MESSAGE – The Word of Fellowship and Love – John 19:25-27
Birthdays: Mason Flynn – May 16th
NEWS ABOUT LIVE-STREAMING
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“YEA LORD, THOU KNOWEST”
What a consoling, peace-giving and comforting thought it is for God’s elect to know that God will never look at us or reject us based on what men think or say of us! He will never bless us or withhold blessing from us because of the opinions of others. He will never deal with us based on what people think but on what He knows us to be in the Lord Jesus Christ. He loves us with an everlasting and immutable love. He knows everything there is to know about us and nothing ever surprises Him. He accepts us in His Beloved Son and has made us the very “righteousness of God” in Him. Though they see a multitude of sin on us, He sees no sin in us. Christ our Surety has made an end of our sin by the sacrifice of Himself, bearing it all away in His body on the tree. He knows in Whom we have believed and what we believe, for He alone has given us understanding and faith. Let men sit in judgment of us, but our God has already judged us in Christ. Let them separate from us, but He will never leave or forsake us. Let them look upon us with suspicion, but He thinks no evil of us. Though we are weak, like Peter we can say, “Lord, you know. You know I love you.”
—Pastor Gary Shepard
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The Apostle Paul wrote, "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" (2 Cor. 11:3). Paul's desire for His hearers was that they, as justified sinners, be established in grace, rejoicing in Christ Jesus, with no confidence in the flesh. In order to do this, he taught that it was necessary for believers to set our minds and affections upon Christ and the simplicity which is found only in Him. What is this simplicity? It is salvation, from regeneration to final glorification, conditioned solely upon Christ and His righteousness imputed, with no contribution from our best obedience as to the ground of salvation. This is what our looking to and resting in Christ is about. This is what it is to give Him all the glory and the pre-eminence in our salvation and in our lives. Our doctrine, our practices, our methods should aim towards this simplicity so that we continually say, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal. 6:14). —Pastor Bill Parker
RELIGIOUS BAKERS
"Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees" (Matthew 16:6).We are familiar with leaven which, when added to dough, causes expansion of the batter. It has an altering or transforming influence on the mixture, making it rise. When someone prepares bread, they don’t bake leaven alone – who in their right mind would eat that? Rather, a small amount of leaven must be added to dough, in a skillful way, and so a delicious product is created. When our Lord warned of "the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees,"He was referring to their erroneous teaching. "How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? Then understood they how that He bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees" (vv. 11-12). He was warning His disciples of the corrupt message of the leaders of Judaism. What did these religious bakers do? They subtly mixed a little error with Biblical truths. They did not openly deny the Word of God, for then their doctrine would not have been received, but they cleverly added a small amount of leaven to the gospel so that their unsuspecting hearers would receive the altered teachings.
Satan has many religious bakers today, and they are proficient in blending leaven with truth so as to make their false gospel palatable to the natural man. Rarely do they oppose the scriptures outright, else most would refuse their doctrine. What they do is blend a small amount of error with the Word of God. They talk about salvation by divine grace, but make salvation hinge upon man’s decision or works. They declare the sacrifice of Christ, but make the success of that sacrifice rest upon the belief or repentance of the sinner. They preach justification by faith, but make man’s faith to be the cause, the reason or the basis for justification, rather than the result, the effect, or the evidence of justification. They preach the necessity of the new birth by the Holy Spirit and then make the new birth to be the result of man’s free-will. In short, they always set forth the salvation of sinners as being dependent upon something man must contribute, rather than solely conditioned upon the blood and righteousness of Christ. How much leaven must be added by a religious baker to transform the true gospel into a false gospel? "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump" (Galatians 5:9).