Bible Study: “The Cost of Redemption” –II Samuel 24
Today’s Speaker: Brother Randy Wages 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. To hear sermons on your computer click on www.americusradio.com
It is no wonder that the religious voices of our day speak of a "grace" that is not very amazing at all. It is because the true condition of all people by nature is denied. In Romans 5, the apostle Paul speaks of abundant and abounding grace. He tells of the true grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ as it meets the true condition and need of sinful men. What is the true condition that grace meets? Grace meets those who are "without strength." (vs.6) They have no ability to save themselves, no ability to perform works of perfect righteousness and no ability to come to Christ that they might have life. Grace meets those who are "ungodly." (vs.6) They are "without God" and therefore without hope in this world. They do not love God, desire God, serve God, worship God, praise God, believe God, come to God or submit to God. They are ungodly! Grace meets those who are "sinners." (vs.8) Those who must be saved by sovereign grace in Christ are those who are sinners by nature, their very mind being enmity against God; sinners by birth, by practice and especially sinners by proxy in Adam, their representative. By him, sin entered in because all sinned in him. Then, grace meets those who are "enemies" to God. (vs.10) They are rebels against the throne of His glory and dominion, defying His rule and government and defiling His kingdom. They are enemies in their "minds,” trust their own “wicked works.” Their friendship with the world makes them the enemies of God. The truth is, every person saved by grace is all of these things: without strength, ungodly, a sinner and an enemy! Now grace that can save such as these must be "marvelous grace!" This grace comes to these sinners through the "obedience of one," Jesus Christ. By His obedience "many are made righteous." This obedience is His obedience unto death! Because grace must "reign through righteousness," Christ satisfied the claims of God's holy justice on their behalf and now God can, on the basis of Christ's blood and righteousness, show grace to them as a just God and a Savior. All the race fell in sin. The law entered and sin abounded. But to those who are the objects of God's grace in Christ, "where sin abounded, grace did MUCH MORE ABOUND! Amazing grace it is to each one who has been saved by it. Amazing grace is righteous grace that is in Christ crucified!
Gary Shepard
THE DOCTRINE OF PREDETERMINATION
When I consider the absolute independency of God, and the necessary total dependence of all created things on Him, their first cause, I cannot help standing astonished at the pride of impotent, degenerate man, who is so prone to consider himself as a being possessed of sovereign freedom, and invested with a power of self-salvation, able, he imagines, to counteract the designs even of infinite wisdom, and to defeat the agency of Omnipotence itself. "Ye shall be as gods," said the tempter to Eve in paradise; and "ye are as gods" says the same tempter to her apostate sons. One would be apt to think that a suggestion so demonstrably false and flattering, a suggestion the very reverse of what we feel to be our state, a suggestion alike contrary to Scripture and reason, to fact and experience, could never meet with the smallest degree of credit. And yet, because it so exactly coincides with the natural haughtiness of the human heart, men not only admit, but even relish the deception, and fondly incline to believe that the father of lies does, in this instance at least, speak truth. The Scripture doctrine of predetermination lays the axe to the very root of this potent delusion. It assures us that all things are of God; that all our times and all events are in His hand.
Augustus Toplady
GOD’S HUMBLING GRACE IN CHRIST
For any who are under the false illusion that they are somehow growing in perfection and holiness, consider carefully the following excerpt taken from a letter by John Newton (preacher and author of the hymn, “Amazing Grace”) to a friend, written on Nov. 23, 1774. “I have no idea of any permanent state in this life, that shall make my experience cease to be a state of warfare and humiliation. At my first setting out, indeed, I thought to be better, and to feel myself better, from year to year. I expected, by degrees, to attain everything that I then comprised in my idea of a saint. I thought my grain of grace, by much diligence and careful improvement, would, in time, amount to a pound. That pound, in a farther space of time, to a talent, and then I hoped to increase from one talent to many, so that supposing the Lord should spare me a competent number of years, I pleased myself with the thoughts of dying rich. But, alas! These golden expectations have been like South Sea dreams. I have lived hitherto a poor sinner, and I believe I shall die one. Have I then gained nothing by waiting upon the Lord? Yes, I have gained that which proofs of the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of my heart, as I hope, by the Lord’s blessing, have, in some measure, taught me to know what I mean, when I say, ‘Behold, I am vile!’ In connection with this, I have gained such experience of the wisdom, power, and compassion of my Redeemer, the need, the worth of His blood, righteousness, ascension, and intercession, the glory that He displays in pardoning iniquity and sin, and passing by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage, that my soul cannot but cry out, “Who is a God like unto Thee?’”
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