New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

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The Danger of Self-Deception” Tonight

Tonight we will cover Matthew 7:21–23, “The Dan­ger of Self-Deception.”  I am hop­ing and pray­ing that God will call many to repen­tance and faith tonight.  Many good, reli­gious peo­ple in Amer­ica have said or said and done the right things, but have never repented of sin and trusted in Jesus.  There is a world of dif­fer­ence between know­ing about Jesus and being known by him.  Pray that God would bring the mir­a­cle of sal­va­tion to many tonight.

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Standing on the Rock of Ages

As we fin­ish the month singing this hymn, let us reflect on the rich­ness of the pic­ture of God revealed in its words.

Rock of Ages cleft for me
Let me hide myself in Thee
Let the water and the blood
From Thy wounded side which flowed
Be for sin a dou­ble cure
Save from wrath and make me pure

The con­tin­ued image of a rock is one of per­ma­nence and foun­da­tion. That it is a rock of “ages” adds to the endur­ing nature. To then declare that this image of sta­bil­ity and strength is cleft or bro­ken for us should point us to the cross of Jesus Christ, where the sin­less Sav­ior was bro­ken. As with the ordi­nance of the Lord’s Sup­per, we remem­ber the body of Christ bro­ken for us so that we might be given new life.

The request to be hid­den in the cleft of this rock recalls Exo­dus 33, where Moses pleads that He may see the glory of the Lord, but the Lord hides him in the cleft of the rock, cov­ered with His hand because no one can see the face of the Lord and live.

The last part of this verse is a strong image of the effec­tive­ness of the aton­ing sac­ri­fice of Jesus. In John’s gospel account, when the solider pierced the side of Jesus, both water and blood are said to have poured forth, ful­fill­ing the Scrip­tures, and show­ing the cleans­ing pay­ment of sin in His death. Not only does man need to be res­cued from the wages of sin and the stain of sin, man must be deliv­ered from the wrath of God. The death of Christ was a dou­ble cure, deliv­er­ing from the wrath of God, and puri­fy­ing believ­ers to the plea­sure of God.

Not the labor of my hands
Can ful­fill Thy law’s demands
Could my zeal no respite know
Could my tears for­ever flow
All for sin could not atone
Thou must save, and Thou alone

This verse is a won­der­fully poetic way of remind­ing us that no amount of our work toward obe­di­ence of the law can ever be enough to over­come our sin­ful nature. Even if we never rested in our zeal for obe­di­ence or mourned con­tin­u­ally over the times we fail, we could still never do enough to deliver our­selves from the wrath of God that must pun­ish sin in order for God to still be right­eous. Only the sin­less per­son of Jesus Christ could accom­plish this.

You’re my Rock of Ages
You res­cued my soul from deprav­ity
Rock of Ages
Atone­ment for my sin
You bring me back to life again

The cho­rus added in this arrange­ment pro­claims per­son­ally who God is for us and what He has accom­plished through Jesus. It also has a sober-minded view of our own con­di­tion: dead in sin and depraved, utterly with­out the right­eous­ness and glory of the Lord. But he res­cued us from deserved pun­ish­ment, can­celed our debt, and gave us life in His Son.

While I draw this fleet­ing breath
When mine eyes shall close in death
When I soar to worlds unknown
And behold Thee on Thy throne
Noth­ing in my hand I bring
Sim­ply to the cross I cling

This verse, a com­pos­ite of 2 orig­i­nal verses to this hymn, con­cludes by stat­ing that at any stage of my exis­tence I bring noth­ing that enhances my posi­tion before God. In my hos­til­ity toward God, not only am I unable, but am unwill­ing to do so. So, whether I am liv­ing with each breath a gift, dying phys­i­cally, or enter­ing into the pres­ence of God in the heav­ens, I hold noth­ing but the cross of Christ.


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The Awful Truth about Trafficking

Justin and Lins­day Hol­combe, who both write for Resur­gence Lit­er­a­ture (Re:Lit), have posted a very good but heart­break­ing arti­cle on human traf­fick­ing.  They say:

The United States is a des­ti­na­tion coun­try for inter­na­tional traf­fick­ing: trans­porta­tion of for­eign women and chil­dren into the U.S. for pur­poses of sex­ual and labor exploita­tion.  The State Depart­ment esti­mates that approx­i­mately 18,000 for­eign nation­als are traf­ficked annu­ally into the United States alone.

Vic­tims brought to the U.S. orig­i­nate from Asia, Latin Amer­ica, East­ern Europe, and Africa.  For­eign national women and chil­dren brought to the U.S. for sex traf­fick­ing find them­selves forced to work in mas­sage par­lors, host­ess clubs, commercially-fronted broth­els, res­i­den­tial broth­els, escort ser­vices, and strip clubs.”

The post includes a lengthy clip of Mark Driscoll talk­ing  about the real­ity and effect of sex traf­fick­ing in the U.S. and the world.

I encour­age you to read the post, watch the video, and begin to pray and work for change based on the Gospel of Jesus.

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Living the Cross Centered Life Chapter Four

In the fourth chap­ter of Liv­ing the Cross Cen­tered Life, C.J. Mahaney explores “The Divine Dilemma.”  Many men and women believe the great­est dilemma in the world today is how to rec­on­cile the exis­tence of the Chris­t­ian God with the exis­tence of suf­fer­ing in the world.  C.J. ref­er­ences R.C. Sproul, who wrote that the most per­plex­ing ques­tion is not why suf­fer­ing exists, but why a God who is per­fectly holy would tol­er­ate sin­ful humans for any length of time.  Although the first “dilemma” is not easy to answer, this sec­ond is indeed beyond comprehension.

Here are sev­eral ques­tions to con­sider as you dis­cuss the chap­ter with others:

1. Mahaney opens the chap­ter by shar­ing his response to the ques­tion, “How are you?”  He says that for some time now, he has responded, “Bet­ter than I deserve.”  What does he mean?  How do you think peo­ple would react if you began to respond in that way?

2. Most peo­ple are not sur­prised to learn that God loves them (61).  What does this assump­tion tell us about our­selves?  How does this assump­tion affect the way even gen­uine believ­ers relate to God?

3. In 1 Tim­o­thy, Paul iden­ti­fies him­self as the fore­most, even the chief, of sin­ners.  What is your actual (not the­o­ret­i­cal) opin­ion of your sin as com­pared to oth­ers?  Why do you believe that is?

4. Why couldn’t God “just for­give” sin?  Why does the Bible say that God “will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex. 34:7)?

5. At the end of the chap­ter, C.J. talks about medi­a­tion as a legal process.  Look at Job 9:33–34. What did Job believe he needed?  Why did he come to this con­clu­sion?  How does this pas­sage pro­vide addi­tional insight to God’s over­all redemp­tive plan through­out history?

Next week we will con­sider chap­ter five, “The Divine Res­cue,” and learn why Jesus alone can save us from sin and its consequences.

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Personal Meetings Tonight

If you are going through the mem­ber­ship process, you should have signed up for a per­sonal meet­ing this evening between 5:45 and 10 pm (unless you have spo­ken to one of the elders already and have sched­uled another time).

Despite the “weather” (I was born in Chicago; it has to snow 18–24 inches before they would even think about can­cel­ing school up there), we will still have our per­sonal meet­ings tonight.  If it con­tin­ues to rain/sleet/snow this evening and you are uncom­fort­able dri­ving in those con­di­tions, please email me and let me know you’d like to resched­ule.  Oth­er­wise, please leave ear­lier than you nor­mally would and drive slowly and carefully!

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