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Grace Baptist Church of Danville

May 25, 2014

When you discuss the sermons of faithful men with and/or before family and friends, speak only of the blessed Savior who has been preached to you, his mercy, love, grace, forgiveness, and glory, and the blessings and/or reproofs of the message to you. In doing so you will be of great help to those who hear you. — If you are so little that you choose rather to discuss the preacher’s flaws and your insignificant disagreements with doctrine, you only display your own evil heart and do great harm to all who are influenced by your wicked speech.

·      I am preaching today for Sovereign Grace Church in San Diego, CA, where Bro. Eric Richards is pastor. Bro. Frank Hall will preach the Gospel to you today. — I plan to preach to you Tuesday night from 2nd John.

·      We will have a Fellowship Dinner on June 8th in honor of our graduates, Alexis Mason, Matthew Rice, and Curtis Hall.

Church Cleaning in June: Sam & Ruth Wall

Nursery Duty this Week

Today: Jayalita McCormack (AM)  — Vicci Rolley (PM)  — Tuesday: Stephanie Wall

Amazing Love! Eternal Grace! — Don Fortner

(Tune: #497 — When I Can Read My Title Clear —CM)

1.    Amazing love! Eternal grace!

Redemption’s work displays,

In God’s predestinated race,

To His eternal praise!

2.    God’s sons by Him were all foreknown

And register’d above;

Predestinated to a crown,

By everlasting love!

3.    On this eternal, fix’d decree,

All things in time depend:

Salvation, perfect, full, and free,

And glory without end!

4.    Predestinating grace and love

Transforms the chosen race,

Prepares His saints for joys above,

And gives triumphant grace!

“Perfect Love”

“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18)

That perfect love that casts out fear is not our love for one another or our love for God, but God’s love for his elect. Perfect love is God’s love. It is everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3), free, unconditional love (Hosea 14:4), electing love (Romans 9:13-18), predestinating love (Ephesians 1:3-6), redeeming love (John 3:16; Romans 5:6-8; 1 John 3:16; 4:9-10), immutable love (Malachi 3:6), and indestructible, unquenchable love (Song of Solomon 8:7).

      If ever you come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and are given the sweet assurance of God’s perfect love for you in his darling Son, the knowledge of that love will cast out fear from your soul.

No Fear in Love

I do not suggest that God’s saints in this world live without fear, but I am saying that we should. And I am saying that as God the Holy Ghost assures us of the perfect love of God for us, he makes us fearless. — “Perfect love casteth out all fear!” — “He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” That is to say, he who fears does not have the love of God made perfect in him. — “Perfect love casteth out all fear!” The blessed assurance of God’s perfect love in Christ casts out the fear of divine judgment, wrath, and punishment; it casts out the fear of providential matters; it frees us from the fear of men, fear of death, and fear of eternity.

Unquenchable Love

That perfect love that casts out all fear is described for us in the 8th chapter of the Song of Solomon as unquenchable love. — “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”

What a description Solomon gives of the love of Christ, the “love that passeth knowledge.” It is our blessed Christ who says, “I raised thee up under the apple tree.” And it is our dear Savior who says, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, and with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.” It is God our Savior who declares, “I drew them with cords of love, and with the bands of a man.” He found me in a desert land, and in a waste howling wilderness. — “Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it.”

Our Prayer

The Lord Jesus declares his love to his church; and she replies, “Set me as a seal,” not only on thy heart, but also on thine arm, the place of your love and the place of your strength, the place of the most tender emotion and deepest passion, and the place of power, safety, and work.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? His love is invincible and irresistible as death. It is a jealous love, as unyielding and unalterable as the grave. It is comparable to fire, coals of fire, the very flame of Jehovah.

“Many waters cannot quench love.”

Song of Solomon 8:7

The Love of Christ is unquenchable love. No other love is really unquenchable, but our Savior’s love is. His love is eternal and everlasting, immutable and unalterable. The love of Christ is infinitely beyond that of a father or a mother, or a brother or a sister, or a husband or a wife. The love of Christ is the one and only love that passeth knowledge, the one love that nothing in heaven, or earth, or hell is able to extinguish or cool, the one love whose dimensions are beyond all measure (Ephesians 3:14-19).

Our Redeemer’s love is compared to fire that cannot be quenched. As such it is affirmed that “waters,” “many waters” cannot quench it. Christ’s love for us is a thing of life which the floods cannot drown (Psalm 69:15, 93:3).

The water floods of our sin and fall in our father Adam did not quench the flame of Jehovah’s eternal love for our souls. God’s eternal love cannot be altered by that which takes place in time. Though we were born “children of wrath even as others,” and were justly condemned in our own guilty consciences, God’s love for his elect was unaffected by our fall in Adam.

The waters of shame and suffering sought to quench and drown it. They would have hindered its outflowing, and come (like Peter) between the Savior and the cross; but his love refused to be quenched on its way to Calvary. Herein was love! It leaped over all the barriers in its way. It refused to be extinguished or drowned. Its fire would not be quenched. Its life could not be drowned. — See his love in Gethsemane!

The waters of death sought to quench it. The waves and billows of death went over the great Lover of my soul. The grave sought to cool and quench his love; but his love for my soul proved itself stronger than death. Neither death nor the grave could alter or weaken his love for me. It came out of both death and the grave as strong as before. Love defied death and overcame it. — See his love at Calvary (2 Corinthians 5:21)!

The waters of our unworthiness could not quench nor drown the love of Christ for our souls. Love is usually attracted to that which is loveable. When something ugly, unlovely, unattractive comes, love (as it is called) withdraws from its object. Not so here. All our unfitness and unloveableness could not quench nor drown the love of Christ. It clings to the unlovely, and refuses to be torn away.

Though we went astray from the womb speaking lies and lived all the days of our rebellion with our fists in God’s face, hating God, his love for his chosen stood firm all the days of our rebellion. The waters of our long rejection sought to quench it. Though the gospel showed us that personal unworthiness could not arrest the love of Christ, we continued to reject him and his love. We continued to hate him and despise his love. Yet, his love for us rose above our enmity to him, rose above our unbelief, and survived our hardness. In spite of everything we are and have done, his love was unquenched.

Though he has saved us by his matchless grace, the filthy water floods of our daily inconsistency, unbelief, and sin seek to quench his love, but, blessed be his name, without success! Even after experiencing his adorable grace, we are constantly spurning his unspurnable love! What inconsistencies, coldness, lukewarmness, unbelief, worldliness, hardness, and utter ungodliness daily flows against the Savior’s love, like a mighty flood to quench its fire and drown its life! Yet it survives all; it remains unquenched, unquenchable and unchanged!

All these indescribable evils in us are like “waters,” “many waters,” like “floods,” torrents of sin, waves and billows of evil, all constantly laboring to quench and drown the love of Christ! They would annihilate any other love, any love less than his. But, blessed be his name forever, our Savior’s love is unchangeable and everlasting!

The Grace Bulletin

May 25, 2014

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 7:45 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

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