Every one of us has felt hunger and thirst. Few of us have ever come close to starving. But Jesus takes the most basic function of the body and points it at the deepest need of the soul: blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

In this message, we reach the hinge of the Beatitudes, the point where being emptied (poor in spirit, mourning, meek) turns into being filled. We look at three dimensions of righteousness, given, lived, and coming, and press into why so many of us are spiritually bloated and starving at the same time, gorging on career, validation, and entertainment while our souls waste away. Using John 6 and Jesus’ rebuke of the crowd that wanted more loaves instead of the Bread of Life, we ask a convicting question: do you want the meal, or just the toy?

In this message:

Why hunger and thirst are the one experience every person shares

Righteousness given, lived, and coming

Jesus’ own hunger and thirst for righteousness in the wilderness

Spiritual gluttony and drunkenness — feeding on good things made into gods

Daily manna vs. rotting manna

Application: wanting Jesus vs. wanting His benefits

Scripture referenced: Matthew 5:3-10, Matthew 4:3-4, Matthew 6:11, Matthew 13:45-46, John 4:13-14, 34, John 6:26, 35, 66, Romans 3:10, Romans 8:16, Isaiah 55:2, Isaiah 61:3, 10-11, Luke 15:22, Genesis 3:6-10, Exodus 16:20, 2 Peter 3:13, Proverbs 23:20-21, Deuteronomy 21:20, Esther 4:16, Psalm 34:8, James 2:10

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church. We’d love to have you join us.

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📖 Study guide and reflection questions for this passage: https://www.silvercityky.com/blog/matthew-5-6

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If we’re saved by grace and not by keeping the law, does that mean Christians can do whatever they want? This week we open Westminster Confession Chapter 20 and work through the scope of Christian liberty, freedom from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the curse of the law, bondage to this present evil world, the dominion of sin, the sting of death, and the grave, along with free access to God as His child, obedience flowing from love rather than slavish fear.

We look at why this liberty is never liberty from the law as God’s standard, but liberty into it, why God alone is Lord of the conscience, and how to tell the difference between open-handed matters of Christian freedom (food, drink, clothing, disputable traditions) and matters where Scripture speaks plainly and leaves no room for private revision. Using a comparison between the American and French Revolutions, we talk through what happens when liberty of conscience gets twisted into either tyranny over others or outright rebellion against lawful authority, and where Christians today can find themselves pulled toward either extreme.

Scripture referenced: Galatians 3:13, 1 Peter 2:16, Acts 5:29, James (the law of liberty), Psalm 119, 1 Thessalonians (living peaceably)

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church.

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Meekness gets confused with weakness more than almost any other virtue in Scripture. We picture the pushover, the quiet kid who never speaks up, the man with no backbone. But Jesus calls Himself meek, and He’s also the one who turned over tables in the temple. So what is meekness, really?

In this message, we work through the third beatitude and recover meekness as self-mastery, not self-erasure, the ability to govern one’s own passions so that boldness and zeal get aimed at the right things. We look at two opposite ditches on either side of meekness: grabbing, like Eve reaching for the fruit or Napoleon conquering half of Europe out of fear of being forgotten, and apathy, like Adam standing silent while sin unfolded in front of him. And we ask what it means to inherit the earth, an inheritance never earned, only ever given through a death, the death of the King who was gentle and lowly in heart.

In this message:

Why meekness is not weakness, stoicism, or self-abasement

Thomas Watson and Matthew Henry on meekness as self-command

Jesus as the perfect embodiment of meekness

Two ditches: Eve’s grasping and Adam’s passivity

What it means to inherit, not seize, the earth

Napoleon’s reported deathbed reflection on the kingdom of Christ

Scripture referenced: Matthew 5:3-10, Matthew 11:29, Matthew 23, Matthew 6:4, John 11:35, John 2:15, Mark 14:36, Isaiah 53:7, Isaiah 61:7, Isaiah 66, Psalm 2:4, Genesis 1:28, Genesis 3:1-10, Romans 4, Romans 8:32, Galatians 5:22-23, Ephesians 1:11,14, Titus 3:7, 1 Peter 1:4, 1 Peter 2:23, Revelation 21:27

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church. We’d love to have you join us.

