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Grace Baptist Church of Danville

July 10, 2016

Because I preach to you that which God has spoken, I preach with the utmost boldness, dogmatism, and confidence.

Daily Readings for the Week of July 10-17, 2016

Sunday Ecclesiastes 1-4 Thursday Isaiah 2-5

Monday Ecclesiastes 5-9 Friday Isaiah 6-9

Tuesday Eccles. 10-Song of Sol. 4 Saturday Isaiah 10-13

Wednesday Song of Sol. 5-Isaiah 1 Sunday Isaiah 14-18

· Conference Offering – July 31^st

· Quarterly Fellowship – August 7^th

Happy Birthday! Diane Campbell-16^th

Happy Anniversary: Doug & Faith Hacker=15^th Tom & Gina Brice-17^th

Nursery Duty this Week

Shante’ Birchum (AM) — Stephanie Wall (PM) — Tuesday: Shelby Fortner

Eternal Spirit, Heavenly Wind — Don Fortner

(Tune: #109 — Ride on, Ride on in Majesty -LM)

1. Eternal Spirit, heav’nly Wind,

Breathe on Your slain (These dead in sin!),

Bid the dry scattered bones revive,

And make the dead in sin alive.

2. Behold how cold and dead we lie,

Send quick’ning unction from on high;

The dead in sin can never live,

Till You the breath of life shall give!

3. Like rushing wind Your power controls,

Your still small voice can comfort souls:

O, breathe upon our souls today,

In grace Your sov’reignty display!

4. Awake, O Wind, and raise the dead!

Bring grace from Christ, our Cov’nant Head,

Refresh the trees of righteousness,

And all God’s saints with comfort bless!

I would not be an Arminian for the world.

William Romaine

I would not be an Arminian for the world, because I am not only willing but happy in getting more and more into Christ’s debt. They are only pensioners in heaven. They take all from him in use, and carry all back to him in praise. God teach us this heavenly lesson. Although I have learned but little, yet I would not be saved in any other way than by sovereign grace; for only by this can I find employment in oneness with God, or happiness in God. — All is grace! All is debt! The sense of this keeps one humble.

“Whom He did Foreknow”

Romans 8:29

Be sure you do not fail to observe that every verb in Romans 8:29 and 30 is in the past tense. The tense in the Greek is called “aorist.” That is very important. The aorist tense of the Greek language indicates “a past action without further limitation or implication.” In other words, the Holy Spirit is telling us here that everything described in these two verses was done, finished, accomplished in the eternal purpose of God.

The first thing mentioned in Romans 8:29 is God’s foreknowledge of his elect from eternity. ― “Whom he did foreknow.” The word “foreknow” is  (proegno) from  (proginosko). The noun form of the verb translated “foreknow” is the word from which we get our word “prognosis.” You know what a prognosis is. In the language of medicine, a doctor first makes a diagnosis of a patience illness. Then he gives a prognosis, telling what course the disease is likely to take.

But with God, foreknowledge is much more than a prognosis! With God there are no unexplainable turns for the worse. And God’s foreknowledge is much more than prescience, or knowledge beforehand of what we would be or do.

The counsel and decree and purpose of God did not depend upon what we would be, or do, or will. God’s purpose and the fulfillment of it is not the result of him foreknowing that we would believe on Christ. In the Bible foreknowledge means much, much more than knowledge beforehand.

In the Word of God, God’s foreknowledge is not a foreknowledge of things, but of people. The Scriptures never speak of what God foreknew, but whom he foreknew. God’s foreknowledge is not to be confused with his omniscience. Omniscience is a divine attribute. Foreknowledge is a divine act.

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God’s Foreknowledge

Romans 8:29

As it is spoken of and revealed in Holy Scripture, God’s foreknowledge implies four things.

Foreordination

God’s foreknowledge is his act and decree of foreordination. Peter tells us that we are “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Peter 1:2). Babbling, will-worship Arminians jump on that statement and spit it at us with a snarl. – “There, you see, election was God’s choice of us based upon his foreknowledge of our faith in him. He chose us because he foreknew we would choose him!” Obviously that is not what the Book of God teaches. That blasphemy would make God’s choice dependent upon our choice, and would run in the face of all the rest of divine revelation. Let no one trip you up with God’s foreknowledge. Election is a matter of God’s pure, free, sovereign, eternal grace

in Christ.

We are not left to guess and speculate about this. The very same Greek word which is translated “foreknowledge” in Romans 8:29 and 1 Peter 1:2 is translated “foreordained” in 1 Peter 1:20. There Peter tells us that our Lord Jesus Christ “verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.” Foreknowledge includes both determination and control. The Lord Jesus Christ, “as a Lamb without blemish and without spot…verily was foreordained (foreknown) before the foundation of the world, but was manifested in these last times for you.” On the Day of Pentecost, Peter said exactly the same thing about the death of our Savior (Acts 2:23). The Son of God was crucified by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God the Father; and we are his people by that same determinate counsel and foreknowledge.

Everlasting Love

God’s foreknowledge of his elect is his everlasting love for us in Christ. I repeat: God’s foreknowledge is of people, not of things. The text reads, “whom he did foreknow,” not “what he did foreknow.” This foreknowledge is God’s everlasting love for his elect (Jeremiah 31:3; John 17:23). God knew his elect from eternity as he knew no one else. He knew us in Christ with love and affection, took infinite delight and pleasure in us, and found satisfaction and complacency with us. God’s foreknowledge is his special, distinguishing love for his own elect from eternity. On the Day of Judgment, the Lord God will say to all those workers of religious iniquity on his left hand, “I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23). That does not mean he never knew who they were, where they were, or what they did. It means he never knew them as he knows his own elect. That is to say, “I never loved you. I never knew you with that distinguishing knowledge of love with which I know my own.”

Divine Approval

Divine foreknowledge is divine approval. “The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish” (Psalm 1:6). The Lord God owns and approves of the way of the righteous. And when the Lord Jesus says, “I know my sheep,” he is saying “I own and approve of my sheep as mine; and he did so from eternity (Ephesians 1:6). The Triune Jehovah approved of his elect in Christ from eternity and accepted us in him with everlasting, immutable approval and acceptance.

Infallible Security

God’s foreknowledge of us is our eternal infallible safety and security in Christ. It is written, “the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his” (2 Timothy 2:19). Think of it. ― If you are a child of God, if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you were known of God from eternity, loved, chosen, owned, approved of, accepted, and secured in Christ according to his eternal purpose of grace! You are one of those “whom he did foreknow!” We who believe God, all who have experienced his free, saving grace in Christ, rejoice in and give thanks to God for that blessed foreknowledge which is our election. How I thank God for electing love!

The Grace Bulletin

July 10, 2016

Grace Baptist Church of Danville

2734 Old Stanford Road-Danville, Kentucky 40422-9438

Telephone (859) 576-3400 — E-Mail don@donfortner.com

Donald S. Fortner, Pastor

Schedule of Regular Services

Sunday

10:00 A.M. Bible Classes

10:30 A.M. Morning Worship Service

6:30 P.M. Evening Worship Service

Tuesday