BIBLE CLASS- 10:00 AM

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MORNING WORSHIP- 11:00 AM

Scripture Reading/Prayer: Psalm 15 (Mike)

Call to Worship: ‘Hail, mighty Jesus! How divine’

Scripture Reading/Prayer: Ezra 2 (Jim)

Hymn: #126- Rock of Ages

Message: Brother Mathieu Kobou

Hymn: #228- ‘My Faith Has Found a Resting Place’

NO AFTERNOON WORSHIP SERVICE TODAY

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ll have not the Gospel preached to them; and many to whom it is preached only hear the sound thereof with the outward ear. They come and go in an attendance thereon as the door upon its hinges, in a way of mere formality. They are not impressed with a sight and sense of their state as sinners. They are not weary and heavy laden because of sin. The proclamation by the Gospel trumpet of redemption for sin through Christ’s blood is not a joyful sound to them. They know not their need thereof. Evangelical repentance is the gift of free grace. Faith is the gift of God. What is God’s, as a gift to bestow, cannot be man’s duty to perform as a condition of salvation. Those who are invited [summoned] to look to Christ, to come to Him for salvation, are very minutely described: they are the weary and heavy laden with sin, the penitent, the hungry and thirsty soul. These are the characters who are called to come to and believe in Christ, and not all men (Matthew 11:28; Isaiah 55:1; Mark 2:17).

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life,” John 5:24

hich comes first, conversion or regeneration? The scripture states that ‘he that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, HATH (not shall have) everlasting life…” Any who hear the word of Christ (His Gospel), by way of submission to Him and His righteousness imputed at Calvary, and believeth on Him, do so because they possess already everlasting life. Can any believe on Christ in truth unless the Spirit of God first regenerates them?

Let’s not confuse the effect with the cause! John 3:8 clearly defines regeneration as the sovereign and free mysterious work of the Spirit. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” Even as there is a distinction between conception and the actual birth of a child into this world, so there is a difference between ‘when’ the Spirit of God first breaths life into a dead soul and the effects manifest in faith-repentance, as the evidence of that life- Acts 20:21. It is only in the effects 'the hearing of the sound thereof,' that we can appreciate that conversion has taken place and that only because of a prior work of regeneration by the Spirit of God.

In the narrative of the Ethiopian Eunuch we see this illustrated, Acts 8: 27-39. Many preach that it was when Philip spoke the Word to him that he was regenerated. However, it is evident that the Spirit was already at work in him giving him the desire to go to Jerusalem, seek the truth, and even procure the Scriptures, and read them before the Lord even caused his path to cross with Philip. The understanding of Isaiah 53, the believing, and water baptism were all subsequent to a heart already regenerated.

One final important question is when a sinner is justified. Some make it simultaneous with regeneration, but Romans 8:10 states that the Spirit is life BECAUSE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. The words ‘Because of’’ show that the righteousness of God imputed in Christ’s obedience unto death at the cross is the cause of the Spirit giving life. It was ordained in eternity, but fully accomplished, applied, and imputed to the spiritual account of all of the elect in the death of the Lord Jesus- Romans 5:9-11. Just as regeneration precedes conversion, justification precedes regeneration, Romans 5:18.

Let us bow to the clear teaching of God’s Word being careful to rightly divide the Word of God which reveals God’s righteousness imputed in Christ’s sacrificial death, in the Gospel, and when revealed to the heart brings conversion where the sinner has already been regenerated by the Spirit of God!

“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah:…And they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more,” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

he Epistle to the Hebrews contains (in chapters 7-10) the Holy Spirit’s comments upon this great prophecy; prominence being given to the truth that Jesus Christ is “the Surety” of this covenant, as well as “the Mediator” thereof (7:22; 8:6; 12:24); that it has been ratified “by His own blood” (9:12-24; 13:20), and that it is therefore “a better covenant, established upon better promises,” (8:6).

Further it is revealed in those chapters that, when Christ had offered that “one sacrifice for sins forever, and sat down on the right hand of God,” not only was the new covenant put into operation, but the old covenant and all its appointments---people, temple, priesthood, sacrifices, etc.----were forever abolished. Which things in fact were, even in their own era, nothing but ‘a shadow of good things to come,’ (10:1).

Moreover, God had never any pleasure in them, because, “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” And surely, as we meditate upon the contents of Hebrews 9 and 10, we must perceive that God would abhor the very thought of setting up again that same system of vain sacrifices and ceremonies, which He abolished at the awful cost of the sacrifice of His own Son, and which had their complete fulfillment in the “one sacrifice for sins forever” offered at Golgotha.