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📖 Study guide and reflection questions for this passage: https://www.silvercityky.com/blog/matthew-5-5

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If believers aren’t saved by keeping the law, why does Scripture spend so much time on it, and why does the longest chapter in the Bible, Psalm 119, read like a love song to it? This week we finish Westminster Confession Chapter 19 by working through the law’s three uses.

We look at the law as a mirror, exposing sin and driving us to Christ; as a restraint, curbing wickedness both in believers and in civil society; and as a guide, the use the Reformed tradition considers principal, showing redeemed people how to live in grateful response to the Father who saved them. Along the way we compare how Lutheran and Roman Catholic traditions handle these same uses differently, and talk through why “saved unto the law” is not the same thing as “saved by the law,” and why a heart with the law written on it comes to delight in it rather than resent it.

Scripture referenced: Matthew 5:17, James 2:10, Psalm 119, Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 36, Isaiah 49

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church.

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We live in the most comfortable, indulgent society in history, and we are still this sad. We numb it with antidepressants, food, doom-scrolling, anything but looking it in the face. Jesus' second beatitude cuts straight through that instinct: blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

In this message, Pastor Zach Hill looks at mourning over sin as the natural extension of poverty of spirit, the grief that leads to real repentance rather than mere regret. Using Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, Huxley's Brave New World, and the contrast Paul draws in 2 Corinthians 7 between godly and worldly grief, we walk through three kinds of mourning, two counterfeits and one true, and ask which one actually describes your relationship to your own sin. This isn't a call to wallow. It's a call to stop numbing what only the cross can heal.

In this message:

Our culture's refusal to sit with sadness, and what it has in common with Brave New World

Mourning as repentance, not mere sorrow

Contrition vs. attrition

Three snapshots: despairing mourning, natural (hypocritical) mourning, and gracious mourning

2 Corinthians 7:10-13 on godly grief that leads to salvation without regret

Application: you don't have to numb your sin, and you don't have to pay for it

Scripture referenced: Matthew 5:3-10, Genesis 37:34, 2 Samuel 18:33, Ecclesiastes 7:2, Zechariah 12:10, Acts 2:37, Acts 9:31, Isaiah 53:3, 5, Psalm 119:71, 136, Psalm 126:5-6, John 16:20, John 20:11-18, 2 Corinthians 7:10-13

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church. We'd love to have you join us.

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📖 Study guide and reflection questions for this passage: https://www.silvercityky.com/blog/matthew-5-4

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Is the Old Testament law just done away with, or is there more going on when Scripture calls something "abrogated"? This week we open Westminster Confession Chapter 19 and work through how God's people, saved by grace, are meant to rightly understand and use God's law.

We trace the law back before Sinai to the garden itself, where Adam was given a covenant of works with life promised for obedience, and walk through the three categories Scripture gives us: moral law (binding on everyone, everywhere, always, summarized in the Ten Commandments and in loving God and neighbor), ceremonial law (fulfilled, not discarded, in Christ), and civil law (specific to Israel as a nation-state, yet still carrying lasting principle). That lasting principle is what the Confession calls "general equity," and we spend the second half of class putting it into practice, working through Old Testament commands that sound strange on the surface, a parapet on a roof, leaving the edges of a field for the poor, not muzzling an ox, not boiling a kid in its mother's milk, and asking what unchanging principle each one still teaches us today.

Scripture referenced: Genesis 2:16-17, Matthew 22:37-40, Hebrews 10:1, Deuteronomy 4:6, Deuteronomy 22:8, Leviticus 19:9-10, Deuteronomy 24:6, Deuteronomy 22:10, Romans 2, Psalm 119

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church.

