Particular

Recently, I was typing on my computer an article for our Sunday bulletin. In the article was the phrase, “Christ’s particular redemption”. The grammar checks on the computer flagged the phrase and suggested I drop the word “particular” in order to make the sentence “more precise”. Immediately, I thought, wow, even my computer hates the gospel. To take out the word “particular” would do just the opposite of making the sentence “more precise”. We hear this same objection from men. They are offended by the precise language of the Gospel. They want our words to be ambiguous enough to accommodate their own interpretation. May the Lord enable us to be so clear as to take away man’s choice and shut him up to The Truth.

Pastor Greg Elmquist

We would all do well to take this quote from John Newton to heart and remember it when our troubles are not solved as quickly as we would like. Brother Newton said, “God works powerfully, but for the most part gently and gradually.”

WHOSE DECISION MAKES THE DIFFERENCE?

I hear many people in religion begging sinners to accept Jesus. They tell dead sinners that they would be saved if they would just let Jesus into their hearts and save them. Yet I never read of any such thing in scripture. Scripture describes the sinner begging God for mercy not God begging sinners to accept Him. Scripture describes salvation as the decision of God and God carrying out His purpose in the hearts of His people with no help from man whatsoever.

The Samaritan woman at the well didn’t decide to accept Jesus. The Lord decided to go through Samaria and reveal Himself to the woman when she came to the well at a time she thought no one else would be there. Lazarus didn’t decide to let Jesus give him life. The Lord chose whom He would give life to. He called Lazarus from the dead by name and Lazarus came forth. The leper in Matthew 8 didn’t “let” the Lord heal him. He begged the Lord to heal him. The impotent man by the pool of Bethesda didn’t “let” the Lord heal him. The Lord just told him to do the impossible, “Rise, take up thy bed and walk” (John 5:8) and then He gave him the power to do it.

Do you see the pattern? If you have a desire to be saved from your sin and you are begging God to save you, it is because God has already done a work of grace in your heart. God has chosen and called you not the other way around.

Pastor

Be Still

Some preachers want to arouse man’s activity. We want to kill it once and for all, to show him that he is lost and ruined, and that his activities are not able to save him. Some seek to make the man stand up. We seek to bring him down and make him feel that he is in the hands of God and that his business is to submit to God, bow to the claims of Christ, and cry, “Lord, save me or I perish.”

We hold that a man is never so near grace as when he feels that he can do nothing at all but cry for mercy. But, when he says, “I can pray, I can believe, I can do this or that,” the marks of self-sufficiency are still on his brow.