Birthdays: Susan Wages – June 17th | Jennifer Vanzandt – June 20th
DEPENDENCE UPON THE DIVINE SPIRIT
However learned, godly, and eloquent a minister may be, he is nothing with out the Holy Spirit. The bell in the steeple may be hung well, fairly fashioned, and made of the soundest metal, but it is dumb until the ringer makes it speak. And in like manner the preacher has no voice of quickening for the dead in sin, or of comfort for the living saints until the Divine Spirit Himself gives him a gracious pull, and bids him speak with power. Hence, the need of prayer for both preacher and hearers.—copied
THE BELIEVER’S POSITION
The believer is perfect in Christ; but in himself he is a poor, feeble creature, ever liable to fall. Oh, the unspeakable blessedness of having One who can manage all his affairs for him at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens; One who upholds him always by His right hand; ONE WHO WILL NEVER LET HIM GO; One who is “the same yesterday, today, and forever;” One who will bear him through all the difficulties and dangers which surround him and finally present him FAULTLESS before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. Blessed forever be the grace that has made such provision for all our need in the blood of a spotless victim and the intercession of a Divine High Priest! —Scott Richardson
PREACHING CHRIST
“We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). When we gather for worship, it is always my desire to exalt the Lord our God as He has revealed Himself in His Word and to set before us a Biblical description of ourselves. The Lord is immaculately holy and we are despicably wicked. He is pure and perfect, we are corrupt and vile. These doctrines being Biblical, and therefore undeniable, it is my responsibility to ask, and my delight to answer, these questions from Job 25:4, “How then can man be justified with God? Or, how can he be clean that is born of a woman?” The answer is that through the free grace of God and the justice-satisfying blood of Christ, believing sinners are cleansed from all their iniquities and are, right now, righteous in the sight of God. “We preach Christ and Him crucified,” and by the grace of God, I do not intend to move one hair’s breadth away from that message!—Pastor Jim Byrd
TRAMPLE YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS
When Christ entered into Jerusalem, the people spread their garments in the way. When He enters into our hearts, we pull off our own righteousness and not only lay it under Christ’s feet, but trample upon it ourselves.
—Augustus Toplady
The Lord God respected Abel and his offering (Gen. 4:4). Enoch walked with God (Gen. 5:22). Abraham was called the friend of God (James 2:23; Isa. 41:8). The Lord spoke unto Moses, face to face, as man speaks to his friend (Exod. 33:11). How could this be given the fact that God is absolutely holy and cannot commune with or even look upon sin? Weren’t Abel, Enoch, Abraham, and Moses sinners? Yes. And God cannot accept, walk in harmony with, or be a friend to anyone except based on a just ground. Upon what ground did God accept Abel, walk with Enoch, and be a friend to Abraham and Moses? As a right relationship with God has always been, is now, and will always be, it is upon the just ground of the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate Who is the Surety and Substitute, the Redeemer of His people, God’s elect. How could God accept Abel, walk with Enoch, and be a friend to Abraham and Moses, upon this ground if Christ had not yet come into the world and establish this ground through His obedience unto death in time? It was by covenant promise that God imputed righteousness to them based upon what Christ would come and accomplish in their future. There was never any doubt that Christ would redeem them and establish righteousness for them by which God had justified them and from which God gave them spiritual life. The spiritual life that caused Abel to approach God by the blood of the lamb (a type of Christ, that caused Enoch to walk with God, that caused Abraham and Moses to be reconciled to God, was (and is) the resurrection life of Christ which is the fruit of His righteousness established in His death (Rom. 5:21). How then could God have imputed righteousness and imparted spiritual life to these Old Testament sinners saved by grace? It was because “all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by us” (2 Cor. 1:20). Christ had to come in time to accomplish the redemption of His people because God chose them in Christ, made Him their Surety (imputing their sins unto Him) and justified them based on His righteousness imputed which Christ would establish for them by His death on the cross. —Pastor Bill Parker
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