BIBLE CLASS – 10:00 a.m. – “Parable of the Sower & Seed” Matthew 13:1-9 | Jim Casey
MORNING WORSHIP – 11:00 a.m –
CALL TO WORSHIP (above)
HYMN – Crown Him with Many Crowns – p. 62
READING – 1 John 1:1-10
MESSAGE – “Faithful and Just to Forgive” | 1 John 1:9 Randy Wages
CLOSING HYMN – At the Cross – p. 129
Birthdays: Richard O'Connor – Oct. 20th | Debra Riggins – Oct. 22nd Mike Lee – Oct. 24th | Jim Casey – Oct. 27th
The grace of God influences both the understanding and the affections. Warm affections without knowledge, can rise no higher than superstition; and that knowledge which does not influence the heart and affections will only make a hypocrite. –John Owen
A HYPOCRITE’S RELIGION
A hypocrite never embraces a whole Christ. He can never take up his full and everlasting rest, satisfaction, and content in the person of Christ, in the merits of Christ, in the enjoyment of Christ alone. No hypocrite did ever long and mourn after the enjoyment of Christ, as the best thing in all the world. No hypocrite did ever prize Christ for a Sanctifier as well as a Savior. No hypocrite did ever look upon Christ, or long for Christ to deliver him from the power of his sins, as much or as well as to deliver him from the wrath to come. No hypocrite can really love the person of Christ, or take satisfaction in the person of Christ. – Thomas Brooks
A WORD OF WARNING
Unbeliever, if God cannot and will not forgive the sins of penitent men without Christ taking their punishment, rest assured He will surely bring you to judgment. If, when Christ had imputed sin laid on Him, God smote Him, how will He smite you who are His enemy, and who have your own sins upon your head? God seemed at Calvary to take an oath and say, “By the blood of My Son I swear that sin must be punished!” If it is not punished in Christ for you, it will be punished in you for yourselves. —Copied
Every declaration of God to the sinner is on the principle of grace and gift, not an offer, which implies there is some capability in man to make use of the benefit offered. The offer of salvation is a denial of man’s total depravity as born in Adam’s fall, and "dead in trespasses and sins," it ignores the Gospel truth of the new birth and puts in its place man’s acceptance of the offer as the condition of divine life. -- John Hazelton
THE TRUTH AND LIFE OF SOVEREIGN GRACE
The sovereign grace of God in Christ Jesus is not only a truth we believe, it is also a life that we live. Our faith and our lives of obedience are both the fruit of our union with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. As He is our only righteousness before God, He is also the power by which we believe in and follow Him. Neither our faith nor our lives of obedience make us righteous before God. Neither do they contribute in any degree to what Christ has accomplished for us by which God declares us righteous. But God-given faith and the life of obedience evidence our union with Christ who alone is our righteousness before God. Many people confuse evidences of God’s grace with their own self-righteous standards, but we cannot give in to traditions of men which corrupt the Word of God as He guides by His Word and the power of the Holy Spirit to live as God’s dear children. And, admittedly, we always come short of the mark of perfection found only in Christ. Nevertheless, by the power of God, we “press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Php. 3:14), knowing always that even at our best we have nothing in ourselves in which to boast. Our glory is in Christ crucified and risen from the dead (Gal. 6:14). –Pastor Bill Parker
REFORMED?
I have never cared much for the term “reformed.” First of all, it is not a prominent Bible word, nor is it ever used to refer to God’s elect. They are not “reformed” but reconciled, redeemed, and regenerated. We were dead and God gave us life. Neither do I wish to be identified too much with the “reformations” of men. Most of them, though “protesting” the Roman Catholic Church, came out with far too many of the rags of Rome still clinging to them. And, I have found that many who claim to be so, also claim to have been saved under a false gospel and later became “reformed,” coming to the doctrines of grace. God’s work of grace in the salvation of His people is not a redoing of the old, a removal of faults, or an amending of what already is, but a “new creation.” The need of men in our day is not reform but rebirth! Christ said, “Ye must be born again,” born from above through that incorruptible seed of the Word of God. The term also seems to say “I've arrived.” But as Paul, “I count not myself to have apprehended...” Even as one reborn, I stand in daily need of reformation! —Pastor Gary Shepard
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