August 2, 2020
Hymn of the Day
Tune: There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood, p.222
As on the cross of Christ I thought, It seemed I heard one cry,
"Is all this nothing in your eyes, You who this day pass by?"
""Is not such suff'ring greater than, That which you've seen before?"
"And was there ever any man, Who grieved or suffered more?"
I looked again, and what I saw, I cannot fully tell;
It seemed within His very bones, There raged the fire of hell.
"What caused your grief?" I asked the man,
What crimes could you have done?
"That God, Jehovah, struck you down, And left you all alone?"
His answer cut my heart like steel, And left me void of breath;
"'Tis for your sins this pain I feel, For you I go to death!"
"Your soul, before my Father's throne, Could find no place to hide."
"This is the way God can be just, And you be justified."
Jehovah's mercies never fail, Each morning they are new;
Great is His faithfulness and love, Therefore, we're not consumed!
Jehovah God, in Christ the Son, Shall all my portion be,
My soul shall, therefore, wait for Him, And live eternally.
-----0-----
Today's Hymns:
Beneath the Cross of Jesus #309
The Hiding Place #cb10
Jesus, Paid It All #125
-----0-----
Food for Thought
We come and sit and sleep through the service. We put a little money in the pot and get out as fast as we can. We join the crowd and all go to Hell together... and call it Christianity. -Rolfe Barnard
-----0-----
"He must increase, but I must decrease." ~ John 3:30
John the Baptist - the man who was sent to prepare the way of the Lord, the man who our Lord Jesus Christ said was the greatest prophet born of a woman - said: "[The Lord Jesus Christ] must increase, but I must decrease." To that, all of God's people will cry: Amen! The higher that the Lord Jesus Christ is raised up, and the more exalted God's people see Him to be, the happier they are! When Christ is exalted, their joy is exalted, their hope is exalted, and their faith is exalted as it LOOKS UP to Him, HIGH in the heavens. The higher they see His throne to be, the more glorious the gospel of their redemption is to them, and the more in awe they are of how far He came down to save them. After seeing Christ in all of His exalted glory, God's people cannot and will not ever see Him any other way. They will cry to every soul who will listen: "He must increase, but I must decrease!" -Gabe Stalnaker
-----0-----
Human rights in this country (USA) is a big deal. We protect our rights; we fight and die for them. However, before God, we have no rights. Our rights were forfeited in Adam. We have forfeited them by our own sinfulness. Any sinner who winds up in heaven does so on the rights of another, and that one is Jesus Christ the Righteous One. -J. Chapman
-----0-----
Where is boasting then? It is excluded! ~Romans 3:27
What would you think if someone said to you, "I have been so good today, I'm confident I am a child of God"? I'm sure you would be shocked by such a statement and might well wonder if, indeed, such a one was a child of God. The self-righteousness of such a statement would be revolting to any believer.
Why, then, do we often think, "I have been so bad today, I wonder if I am really a child of God"? Since we do not believe that it is by our righteousness we stand, why do we believe that by our lack of it we shall fall? Sin cannot help but grieve the child of God, BUT IT NEVER NEED BE AN OCCASION OF DOUBT! Those who, by grace, have learned the meaning of, "Where then is boasting? It is excluded!" can go on to say, "Where then is despair? It is, likewise, excluded!" The same grace that excludes boasting in our righteousness also excludes despair over sin.
When you fall, grieve, for sin is a grievous thing. But, if your hope is in the Living God and His Son, Christ Jesus, never think for a moment that a failure in your righteousness has brought you once again into condemnation. Your acceptance before God does not rest one iota upon your righteousness, so any failure in the same can have no effect on that acceptance. If you are accepted at all, you are "accepted in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:6 KJV) and His righteousness never fails! -Joe
-----0-----
"But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." ~ Galatians 6:14
Every religious person is going to glory (boast) in something. He will glory in his pedigree, his morality, his gifts, his office, his revelations, or his sufferings. But with a strong, "God forbid," Paul made a clean sweep of all these grounds for boasting declaring, "I will glory only in the cross of Christ."
You know, without me having to tell you, that he wasn't referring to a tree, a necklace, or a symbol on a church steeple but to the great atonement of our Lord. He was referring to the substitutionary, vicarious suffering of Christ, as revealed in the glorious gospel, which came from the cross.
How I wish that today's religion would totally abandon the superstitious use of crosses and begin to, once again, preach the true cross of Christ, which is the gospel of his glory! – Henry Mahan
-----0-----
Some day – and it is a day not that far off – you and I will be done with this life and this world. I am quite certain that, on that day, none of us shall care one whit about what anyone in this world thought of us. But we will be in the presence of One whose opinion of us will mean everything to us. His opinion of us will determine our eternity. Some will see Him and cry to the rocks and the mountains to fall on them and hide them from His face. But others shall stand in His presence with no fear at all, for they will already have a suitable hiding place:
"On Christ almighty vengeance fell that must have sunk a world to hell,
He bore it for His chosen race and thus became THEIR HIDING PLACE."
May wisdom compel us to make the great concern of that day to be the great concern of our hearts in THIS day! -Joe