Weekend
Gospel message to follow for All Hands (28-30DEC18)
Heads-Up --- Please find enclosed encouragement in "SO GREAT SALVATION" by the perfect and finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ in saving poor, needy and wretched sinners by His sovereign free grace -God's unmerited favor- from their sins and from Hell:
“Wherefore
David blessed the LORD
before all the congregation: and David said, Blessed be Thou, LORD
God of Israel our father, for ever and ever. Thine, O LORD,
is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and
the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is Thine;
Thine is the kingdom, O LORD,
and Thou art exalted as head above all. Both riches and honour come
of Thee, and Thou reignest over all; and in Thine hand is power and
might; and in Thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength
unto all.” -I
Chronicles 29:10-12 [KJV]
To
declare the sovereignty of God, is to simply proclaim: God is God. It
is to declare, as David did, “Thou reignest over all.”
Divine sovereignty is the Lord’s absolute (unlimited,
total, complete), independent right (free from all outside influence)
to do as He pleases with all that He has made, which is everything!
“Thine is the kingdom.” God reigns in the kingdoms
of nature, providence and salvation. “Whatsoever the LORD
pleased, that did He in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all
deep places” (Psalm 135:6). In setting forth God’s
sovereignty in salvation Paul declared, “Therefore hath He
mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth”
(Romans 9:18). Without any injustice, the Lord shows mercy to
whom He will and hardens whom He will. He loved Jacob, but hated Esau
(vs 13). He spared and liberated undeserving Israel, but raised up
Pharaoh to the throne and hardened his heart so the monarch was set
in his opposition against Jehovah and Israel. God used the Egyptian
king to fulfill His eternal designs and then destroyed him to glorify
His power.
In
verse 21 Paul asked, “Hath not the Potter power over the
clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and another
unto dishonour?” As a potter has authority over a mass of
clay to make whatever vessels he chooses for whatever purpose he
intends, so the Lord has unlimited power over His creatures to
fashion them any way He determines to accomplish His eternal decree.
Some are “vessels of wrath fitted for destruction,”
while others are “vessels of mercy, which He had
afore prepared unto glory” (vss 22-23). The vessels of
wrath have no reason to complain and the vessels of mercy have no
reason to boast. The sovereign God does as He pleases and therefore
asks in Matthew
20:15, “Is it not lawful for Me
to do what I will with Mine own?”
-Gospel report by preacher Jim Byrd
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