September 30, 2012
Let us not forget to pray for our brethren who are going through trials and sickness.
Our Everlasting God
From everlasting to everlasting
Thou art God Who has created all things.
Your Kingdom eternal; Your Holiness pure;
Your purpose eternal; your mercy is sure.
From everlasting to everlasting.
Salvation is in our God and King.
His grace is eternal secured by His Son;
Eternal life given to His chosen ones.
From everlasting to everlasting
The Lord Jehovah has made sure all things.
The eternal gospel is preached to His own.
He gathers His chosen around His great throne
By Gary Spreacker Tune: ‘O Worship the King’ Pg, 1
There are two things that clearly reveal that Christ not only had our sins laid on Him but that He also put them away as He hung there crucified on the cross. First, the separation that He endured: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” This is what sin requires, separation from God. The other thing is the fact that He died! “The wages of sin is death.” Sin brings forth death. It is by these two things that we know that He was made sin for us and we are therefore made the righteousness of God in Him. This is why the preaching of the cross is the wisdom of God’s grace to those who are being saved!
- Pastor Gary Shepard
How Lost Were We?
How utterly abominable and wicked we must be, that nothing less than God coming down and taking unto Himself human flesh, and "being made in the likeness of sinful flesh", so that He would have a body in which He could suffer death on the cross.
How awful sin must be, and how horribly sinful we must be, that Christ Jesus our Lord must be the one “Who his own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24), and “pour out his soul an offering for sin”. Sin is indeed exceeding sinful that it would take such a sacrifice.
How utterly lost, helpless, and without any ability to better ourselves before an infinitely holy and righteous God we must be, that Christ, God's dear Son would take our place before His Holy Father on the cursed tree and there bear what I could not bear, which is the infinite righteous wrath and justice of God against us and our sin.
By his suffering in our stead, He consumed the wrath of God which was against us, and he satisfied God's infinitely righteous justice for us. Yet after Christ, having done all this in our room and stead, we are totally unable to see these things, or to know these blessed truths, or even care about them unless we are born again! Our carnal minds were enmity against God, we were enemies in our minds by wicked works, and so how are our minds changed from enmity and our wills brought into subjection to God?
It will take omnipotent power to make us willing to be saved; we must be drawn to God because we are unwilling to come. We must be given new hearts, new wills, new minds, new desires, new loves, and new natures if we are to enter the kingdom of God. None of these things can we do for ourselves. But blessed be God, He loved us and gave His Son for us, and with him he freely gives all things, he sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts and we cry Abba Father. Our gracious God, in making his Son’s death effectual to us, makes us new creatures In Christ. He brings into existence a new man. It is this new man that is able to see, to believe, and to walk and commune with God in Christ. - Pastor
HE NEVER CHANGES
Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and forever. I am so thankful that as I grow older and things change, inside and out, that there is one who never changes.
1. His love never changes with time, for he loved me with an everlasting love that knows no change.
2. His power never changes. He is just as able to keep me from falling today as when I first began.
3. His Word never changes: “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?” (Numbers 23:19) Has he not magnified his word above his name?
4. His election of me shall never change. He will never cast off those whom he has chosen, for they will never do anything that he did not know about and has not already taken care of.
5. The Power of His Blood shall never change. It still cleanses from all sin. No matter how deep the stain has gone, his blood washes it away. 6. His Sacrifice will never change; it will never lose its effectiveness because it is always fresh in the midst of the Throne of God: “And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain,…” (Revelation 5:6) We have a living sacrifice standing in the midst of the Throne of God.
When we rise out of our beds in the morning and go through our changes, just remember that there is one who remains the same yesterday, today and forever: The Rock Christ Jesus.
- Pastor John Chapman