SHREVEPORT GRACE CHURCH

BIBLE CLASS- 10:00 AM

The Plagues- Exodus 10, 11

MORNING WORSHIP- 11:00 AM

Scripture Reading/Prayer: Psalm 37(Layne)

Call to Worship: ‘Thy Great Love to Me’

Scripture Reading/Prayer: Romans 10 (David)

Hymn: #16- ‘The Lord is King!’

Message: ENEMIES OF THE LAMB- Revelation 13:1-9

Hymn: #144- ‘Hark! Ten Thousand Harps and Voices’

AFTERNOON WORSHIP – 12:30PM

Hymn: #334- ‘Be Thou My Vision’

Scripture Reading/Prayer: Nehemiah 4 (Jim)

Hymn: #6- ‘Come, Thou Almighty King’

Message: THE LAW OF INHERITANCES- Numbers 27:1-11

Hymn: #256- ‘It is Well with My Soul’

hrist did all that was needful to be done to make us perfect, and present us holy. For what can be more required to the justification of a sinner before God than to be free from all sin? Is not he that is no sinner a righteous person? Must not he that is free from all sin, of necessity, appear just to Him that knows he is so as God does? It is all one to be free from sin and to be perfectly righteous (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 John 1:7). There is no medium betwixt them: "By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many: for he shall bear their iniquities" (Isa. 53:11). His bearing their iniquity was that which did justify them; and by His knowledge He knew whose sins He bore, viz. whom He justified. Samuel Richardson, 1647

“These things I have spoken unto you, that IN ME ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

here is no peace in this world for children of God, but there is eternal peace in Christ. He overcame our enemies when He died on the cross to justify us in the sight of God. He overcame our enemies when He arose from the dead. He overcame our enemies when He gave us spiritual life by His Spirit when we were born again. He continually overcomes our enemies as He ever lives to make intercession for us and keep us by His power and grace. He will ultimately overcome our enemies when He returns to this earth to gather His church unto Himself, glorify us, and judge this world. Let us keep our eyes upon Him. Let us trust Him, not ourselves, but Him alone. BILL PARKER Ashland, KY

“To Titus, mine own son after the common faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior,” Titus 1:4

he order of Paul’s salutation to Titus (grace, mercy, and peace) is no mere coincidence. To understand the order is to know the very foundation of salvation as revealed in the Gospel. The apostle links these saving graces to THE COMMON FAITH, the doctrine of faith, which is but one, and is common to all saints (those redeemed and justified by the death of the Lord Jesus, Romans 3:24).

1. GRACE- It begins with God the Father as the one who, according to His sovereign will chose sinners out from fallen humanity, passing by many, and decreed that His elect ones should be saved by His appointed, anointed Substitute and Surety, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is undeniably declared in 2 Timothy 1:9- “Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.” The fall did not occur before the world began, but when Adam fell. Righteousness was not imputed until Christ came and completed the work at Calvary (Romans 5:9-11). Nonetheless, both the fall and the salvation by Christ of God’s elect were decreed before the world began according to God’s sovereign grace.

2. MERCY- Is a reference to the death of the Lord Jesus, where justice was satisfied once for all, and mercy accorded upon completion of Christ’s work at the cross. It is typified in the mercy seat in the Old Testament, which was nothing apart from the blood shed and sprinkled on it, Gen. 19:19; Ex. 20:6 34:6,7; Ps. 85:10 86:15,16. Mercy and truth met together in Christ, and He fulfilled all the conditions necessary in His obedience unto death, and that according to the GRACE accorded in Christ before the world began, enabling God to be the just justifier of sinners He chose and Christ redeemed. Mercy has been granted to all of God’s elect (vessels of mercy) because Christ satisfied law and justice for them.

3. PEACE- This is peace WITH God that is the effect of Christ having finished the work, Romans 5:1. Being justified already by Christ’s death, we have peace WITH God. Christ having put away sin, the law being satisfied, every elect sinner has now been reconciled legally with God by His shed blood. There is therefore NOW no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, Rom. 8:1. As the Spirit of God reveals this glorious truth in the heart of those sinners for whom Christ died, it produces in their hearts and consciences that same peace with God, as they are brought to bow to Christ and His righteousness imputed alone. As Paul with Titus, so is the bond between the Lord’s people. We share the same common faith, because of God’s grace, mercy, and peace ordained, established and revealed by His Spirit through the Gospel.

“Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord,” Acts 10:47, 48

he ordinance of baptism, in reference to the church of God, sets forth something of an experiential character very strikingly. In the first place, as baptism is a burial, it is not normal to bury anyone until he is dead. No living person is put into the grave and buried. In like manner, no sinner has a right to the ordinance of baptism until he is dead. I speak not of the death of the body. Of what death, then, do I speak? The death of which the apostle speaks: “I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” It is the soul that is dead to the law, dead to all hope of salvation and justification by works of righteousness. Are you dead, my friends? If you are not dead in this sense, you have no right to the ordinances of God’s house; the command does not belong to you.

About eighteen years ago…,I met an aged pilgrim in a narrow passage, quite unexpectedly, and having shaken hands with me, he said, “I hear you are going to baptize before you leave the town.” “Yes,” I said, “I am, on Thursday night.” Then, in a rather sharp and hurried manner, he said, “Well, Sir, are you going to baptize the dead or the living?” The question came to me in a rather novel form, and I was for the moment at a loss for an answer. After a short pause, however, I saw the old man’s design, and I said, “I hope I am going to baptize both the living and the dead. They are dead to all hope of saving themselves by works of righteousness, but they are alive to God by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”