We will serve the LORD’S SUPPER following the messages today. All believers are invited to participate in this blessed memorial ordinance given by our Lord to His church to remember the merits of His blood and righteousness for our complete salvation. After all the worship services, we will serve lunch in the back. All of you are invited to eat with us and enjoy a time of fellowship.
ONE HARMONIOUS GOSPEL
Take the doctrines of grace isolated from the Person of Christ; they are scattered limbs. There is no beauty in them alone. But view the truth of the Gospel in connection with the Person and work of the Son of God, what a heavenly light, what a divine glory is cast upon every truth connected with His sacred Person, atoning blood, finished work, and dying love! This is the way to receive the Gospel: not as a thing of shreds and patches, a mere collection or scheme of certain doctrines floating up and down God’s Word, as waifs and strays from a stranded ship; but as ONE HARMONIOUS GOSPEL, full of grace, mercy, and truth, impregnated with divine blessedness, and all connected with, all springing out of the Person of the God-Man. –J.C. Philpot
THE STRAIT AND NARROW WAY
"Strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." (Matthew 7:14) The way of salvation is as broad as Christ and as narrow as Christ. It shuts the door of hope to everyone except those who are brought by God to seek Him based on the merits of the shed blood and imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit opens the way at this very point. It commands sinner, "Be ye reconciled unto God based on the merits of Christ's blood and righteousness alone, and forsake yourself and all that you believed before would recommend and other sinners unto God.” Any and every other way is the broad way that leads to eternal destruction. Christ and His finished work of redemption for His people is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). Few find it because men by nature do not desire this way and refuse to come this way. But HE is the only way! –Pastor Bill Parker
THE DOCTRINES OF SOVEREIGN GRACE ARE THE GOSPEL
Those who view the doctrines of God’s free and sovereign grace in the salvation of sinners in and by the Lord Jesus Christ and based on His righteousness imputed alone as merely a higher knowledge for Christians to attain have never been brought by God to true faith and true repentance. There is only one God, one Savior, and one way of salvation. The true Gospel presupposes the truths of God’s sovereignty and holiness, of man’s sinfulness and depravity, and of the glorious Person and successful redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The god who men claim will save them based on conditions man meets out of his own goodness is an idol. The savior who died for multitudes who perish because they will not cooperate is a counterfeit. The spirit who tries to persuade men to believe but who does not give them spiritual life in the new birth and convince them powerfully and invincibly of these truths is not the Holy Spirit. How can we say such radical things about professing Christians? It is because of the Bible wherein we find God’s revealed truth of salvation by His grace in Christ. The god of false Christianity and the God of the Bible are not the same. The savior who merely tries to save but either will not or cannot unless sinners let him and the true Savior, Christ Jesus are not the same. The spirit who merely tries to draw men but either will not or cannot convince them of sin, righteousness, and judgment and the Holy Spirit are not the same. Again, how can we say such things? These are the teachings God’s Word. –Pastor Bill Parker
“While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). I do not boast of being a sinner and all that the word includes. It certainly brings great sorrow to my heart knowing that I am by nature a rebel and a criminal against the most high God. But I do rejoice that Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners. He lived in this world as the perfect Man for sinners. He died a justice-satisfying death to redeem sinners from the curse of the law. He reconciled sinners to God by His blood. He arose for sinners because He had accomplished our justification. He ascended back to glory and ever lives to make intercession for sinners. Someday He will come again to receive ransomed sinners unto Himself. Am I a sinner? Yes, but I will not despair about that, for I am a sinner SAVED BY GRACE.
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