CALL TO WORSHIP

(Tune: Brethren We Have Met To Worship)

Glory, glory, I'm forgiven;

All my sins are washed away.

Christ, by His great blood atonement,

All my sin has put away.

Sin imputed to my Savior,

When He died upon the tree

As the Substitute for sinners,

God will not impute to me.

Glory, glory, I'm accepted,

Robed in Christ own righteousness;

I'm a child, an heir of heaven,

Saved by God's almighty grace.

Christ's obedience to the Father

Is imputed now to me;

In God's sight I'm pure and holy,

He declares me so to be.

Glory, glory, I'll not perish,

In Christ's hands I am secure;

He who saved me, sure, will keep me;

By God's grace I shall endure.

This is not a vain presumption;

I just take Him at His word;

Christ has sworn, "They shall not perish

Who believe on Me their Lord."

Today’s Speaker: Brother Mark Pannell will conduct the 11:00 am service today. Pray for him as he delivers God’s word.

Television Broadcast: Our Reign of Grace Television program is being broadcast on WFXL Fox 31, Channel 4. The program will air every Sunday morning at 11 AM. Pray that God will use it for His glory.

Radio Broadcast: Sunday morning at 9:30am on 98.7 FM –WISK. To hear sermons on your computer click on www.americusradio.com

Web Sites: Visit our newly designed web site at: www.rofgrace.com Also visit us at: www.Sermonaudio.com\reignofgrace

Birthdays: Mike Lee – Oct. 24^th , Jim Casey – Oct. 27^th

“WITHOUT SPOT”

Many times in the descriptions of the various sacrifices and offerings in the Old Testament we read these words “without spot.” Here is one of many:

“And in the beginnings of your months ye shall offer a burnt offering unto the LORD; two young bullocks, and one ram, seven lambs of the first year without spot;” (Nu 28:11)

These offerings were all pictures and types of the Lord Jesus who was the one sacrifice for sins forever. (Heb. 10:12) He is not an offer to men but an offering for His people. By that one offering He perfected forever them that are sanctified, set apart in Him, by God’s sovereign choice of grace. (Heb. 10:14) This was all according to God’s will through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Heb. 10:10) Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many. (Heb. 9:28) How could He do this and how could the thrice holy God accept His sacrifice? Because He offered Himself without spot to God. “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God,purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:14) One instant He is the Lamb without spot or blemish and the next instant He is the Lamb slain! Why? Because the wages of our sin is death! (Rom. 6:23) One minute He is the only One acceptable to pay that debt; the next minute He is the One who has paid it! The soul that sinneth shall surely die (Ezek. 18:4, 20) but a sinner cannot die for a sinner. Oh, but He who knew no sin can and He did. “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:” (1Pe 1:18-19) It is because of His sinless offering offered to God in the place of sinners that Paul says to believing sinners that Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it “That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.” (Eph. 5:27) “What a wonderful Savior is Jesus my Lord…”

--- Gary Shepard

For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. (Ro 5:19)

To say that the just God would deal with one representative man in one way and the Other in another way is to begin down a slippery slope to great error. If Adam was made a sinner by a just God’s legally accounting him so, then Christ the Last Adam was made sin by God legally accounting Him so. In Adam all die, in Christ all are made alive. There is undoubtedly a great difference in the two representative men but a difference in Greek words used does not make a change in the principles of representation and substitution. Righteousness IS a matter of justice and we are made the righteousness of God "in Christ." Thank God He is a just God and thus a righteous Savior!

--- Gary Shepard

God’s Everlasting Love

God’s love to his Son, as a Mediator, is an everlasting love; Thou lovedst me, says Christ (John 17:24), before the foundation of the world. This love was a love of complacency and delight; for Christ as Mediator, was from everlasting, then by him, that is, the Father (Prov. 8:30), as one brought up with him, and was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him. Now God loves his elect with the same love he loves his Son as Mediator. Hence Christ prays for the open and manifest union between him and his people; That says he (John 17:23), the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. If God therefore has loved his Son, as Mediator, from everlasting, with a love of complacency and delight, and he has loved his elect from everlasting with the same love he has loved him, then he must have loved his elect from everlasting with a love of complacency and delight: and, indeed how can it otherwise be, since the elect were always in Christ their Head, in whom they were chosen before the foundation of the world? And they could not be considered in him but as righteous persons, through his righteousness, with which God is always well pleased, because by it the law is magnified, and made honorable; and so Christ is often said to be God’s beloved Son, in whom not with whom, he is well pleased (Matthew 3:17; 2 Pet. 1:17); which designs not his person only singly, but all the elect, as considered in him, who together with Christ, are the objects of God’s eternal delight and pleasure.

It is certain that Jesus Christ has, from everlasting, loved the elect with a love of complacency and delight; for from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was, when there were no depths nor fountains, before the mountains and hills were brought into being, while as yet God had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world, Christ’s delights were with the sons of men" (Prov. 8:31). The word in the Hebrew rendered delights, is expressive of the most intimate, sweet, ravishing delight and pleasure; and it being not only in the plural number, but also having its radical letters, especially its two first radical letters, doubled, which, in the Hebrew language, increases the signification of the word; it sets forth, that exceeding great delight and pleasure which Christ had in his people from everlasting; nay, he not only took delight in the persons of the elect, as they were presented to him in the glass of his Father’s purposes and decrees, but took pleasure also in the fore-views of the very spots of ground where he knew his people would dwell: and hence he says, that he was rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth (Prov. 8:31). Now why God the Father should not, from everlasting, love the elect with the same love his son did, I know not.