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The kingdoms of this world tell you blessedness comes from what you have. Jesus starts His most famous sermon by saying the opposite: blessedness begins with destitution. Not "blessed are the wealthy" or "blessed are the accomplished," but "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

In this message, Pastor Zach begins walking through the Beatitudes by reading all eight primary statements together and noticing the inclusio that frames them, the kingdom of heaven bookending verses 3 and 10. Then we sit in the first one. We look at what poverty of spirit actually is and isn't, how pride shows up loudly at the party and just as often quietly behind a locked door, and why Jesus insists that the empty are the only ones with room enough for His kingdom. Using Thomas Watson, C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce, and the Pharisee and tax collector of Luke 18, we ask a simple but searching question: are you full of yourself, or are you finally empty enough to be filled?

In this message:

• The inclusio structure of the eight Beatitudes
• Why Jesus starts with poverty of spirit, not action or morality
• Loud pride vs. quiet, isolated pride
• The Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14)
• C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce and the ghost who won't let go of his own righteousness
• Application: true vs. false poverty of spirit

Scripture referenced: Matthew 5:3-10, Isaiah 61:1, Proverbs 18:1, 12, Luke 18:9-14, Matthew 12:43-45, Matthew 25:14-30, Zechariah 4:6, Romans 14:17, Hebrews 12:28, Philippians 2:1-11

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church. We'd love to have you join us.

🔔 Subscribe for weekly sermons, verse-by-verse Bible teaching, and Reformed theology applied to everyday life.

📖 Study guide and reflection questions for this passage: https://www.silvercityky.com/blog/matthew-5-3

⛪ Visit us: silvercityky.com

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This week we set aside our regular study of the Westminster Confession for something the Confession itself points us toward: a living example of the perseverance and assurance we've been studying together. A beloved member of our congregation, Patrick Kendall, shares his testimony of the Lord's kindness across seasons of deep struggle and restoration, from years of substance abuse and a painful fall after a decade of sobriety, to repentance, reconciliation with his family, and the steady, patient grace of God carrying him through it all.

Grounded in Psalm 32 and Psalm 34, this is a story about what it means to be forgiven and to know it, and how God uses ordinary means, His Word, the sacraments, and the body of the church, to hold a person fast even when their own strength runs out. This is a testimony of everything we have been studying in the Westminster thus dar.

Scripture referenced: Psalm 32, Psalm 34:1-9, Luke 15:17-24

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church.

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When Jesus stood up in the Nazareth synagogue and read from Isaiah 61, everyone expected a battle plan. They got a promise of Jubilee instead — freedom for captives, debts canceled, and a kingdom handed over before anyone had done a thing to deserve it.

This message opens a short series on the Beatitudes by going back to where Jesus' public ministry actually starts: not the Sermon on the Mount, but a scroll in a hometown synagogue. We trace how Isaiah 61 is the root that the Beatitudes grow out of, why "the year of the Lord's favor" is a direct echo of the Levitical law of Jubilee, and why every kingdom we know how to build hands us requirements before belonging, while Jesus' kingdom does the exact opposite. This sets the stage for the whole series ahead: the Beatitudes aren't a ladder to climb into the kingdom. They're a description of what someone already inside it starts to look like.

In this message:

• Why first-century Jews heard "kingdom of God" as a political promise, not a metaphor
• The covenant of works vs. the covenant of grace
• Isaiah 61 as the root of the Sermon on the Mount
• The Year of Jubilee and what it means for Jesus to proclaim it fulfilled
• Adoption, inheritance, and why the kingdom is given, not earned
• Setting up the Beatitudes series

Scripture referenced: Isaiah 61:1-11, Luke 4:16-22, Matthew 4:17, Matthew 5:3-4, Matthew 25:34, Luke 12:32, Luke 17:21

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church. We'd love to have you join us.

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📖 Study guide and reflection questions for this passage: https://www.silvercityky.com/blog/isaiah-61

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Can you know you're saved without some dramatic sign from heaven? This week we finish Westminster Confession Chapter 18, working through two remaining questions: how is assurance actually attained in ordinary life, and what happens when it gets shaken?

