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Grace Baptist Church of Danville

March 5, 2017

The faithful exposition of Holy Scripture doesn’t raise questions. It answers them.

Daily Readings for the Week of March 5-12, 2017

Sunday Deuteronomy 30-32 Thursday Joshua 9-10

Monday Deuteronomy 33-Joshua 1 Friday Joshua 11-14

Tuesday Joshua 2-5 Saturday Joshua 15-17

Wednesday Joshua 6-8 Sunday Joshua 18-20

Happy Birthday! Charlotte Hart-7^th

Nursery Duty This Week

Elizabeth Peterson (AM) — Celeste Peterson (PM) Tuesday: Shelby Fortner

Christ as My Mediator Stands — Don Fortner

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

1. Christ as my Mediator stands,

Between my soul and God;

Upon us both He lays His hands,

Presenting precious blood.

2. He took salvation’s work in hand

Before He made the sun,

My Surety, both God and man, —

The work is His alone!

3. He is the Daysman God approves,

By whom He’s satisfied,

The Kinsman ransomed sinners love, —

Christ Jesus crucified!

4. God trusts His glory in His hands,

And there I trust my soul;

The Surety for both, He stands, —

For God and for my soul!

Charismatics are found in every denomination in our day. Theirs is a religion without theology. It is all emotion. To them, it doesn't matter what a man believes, so long as he speaks in tongues and/or performs miracles. All walls are broken down; Papists, Baptists, Methodists, and Pentecostals, a1l have become one in this unified apostasy. It is Satan’s latest great deception. Do not be duped by this stupefying mixture of emotion and disorder. Can this modern charismatic revival be of God? The gifts of the Holy Spirit are exalted; and the grace of Christ is diminished. Men glory in the flesh and boast of their latest experience, but speak little of Christ and his finished work.

I warn you to beware of this modern deception, “lest any man beguile you.” It is a perversion of the apostolic gift, by which the gospel was established, and a mockery of the Holy Spirit, whose work it is to magnify Christ.

Pentecostalism and the Word of God

2 Peter 1:16-21

There is a religious movement afoot today which threatens the authority of Holy Scripture in the church of Christ. That which is called “Christianity” today is plagued with a new Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism is no longer an obviously small, fanatical sect of “holy rollers,” looked upon with scorn by orthodox “Christians.” It has refined its actions. And it is a militant, aggressive, widespread movement, which has infested every “Christian” denomination.

New Revelation

Pentecostalism strikes at the very foundation of our faith — the Word of God. It offers the religious world a new approach to authority and absolute truth. Pentecostals boldly claim to have apostolic gifts and powers. They speak of receiving a word from God, seeing angels, speaking in tongues, and performing miracles of healing. They claim to heal family troubles, financial troubles, and physical troubles. They claim to have a new word from God, new revelations.

Supplants Scripture

Pentecostalism supplants Holy Scripture. — If these men and women have the gifts they claim, they also possess apostolic authority, and they can receive infallible revelation from God, as the apostles did.

And this they actually claim. Pentecostals claim that when a man speaks in tongues, his body becomes the instrument of the Holy Ghost and he is speaking the very words of God. It is not difficult for the modern day miracle worker to get a following. His terribly heretical doctrines are received, because of his ability to perform miracles and wonders.

I make no effort to disprove the validity of their miracles. I have no question about it, some of these men can perform miracles. They do have visions. They do speak in some babble called “tongues.” But this does not prove that they are of God. They are of that wicked One — “Even him whose coming is after the work of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders? (2 Thessalonians 2:9 — Read Revelation 13:11-18).

The Pentecostal has a very low esteem for the Word of God. Those who attend their meetings are more elated by the dreams and visions of their supposed 21^st century prophets than by the words of Christ and his apostles. As their pretentious charismatic gifts increase, the exposition of God’s Word decreases. Their views of God are pathetic. Their views of man are great. Their views of Christ are sissified. Their views of the world are carnal.

Their attitude toward Scripture makes the Bible of secondary importance, at best. Charismatic meetings are filled with “sharing experiences,” with only an occasional reference to the Word of God. Pentecostalism is built and lives upon the physical, the tangible, and the emotional. It is all experience and feeling. And it has little use for the Word of Truth. The Pentecostal interprets the Word of God by his latest experience. Whereas, he ought to interpret his experience by the Word of God.

More Sure Word

“We have a more sure word of prophecy.” — The Bible alone is the foundation of our faith. It is God’s complete revelation of his will and purpose to man; and it is sufficient and authoritative as our only rule of faith and practice.

“A More Sure Word of Prophecy”

2 Peter 1:16-21

Perter, James, and John were with the Lord Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. They beheld the Lord Jesus Christ in his transfigured glory, heard Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the Prophets, and heard them talking to our Savior about the death he would accomplish at Jerusalem as the Surety of the everlasting covenant, by which he would fulfill all the Old Testament Scriptures in the accomplishment of redemption for his elect. Then they heard the Lord God speak from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

After telling us about this, the most wondrous, most spectacular, most unexplainable thing ever seen on the earth, Peter says…

“We have also a more sure Word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”

The Bible alone is the foundation of our faith. It is God’s complete revelation of his will and purpose to man; and it is sufficient and authoritative as our only rule of faith and practice.

God’s Word Exalted

Here the Holy Ghost tells us the meaning of his statement in Psalm 138:2. — “Thou hast magnified thy Word above all thy name.” God’s name is the revelation of his being. The many names by which he has revealed himself are the means by which he shows us his distinctive attributes as God. Those attributes, the very being and glory of God, are revealed in only one name, the Name by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12), the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter had seen Christ, the crucified, risen, exalted, glorified Son of God upon the holy mount. Yet, he says, with regard to the written Word of God, “We have a more sure Word of prophecy.”

The Word of God, the written Word of God, is that more sure Word, surer than anything we can see, taste, touch, feel, think, experience, or even imagine. The faith of God’s elect stands upon the written Word of God, and that alone. I once again raise the cry of the Reformation, “God alone, Christ alone, the Scriptures alone!”

Threefold Testimony

Charismatics ask, “If you do not have the gift of tongues, miracles, etc., how do you know that your faith is true?” This is answered for us by the Apostle Peter in this passage. Here God the Holy Spirit lays down a threefold testimony to the truth of the gospel. How can we be sure that the gospel of substitution is true? How can we be certain that the gospel of God’s free and sovereign grace in Christ is true? How can we know that our faith is the faith of the gospel? Peter gives us three reasons.

1. We believe the gospel upon the divinely affirmed testimony of the Apostles (vv. 16-18).

2. We believe the gospel upon the infallibly inspired Word of God (vv. 19-21).

3. We believe the gospel upon the revelation of Christ in our hearts (v. 19).

Those Apostolic gifts that ceased when the last of the Apostles went to glory are no longer needed. “We have a more sure Word of prophecy,” the Word of God!

The Grace Bulletin

March 5, 2017

Grace Baptist Church of Danville

2734 Old Stanford Road-Danville, Kentucky 40422-9438

Telephone (859) 576-3400 — 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