commanded Joshua to lead. He commanded Joshua to gather all the people. God was ready to hunt the one who broke faith in regard to the devoted things of Jericho. In Chapter 6, God told Joshua to tell the people to stay way from the things of Jericho that were described as “devoted things for destruction”. These things included everything inside the walls of Jericho including the “spoils of war”: gold, precious treasures, fine garments and other valuables of this immense walled city.

So why was God so concerned with His people staying away from these things? Because, God describes them as objects of destruction. Because they are objects of destruction! They destroy! Hurt! Bad! Danger Will Robinson, Danger! I believe it is the same reason I was angry recently, when I found my youngest daughter Kiah wielding a large kitchen knife trying to get into her birthday presents after I had told her no. Why was I angry? Am I a control freak who hates the thought of my youngest daughter having fun and enjoying her birthday presents? No. I am a father who hates the thought of my daughter bringing me 3 severed fingers covered in blood saying, “Look what I did Daddy!”

So how did God deal with this sin? He had the people consecrate themselves, which included separating themselves out from one another, washing their clothes and abstaining from sexual relations for a period of time. He then had everyone wake up early in the morning, gather in their tribes and then God performed the most terrifying game of pick’em in history. (Not only is getting picked last in this game embarrassing, but it is life threatening. Kind of like “Duck, Duck, Dead”) He narrowed down the peoples by clans and then by individual families until Achan had been identified as the culprit.

Joshua then approaches Achan and asks him to “give glory to the Lord God of Israel and give praise…”. Interesting wording there. But we will come back to that.

Achan comes clean and tells Joshua that he took a beautiful cloak from Shinar, 200 shekles (80 lbs) of silver and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekles (20 lbs). A side note here, to put this in perspective, this amount of gold and silver actually adds up to roughly the amount of wages a common worker would earn in a lifetime. (Median income in MA – about $60,000 a year – 30 years – $1.8 million)

The amount is not the offense necessarily, even though it is immense, the real issue is Who he stole from. Let’s examine this for second. You see, this is not an 8^th commandment issue (Thou shalt not steal), it is really a first commandment issue (You shall have no other God’s before Me.) Achan is really questioning God’s character by taking these for himself. He is literally saying that God will not take care of him well enough, so he has to take from God to take care of himself. Achan is saying that he is a better god than God. See how this offends God? See how questioning His goodness could be an issue?

God was so offended by Achan’s sin that He brings swift and permanent judgment on Achan. Joshua sends men to dig up the tainted treasure and bring it back and lays it before God, Achan and the people to all see. Once there, Joshua and the men gathered everything of Achan’s; his livestock, the gold and silver, the tent he lived in and even his family. Then, they stoned Achan and his family and lit the remaining things on fire.

As shocking as that is, this next part may be even more shocking. This action of violence and vengeance actually satisfied God’s wrath. The chapter ends by saying, “Then the Lord turned from his burning anger.”

What?! This violence and vengeance satisfied God? That is so out of kilter with the God that we hear about all the time right? This simply doesn’t fit! How can this be? This seems like a totally different God than the one we see in the New Testament right? If this is truly Who God is, then He will not fit in here in Western MA. He is way too intense for this place. This sounds like such a different God than the one we see Robert talk about each week. Is it that it’s me? Is it that Ryan drew the short straw and only represents Vengeance-God and Robert gets to teach about, post counseling, “on His meds” God? What is so different? What has changed?!!!!

The De-Churched

Time flies.

A year ago today, our friend and fellow warrior in Christ, Baranbu Ochunyi passed away.

Keep dancing for Jesus my friend, we will join with you one day.

To read the Eulogy, go here.