THANK YOU for all of the work that went into our special meeting last week. Our Lord and Savior was glorified in preaching so we had a time of true worship. Thank you to our ladies for all of the good food we enjoyed during our times of fellowship. Thanks for all of your efforts to keep the building clean and comfortable for everyone. If you cannot make it to the Bible classes, please remain silent in the vestibule until the classes are finished. We have two classes of children and a class of adults in rooms connected to the vestibule who don’t need any distractions.
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
We will have a church dinner after the service on Sunday, May 17th to celebrate the high school graduation of Charity Collins.
We will have a church dinner after the service on Sunday May 24th to celebrate the 100th birthday of Norma Clement.
Vacation Bible School for ages 4 through high school will be held from June 10-12 from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Please be in prayer for our teachers as they prepare and our children who will attend.
The greatness of God and His grace is seen most clearly when we see that God is gracious to the most undeserving sinners. Oh God make me see how unworthy I am so I can be an object of Your grace!
PARDON FOR SIN
When a president leaves office, he frequently pardons prisoners. Those prisoners are set free from prison, but those former prisoners remain guilty. The president of the United States has power to set a guilty prisoner free from prison, but he does not have the power to make that prisoner not guilty. Society must look on that former prisoner as a free man but everyone knows he is really still guilty.
GOD DOES NOT PARDON SIN LIKE THE PRESIDENT PARDONS PRISONERS. God is holy. God ALWAYS punishes sin.
God “will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex. 34:7). So when God pardons sin, God removes the guilt of sin through the sacrifice of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The guilt of the sin of all of God’s elect was charged to Christ our Substitute. The blood of Christ removed the guilt of the sin of His people. In Christ we stand NOT GUILTY. The Father does not wink at the sin of His people and accept them in spite of their sin. The Father accepts His elect in Christ because in Christ they have no sin! “And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me” (Jer 33:8).
GRACE IN ACTION
God’s grace saves. That means more than deliverance from hell – although that is a great blessing. There are many things grace does. Among those things are how it affects our view of ourselves and how it affects our view of others. Grace humbles us in our view of self. When you believe grace you really believe you are the chief of sinners. And grace makes us esteem others as better then ourselves, and grace causes us to forgive others. If we are around each other for any time at all, we are going to need other’s forgiveness. “Be ye kind, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32). When a man cannot truly forgive from his heart, he has never experienced the grace of God.
Pastor Todd Nibert
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