Sunday
Worship 9:30 am
Pastor Arch Warren
Coffee 10:45 am
Classes 11:15am
Wednesdays
Dinner 5:30 pm
Classes 6:15 pm
Practices 7:15 pm
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SERMONS |
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Thirty-five years ago (1973), Dr. J. I. Packer published his enormously challenging, helpful, and popular book, Knowing God. He has some profound things to say in Chapter XIX, “Sons of God,” that I want to pass on to you. He writes:
What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father.
But cannot this be said of every person, Christian or not? Emphatically no! The idea that all are children of God is not found in the Bible anywhere. The Old Testament shows God as the Father, not of all, but of his own people, the seed of Abraham. “Israel is my son, . . . ‘Let my son go’” (Exodus 4:22-23). The New Testament has a world vision, but it too shows God as the Father, not of all, but of those who, knowing themselves to be sinners, put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as their divine sin-bearer and master, and so become Abraham’s spiritual seed . . . (Galatians 3:26-29). Sonship to God is not, therefore, a universal status into which everyone enters by natural birth, but a supernatural gift which one receives through receiving Jesus. “No one comes to the Father” —in other words, is acknowledged by God as a son— except through me” (John 14:6).
The gift of sonship to God becomes ours not through being born, but through being born again. ”To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:12-13).
.......go to SERMONS
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