It was great to be together on Sunday morning, to lift up our voices in praise of our great God, who’s grace has saved us!
Jadie Stiven led us in singing praises to God, and rejoicing in the truth of the gospel. We also shared Communion together, allowing us time to reflect on the amazing grace of God to us!
We sang the following songs together:
Sunday’s sermon was the fifth part in our “Bookends of the Christian Life” series, inspired by the book of the same title by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington. It was preached by Nathan Smith and was entitled: “The Holy Spirit, Sanctification & Me.” You can listen to or download the audio file from here, or via our iTunes podcast feed.
Here’s the quotes from the message:
William Plummer:
“Regeneration is an act of God’s Spirit. Sanctification is a work of God’s Spirit, consequent upon that act. In regeneration we become ‘new born babes’; in sanctification we attain the stature of full-grown men in Christ Jesus.”
John Owen:
“Let us consider what regard we ought to have to our own duty and to the grace of God. Some would separate these things as inconsistent. If holiness be our duty, they would say, there is no room for grace; and if it be the result of grace there is no place for duty. But our duty and God’s grace are nowhere opposed in the matter of sanctification; for the one absolutely supposes the other. We cannot perform our duty without the grace of God; nor does God give his grace for any other purpose than that we may perform our duty.”
Jerry Bridges:
“There is no question that we are responsible to pursue holiness with all the intensity that the word pursue implies. Every moral imperative in the Bible addresses itself to our responsibility to discipline ourselves unto godliness. We are not just to turn it all over to the Lord and let Him live His life through us. Rather, we are to love one another; we are to put to death the misdeeds of the body; we are to put off the old man and put on the new man. If we are to make progress in the pursuit of holiness, we must assume our responsibility to discipline or train ourselves. But we are to do all this in total dependence on the Holy Spirit to work in us and strengthen us with the strength that is in Christ.”
Thomas Chalmers, “The Explusive Power of a New Affection”
“The best way to disengage an impure desire is to engage a pure one; the best way to expel the love of what is evil is to embrace the love of what is good instead. To be specific, we must replace the object of our sinful affection with an infinitely more worthy one — G od himself. In this way we do not move from a full heart into a vacuum. Instead, we move from a full heart to a heart bursting with fullness. And the explusive power of a new affection weakens and even destroys the power of sin in our hearts.”
Sunday’s sermon was the second part in our “Bookends of the Christian Life” series, inspired by the book of the same title by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington.
It was preached by Peter Bowley and was entitled: “Gospel Enemy#1 – Self-Righteousness“ from Luke 18:9-14. You can listen to or download the audio file from here, or via our iTunes podcast feed.
During the message Peter shared some applications questions, taken from the Bridges/Bevington book, to help us identify self-righteousness in our own lives:
1. Do you tend to live by dos and don’ts?
2. Is it difficult for you to respect those whose standards aren’t as high as yours?
3. Do you assume that practicing the spiritual disciplines should result in God’s blessing?
4. Do you feel better than most people?
5. Has it been a long time since you identified a sin and repented of it?
6. Do you resent it when others point out your ‘spiritual blind spots’?
7. Do you readily recognise the sins of others but not your own?
8. Do you have the sense that God owes you a good life?
9. Do you get angry when difficulties and suffering come into your life?
10. Do you seldom think of the cross?
Sunday’s sermon was the second part in our “Bookends of the Christian Life” series, inspired by the book of the same title by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington.
It was preached by Peter Bowley and was entitled: “Gospel Enemy#1 – Self-Righteousness “ from Luke 18:9-14. You can listen to or download the audio file from here, or via our iTunes podcast feed.
Here’s the quotes Peter used, including the “application prayer” from J.D Greear. The applications questions he supplied, taken from the Bridges/Bevington book, to help us identify self-righteousness in our own lives, will follow in a separate post later.
John Piper:
“All the gospels want us to know from the very beginning how the story ends. It ends with Jesus dying as a Lamb for the forgiveness of sins and rising again as Lord of the universe. That is the way to understand every paragraph in the Gospels. Jesus commandments are not mere snippets of wisdom for how to raise your family, or how to prosper in business, or how to feel good about yourself. They are descriptions of how new human beings live who have been born again by God’s Spirit, and have seen the glory of his Son, Jesus Christ, and have recognised the desperate condition of sin they are in, and have ceased to trust in anything about themselves at all for acceptance to God, and have turned wholly to Jesus and all that God has done for us in him, and all God is for us in him. If the Gospels have not had that effect on you yet, you will probably misuse all the commandments of Jesus.”
John Owen:
“When we have our quiet times for the day, or when we have given a tithe, we are confident of God’s love toward us. But when our days become crowded and personal devotions end up neglected, we start to avoid God, sensing that we are under his wrath and anger. We imagine that God is waiting for us to get ourselves together before we again enter his presence. Such thinking betrays our failure to grasp the security of our union with Christ and the depth of God’s love and consequently disrupts our communion with him. Making God’s love contingent on our action is a sad but common misunderstanding in the church. Remember a believer’s union is never in jeopardy. The wrath of God against the the sin of saints was completely exhausted on the cross.”
J. D. Greear:
“About four years ago, I wrote a prayer for our church to help to this end. We often talk about “preaching the gospel to ourselves daily,” but how can you do that? This four-part prayer confronts us with the reality of God’s gift-righteousness and love:1. “In Christ, there is nothing I could do that would make you love me more, and nothing I have done that makes you love me less.”
- Pray about this “gift righteousness” of the gospel (2 Cor. 5:21) and go to war against the incipient works-righteousness hardwired into our hearts.
2. “Your presence and approval are all I need today for everlasting joy.”
