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Valley Forge Baptist Church

God’s Great Mercy

1/2/2019

Pastor Bill Farrow

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1 Peter 1:3)

Because of His mercy,
God desires to lift sinners out of their pitiful condition.

   Several years ago I spent about a week in India. Each day I saw countless starving, diseased people with no home but a few square feet of filthy street. I could not help but feel compassion and pity on those people who lived in such misery.
     In a spiritual sense, though, before God saved us, we were each even more pathetic than any beggar in India. Spiritually, we “were dead in [our] trespasses and sins … and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:1, 3–5). God saw our wretched condition and was moved to do something about it.
     How does mercy compare with grace? Mercy has respect to man’s wretched, miserable condition; grace has respect to man’s guilt, which has caused that condition. God gives us mercy to change our condition; He gives us grace to change our position. While grace takes us from guilt to acquittal, mercy takes us from misery to glory.
     Doesn’t it give you great joy to know that God not only removed your guilt but looked at you and had compassion? And He’s not through giving us mercy: “The Lord’s many lovingkindness indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness” (Lam. 3:22–23). We can always “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).

Suggestions for Prayer:
     Thank God for His great mercy, for the forgiveness and blessings you have as His child.

For Further Study:
     Luke 15:11–32 contains the well–known parable of the prodigal son, a moving illustration of God’s loving compassion. What was the son’s condition when he returned? ✧ What was his father’s reaction? ✧ How does God respond to us when we turn to Him in repentance and humility?

Jesus Wept...

12/30/2018

There is infinitely more in these two words than any sermonizer, or student of the Word, will ever be able to bring out of them, even though he should apply the microscope of the most attentive consideration. "Jesus wept." Instructive fact; simple but amazing; full of consolation; worthy of our earnest heed. Note, too, that his pure body and his sinless soul were originally constituted as ours are. When his body was formed according to that Scripture, “A body hast thou prepared me,” that holy thing had in it the full apparatus of grief: the lachrymal gland was in his eye.

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Jesus Wept!

An Easy Hell!

12/27/2018

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

"I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know both how to have a little, and I know how to have a lot. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being content--whether well-fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need."

Whatever affliction or trouble a child of God meets with--it is all the Hell he shall ever have! Whatever eclipse may be upon his name or estate--it is but a little cloud which will soon be blown over, and then his Hell is past!

Death begins a wicked man's Hell.
Death ends a godly man's Hell.

   Think with yourself, "What is my affliction? It is but a temporary Hell. Indeed, if all my Hell is here on earth--it is but an easy Hell. What is the cup of affliction--compared to the cup of damnation!"
   Lazarus could not get a crumb; he was so diseased that the dogs took pity on him--and as if they had been his physicians, licked his sores. But this was an easy Hell--the angels quickly fetched him out of it!
   If all our Hell is in this life--and in the midst of this Hell, we have the love of God--then it is no more Hell, but paradise! If all our Hell is here on earth, we may see to the end of it; it is but skin-deep, it cannot touch the soul. It is a short-lived Hell. After a dreary night of affliction, comes the bright morning of glory!

Since our lives are short--our trials cannot be long!
As our riches take wings and fly away--so do our sufferings!
Let us learn then, to be content whatever our circumstances.

Two Purposes for Christmas

12/25/2018

Selected Scriptures

Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:7–8)

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December 24th, 2018

12/24/2018

I often read some of the older Bible writers and seek to learn from their experience! This morning I read a piece by Dr. Henry Law, a Preacher in England who lived from 1797 until 1787. He has a lot of good teaching to offer us and quite a number of different things to gather that teaching from. Recently I read a wonderful piece of his that might serve you well: "Their Constant Pleasure Ground".

Submitting to Christ as Lord

12/23/2018

Pastor Bill Farrow

“God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name . . . that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:9, 11).

To receive Christ as Savior is to submit to His authority as Lord.
Is Jesus Lord? According to the declaration of the Father, He is. We cannot know Him any other way than as Lord. That’s why the first creed in the history of the church, given in Philippians 2:11, says, “Jesus Christ is Lord.” Every Christian must acknowledge that. It is the foundation of the Christian faith, the very substance of what we believe. We don’t make Him Lord after salvation. Every time I hear someone say, “You need to make Jesus Lord,” it is as repellent to me as hearing fingernails scraped down a blackboard. We never make Jesus Lord—God has already done that.
Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, and those who would receive Him must take Him for who He really is. Puritan John Flavel put it this way:

“The gospel offer of Christ includes all his offices, and gospel faith just so receives him; to submit to him, as well as to be redeemed by him; to imitate him in the holiness of his life, as well as to reap the purchases and fruits of his death. It must be an entire receiving of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

In a similar vein, A.W. Tozer said, “To urge men and women to believe in a divided Christ is bad teaching, for no one can receive half of Christ, or a third of Christ, or a quarter of the Person of Christ! We are not saved by believing in an office nor in a work.” Jesus is Lord, and if you refuse Him as Lord, you cannot call Him Savior. If you have truly received Him, your life will be characterized by submission to His authority.

Where Does the Story of Christmas Begin?

