Sovereign Grace Missionary Baptist Church
1217 Dillon Texarkana, Texas 75501
August 04, 2013          
 Newsletter Number 427

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 & Martha Mollette, Larry Mollette II & Family, Kerry Pennington, Kim Poole, Danny & Nita Mollette, Robert Riggs, 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, Tommy Walker and family, Dina Thomas, Gina Peel, James and Lynn Tomlin, Brother Kelley and Sister Hinson, 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:

God Knows All!
“Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” Acts 15:18 

This is a bottom-line fact that many people forget and that is God is Omniscient which is defined as all-knowledge.  There is nothing He does not know and nothing He has not ordained to happen. If God is God then He is everything or He is not God. God knew the fall of man would happen and He knew every detail of it, He could have prevented it had He chosen but rather He chose not too. God knows the history of the world and every detail of it, in fact He controlled it, even the ultimate sacrifice of so many believers. God know every detail of everything that happens today and nothing happens without it obeying His blessed will. And nothing will happen that God has not already marked out to come to pass. The problem for a lot of people is not God it is man, they simply do not know God as well as they need too. In fact God is to wonderful for our feeble minds to comprehend, so much so that we can only understand as much as God reveals to us through manifestation. People in general know nothing about God because God has not revealed Himself to them, they simply think they know Him. God to them is what they have made Him out to be but that is not the true God. Wisdom of God does not come natural and can not. Man does not even have the ability to know his own frame much less God. Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” So while people think they know who God is, how could they. People can’t even understand that God is sovereign or what His sovereignty is. God needs nothing or no one, He has total ability to all He wills, alone and sovereign. God told Moses in Exodus 3:14  “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” When God call Himself “I Am” He means that He is everything and totally sovereign. The words express absolute, and therefore unchanging and eternal Being, As one writer put it. God said in  John 8:58 “Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.” Signifying His eternal existence. We  see Him in the fiery furnace in Daniel 3:25  “He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” There is never a tomorrow with God the words “I Am” signifies He never has another second before or after the present. God has never not known His works or His will. People signify that God is not in control or that He has not the power to control something but He is just the opposite of that, nothing happens outside of His will. The problem is us and our ability to understand God, although He understands everything about us.  Matthew 6:8  “Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” How could this be possible except God knows everything God does not wait for tomorrow because He is already in tomorrow? Some will say that God looked into the future but how can He look into where He already is. This is how He already know what we have need of before we ask. This is the sovereign God that so few know, who know the end from the beginning. 

For Our Weekly  Meditation:

Believing Without Effect

“Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.” (I Cor. 15:1-2)

Apostle Paul preached the Gospel, which is the fact that Jesus Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day, “by which also ye are saved.”  Salvation does not exist outside of the boundaries of this fact, plus nothing and minus nothing.  If this simple fact is tainted by adding anything or removing anything it become perverted and is no Gospel at all.  One is only able to be saved by believing into this truth of the Gospel of Jesus as preached by the Apostles.  This comes not by believing about but by believing into.  It is being plunged into the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.  This is the effect of the Gospel of Jesus.

The words “if ye keep in memory” from the language carries the thought of “having in one’s possession.”  It is not just agreeing with the pronouncement of the Gospel; rather, it is possessing the Gospel which has been embedded by the Holy Spirit unto the birth of a new creature born out of God, saved unto the uttermost.  We are saved IF we have truthfully in our custody the fact that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and rose by the power of God in a bodily resurrection. 

“Unless” means “if not”; that is, if one is not in possession of the Gospel by the sovereign power and grace of Almighty God plunging him into the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, then all of his believing about and all of his religious activities has been for nothing.  “Believed in vain” means “believed without effect.”  That is to say, if one possesses in his spirit the Gospel a change will take place inwardly and outwardly conforming him to the righteousness of Christ Jesus.  One saying he believes with no conversion unto righteousness is still in his sins, because his believing has had no effect.  He possesses not the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. 

By Dr. M. J. Seymour, Sr.

WORLDLINESS

Worldliness is not easily observed. It is not to be measured by the style of our clothes, the means of innocent relaxation and entertainment, or the place of our residence.

Worldliness is the love of the world, the atmosphere of greed, the spirit of ambition, the passion for pleasure and self gratification which consumes the hearts, lives, thoughts, and deeds of lost souls.

By Don Fortner

There will be a business meeting today at 4pm please attend.