We look at why assurance isn't part of the essence of faith itself — a true believer can wait long and wrestle through hard seasons without that meaning the faith underneath is fake — and why the Confession still calls assurance a duty, attainable through ordinary means of grace: the Word, the sacraments, prayer, and fellowship, not some extraordinary revelation. We also work through 1 John's series of tests for self-examination — doctrinal, moral, relational, and perseverance — as a practical tool for asking "do I actually know Christ," and talk honestly about doubt, dark nights of the soul, and why even faithful believers go through seasons where assurance dims without ever being destroyed.

Scripture referenced: 2 Peter 1:10, Romans 6:1-2, 1 John 3:19-20, 1 John 1:9, 1 John 5:13, Hebrews 12:28, Psalm 51

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church.

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At the city gate, an unnamed man had the right to redeem Ruth — and he refused. He wouldn't risk his own inheritance to save an outsider. So Scripture doesn't even preserve his name. Boaz does what the nearer redeemer would not: he willingly pays the price, takes Ruth as his wife, and perpetuates the name of a dead man who could do nothing for himself.

In this message, Brother Aaron Caldwell finishes the story of Ruth and Boaz at the city gates and watch redemption become public, costly, and complete. We see the gospel already at work in the story: a Moabite widow and a Canaanite harlot, both outsiders, both grafted into the very lineage of Christ, not because of their pedigree but because of a Redeemer who was both willing and able. And we sit with the final picture of the text: Boaz could preserve a dead man's name, but Christ raises the dead and gives them an eternal one.

In this message:

• The legal scene at the city gate and the unnamed redeemer's refusal
• Ruth, Rahab, and God's grace toward outsiders in the line of Christ
• Sovereignty and human responsibility: Boaz takes action
• The cost of redemption — willingness, not just ability
• Redemption made public: possession, belonging, and testimony
• Application: the Redeemer gives a name to the dead

Scripture referenced: Ruth 4:1-12, Matthew 16:18, James 2:26, 1 Corinthians 6:20, Ephesians 2:1-5

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church. We'd love to have you join us.

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📖 Study guide and reflection questions for this passage: https://www.silvercityky.com/blog/ruth-4-1-12

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Can you actually know you're saved? Or is that just arrogance? This week we open Westminster Confession Chapter 18 — the final chapter in the Confession's long treatment of redemption applied — and ask a question different from everything that's come before it: not "what is salvation," but "can you know you have it?"

We look at two very different kinds of confidence: presumption, the false hope of someone going through religious motions with no real fruit, and genuine assurance, the settled confidence of someone who truly believes in Christ, loves Him sincerely, and is pursuing a good conscience before Him. We also dig into why the Confession calls this assurance "infallible" — resting not on your performance or your mood, but on God's promises, the visible evidence of grace in your life, and the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit Himself.

Along the way, we talk honestly about the two postures many Christians live in: presumption on one side, and doubt-driven anxiety on the other, treating every failure as proof God must be furious. Neither honors what Scripture actually promises. Works are the fruit of assurance. They are never its root.

Scripture referenced: Job 8:13-14, Matthew 7:22-23, 1 John 5:13, 1 John 1:9, Romans 5:2, 5, Romans 8:16, Ephesians 1:13-14

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church.

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Ruth has done everything she can do. She's placed herself at Boaz's feet, trusting him with her future. But there's still a problem — another redeemer has a prior claim, and now she has to wait.

In this message by Brother Aaron Caldwell, we pick up right where Ruth 3 left off, at the threshing floor, and watch Boaz do something remarkable: he sends Ruth home with six measures of barley she did nothing to earn. Up to this point, every provision Ruth received came through labor. This is different. This is grace.

We trace how that gift is a picture of the gospel itself — that our confidence as Christians was never meant to rest on the strength of our own hands, but on the finished work of a Redeemer who will not rest until every promise is kept. And we sit with the hardest part of the text: the waiting. Ruth doesn't know how the story will end. But she knows who Boaz is. And sometimes, that's all faith has.

