2970 Baird Rd., Shreveport, LA 71118

CHRIST ALONE-SCRIPTURE ALONE-GRACE ALONE

MAY 28, 2006

OPPORTUNITIES FOR WORSHIP

SUNDAY

WEDNESDAY

7:00 PM- Mid-week Service

Nursery care available for all services for ages 4 and younger.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Ken Wimer, Pastor- ( (318) 687-4943

PO Box 5028, Shreveport, LA 71135

E-MAIL: pastor@shrevegrace.org

WEB SITE: http://www.shrevegrace.org Updated weekly with audio messages now available on-line.

CALL TO WORSHIP

Tune: ‘Doxology’

Words by Isaac Watts, 1719 based on Psalm 146

Praise ye the Lord:  my heart shall join

In work so pleasant, so divine;

Now, while the flesh is mine abode,

And when my soul ascends to God.

Praise shall employ my noblest powers,

While immortality endures:

My days of praise shall ne’er be past,

While life, and thought, and being last.

Happy the man whose hopes rely

On Israel’s God:  He made the sky,

And earth, and seas, with all their train:

And none shall find His promise vain.

His truth for ever stands secure:

He saves the oppress’d, He feeds the poor;

He sends the laboring conscience peace,

And grants the prisoners sweet release.

The Lord hath eyes to give the blind;

The Lord supports the sinking mind;

He helps the stranger in distress,

The widow and the fatherless.

He loves His saints:  He knows them well;

But turns the wicked down to hell;

Thy God, O Zion, ever reigns:

Praise Him in everlasting strains.

MERCY

ercy is, properly speaking, the name of Jesus.  For David, speaking of grace, and pleading for it before the Lord, saith as an argument and plea for receiving it, ‘There is mercy (that is, there is Jesus Christ) with Thee,’ Psalm 130:4.  And when Zacharias prophesied, under the influence of God the Holy Ghost, at the coming of Christ, he said it was ‘to perform the mercy promised,’ Luke 1:72.  The Lord Jesus is that MERCY promised!

ROBERT HAWKER

PREDESTINATED

“…being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will,” Ephesians 1:11

o you think that predestination only involves God’s choice as to who goes to heaven?  Do you also think that because He predestinated something in His eternal decree that therefore it was done from eternity?  Unfortunately, this is how it is often misrepresented.  A good translation of the original word would be ‘to determine before hand what should be done,’ as in Acts 4:28. Certainly in Ephesians 1:11 predestination encompasses both the purpose and the outworking.  God purposed to save and justify sinners through the shed blood of His Son, but it took Him coming and dying to accomplish that salvation, Hebrews 10:7-10.  God purposed to call redeemed, justified sinners by regeneration, but they are not regenerated from eternity, but in time as God calls them by His Spirit.

                Finally, predestination encompasses ALL persons, events, conditions and means to fulfill the counsel of His will.  What a comfort to know that ALL THINGS come to pass in time exactly as He has eternally purposed,  being predetermined in His one eternal, immutable mind.                    KEN WIMER

BY GRACE YOU ARE SAVED

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast,”                         Eph. 2:8, 9

he phrase, ‘for by grace are ye saved,’ stands on its own in this portion of Scripture.  The word ‘saved’ is a perfect tense verb that says, ‘you were saved at some point in the past, you stand saved now, and you always will be saved.’   It is by the grace of God!  The grace that elected you, the grace that justified you, and the grace that called you.  You are saved!  You are delivered!  It is through faith, or the means of faith that we see that salvation.  And Paul hastens to say that faith or any part of salvation is not of you.  Even though you are the one who believes, that believing is not of you.  You didn’t have anything to do with your election.  You didn’t have anything to do with your justification.  Your forgiveness, you had not one thing to do with that.  Even that faith you exercise is not of yourselves.  BY GRACE ARE YE SAVED!  God gave it to you as a gift.  When He gives it, then you have it.  It’s not of works, nor of deeds or decisions, lest a man would have reason to boast.  

We are His workmanship, created unto good works, not because of good works.  Even a person who has lived the kind of life described in 1 Corinthians 6:9, 10 (fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, etc.) are not worse than any one of us.  Were we not also idolaters in our free-will religion?  Do we not also have passions for which we are ashamed?  But, by God’s grace we are HIS workmanship, created unto good works that God has ordained before that we should walk in them.                                                                                                                                                          DAVID SIMPSON

GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY

“As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country,”

Proverbs 25:25.

s this not a very appropriate description of the Gospel of God’s grace in Christ Jesus?  It is good news from heaven itself as it is the Gospel of God, not of men.  It is good news to a sinner who sees his need of mercy, of free and sovereign grace, of the forgiveness of sins by the blood of Christ, of justification before God by the righteousness of Christ imputed, of spiritual life by the Spirit of God, and of eternity in heaven with Christ by the power of God.   It is spiritual water for the thirsty soul,   spiritual bread for the hungry soul.  It is good news of a work already accomplished and a  salvation already established for sinners by the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross.  As we struggle with sin and opposition here on earth, we hear the good news from heaven of God’s power, love, and grace in Christ.  Sinner, there is no greater news you can hear, and our prayer is that God will give you ears to hear it as good news.                                                                                                                              BILL PARKER

JUSTIFIED FREELY THROUGH CHRIST’S DEATH

ccording to Romans 3:24, we are “justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”  This justification must be the act of God, being ‘freely by His grace,’  and it is through the ‘redemption that is in Christ Jesus.’  If so, the act of justification cannot be considered as actually passed until the redemption was actually made.  Redemption is ‘through His blood,’ Eph. 1:7 and Col. 1:14.  Again, ‘in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son made of a woman and made under the law to redeem them that were under the law,’ Gal. 4:4,5.  Hence, as redemption is so manifestly a time act for those who before ‘were under the law,’  I cannot believe that the act of justification was passed until Christ was raised again.  It is true Christ is said in Hebrews 9:12, ‘To have obtained eternal redemption for us.’  However, a moment’s reflection on the passage and its connection will, I think, convince any one that the redemption is here called eternal, not because it existed from eternity, but because it shall be, in its effects, of eternal or everlasting duration.  The fact of Christ’s obtaining it denies its having eternally been, as well as the connection.

SAMUEL TROTT, 1833