12/21/2018

   As the celebration of Christmas fast approaches, our attention quickly goes to the familiar words of the infancy narratives found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. This is a healthy reflex. After all, the Gospel of Jesus Christ rests upon the historicity of the events that took place in Bethlehem as Christ was born. Our understanding of the identity of Jesus Christ is directly rooted in these narratives and our confidence is in the fact that Matthew and Luke give us historically credible and completely truthful accounts of the events surrounding the birth of Christ.
   A closer look at the narratives in both Matthew and Luke reveals a richness that familiarity may hide from us. Matthew begins with the genealogy of Christ, demonstrating the sequence of generations as Israel anticipated the birth of David's Son -- the Messiah. Luke, intending to set forth "an orderly account" of the events concerning Jesus, begins with the anticipation of the birth of John the Baptist and then moves to tell of the virgin conception of Jesus.
   A careful reading of Matthew and Luke reveals both the elegance of detail and the grand expanse of the story of Christ's birth. Matthew gives particular attention to the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. The virgin birth, the birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea, the Herodian massacre of the innocents, the flight to Egypt, and the role of John the Baptist as forerunner are all presented as the fulfillment of specific Old Testament prophecies.

Every word of the Old Testament points to Christ. He is not only the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies concerning Him, He is the perfect fulfillment of the law and the prophets -- the entirety of the Old Testament Scriptures. The Christmas story does not begin in Bethlehem, for Israel had been promised the Messiah. As Luke reveals, Simeon beheld the baby Jesus in the temple and understood this infant to be “the Lord's Christ” -- the Davidic Messiah. Simeon understood this clearly -- the Christmas story did not begin in Bethlehem, or even in Jerusalem.
So, where does the Christmas story begin? In the Gospel of John we read:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” [John 1:1-3]

The prologue to John's Gospel points to creation and to Christ, the divine Logos, as the agent of creation. Yet, with language drawn directly from Genesis, John begins his gospel “in the beginning.”

In other words, the Christmas story begins before the creation of the world. As we celebrate Christmas and contemplate the Christmas story, we must be very careful not to begin the story in Bethlehem, or even in Nazareth, where Mary was confronted by Gabriel with the message that she would be the mother of the Messiah.
We must not even begin with Moses and the prophets, and with the expectation of the coming Son of Man, the promised Suffering Servant, and the heralded Davidic Messiah. We must begin before the world was created and before humanity was formed, much less fallen.

Why is this so important? Put simply, if we get the Christmas story wrong, we get the Gospel wrong. Told carelessly, the Christmas story sounds like God's “Plan B.” In other words, we can make the Christmas story sound like God turning to a new plan, rather than fulfilling all that He had promised. We must be very careful to tell the Christmas story in such a way that we make the gospel clear.
Christmas is not God's second plan. Before He created the world, God determined to save sinners through the blood of his own Son. The grand narrative of the Bible points to this essential truth -- God determined to bring glory to himself through the salvation of a people redeemed and purchased by his own Son, the Christ. Bethlehem and Calvary were essential parts of God's plan from the beginning, before the cosmos was brought into being as the Son obeyed the will of the Father in creation.
The Christmas story does not begin in Bethlehem, but we appropriately look to Bethlehem as the scene of the most decisive event in human history -- the incarnation of the Son of God. Even as we turn our attention to Bethlehem, we must remember that the story of our salvation does not begin there. That story begins in the eternal purpose of God.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” That is where the Christmas story begins, and John takes us right to the essence of what happened in Bethlehem:

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” [John 1:14]

Let's be sure to get the Christmas story right, start to finish.

The Gospel Distilled

12/19/2018

GTY

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

John 3:16 is likely the Bible’s most well-known verse. Most Sunday school children can quote it verbatim before they learn to read or write. It shows up on t-shirts, hats, and other gear like a sports logo or political slogan. Even staunch anti-church members of the secular public can communicate the gist of this familiar verse.

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The Gift of “God With Us”

12/18/2018

One of the greatest and most encouraging truths of the Christmas season is that God sent His only Son and that Son was sent to us in order, among many other things, to be "Emmanuel" or the gift of "God with Us" ! Let's think about this name for a bit...

What Emmanuel Means!

“God highly exalted Him” (Philippians 2:9).

12/16/2018

   Christ was exalted not only in His resurrection and ascension, but also in His coronation. Mark 16:19 says, “When the Lord Jesus had spoken to [the apostles], He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.” In Scripture the right hand is a symbol of power and authority. What is the extent of Christ’s authority? Ephesians 1:20-22 says, “[God] seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church.” Christ is the Sovereign of the universe.
   Besides His coronation, Christ is exalted in His intercession for believers. He stands before the Father as the High Priest of His people. His first act was to send the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:33). Our sympathetic High Priest “has been tempted in all things as we are” (Heb. 4:15), and “He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for [us]” (7:25). Christ’s intercessory work grants us faith, repentance, and forgiveness (see Heb. 4—9).
     Puritan minister Thomas Watson said, “Had you a friend at court, who, when you were questioned for delinquency or debt, should plead with the judge for you, and bring you off your troubles, would you not love that friend? How often does Satan put in his bills against us in the court! Now Christ is at the judge’s hand; he sits at his Father’s right hand, ever to plead for us, and to make our peace with God. Oh, how should our hearts be fired with love to Christ!”
How intense is your love for Jesus Christ, our faithful Advocate?

Suggestions for Prayer
“Draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that [you] may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).

     Pray for a fresh appreciation of this today!!

For Further Study
   What do 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Hebrews 2:17 say about Christ as our High Priest?