In this message:

• Recap: Ruth's journey from Moab to the threshing floor
• Boaz's provision without labor — grace pictured in six measures of barley
• Westminster Shorter Catechism Q.35 on sanctification
• Faithful obedience vs. resting in Christ's finished work
• The application: when God makes you wait, trust the wisdom of your Father
• God's sovereignty as a loving Father, not a distant governor
• 
  

Scripture referenced: Ruth 3:14-18, Ruth 2:7, Romans 8:32, Matthew 7:22-23, Westminster Shorter Catechism Q.35

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church. We'd love to have you join us.

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📖 Study guide and reflection questions for this passage: https://www.silvercityky.com/blog/ruth-3-14-18

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Perseverance and Counterfeit Gods | WCF 17.2-17.3

Why haven't you walked away from Christ yet? That's the question driving this class on Westminster Confession 17.2-17.3 — and this week we get practical: how do we actually persevere, together, when life hands us reasons to quit?

Brother Bryson Amyx gives an insightful take on the practicality of perseverance by looking at four counterfeit "end goals" — comfort, approval, control, and power — that quietly compete for the place Christ alone should hold in our lives. Each one promises an easier road, but each one leaves perseverance feeling pointless the moment it's tested. Using Philippians 3, Hebrews 12, and Keller's work on counterfeit gods, we talk through what it looks like to recognize our own "counterfeit cupcakes," and why perseverance isn't white-knuckled effort but repeated faith and repentance, returning again and again to the gospel.

This is also a call to community: perseverance in Scripture isn't a solo project. It's covenantal, communal, sometimes walking hand in hand and sometimes dragging a brother out of despair. Come discover what it means to chase the right telos, together.

Scripture referenced: Matthew 13:44, Matthew 6:19-21, Hebrews 12:1-2, Philippians 3:7-15

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church.

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What do you do with the person in your church who talks a big theological game but never actually does anything? In this final message in our 2 Thessalonians series, we tackle one of the most avoided topics in modern Christianity: church discipline.

Paul commands the Thessalonian church to withdraw from "busybodies" — people who claim special spiritual insight while contributing nothing and disrupting everything. We unpack why the Greek word for "idle" is actually military language for a soldier breaking rank, why "if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat" is rooted in creation itself (not capitalism), and why the modern church has largely lost the category of holy shame altogether.

This isn't a call to be harsh. It's a call to be a peacemaker instead of a peace-monger — someone who loves people enough to tell them the truth. Because a church that won't guard its own peace has nothing credible to offer a watching world that's dying for it.

In this message:

Introduction — Silver City and the Thessalonian church

The command to withdraw from the disorderly (v. 6)

Paul's own example: he worked so he wouldn't be a burden (vv. 7-9)

Busybodies, not busy: diagnosing spiritual gossip (v. 11)

Church discipline as peacemaking, not peace-mongering (vv. 14-15)

The benediction of peace — and why order isn't the enemy of love (v. 16)

Closing: it takes your hand — grace as the foundation for the work

Scripture referenced: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-18, 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, Genesis 3:19, Romans 5:1, Colossians 1:20, Romans 14:17

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church. We'd love to have you join us!

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📖 Study guide and reflection questions for this passage: https://www.silvercityky.com/blog/2-thessalonians-3-6-18

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📍Sunday School: 9:30am/ Worship 10:30am/ 115 Stone Trace Drive, Mt. Sterling, KY (Ramada Inn Conference Center)

#ChurchDiscipline #2Thessalonians #ReformedTheology #ExpositoryPreaching #BibleTeaching #Sermon #ChristianCommunity #WestminsterConfession #GospelOfGrace

Brother Bryson Amyx gives an insightful and encouraging study of the perseverance of the saints found in chapter 17 of the Westminster Confession of Faith.

08/23/2026

Pastor Zachary C. Hill

In this episode, Pastor Zach finishes out the WCF chapter convened with good works by examining what good works are not.

08/16/2026

Pastor Zachary C. Hill

Pastor Zach begins a part part teaching on what good works are and are not.