We welcome Kevin Thacker and his family to the worship service today. They attend Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Ewing, NJ., where Brother Clay Curtis pastors. Kevin will be bringing the lesson in the Bible Class this morning. Pastor Don Fortner of Grace Baptist Church of Danville, KY will be here to bring the message to us on Wednesday, June 20th.
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. Deut. 6:7
One of the most important things we can do both as parents and as a church body is to teach our children the gospel every day, all through the year, because the scriptures are able to make them wise unto salvation. (II Timothy 3:15)
Bible School week is special because that is a time devoted entirely to teaching our children. I want to give a special thank you to our teachers (who taught this week and every week in the Bible classes) and the volunteers who worked so conscientiously to make a good and profitable week for our young people. May our Lord be pleased to bless it to their eternal benefit.
TOTAL DEPRAVITY
The total depravity of man is so plainly taught in scripture that the only way the truth of it can be denied is by willful ignorance. Man by nature is willing to be ignorant of our total depravity because total depravity means that we are not good, but evil, so there is nothing good we can do to earn salvation. Total depravity means we cannot do anything to get God to save us. Total depravity means that we are completely dependent on God to save us by His sovereign grace. The first thing God teaches everyone He saves is that they are totally depraved and completely sinful. The only person who will beg God for mercy is someone who has been taught they are totally depraved so they cannot help themselves.
The job of God’s preacher is to preach Christ. Men will quit arguing about total depravity and their ability to make a decision for Jesus if the Lord ever gives them a glimpse of Christ by faith. This was Job’s experience. “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.
Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6) This was Isaiah’s experience.
“Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” (Isaiah 6:5) May the Lord be pleased by His grace to make this our experience!
Pastor
When I hear it said, “Such and such do not believe the doctrines of sovereign grace and substitution, but they love the Lord and are saved,” I wonder and ask, “What then was the Bible written for?” Is it no infallible expression of the mind of GOD? Is it no standard of Truth? Are we to believe what appeals to us and deny the rest? God forbid! God’s Word declares the oneness of Truth and condemns every departure from the Truth as a direct attack on God Himself! Do not tell me that a man’s heart is right with God when his head contains a creed of error and denies the Person and Work of the Redeemer.
Horatius Bonar
“I would not give a penny for your love to the truth if it is not accompanied with a hearty hatred of error.”
Charles H. Spurgeon