September 20, 2020
Hymn of the Day
(tune: "Am I a Soldier of the Cross," p.414)
Come, let us strike our hearts afresh, To great Jehovah's Name;
Sweet be the accents of our love, When we His love proclaim.
'Twas by His bidding we were called, In pain awhile to part;
'Tis by His care we meet again, And gladness fills our heart.
Blest be the hand that has preserved, Our feet from every snare;
And blest the goodness of the Lord, Which to this hour we share.
O, may the Spirit's quik'ning power, Now sanctify our joy;
And warm our zeal to works of love, Our talents to employ.
Fast, fast our minutes fly away, Soon shall our wand'rings cease;
Then with our Father we shall dwell, A family of peace
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Today's Hymns: See the Table Spread Before You - #cb8
How Sweet an Awful is the Place - cb17, The Hiding Place - #cb10
Special Dates: Amy Van Der Brink – 20 ~ Jason Vlastuin - 27
We rejoice in the grace given to Morgan Van Der Brink to believe the gospel and be saved. She will be baptized after the morning service on October 11th. We welcome her into the followship of this assembly!
I will be out of town next week. Eric Van Beek will bring you the gospel.
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When God is exceedingly displeased with a people, it is not necessary, in order to their punishment, that He should bury them alive by an earthquake, or destroy them by lightening. If He only LEAVES THEM TO THEMSELVES, withdraws His blessings from their counsels, and His restraint from their passions, their ruin follows on course according to the necessary order and connection of causes and effects.
If God gives up a people to the way of their own hearts, they will, they must, perish! When a general corruption of morals takes place, when private interest extinguishes all sense of public virtue, when a *profligate and venal spirit (* immorality, indecency, given to excess) has infected every rank and order of the state, when presumptuous security and dissipation increase as danger approaches; when, after repeated disappointments, contempt for God, and vain confidence in imagined resources of their own, grow bolder and bolder, then there is reason to fear that the sentence has already gone forth, and that the execution of it is at hand. -John Newton
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And told [Jacob], saying, Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor over all the land of Egypt. And Jacob's heart fainted, for he believed them not. And they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said unto them: and when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived: And Israel said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die.
~Genesis 45: 26-28
Jacob's heart fainted because he believed not. But they continued to tell him all the words of Joseph. Then when Jacob saw wagons sent by Joseph to carry him his spirit came alive. His name was changed, "Israel said, 'It is Enough!'' He believed the word that the son was yet alive and determined to go and see him before he died.
When we first hear the gospel preached our heart faints because we believe not. But after hearing the gospel the Spirit makes us behold the wagons of full provision Christ has provided to carry us the whole way to glory. Then our hearts are revived. A new man is created in the name of Christ (Isaiah 49: 3; Genesis 32:28). In Christ's name, in the Prince of peace, we have Power with God and have prevailed. The heart cries, "It is enough, Christ my Lord is alive! I will go and see him before I die." May God work this in our hearts today! -Clay Curtis
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Yet he saved them for his name's sake, to make his mighty power known.
~Psalm 106.8
God does not look for any goodness or merit in the creature to draw His love-but He will justify, pardon, and save for His name's sake. All the motives which move God to show mercy are in His own bosom.
Salvation is only from free grace, and not from anything good in us, or done by us. – Thomas Brooks
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That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ ~1 Peter 1.7
If you are a believer, your faith will be tried. These trials should not surprise us as though it is a strange thing for faith to be tried and tested. In fact, we should be more surprised when our faith is not being tested.
Faith will be tried because our great enemy knows that faith is what links us to Christ, so he does all he can to eliminate faith. Recall how he tempted our Lord: he began two of the three of his temptations with, "If you be the Son of God°" His first point of attack was to put a question mark on the Lord's sonship. And so will he do to you, child of God. By God's permission, he will bring disaster into your life, then ask, "Why would God allow this to happen to one of His children?"
Faith will be tried because God, the source and object of genuine faith, cherishes faith, for it honors Him. Peter wrote that faith is more precious than gold. That is the value God puts on it. Our Lord asked the question, "However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?" He comes, not looking for busy-ness, morality, or religiosity: He comes looking for faith. Therefore, He tests and proves all claims to faith that it may be shown what faith is real and what faith exists only in words.
Furthermore, He tests faith out of love to His people, for without testing, we are left to wonder if our faith is real. We know there is such a thing as false faith. And we know that there shall be many who appear before the Lord in utter shock that they are not among His redeemed. How beneficial it would have been had God sent them trials sufficient to overthrow whatever faith they had so that they would abandon their faulty, works-based faith and trust entirely in the doing and dying of the Lord Jesus.
And God tests our faith to purify it by removing every rival for our faith's attention. The faith of God's elect is polluted with remnants of their old, fleshly faith that they had before God called them. Trials burn out the dross of self-reliance with the goal that, in every aspect of his being, the believer trusts God, and God alone. -Joe