July 9^th , 2017

9:30 am -----------------------------Many Believed, But Some Went Their Ways – John 11:45-57

10:00 am -----------------------------------------Gracious Words From His Mouth – Luke 4:16-32

“ The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going” – Proverbs 14:15

There be many which believe and follow fools gladly. There are many blind who follow blind leaders, questioning nothing, believing everything. Let it not be so with you, but rather believe God, and watch where you are going (and who you are following). For there is a way which seemeth right unto man but the end is destruction. Fools and their followers will all fall in the ditch, but the one who believes God, with God’s Word as a lamp unto his feet and a light unto his path, will be established in his goings.

McCheyne somewhere says: "Depend upon it; it is God's word, not man's comment on God's word, which converts souls." I have frequently observed that this is the case. A discourse has been the means of conviction or of decision; but usually upon close inquiry I have found that the real instrument was a scripture quoted by the preacher. A large fruit may contain and nourish a tiny seed; when the fruit falls into the ground and the shoot springs up, the real life was in the central pip, and not in the juicy fruit which encompassed it. So the divine truth is the living and incorruptible seed: the sermon is as needful as the apple to its pip; but still the vitality, the energy, the saving power, was in the pip of the Word, and only in a minor sense in the surrounding apple of human exposition and exhortation. – Spurgeon

Why Art Thou Cast Down?

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? -- Psalm 42:11

This is a question that I ask myself often. I ask this to my own soul, mind and heart. Why art thou cast down? If I am honest with myself, then all the answers are traced back to only one . . . SIN!

Why do I worry and fret about things that really do not matter, especially when God has promised me that He will never leave me or forsake me? Why do I question so many things, when I know that my Lord controls ALL THINGS? Why do I linger a far from His love, when He has promised me that He loves me with an everlasting love? Why? Because of the sin which so easily besets me! The reason my soul is cast down is because I look within my sinful flesh, instead to God. Our comfort is found in the last part of this glorious verse. "Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God." -- David Eddmenson

Election...

Election having once pitched upon a man, it will find him out and call him home, wherever he be. Election called Zaccheus out of accursed Jericho; Abraham out of idolatrous Ur of the Chaldees; Nicodemus and Paul, out from the Pharisees, Dionysius and Damaris, out of superstitious Athens.
In whatsoever dunghills God's elect are hid, election will find them out and bring them home! -- John Arrowsmith

Treason To Be Silent