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Grace Baptist Church of Danville

March 6, 2016

As the Church of God marches against the gates of hell, the Dragon of hell throws fireballs of heresy against her, but never prevails. The Gospel of God and the Church of God are never injured, harmed, or even made to pause. Our Lord has promised, “the gates of hell shall not prevail.” No matter how things may appear, his promise is sure.

Daily Readings for the Week of March 6-13, 2016

Sunday Deuteronomy 33-Joshua 1 Thursday Joshua 11-14

Monday Joshua 2-5 Friday Joshua 15-17

Tuesday Joshua 6-8 Saturday Joshua 18-20

Wednesday Joshua 9-10 Sunday Joshua 21-22

· Set your clocks for Daylight Savings Time change next Saturday. — Spring forward one hour.

· I am scheduled to preach March 15-16 for the Sovereign Grace Fellowship in Wasilla, Alaska and March 18-20 for the Yuba-Sutter Grace Church in Marysville, CA, where Bro. Rick Warta is pastor.

· We will have a baby shower for Baby Eva Peterson next Sunday afternoon in conjunction with our Quarterly Fellowship.

Happy Birthday! Charlotte Hart-7^th Debbie Bartley-13^th

Nursery Duty this Week

Jenny Bartley (AM) — Diane Campbell (PM) — Tuesday: Ruth Wall

O Church of God, Pursue Your Foes! — Don Fortner

(Tune: #497 — When I Can Read My Title Clear —CM)

1. O Church of God, pursue your foes!

The victory is won!

The battle, our great Captain shows,

Is His and not our own.

2. He armor, strength, and food supplies,

And gives in darkness light.

So let us in His pow’r confide

And conquer in His might.

3. Our ransomed souls go not to war

At our own charge and cost,

But from our Captain’s fulness draw,

Whose cause cannot be lost!

4. Let fiends, and foes, and sins assail, —

And in-bred traitors move,

In Jesus’ strength we shall prevail,

And more than conqueror prove!

“To think that God might not keep His word brings great dishonor on His name. God is too pure and holy, and too honorable ever to turn back from the word that He has given. I may feel my feet almost gone, but I know that He will not allow me to perish, or it would be a blemish on His honor. He said, ‘They shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand.’” — Pastor Milton Howard

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“Shall not Prevail”

Matthew 16:18

“Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” — Perhaps no word in the Bible has been more misunderstood, more abused, and more confusing to men than the word “church.” Man’s misunderstanding of this word has led to bigotry, sectarianism, strife, isolationism, and even persecution.

The Church

What is this Church, which the Son of God calls, “my church”? The word “church” is used in three ways in the New Testament. Sometimes it is used to describe local, visible assemblies of professed believers in a given place. In every local church there are both believers and unbelievers, wheat and tares, sheep and goats, true possessors of faith and false professors of faith. Every local church has in its membership both the true and the false; but still every local assembly of men and women, who profess faith in Christ and the gospel of God’s free grace in him, is set forth as a local church and is called, “the church of God” (Romans 16:1-5).

Sometimes the word “church” is used to describe all true churches at any given time in the world. Obviously I do not suggest that the church of God is made up of all churches and denominations, but it does include all New Testament churches at any given time in the world. We are one in Christ, one in purpose, one in heart, and one in desire. All true gospel churches in this world in Jesus Christ are one (1 Corinthians 10:32; 12:28).

The word “church,” as it is used here, does not refer to any local church, or any denomination, but to “the church which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (Ephesians 1:22-23), the family of God, the redeemed and called ones of Christ, “of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named” (Ephesians 3:15). Here, as in many other places in the New Testament, the word “church” is used to describe all true believers of all ages, from the beginning of the world to its end, all the saints of the Old Testament and New Testament ages, all of God’s elect upon the earth and in heaven. This is what we call the universal church. It is the mystical body and spiritual bride of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is that spiritual body of which Jesus Christ is the Head (Ephesians 1:22; 5:23-25).

Christ’s Promise

What does the Lord Jesus here promise his church? He promised to build it. “I will build my church.” It is his church. He chose it. He redeemed it. And he builds it, calling his elect to life and faith by his Spirit. And he promised to protect it. “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Local churches do wither and die. How often we have seen the Lord remove the candlestick from different places! But not one member of Christ’s mystical body shall perish (John 10:28).

Falling Gates

But there is something more in the Savior’s promise. “Gates” are not weapons of offense. They are weapons of defense. We hear much about hell assaulting the church; and it certainly does. We should never expect anything else. Revelation 12 describes the relentless assault. But here our Lord is talking about the gates of hell falling before his church.

The implication should be obvious to anyone. Our blessed Savior, the Captain of our Salvation, our mighty Man of War, here assures us that as we, by the preaching of the gospel, take the fight to hell, charging the very gates of hell by the gospel, the gates of hell shall fall before us! O Spirit of God, give us grace to take up the charge, relentlessly preaching the gospel by every means at our disposal. As we do…

· Christ will build his church by saving his elect.

· He will protect his church, so that no evil befalls it and no foe can harm it.

· And our Lord Jesus Christ will cause his church to triumph at last over Satan and hell: the gates of hell shall not prevail against us, but shall certainly fall before us!

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Christ Made Sin

John Bunyan

How was Jesus Christ made of God to be sin for us? — Even so as if himself had committed all our sins; that they were as really charged upon him as if himself had been the actor and committer of them all. “He hath made him to be sin,” not only as a sinner, but as sin itself. Some, indeed, will not have Jesus Christ our Lord to be made sin for us. Their wicked reasons think this to be wrong judgment in the Lord. It seems, supposing that because they cannot imagine how it should be, therefore God, if he does it, must do it at his peril, and must be charged with doing wrong judgment, and so things that become not his heavenly Majesty. But against this duncish sophistry we set Paul and Isaiah, the one telling us still, “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” and the other that, “God hath made him to be sin for us.”

But these men, as I suppose, think it enough for Christ to die under that notion only, not knowing nor feeling the burden of sin and the wrath of God due thereto. These make him as senseless in his dying, and as much without reason, as a silly sheep or goat, who also died for sin, but so as in name, in show, in shadow only. They felt not the proper weight, guilt and judgment of God for sin. But thou, sinner, who art so in thine own eyes, and who feelest guilt in thine own conscience, know thou that Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God in flesh, was made to be sin for thee, or stood sensibly guilty of all thy sins before God, and bare them in his own body upon the cross.

God charged our sins upon Christ and that in their guilt and burden. What remaineth but the charge was real or feigned? If real, then he hath either perished under them, or carried them away from before God. If they were charged but feignedly, then did he but feignedly die for them, then shall we have but feigned benefit by his death, and but a feigned salvation at last — not to say how this cursed doctrine chargeth God and Christ with hypocrisy, the one in saying, he made Christ to be sin; the other in saying that he bare our sin; when, in deed and in truth, our guilt and burden never was really upon him.

(Taken from Bunyan’s — Light for Them that Sit in Darkness)