Sovereign Grace Missionary Baptist Church
1217 Dillon Texarkana, Texas 75501
March 24, 2013          
 Newsletter Number 408

Brother Randy Johnson, Pastor                    Brother Ronnie Henderson, Song Director
Pastor E-Mail: pastor@sgmbaptist.com          Web Site: www.sgmbaptist.com

"Where The Truths Of God’s Word Have Been Taught For More Than Fifty Years”

You Were Asked To Pray For:

All of Our Military, Their Family’s & All the Civilian Workers in The Middle East, Zee Mink Fuller and Family, Her son’s Bryan Armstrong and Hunter Hackie, Daughter Shannon, and Brother Philip & Sondra Thornsberry, Junior Baldridge, Frankie Baldridge and daughter, Buckie Thompson, Frank & Sonya Trusty, Frank & Dawana Reigel, Andrew Preston, Larry Mollette, Larry Mollette II & Family, Kerry Pennington, Kim Poole, Danny & Nita Mollette, Wendell Henderson, Judy Dunn, Martha Gray, Joshua Kidd, Matthew Kidd, Ronnie Henderson Jr. & Children, Ricky Henderson and Family, Jacie Henderson, Velma Hammond, Charles, Don Hammond and Families, Archie & Barbara Griffin, Bro. & Sister Bob Keller, Mary Ramsey, Donna Johnson, Fay Johnson, James and Luann Reynolds, Timothy and Nathan Fails, Jacob Ramsey, Jerry Hughes, Sister Nita Bookout, Teresa Bookout, Pastor G. L. Burr, Melody Carr, Janie Capps, Imajo Tracy, Linda Hughes, Roy Lemmon, Rosie Tomlin, Lee Mollette’s Daughter & Granddaughter Kristal, Pat Abercrombie, Barbara Brewer, Donna Jones, Dale and Linda Trahan, Ricky and Margaret McCoy, Brother David O’Neal, Gina, Ryan, and Mallary Peel, Tommy Walker and family, Brother Steve McCool and the work in Canada, Brother Curtis Pugh, Brother Dan Sullivan and the work in Thailand, Brother Raul and the work in Romania, and Bro. Sergey Mochalov and the Churches in Russia.

A Thought From Our Pastor:

What is “Everlasting Love”?
"The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee." Jeremiah 31:3

This question (if looked at in a proper way) will simply cause fuses to blow in your brain. What is everlasting?  Vine's Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words says it means – perpetuity - which means – without an end – however when we look at it from Gods point it means without beginning or without end. When we truly look at it from a secular or from a natural standpoint we will never understand this word exactly as it is meant from a Deity stand point. Sometimes I hear two young people in love say “our love is eternal or forever” but is it really? Well the answer is most certainly “no” because our love for one another could never be forever or even eternal in this flesh, because everything with man is temporal. The only thing that is truly eternal is the love we share with God and the love He has given to us. Just as God is the giver of life (because life does not exist outside of God) He is also the giver of love. Two people may marry and live together in marriage for 75 or more years but their love is not eternal because there is no evidence that our earthly relationships exist in eternity. Besides most eternal relationships only last a few months or maybe a few years and then the love has been exhausted. But in our text we see God tell the nation of Israel that He “…loved thee with an everlasting love…”, however this is God talking and not man. When God says something He means it because God never lies or even stretches the truth. Now when we look at Deity everything comes from a different view, for example God only says what He means and everything with God is eternal. Therefore if God told Israel that He loved them with an eternal love then that is exactly what He meant. However looking at this love from Deity’s standpoint it tells us that God eternally loved, does love, and will eternality love Israel. God is immutable or He never changes: that’s right God has never changed in even one tiny way. So when God said “For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect..." Isaiah 45:4 does it mean that God actually sit down and chose from the entire people one the earth Jacob and from all the nations of the earth Israel? No! While the word means chosen God never simply made a decision because that would violate who God truly is. God is immutable which means He cannot change; God is Omniscient which means He has all knowledge, so if both of these are truly attributes of God then He never actually chose anything. Now don’t misunderstood, I believe in election but not as we know it to be election. Gods love for Israel did not, ever not exists, or there was never a second in eternity past when God did not love Israel. God did not actually choose them He has always loved them. It is just like the love God has for His chosen Gentile believers; as John puts it “We love him, because he first loved us." 1 John 4:19 He had to because He could have never come to love us because God does not change. Paul went on to ask this question "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ..." Romans 8:35 well we cannot be separated because his love is the same as the Fathers, "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you..."John 15:9 Christ loves us exactly as the Father did, He did not come to love us He eternally loves us, therefore this explains why nothing created can separate us from the love of Christ.

In conclusion think about this, if you are saved it is because God loved you and chose you to be His beloved in eternity past, but there was really no choosing just as there was never a time in all eternity that He did not love you nor want you to be His. How wonderful is that!

For Our Weekly  Meditation:

The little things which we are apt to desire and to lay out for ourselves as a path to heaven in, let us refer them wholly to the will and wisdom of our heavenly Father. It is our privilege that, as His children, we may lay them before Him and pray Him to bestow them if for His glory and our good; but in nowise let us choose for ourselves, but continually give up ourselves and all things which concern us into the hands of the Lord, and say, "Choose our inheritance for us."

Alas! we would make a foolish choice if left to our own will, our own wisdom! We would soon be undone if left to our own conduct. Let us not attempt it. There is a snake in the grass of those pleasing things which we desire to lie down in, which the Lord denies us of, that we do not see, which would soon destroy the health and comfort of our souls.

We naturally love smooth things, but alas, we have so much roughness in us that we must have rough things to smooth us. It is well we have a Father that loves us infinitely—who is infinitely wise and well knows how to make us as glorious as He designs us—who will not spare for our crying, but will pare off our knots and blemishes, and hew and carve us into gracious pieces of His workmanship—whatever labor it costs Him—whatever sharp things are needful to be used on us—or whatever blows are requisite to be given us.

Come, my brother, let us give up ourselves into our all-wise, all-gracious, and almighty Father's hands! He will work us into the image, the glorious image, of Jesus! And what does it matter which way He does it? If this blessed work is done we shall rejoice and praise Him forever; aye, and let me say, we shall admire and praise all the ways that He took to do it in, when we see, with the veil cast off, all those exceeding riches of His infinite grace, wisdom, and prudence, which have been expended and laid out upon us therein. Oh, we shall admire and adore  all the Lord's ways with us, which are mercy and truth. We shall see and say, they were like God—worthy of God—of His great Being—of His glorious art!

Until then, let us live by faith, and in the obedience thereof shroud ourselves under the shadow of Jehovah's wings, and cry unto Him continually, under a deep sense of our utter insufficiency—and of His all-sufficiency to guide us by a right way all through this valley of misery, until He has brought us unto Himself in glory!

By Anne Dutton From Her Letters on Spiritual Subjects

Mirror and fountain:

The Scripture is a mirror to show us our sins; Christ's blood is a fountain to wash them away.

By Thomas Watson