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
Web Sites: Visit our newly designed web site at: www.rofgrace.com
When we look at the life of Jacob, we see a sinner who had many prob-lems due to his own sinful ways. If we are honest, we can all identify with Jacob in his sin. But when we study Jacob’s life, we find in him something amazing. It had nothing to do with any supposed goodness or righteousness within himself. In the matter of God saving Jacob, it was said of Jacob and Esau, “For the chil-dren being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that cal-leth;” (Rom. 9:11). Jacob’s salvation was all due to the sovereign grace, love, and mercy of God in Christ.
Amidst all of his sin and problems, Jacob had a God-given longing to seek the LORD. Someone may ask, ―Why didn’t God give this same longing to Esau?‖ God does not give us any reason for His sovereign choice. God left Esau to his own desires and devices, and God was just to do so. If God had left Jacob to himself, he would have been no better off than Esau. Why didn’t God let both perish in their sins? It is because He is a God of mercy and grace who has pur-posed to glorify Himself in the salvation of “a remnant according to the election of grace” (Rom. 11:5). The question we must consider is this – DO WE HAVE A GOD-GIVEN LONGING TO SEEK THE LORD? All who seek the LORD shall find Him. And all who find Him can identify with Jacob, not only in his sin-fulness, but also in the grace and mercy of God that Jacob found in Christ – “For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not con-sumed” (Mal 3:6).
--- Pastor Bill Parker
In the Old Testament, the man who brought a sin offering before the Lord was saying, in effect, “I am a sinner and I must have my sin taken away for I am guilty in the sight of God. So I put my hand upon this animal, which is about to die, thereby confessing and transferring my sin to it as my substitute” (Lev 4:29). Think about it, many a feeble and diseased hand was laid on the head of the animal which was to be offered, but this neither altered the character of the sacrifice, nor made it less powerful. In addition, the priest would not turn the sinner away because he was weak and without strength nor would the sacrificial animal be refused because of some deficiency in the worshipper. The burnt offering was still the burnt offering and even the weakest touch established the connection between the worshipper and his substitute (Rom 5:6). As for us, since God is righteous and just (Jeremiah 23:6) and we by nature are not and should, therefore, be condemned (Ps 109:7). But we have a substitute, the Lord Jesus, on whom we can lay our hand. Often, however, our faith lacks strength but, in His justice, the Father has forgiven us not because of the perfection of our faith but because of the perfection of our sin offering, the Christ of God.
--- Miles McKee
"I WAS BEFORE"
Saul of Tarsus was a moral man, a man with an excellent public record, a Pharisee and more. He was also a religious man, highly esteemed among his peers and a religious teacher taught by the greatest teacher of his day, Gamaliel. But after God was pleased to reveal His Son in Him, he made this confession: "Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief." (1 Timothy 1:13) Think about it, the very things men and women count as modern Christianity, the very professions they cling to and the very things most dare not question, he called blasphemy and unbelief! He was at that time an unbeliever. His preaching, religious activity and the righteousness he thought he had established before God was blasphemy. When did he find out what he was before? AFTER Christ stopped him on the road to Damascus and caused him to know the truth about who He was! Only in the "after" of regeneration, faith and being brought to the knowledge of the truth. How do men find out who Christ is? By the Spirit of truth taking the things of Christ and showing them to them! When He shows us in the gospel who Christ really is by showing us there what Christ did. What did Christ do? He, by His life and death on the cross, saved His people from their sins! When the Spirit of God revealed Christ to me a lost preacher years ago, He did so by teaching me what the scriptures actually say about His glorious Person and accomplished work. I was brought from one of the ways of death to the way of life, righteousness and peace in Christ. When I looked back and weighed what I believed before that, my view of God and the work of Christ before that, I too had to confess, "I was before a blasphemer.." Like Paul and the Ephesian believers, I trusted Christ "after I heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation." (Eph. 1:13) If there never was a before, then there's not an after! The word of truth is not "how to be saved" but rather "the gospel of your salvation." How that Christ saved you all by Himself through His sufferings and death, all by Himself and for His glory! His blood shed for me and His righteousness imputed to me is all my salvation. His life laid down is my hope, not my life lived for Him! We see what we were before, lost blasphemers, when God is pleased to open our eyes to the truth!
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