Acts 9: Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did.
Tabitha made coats and garments. She gave them to the poor in the church. The works she did glorified the work Christ did for her.
When Christ obeyed God's law in honesty, when he faithfully answered to the law's justice, he made God just in justifying Tabitha. When the Spirit of the Lord filled Tabitha, the new Tabitha was born to behold that Christ had made a coat of perfect righteousness and freely clothed her in his tapestry of fine linen made particularly for her. Being made a partaker of Christ's divine nature, being created in him in righteousness and true holiness, recreated after the image of God, the Holy Spirit filled Tabitha full of good. Had the triune God only performed a work of grace for her, and not in her, nothing about Tabitha could have ever been called good. But read what the God of all Truth says of her, "This woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did" (v39.) What a work of our Lord in taking worthless lumps of clay and filling them so that he righteously describes them as good.
Just as her Lord Jesus had made a garment and clothed her, so Tabitha made coats and garments and clothed the poor widows at Joppa. It may seem like an insignificant act to some, but this simple foreordained work of providing a coat for a saint too poor to provide for herself is one of the very reasons God created Tabitha in Christ Jesus. God never ordained a work for his saints to perform in order to glorify his saints but to glorify Christ who Sanctifieth.
Our Lord Jesus Christ graciously robes his saints in perfect righteousness because of what he performed for us and he also provides our every need in this world by what he does in us. Tabitha could have entered into a cold, heartless, mental assent of the legal condition which Christ worked for his people, but without Christ filling her full of his good she would have never known faith in God and love for her brethren. Without the Lord filling her with a spirit of grace, her treatment of her brethren would have been as systematically cold as her doctrine. May God fill our vessels with his Spirit that our most unnoticed, insignificant acts might glorify our Lord Jesus Christ and that he might use us to provide for the brethren whom he has given us a heart to truly love.
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LOCATION & TELEPHONE Rocky Hill Firehouse, 2nd floor 150 Washington Street, Rocky Hill, NJ, 08553 Pastor's Telephone: 615-513-4464
SCHEDULE OF SERVICES Sunday 10 AM Bible Class 11 AM Morning Worship Thursday 7:00 PM Mid-week Service (The first Sunday of each month, morning worship begins at 10am followed by observing the Lord's Table. Afterwards we have lunch together.)
NOTE: We especially welcome our friends who are so consistently listening, reading and commenting from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. For those who might like to visit us without missing their regular services, our mid-week worship service is on Thursday night at 7:00 pm. We welcome you to join us in worship of the Lord our Righteousness.
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