Call To Worship February 14 2016
We worship our one God who promised His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit not only regenerates dead sinners, but He sanctifies all those whom He made new in Christ. His sanctifying work is never separate from the word of God. The confession aids our understanding of the Bible’s teaching concerning sanctification. “They who are united to Christ, effectually called, and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection,” the authors wrote, “are also farther sanctified, really and personally, through the same virtue, by His Word and Spirit dwelling in them; the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified, and they more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces, to the practice of all true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.” (1689 LBC, Chapter 13, paragraph 1) These men agreed with Paul’s writing that sin no longer reigned in condemnation or dominion in the believer. So, the constant, consistent, unrepentant practice of immorality or filthiness was not to be the staple of the Christian’s life. Sin’s dominion was to weaken through mortification during the lifetime of the believer. Let us worship today knowing that God has granted all the tools we need to fight against sin, and given us the only acceptable advocate, Jesus Christ, to stand on our behalf when we fail or fall. Pastor Brandon F Smith