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Grace Baptist Church of Danville May 6, 2012
God does not call qualified men to preach the gospel. He qualifies the men he calls.
Daily Readings for the Week of May 6-13, 2012 Sunday 1 Chronicles 14-17 Thursday 1 Chron. 28-2 Chron. 1 Monday 1 Chronicles 18-21 Friday 2 Chronicles 2-5 Tuesday 1 Chronicles 22-24 Saturday 2 Chronicles 6-7 Wednesday 1 Chronicles 25-27 Sunday 2 Chronicles 8-11
HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Will Hacker-10th Fred Tuttle-11th
NURSERY DUTY THIS WEEK Today: Alexis Mason (AM) Laura Peterson (PM) Tuesday: Celeste Peterson
My God, I Thank You for Your Son — Don Fortner (Tune: My Faith Has Found a Resting Place #228 — CMD) 1. Praise God, all saints, for His free grace and everlasting love; He chose us in eternity. — O matchless grace and love!
Refrain: My God, I thank You for Your Son and all Your grace in Him, For righteousness, atoning blood, and pardon for my sin!
2. Before in Adam we had sinned and gone astray from God, God made a covenant with His Son, to save us by His blood.
3. In the fulness of time He sent His Son into the world, To ransom sinners, (Bless His name!), according to His Word.
4. And in the time of love He sent His Holy Spirit down To call us from our sins and death to life in Christ, His Son.
5. Chosen, redeemed and sealed, we are saved by almighty grace, In Jesus Christ forever saved by God’s almighty grace!
GRACE is not a helpless, frustrated passion in the heart of God, causing him to desire the salvation of sinners. It is the almighty, irresistible power of his goodness, by which he accomplishes the salvation of sinners!
1 “Wonderful in Counsel and Excellent in Working” Isaiah 28:29
When Isaiah declares that the Lord God is “wonderful in counsel and excellent in working,” he means for us to understand and bless God for these three, indisputable facts.
1. God almighty has a plan by which he always works, from which he never deviates.
All men look upon a person who works without a plan as a fool. Haphazard work is folly. Yet, when we insist that God almighty in all his works is fulfilling his own great plan, men and women get angry. Be that as it may, let wicked men rebel as they dare against it, the truth still stands; and we rejoice in it. God always works by a plan. Nothing in this world is left to chance. God has determined the end from the beginning. He has not left a single screw in the machinery of providence loose. Everything that comes to pass in time is brought to pass according to God’s sovereign, unalterable, eternal purpose (Isaiah 14:24-27; 46:9-11; Romans 8:28-30; 2 Corinthians 5:18; Ephesians 1:11).
Man is free to do whatever he wills. And, in as much as he is able, he always does exactly what he wants to do. And every person is entirely responsible for what he does. Yet, the great, eternal God sovereignly works out his purpose and accomplishes his will as perfectly as though men and devils were machines, programmed to carry out his designs. Yes, our God is “wonderful in counsel”
2. God is “excellent in working” in the execution of his plan.
As he is “wonderful in counsel,” his works, which are but the execution of his counsel, the fulfilment of his plan, are excellent. Creation (Psalm 104), providence (Psalm 107), redemption (Ephesians 1:3-14), and grace (Ephesians 2:1-7) are God’s excellent works. Examine them closely. Behold their beauty and perfection. And glorify God, who is “wonderful in counsel and excellent in working.” Everything in time is accomplished “according to the good pleasure of his will” (Ephesians 1:5).
3. God’s wonderful counsel shall be perfectly fulfilled by the excellent works of his hands (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).
There is a day coming when time shall be no more. In that day, all that God purposed from eternity shall be done, perfectly and completely. Nothing shall have been done but what God purposed to be done. And nothing shall be left undone which God purposed from eternity to do, for the Lord God, our God, is “wonderful in counsel and excellent in working.” “His ways are everlasting” (Habakkuk 3:6); and his purpose is sure. He always has done, is doing, and forever shall do all his pleasure everywhere and in all things.
2 “Created in Christ Jesus unto Good Works” Ephesians 2:10
Several years ago, after preaching a message on salvation by grace, a man came up to me and said, “If what you are saying is true, then if a person believes on Jesus, it’s okay for him to go out and sin all he wants to.” Needless to say, my blood began to boil. Yet, this is the response I always get from both Arminians and Calvinistic legalists to the message of God’s free-grace in Christ. When men cannot answer our doctrine and refuse to bow to the truth of God, they always attempt to cast upon it the hideous, slanderous charge of licentiousness and antinomianism, thereby “turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 4).
They know full well that their accusations are false; but they persist in their ungodly slander. As it was in Paul’s day, so it is in ours. Judaizers always seek to undermine the gospel of the free grace of God in Christ Jesus. Ishmael, the child of bondage, always envies and therefore hates Isaac, the free-born son. I cannot stop the mouths of gainsayers; but I do want all men and women to know these three things.
1. Salvation is by grace alone.
God’s grace in Christ is free, sovereign, unconditional, eternal, and unchangeable. Grace planned our salvation, provided us with a Redeemer, purchased our pardon with his blood, produced life in us by his Spirit, preserves us in life and faith, and shall present us faultless before the presence of God’s glory in eternity. “By grace ye are saved!” Grace cannot be resisted and cannot be frustrated. It is always effectual. And God’s grace is not in any way determined by or dependent upon the will, works, and worth of the sinner. Grace is free!
2. Good works have nothing whatsoever to do with the accomplishment, preservation, or consummation of our salvation in Christ.
Neither our election, nor redemption, nor calling, neither sanctification, nor preservation, nor glorification are determined by our works. The moment you make room for works, you push grace out. If you attempt to win, improve, or maintain God’s favor by your works, you “are fallen from grace,” you have departed from the gospel of the grace of God, and “Christ shall profit you nothing.” Any mixture of works with grace is not salvation, but damnation.
3. All who are saved by grace walk in good works.
Though we are sinners still, though sin is mixed with and mars everything we think and do, so that our best works of righteousness are filthy rags, God’s people, sinners saved by God’s free grace in Christ Jesus walk in good works, carefully striving to maintain those works on earth that glorify God our Savior. They are motivated by gratitude and love to do so, because we are “saved by grace.”
3 The Grace Bulletin
May 6, 2012
Grace Baptist Church of Danville 2734 Old Stanford Road-Danville, Kentucky 40422-9438 Telephone (859) 236-8235 - E-Mail don@donfortner.com
Donald S. Fortner, Pastor
Schedule of Regular Services
Sunday 10:00 A.M. Bible Classes 10:30 A.M. Morning Worship Service 6:30 P.M. Evening Worship Service
Tuesday 7:30 P.M. Mid-Week Worship Service
Television Broadcasts in Danville
Channel 6 - Sunday Morning 8:00 A.M. Channel 6 - Wednesday Evening 6:00 P.M. Channel 6 - Friday Evening 7:00 P.M.
Television Broadcasts in Harrodsburg Channel 6 - Sunday Afternoon 3:00 P.M. Channel 6 - Friday Evening 6:00 P.M.
Web Pages http://www.DonFortner.com http://www.FreegraceRadio.com http://www.Grace-eBooks.com
Don Fortner
Listen to sermons at FreeGraceRadio.com |
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