March 23, 2014

We will take the Lords Table tonight this blessed ordinance is for believers.

See the Table Spread Before You

See the Table spread before you, See the feast of Bread and Wine,
These are emblems of the Savior, Tokens of His love Divine.
Bread that's broken in His body, Crushed beneath the wrath of God,
Wine poured out is a reminder, Of the Savior's precious blood.

Children of our God remember, How He bought your soul and mine,
In remembrance of the Savior, eat the bread and drink the wine.
Jesus came, the God incarnate, To fulfill God's Holy Law,
On the cross He made atonement, and retrieved us from the fall.

Let us ne'er forget the promise Jesus made to come again,
Soon He comes, our King to call us, Home to glory, Praise His name!
With this hope and expectation, We rejoice to keep the feast,
Celebrating our redemption, Till we lean on Jesus' breast.

(Tune: "Come Thou Fount" #17)

It is as clear as the noonday sun that the law is neither the ground of life to the sinner nor the rule of life to the Christian. The Lord Jesus Christ is both the one and the other; He is our life and our rule of life. The law can only curse and kill, Christ is our life and righteousness. He became our curse by hanging on a tree. He went down into the place of death and judgment and by his death completely discharged all that was or could be against us "Bless the Lord, O my soul!"

- Scott Richardson

Three Great Errors of Modern Day Religionists

1. They talk much about Jesus as Savior, but don't mention His Lordship.
2. Much is made of His finished work on the cross, but rarely is His blessed person as God-Man mentioned.

3. Man's will is paramount in accepting or rejecting Jesus, and He is presented as one who is so sad because you won't LET HIM in your hearts.

The third error is a natural result of the first two errors. Jesus Christ was Lord - Jehovah, before He came into this world. As Lord He is the one with all power and authority in Heaven and in Earth. It is His will that determines men's salvation. It is His will that determines whether you ever hear the gospel, (Jn.6: 37, Jn.10: 27, Ps. 110:3).

The Holy Scriptures know nothing of a salvation that allows a soul to be saved without submitting to the will, the word, and the ways of the Lord Jesus Christ! You see, beloved, it is not the cross itself that enthralls believer's and fills their hearts with wonder and thankfulness. No, it is WHO was on the cross, and WHY He was on that cross. It is because of who He is that salvation was accomplished. It wasn't the amount of time, the amount of blood, nor even the amount of suffering He endured that secured salvation and satisfaction to the holiness and justice of God. No, it was WHO HE WAS that gave worth to these things.

Any man who has his heart opened to see Him will never debate in his heart again whether they will accept or reject Jesus. Gone will be the proud thoughts of his heart as to his ability to accept or reject the Lord Jesus Christ! The apostles always presented their hearers first with the Person of Christ before the work of Christ, because they knew that His work of living, dying, and rising again, was absolutely worthless unless... He was the Lord of Glory, the great I Am (Acts 2:32-37).

Men humiliated him when He was here on earth in His flesh but God has exalted Him to His right hand and given Him a Name above every name. Now it is bow the knee, confess with your tongue that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. - Pastor

THE MERCY OF GOD

Christ did not bring the mercy of God to us. IT WAS THE MERCY OF GOD THAT BROUGHT CHRIST TO US! Christ is the channel of mercy, not the cause of mercy. The death of Christ makes it possible for God to righteously bestow covenant mercies on His people, justice having been fully satisfied by Christ the Surety. Mercy comes from God, but only through Jesus Christ. We have a concrete example of the mercy of God in the regeneration of Saul of Tarsus. He attributes his conversion to the mercy of God. He says that he was once a blasphemer, a persecutor, and injurious; "but I obtained mercy," says he, "because I did it ignorantly in unbelief" (I Tim. 1:13). This does not mean that ignorance and unbelief were the grounds of mercy, but the evidence that his salvation was an act of mercy. Paul was the chief of sinners, but he obtained mercy. There is no sinner too bad for mercy to save. Mercy implies that the sinner has nothing to say in his own defense. We understand the meaning of mercy when the defendant throws himself on the mercy of the court. That means that he is guilty and has nothing of merit to plead before the law. And this is exactly the condition of every man of us before the bar of divine justice. Mercy is our only hope. We may plead before our fellowman, but to ask God for justice (to ask God to give us what we deserve) is the same as asking for a room in the regions of the damned. - C. D. Cole

THEY ARE THEY WHICH TESTIFY OF ME
(John 5:39)

Those for whom Christ in His plain Gospel is not enough, fancy themselves to be digging into the deeper things of the word of God This is a delusion. You've altogether abandoned the word of God. "THEY ARE THEY WHICH TESTIFY OF ME, and you will not come to Me, that ye might have life." The Bible is not a puzzle book full of dark riddles to be incessantly solved one after the other. The riddles that men concoct from the Bible are never solved.