April 21^st - 2019

9:30 am ---------------------------------------------Marks of a True Believer – Philippians 3:1-11

10:00 am -----------------------------------------------------------Christ & The Dove – Luke 3:21-22

The High Value of Our Bibles – by John Brown, Scotland – 1784-1858

How highly should we value our Bibles! How highly should we value them, when we think what they have cost! How highly should we value them, when we think what they contain! How highly should we value them, when we think what end they are intended and fitted to serve!

How much have our Bibles cost? They have not cost us much. Though there once was a time, even in this country, when a single copy of the Scriptures was a possession to which only the wealthy and noble could aspire; yet, ever since any of us can recollect, the Bible was to be obtained at a moderate price, and we have great cause to rejoice that now, the best of books, is the cheapest of books. If anyone in our country is without a Bible, the reason must be sought somewhere else than in the scarceness or the dearness of the inspired volume. Yet the Bible, which costs us so little, cost some very dear, through whose instrumentality it comes to us. Our English Bible cost William Tyndale his life; and many others bonds and imprisonments. Indeed it were difficult to estimate the amount of labour and suffering which our English Bible has cost; still more difficult to estimate the expense of toil and sacrifice at which, since the beginning, the preservation and transmission of the sacred book has been secured. All these considerations go to enhance the value of our Bibles; but they are all as nothing in comparison with this consideration. Looking at our Bibles, we may say, “They were not gotten for gold, neither was silver weighed for their price… They were not purchased for us by such ‘corruptible things as silver and gold;’ nay, not by such things as the travail of men’s minds, or the sacrifice of men’s lives, but ‘by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” Our Bibles are blood-bought Bibles! Surely, then, we should value them, and show our value for them by rightly using them. He who neglects the Bible pours contempt on the blood of the incarnate Son of God.

Let Us Be Like Our Brother– by Daniel Parks

The Holy Spirit says of Jesus Christ, “He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17).

Now, if Jesus Christ made Himself to be like His brethren in order to save them, should not His saved brethren make themselves to be like Him?

Brothers and sisters, let us be like Jesus Christ in all aspects of our earthly lives:

• our love to God, neighbors, brothers and sisters

• our prayers to God

• our worship of God

• our estimation of earthly wealth and fame

• our walk in this world

• our conversation with others

• our abstinence from all that is ungodly, unholy, unrighteous

• our resistance to temptations

• our kindness to sinners

• our faithfulness until death

Let all Jesus Christ’s brothers and sisters be like their elder brother.

“As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man” – Proverbs 27:19