- Pray about this value of God’s presence in our lives. It’s one thing to know that Jesus is your possession; it’s another for that approval to have such weightiness in our hearts that our captivity to other idols is snapped.
3. “As you have been to me, so I will be to others.”
- Pray about and consider the extravagant generosity of God toward us. His generosity toward us leads us to radical generosity toward others.
4. “As I pray, I’ll measure your compassion by the cross and your power by the resurrection.”
- Pray that God would help you view the world through the lens of the gospel. Seeing the compassion and power of God revealed in the gospel produces bold, audacious faith in our hearts.
It was great to be together on Sunday morning, to lift up our voices in praise of our great God, who’s grace has saved us!
Nathan Smith led us in singing praises to God, and rejoicing in the truth of the great exchange — all our sin placed on Christ, and his righteousness credited to us!
Here’s the quote from Terry Virgo that was shared during the worship time:
“The gospel of grace is a message of breathtaking freedom. It must be embraced with faith and thanksgiving. You are thoroughly accepted just as you are. Jesus Christ is your righteousness and he is never going to change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. When you wake tomorrow, he will still be your righteousness, before you have done anything to enjoy God’s favour. You have to earn nothing. Your spirit needs to bask in the brilliant sunlight of this reality. You need to know it inwardly and celebrate it on a daily basis.”
— Terry Virgo, God’s Lavish Grace; (Oxford, UK: Monarch Books, 2003), p.40
We sang the following songs together:
If you have questions related to the prophetic contributions and tongues/interpretation that occurred during the worship time, please send us an email, and we’ll try to answer them on the blog this week.
Sunday’s sermon was the second part in our “Bookends of the Christian Life” series, inspired by the book of the same title by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington. It was preached by Peter Bowley and was entitled: “Gospel Enemy#1 – Self-Righteousness “ from Luke 18:9-14. You can listen to or download the audio file from here, or via our iTunes podcast feed.
The quotes and application questions will follow on the blog later this week.
It was great to be together on Sunday morning, to lift up our voices in praise of our great God, who’s grace has saved us!
Jadie Stiven led us in singing praises to God, and rejoicing in the immensity of the love God has lavished upon us, displayed most incredibly through the cross of Christ.
We sang the following songs together:
Sunday’s sermon was the first part in our new “Bookends of the Christian Life” series, inspired by the book of the same title by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington. It was preached by Nathan Smith and was entitled: “The Righteousness of Christ“ from 2 Corinthians 5:21. You can listen to or download the audio file from here, or via our iTunes podcast feed.
Here’s the quotes from the sermon (and some that we had no time for!):
C.H. Spurgeon:
“Christ was free from the corruption and condemnation of the sin of Adam, [and] in his life no sin ever corrupted his way. His eyes never flashed with unhallowed anger; his lips never uttered a treacherous word; his heart never harboured an evil imagination. Never did he wander after lust; no covetousness ever so much as glanced his soul. He was holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners. From the beginning of his life to the end, you cannot put your finger even upon a mistake, much less a wilful error. With sin he had no communion, no fellowship, no brotherhood. He was a perfect stranger in the presence of sin; he was a foreigner in the land sin in habited.”
Philip Hughes:
“[It] is of vital importance for us that as a man, in his incarnate state, Christ knew no sin, for only on that ground was he qualified to effect an atonement as man for man…Only he who had completely and uninterruptedly obeyed the law of God was fitted to suffer the punishment due to those who have wilfully disobeyed the law. Only he who was entirely without sin of his own was free to bear the sin of others.”
John Calvin:
“In Christ every part of our salvation is complete. As all mankind are, in the sight of God, lost sinners, we hold that Christ is their only righteousness, since, by His obedience he has wiped off our transgressions, by his sacrifice appeased the divine anger, by his blood washed away our sins, by his cross borne our curse, and by his death made satisfaction for us. We maintain that in this way man is reconciled in Christ to God the Father, by no merit of his own, by no value of works, but by gratuitous mercy.”
John Stott:
“When we are united to Christ a mysterious exchange takes place: He took our curse, so that we may receive his blessing; He became with our sin, so that we might become righteous with his righteousness.”
David Dickson:
“I have taken all my good deeds, and all my bad deeds, and have cast them together in a heap before the Lord, and have fled from both to Jesus Christ, and in Him I have sweet peace.”
Jerry Bridges:
“Before battery-powered watches were invented, wristwatches had to be wound every day. A watch’s stem was used not only to adjust the hands, but also to wind up the mainspring. The gradual unwinding of the mainspring throughout the day drove the mechanism of the watch to keep time. The gospel of justification by faith alone in Christ is the mainspring of the Christian life. And like the mainspring in old watches, it must be wound every day. Because we have the tendency to look within ourselves for the basis of our approval or disapproval, we must make a daily conscious effort to look outside of ourselves to the righteousness of Christ, then to stand in the present reality of our justification. Only then will we experience the stability that the first bookend is meant to provide.”
Hope you will agree that it was good to be together to lift up our voices in praise of our great God, who’s grace has saved us! It was fantastic to see so many new faces, and have the opportunity to serve lunch to our growing student community!
Tim Hacker led us in singing praises to God, and Peter Bowley led us in sharing communion, helping us to remember and rejoice in the incredible grace of God towards sinners like us; ours through the finished work of Jesus Christ.
We sang the following songs together:
Sunday’s sermon was preached by Nathan Smith and was entitled: “The Long and Winding Road to Rome“ from Acts 21-28. It was the final part of our “Momentum: The Unstoppable Gospel in the Book of Acts” series. You can listen to or download the audio file from here, or via our iTunes podcast feed.
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