2970 Baird Rd., Shreveport, LA 71118

CHRIST ALONE-SCRIPTURE ALONE-GRACE ALONE

OCTOBER 1, 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: #45- ‘Ye Servants of God)

Words by J. Hart

e children of God, through faith in His Son

Redeemed by His blood, and with Him made one;

This union with wonder and rapture be seen,

Which nothing shall sunder, without or within.

This pardon, this peace, which none can destroy,

This treasure of grace, this heavn’ly joy,

The worthless may crave it; it always comes free;

The vilest may have it, ‘twas given to me.

‘Tis not our good deeds, good tempers, nor frames;

From grace it proceeds, and all is the Lamb’s

No goodness, no fitness, expects he from us;

This I can well witness, for none could be worse.

Sick sinner, expect no balm but Christ’s blood;

Thy own works reject, the bad and the good;

None ever miscarry that on Him rely,

Though filthy as Mary, Manasseh, or I.

CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me:  and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20

ach true believer boasts, “In the Lord have I righteousness,” and knocks at heaven’s gate with the unanswerable plea.  In Christ, my law-fulfilling surety, I bring the Righteousness of God.  Great was the loss in Adam; but far greater is the gain in Christ.

            So too, as a common person, He hangs upon the cross.  In Him His people suffer unto death.  In Him they exhaust the cup of wrath.  In Him they taste the bitter pains, which sin deserved.  In Him they pay the uttermost farthing into the scales of justice.  In Him they endure, until each attribute of God requires no more.  Thus each child of faith exclaims, with adoring praise, ‘I am crucified with Christ.’  Who can lay anything to the charge of one, who in Christ is discharged of all?  In Adam we merit wrath.  In Christ we undergo it.

HENRY LAW- ‘The Gospel in Genesis’

ENDURING ALL THINGS FOR THE ELECT’S SAKES

“Therefore I endure all things for the elect’s sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory,”                     2 Timothy  2:10.

e never know when it will please God to reveal His imputed righteousness in Christ in one of His chosen ones, but He will in His time.  In the mean time, we may have to endure much opposition and trial in declaring it, both by those who may not be elect, but also even by the elect themselves until such time as the Spirit of God is pleased to grant life to believe.  Let us not be weary in this well doing in giving testimony to no other righteousness than that ordained of God, established by the Lord Jesus, and revealed by the Spirit in His Word.  In spite of the opposition, we can rejoice in God’s time when it pleases Him to reveal Christ in one of His own.

Faith proves itself to be a genuine grace of the Holy Spirit, when it submits to and trusts in the righteousness of God in Christ alone for justification, His blood for pardon, and His all-prevailing merits and intercession for life- 2 Peter 1:4.  Faith glorifies the Lord Jesus as God’s High Priest who put away sin, and honors Him as King to rule and govern, and yields obedience to Him as God’s prophet to instruct in the truth.

KEN WIMER

DO YOU KNOW THE LORD?

any will say ‘Lord’ with their lips but their heart is still wrapped in self will, pride, and satisfied with any signs of peace, Matthew 7:21.  They think themselves at peace with the Lord because they have feelings of sympathy for Him, but they are not real or lasting sentiments, being still wrapped in grave clothes of sin that are welded to their dead souls.  When the Lord calls the Lazarus’s from the grave of sin, the grave clothes have to be taken off of them. “And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go,” John 11:44.

                Have you heard the voice of the Son of God, calling you from the deadness of sin?  It is the Great I Am that calls a sinner.  His constraining grace makes him willing in the day of His power, Psalm 110:3.  It is the blood shed of the Lord Jesus for sinners that has made the way open for us to even approach a holy God and plead for mercy.  That’s the way that the Lord Jesus Christ does His work when He resurrects a dead soul to life in Him.  Those of us who are the Lord’s do not mind, nor are we offended if someone asks us “Do you know the Lord?”  I wish more people would question our salvation.   Has the Lord tested what you have?  If it is of Him it will hold!                                                 

ED HALE

BUT NOW

 “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ…” (Rom 3:21-22)

an is doomed, doomed, doomed.  His condition is one of thorough hopelessness and despair.  In the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3 with Adam as his representative man lost God’s approval.  He was sent into and declared to be in a state of legal condemnation, moral corruption and spiritual inability.  And there is no difference.  The centuries since have borne out the reality of that event.  Man is possessed with a total depravity that affects every part of his being, his mind, his affections, and his will.  Neither the law of nature, which the Gentiles had, nor the Law of Moses, which the Jews had, could correct this fallen state or condition.  But something pivotal has happened.  Christ has come.  Righteousness has been earned.  Righteousness has been accepted.  Righteousness has been applied by imputation.  The mark of this occasion is addressed in the opening two words of this verse – “but now”.  But now, marks the change from discussing the Gentiles, the Jews and even the elect , who could provide no righteousness to commend themselves to God or to justify themselves before God.

                Man must have a justification altogether outside himself.  The Gentiles could not produce it though they had general revelation.  The Jews could not produce it though they had the specific revelation of the Law and the Temple and all that went with it.  It has to be outside of us.  If this justification is to the least degree dependent upon the works or the will of man it is tinged with the fingerprints of fallen humanity.  Such a system will lead to the empty religion, the form of knowledge and truth held by the Jews or Gentiles.  Today all men have done is to replace one form for another.  They had their form, men today have theirs.  But the emptiness of free-will, works oriented, conditional religion is still empty.  There is no justification in it.  There is no relationship with God in it.  This two word phrase (but now) points to the pinnacle of human history.  It was to that point that Abraham looked.  “Abraham rejoiced to see my day” (John 8:56).    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            DAVID SIMPSON- POWELL, TN