Hymns for service: Blessed Assurance – p. 255 Amazing Grace – p. 236
A child of God is like a person in a beautiful palace. If there is light in it, he sees the splendid objects around him and enjoys them; but if the light is removed, he is nevertheless in the palace still, and surrounded with the same splendid objects as before, though he cannot see them. So, though the believer’s frames and sensible comforts may have their ebbs and flows, his state, Godward, is invariably the same. – Augustus Toplady
A BELIEVER’S ASSURANCE IN CHRIST
“Although my house be not so with God; yet He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although He make it not to grow” (2 Samuel 23:5). King David knew his own sinfulness and impotence to save himself. He knew the depravity of all men by nature and the impossibility of any person being and made right with God by their works. He knew the sad state of his earthly family and kingdom, yet he expressed here an assurance of salvation and eternal life for himself. How could he be so sure and not be presumptuous or self-righteous? It was because of the “everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure.” This is the everlasting covenant of God’s grace which was set in order by Him before the foundation of the world. It was a sure covenant because the Lord Jesus Christ was (and is) the Surety of the covenant. All of its requirements, conditions, and demands were placed upon Christ, not upon David or any other sinful human being. God’s elect are certain to be saved because all the promises and blessings of this covenant are in Christ (2 Cor. 1:20; Eph. 1:3). This is the Gospel covenant made sure by the blood of Christ whereby He paid the entire debt of the sins of His people owed to God’s justice. His righteousness is the ground of the certainty of the salvation of all God’s chosen people. –Pastor Bill Parker
Well may the believer say of the mocking world, Let them laugh, let them rage; let them, if they please, point at me for a fool as I walk the streets; if I do but take up the Bible, or run over in my mind the inventory of the blessings with which the Lord has enriched me, I have sufficient amends. Jesus is mine. In Him I have wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, an interest in all the promises and in all the perfections of God. He will guide me by His counsel, support me by His power, comfort me with His presence while I am here and afterwards, when flesh and heart fail, He will receive me up to His glory. Let [the scoffers] say what they will, they shall not dispute or laugh us out of our spiritual senses. —John Newton
GLORYING IN THE CROSS
“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Galatians 6:14). For his own part, the apostle was determined to glory (boast) in nothing save the cross of Christ. He had gone out to Him without the camp, bearing His reproach, and like Moses, he counted the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. The cross is put here for the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God upon the cross. This is the foundation which God hath laid in Sion for the hope of the guilty. His own self bare the sins of His people in His own body on the tree; they are justified by His blood, redeemed from the curse; and upon this, and this alone, believers rest their hope. They do not glory in any real or fancied superiority over others. They behold the glory of the Lord shining in the face of Jesus Christ. Through the rent vail of the Redeemer’s flesh, they draw near to their covenant God, seated on a throne of grace; and, beholding the perfection of the sacrifice offered on Calvary, and arrayed in their Redeemer’s everlasting righteousness, they challenge the universe to lay anything to their charge. – Copied
“Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.” (Romans 8:33
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