WE WILL SERVE THE LORD’S SUPPER FOLLOWING THE 11:00 A.M. MESSAGE. This is an ordinance for true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ only, so all who trusts Christ alone for all salvation, forgiveness, righteousness, and eternal life are invited to stay a partake of this supper with us. There will be a fellowship dinner in our dining hall after the services today. All are invited to stay and eat with us.
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CONFIDENCE AND ASSURANCE
Confidence and assurance of salvation is never self-righteous presumption when our confidence and assurance is in the Lord Jesus Christ and based upon HIS great work of redemption to put away our sins by the sacrifice of Himself. This kind of confidence and assurance is given to God’s people by the Holy Spirit when in the new birth He imparts spiritual life, convicts us of sin, and gives us knowledge of and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. If our assurance is in ourselves, someone or something else, or even in what we imagine the Holy Spirit enables us to do, it is vain, self-righteous presumption. We must examine ourselves in this light – Do we glory (boast with confidence) in nothing except Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. What is our confidence and assurance of the forgiveness of our sins? Is it anything other than the blood of Jesus Christ? What is our confidence and assurance of being justified before God, accepted in His sight? Is it anything other than Christ’s righteousness imputed? There is no one and nothing else to accomplish the great work of our salvation. Our whole existence as sinners saved by the grace of God is owing to Jesus Christ as the Lord our Righteousness. He alone is our Surety, therefore, true godly assurance and confidence can only come to a sinner who is looking unto Jesus as the Author and Finisher of his faith. Anything more is a denial of Christ and His righteousness. Anything less is the dark despair of fallen humanity.
– Pastor Bill Parker
The application of the blood of Christ purifies the heart and makes Jesus Christ precious. It not only brings peace to the soul in sweet gratitude, but fills it with earnest desires to live to God's glory and honor. As God opens up the depth of our fall, makes the burden of sin felt, and shows the sinner his guilt and inability, He brings the proud heart down and lays us low in the dust; and as He makes us sigh and groan, He applies His precious blood. He brings that blood of sprinkling into the conscience, sheds abroad His mercy and love, and con-strains our feet to walk in faith, love, and cheerful obedience.
What fountain is that which sweeps away My sins just like a flood, Nor lets one guilty blemish stay? 'TIS CHRIST'S OWN PRECIOUS BLOOD!
-- J. C. Philpot
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THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD
One of the most blessed truths we can ever grasp as God's children is what David so confidently expressed in Psalm 23:1 – "The Lord is my Shepherd." It is hard to imagine Jehovah, the infinite, omniscient, sovereign King of the universe condescending to be my Shepherd. The thing we must realize is that Christ is our Shepherd by virtue of our being made one with Him through the blood of the everlasting covenant of grace (Heb. 13:20-21). Christ has never and shall never be the Shepherd of any but those who were given to Him in the covenant of grace made before the foundation of the world. As our Shepherd, Christ, by His perfect, obedient life and atoning death as our Representative and Substitute, fulfilled all the righteousness God's holiness and justice required. By His righteousness alone God the Father, a righteous Judge, is enabled to be both a just God and a Savior. Christ is the chief Shepherd, the good Shepherd, and the great Shepherd because "He loved us and gave Himself for us." And this makes Him my Shepherd. Therefore, "I shall not want," i.e., I shall not lack for all the righteousness and redemption I need to be delivered safely and perfectly into His blessed presence eternally.
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