May 30, 2010

Bible Study: “Glorious Reconciliation” – II Samuel 19:1-15

Today’s Speaker: Brother Jim Casey 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. You can also hear the sermons on your computer. Just click on www.americusradio.com

Birthdays: Alex Wages – June 1st.

Why I preach the Righteousness of Christ

When people ask me why I preach the righteousness of Christ so much, I answer it is because God must be glorified, Christ must be exalted, all boasting must be excluded in ourselves, and we must be encouraged to persevere and obey with the absolute certainties of God's grace. Nothing else will accomplish all this but the preaching of Christ and His righteousness as the only ground of the whole of salvation. The main issue in salvation is the glory of God. The main issue in the glory of God is the righteousness of Christ by which God is enabled to be both a just God and a Savior. This is God's redemptive glory (Isa. 45:21-22), and this is where Christ is exalted and given the pre-eminence as Lord of all (2 Cor. 4:6).
Whenever we preach or teach any subject from the Bible, this message of grace is the very thing God the Holy Spirit uses to empower the truth for the salvation of sinners and the edification of God's people. Without it, the message simply blends in with the rest of false religion in its moral pep talks and psychological babbling (Matt. 5:13-16). Without this message of grace, Christ and His righteousness as the only ground of salvation, the salt loses its savor and is good for nothing but to be cast out. Think about this seriously. There are many other things in the Bible we need to hear, learn, and practice, but all things in the Bible are to be preached in light of this Gospel (Rom. 1:16-17). Without this, there is no Gospel.

Bill Parker

FAITH

Faith is the evidence and manifestation of justification, and therefore justification must be before it; "Faith is the evidence of things not seen", #Heb 11:1 but it is not the evidence of that which as yet is not; what it is an evidence of, must be, and it must exist before it. The "righteousness of God", of the God-man and mediator Jesus Christ, "is revealed from faith to faith", in the everlasting gospel, #Ro 1:17 and therefore must be before it is revealed, and before faith, to which it is revealed: faith is that grace whereby a soul, having seen its guilt, and its want of righteousness, beholds, in the light of the divine Spirit, a complete righteousness in Christ, renounces its own, lays hold off that, puts it on as a garment, rejoices in it, and glories of it; the Spirit of God witnessing to his spirit, that he is a justified person; and so he is evidently and declaratively "justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God", #1Co 6:11.

John Gill

“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16).

As believers, we should never be ashamed of this glorious message that God has committed to us to proclaim to lost sinners. The reason we should not be ashamed of it is because it is the ONLY MEANS God will use to call His elect children to rest in Christ as “the LORD our Righteousness.” Paul calls it “the power (in the Greek the word is dunamis, from which we get the word dynamite) of God UNTO salvation.” The reason it is so powerful is because of what it reveals – “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith” (Rom. 1:17). In the preaching of the Gospel, God’s servants declare the ONLY RIGHTEOUSNESS God accepted to justify sinners. That RIGHTEOUSNESS was worked out by the perfect life and obedient death at Calvary of God’s appointed servant, the Lord Jesus Christ – “He shall see of the travail of HIS soul, and shall be satisfied: by HIS knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many; for HE shall bear their iniquities” (Isa. 53:11). If we do not preach out this RIGHTEOUSNESS as the sinner’s ONLY HOPE of salvation every time we speak for God, we should be ashamed of it because we have not proclaimed the Gospel. God help us to proclaim the clear, simple message of Christ and Him crucified every time God gives us the opportunity.