April 8, 2012
SOVEREIGN GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH
LOCATION
Rocky Hill Firehouse, 2nd Floor
150 Washington Street
Rocky Hill, New Jersey, 08553
Telephone: 615-513-4464
Schedule of Services
Sunday 10: 15 AM Bible Class
Sunday 11 AM Morning Service
Thursday 7: 30 PM Midweek Service
The school of the cross is the school of light; it discovers the world’s vanity, baseness, and wickedness, and lets us see more of God’s mind. John Bunyan
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WHY THE MOUTH OF BABES?
Psalm 8: 1-2
We have probably all heard someone use the expression, “Out of the mouth of babes.” But who are God’s babes? Who is the strength of God’s babes? Why does our Lord choose to bring strength out of the mouth of babes?
Who Are God’s Babes? (Psalm 8: 2) We cannot think of anything weaker, as helpless, or as dependent upon another as a nursing infant. That is what the believer is. God’s babes are his children, born-again believers, who desire the sincere milk of the word that we may grow thereby.
When of God Christ is made unto us the Power and Wisdom of God, the Spirit of God makes us as needy for the gospel of Christ as a suckling depends upon its mother’s breast. The Excellency of the power is of God not of us! True God-given faith stands in the power of God not in the wisdom of men. Through that same gospel by which God teaches who Christ is and gives us faith to believe on Christ, God also grows his babes in grace and knowledge of him (Mt 11: 25-26; 9-27). In the local church, the more God grows each of us in knowledge and understanding of the glory of God in Christ Jesus, the more he makes us to desire Christ and his gospel and the closer he unites brethren with each other. How sad for any who are too busy in the world so as to miss this beautiful flower blossom before our very eyes!
Who is the Strength of God’s Babes? (Ps 8: 1) This Psalm is praising the LORD our Lord who is our strength and our praise. God manifested his name under heaven in all the earth by the Son of God coming down joining himself with the nature of his elect children. He is the Power and Wisdom who has spoken to us in these last days and confirmed his word unto us by his babes and sucklings (Psalm 8: 3-6; Hebrews 2: 1-12; Acts 4: 12.)
Christ Jesus fulfilled the law for his babes because he loved God and his brethren so much that he was willingly made sin to declare God just and Justifier of his brethren and at the same time justify us from our sins. He is the Lord our Righteousness.
God set him above the heavens in the throne (Ephesians 1: 21-23; 4: 10). Christ sent the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. He gives his babes one Spirit. Christ adds to the church daily such as should be saved. He is our Strength.
Why the Mouth of Babes? (Psalm 8: 2) The enemy and the avenger is one whose heart is enmity against God but who is wise and prudent in his own eyes. He despises God’s means and despises God’s babes because he despises God! But God ordained strength in the mouth of babes that HE—THE LORD our Lord—might still the enemy and the avenger!
Every believer in whom God has ordained strength was once enemies in our own minds by the very same wicked works as those who are yet enemies. But our faithful Father sent one of his babes, crossed our path with the gospel of Christ and strengthened his babe so that he could not be turned by our opposition against the gospel. Through the gospel our faithful Father founded strength and praise within us unto his excellent name by forming Christ in us and making us a new creation. So God stilled that old wicked flesh through the gospel spoken by the mouth of one of his babes (1 Corinthians 1: 21-25). Now we know that the gospel of Christ Jesus is the power of God unto salvation by which we were called and go forth declaring his name to others.
Yet, through the same gospel out of the mouth of babes the LORD “stills” the enemy in another way. The means God uses does not impress and is not even deemed necessary by the wise and prudent. And because they would not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved, God sends them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness (2 Thess 2: 10-12.) They are left confounded and brought to nothing (1 Corinthians 1: 27-29).
Nevertheless, to us have been made to taste God’s grace, the feet of “them” who God uses to preach the gospel are beautiful because the feet of “HIM”, Christ the Voice, who speaks through them, is beautiful. The final straw for vainly religious men was when they heard those they deemed beneath them rejoicing and praising the name of Christ Jesus our Lord. Christ rebuked them with this very Psalm “And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? And he left them, and went out of the city into Bethany; and he lodged there.”
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If You Walk in the Fear of God
JC Philpot
"If ye were of the world, the world would love his own but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." John 15:19
If you walk in the fear of God, and follow in the footsteps of a persecuted and despised Jesus, the world will hate and despise you as it hated and despised him, as he himself declares, "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you." God himself has put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent (Gen. 3:15); and nothing will secure you from the manifestation of this enmity if you are on Christ's side. Neither rank, nor property, nor learning, nor education, nor amiability, nor the profuse deeds of liberality, nor the greatest uprightness of conduct, will stave off the scorn of men, if you are a sincere follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, and carry out in practice what you hold in principle. If you are not conformed to Jesus here in his suffering image, you will most certainly not be conformed to Jesus hereafter in his glorified likeness. But if by living for and unto Jesus and his cross, your name be cast out as evil, wear it as your distinguishing badge, as adorning the breast of a Christian warrior. If men misrepresent your motives or actions, and seek to hunt you down with every calumny that the basest malignity can invent, do not heed it as long as you are innocent. They cannot find you a better or more honorable crown, if indeed your godly life provoke the cruel lie. It is a crown that your Master bore before you when they crowned his head with thorns.