Sovereign Grace Baptist Church

December 4, 2022

Weekly Schedule of Services

 Proverbs 19:17: He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.

?-----------------------------?

John Newton wrote, “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in every believer’s ear!  It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds, and drives away his fear.”  When we love brethren we want their sorrow soothed, their wounds healed and their fear driven away.  Therefore Christ’s name is what we speak.  Christ’s name is the Consolation of Israel: as our own consolation abounds by Christ so we comfort fellow saints with the same consolation; the comfort Christ commands us to comfort with is that our Redeemer has accomplished the warfare of His people, our iniquity is pardoned: we have received of the LORD’s hand double for all our sins (Lu 2:25; 2 Cor 1:5; Is 40:2)  Our Savior’s name is the great Physician: He heals our wounds with the word that declares “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Lu 4:23; Mt 9:12; Jer 8:22; Is 53:5).  Our Lord’s name is the Shepherd: His staff is the gospel of His sovereign salvation with which He drives away our fear as a shepherd drives away any that would harm his sheep (Ps 23:4).  Over and over scriptures teach us to look to Christ, to set our affection on Christ above.  May God give us grace to do so our own selves and to be helpers of one another’s joy by speaking the name of our all-sufficient Redeemer “for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

Malachi 3:16: Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name.

?-----------------------------?

John Trapp, quoting one of the ancient writers, said, “The adamant stone is a legendary stone thought to be the hardest of all stones, harder than flint (Ezekiel 3:9), harder than the nether millstone (Job 41:24). Fire could not burn it, or even cause it to be heated throughout. It could not be broken by a hammer. Yet, this hardest of all stones, when soaked in a goat’s blood, is melted, dissolved and broken. So the hardest heart of the most obstinate sinner is melted, dissolved and broken when sprinkled with the precious blood of Christ, the sinner’s Scapegoat.”

?-----------------------------?

Leave the doctrines of grace out of the preaching, and you have left the marrow and fatness out of it. What is there to make the people rush to your houses of prayer, and crowd them, if there be no preaching of the election of grace, no declaration of particular redemption, and effectual calling, no proclamation of the blessed final perseverance of the saints! If you leave these glorious truths out of your preaching, you have put on the table nothing but the horseradish and the parsley, but the joint of meat is conspicuous by its absence.                         

–Charles Spurgeon

?-----------------------------?

To you that have any good hope through grace that you have a title to blessedness, let me say as the Levites did to the people, ‘Stand up and bless the Lord your God for ever and ever’ (Nehemiah 9:5). What infinite cause have you to be thankful that the lot of free grace is fallen upon you! Though you had forfeited all, yet God has provided a haven of happiness, and he is carrying you thither upon the sea of Christ’s blood, the gale of his Spirit blowing your sails. You are in a better condition through Christ, than when you had the robes of innocence upon you. God has raised you a step higher by your fall. How many has God passed by and looked upon you! Millions there are who shall lie under the bitter vials of God’s curses, whereas he will bring you into his banqueting-house and pour out the flagons of wine and feast you eternally with the delicacies of heaven. O adore free grace; triumph in this love of God. Spend and be spent for the Lord. Dedicate yourselves to him in a way of resignation, and lay out yourselves for him in a way of gratulation. Never think you can do enough for that God who will shortly set you ashore in the land of promise.  

–Thomas Watson

?-----------------------------?

Even after a work of grace has passed upon the heart in regeneration, such is the power of surviving depravity, that not one perhaps in twenty of God’s people, can, humanly speaking, be trusted with prosperity. Let every afflicted believer, therefore, rejoice in that he is made low. God deals out our comforts and our sorrows, with exact, unerring hand, in number, weight, and measure. Hence, we have not, either of joy or adversity, a grain too little or too much. If less tribulation would suffice, less would be given. We are bad enough, with all our troubles: what then should we be, if we were exercised with none? 

–Augustus Toplady

?-----------------------------?

The apostle Paul called our afflictions light compared to the far more exceeding weight of glory that God works for us by those afflictions.  It is because the Spirit of God causes us to “look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.” (2 Cor 4:16-18)  We see an example when Stephen was stoned for preaching Christ.  The Holy Spirit filled Stephen, turned him to look “stedfastly into heaven” and he saw “the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55-56).  The carnal men only saw temporal things below. But Stephen saw his Life in heaven.  By this, Stephen was enabled to proclaim to those men the One he saw, enabled to call on the Lord Jesus to receive his spirit, even enabled to ask the Lord not to lay this sin to their charge.

    In love for his child, God sends afflictions to work for us not against us.  The Spirit of God turns our affection above to behold what cannot be seen with carnal eyes, Christ our Life.  It is how God renews our inward man.  He reminds us that when this earthly body, and all temporal things, are dissolved “we have a building of God, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”  It is how God weans his child from this world.  It how God makes us call on the Lord Jesus in faith, how he makes us faint not but keeps us bearing witness of Christ, even how God enables us to pray for those who oppose us.

“Our hearts are fastened to the world

By strong and various ties;

But every sorrow cuts a string,

And urges us to rise.”