Rev. Geoffrey Donnan of Reformation Christian Ministries is coming to Faith Church on Sunday, March 9^th. Rev. Donnan will preach the evening worship service and report on his ministry.

Daylight Savings Time begins Sunday, March 9^th. Before you go to bed Saturday night don’t forget to set your clocks ahead one hour. You want to be on time for church!

Congratulations to Bertha Horvath who turns 90 years old on March 28^th! Help celebrate her birthday at our Fellowship Time on March 2^nd following the evening service. Besides Bertha’s birthday we will celebrate all our church family who have a birthday in March. There will be a large cake and everyone is welcome.

The Old Gospel,

JI Packer

(From his introduction to

The Death of Death in the Death of Christ by John Owen)

The preacher's task… is to display Christ: to explain man's need of Him, His sufficiency to save, and His offer of Himself in the promises as Saviour to all who truly turn to Him; and to show as fully and plainly as he can how these truths apply to the congregation before him. It is not for him to say, nor for his hearers to ask, for whom Christ died in particular. "There is none called on by the gospel once to enquire after the purpose and intention of God concerning the particular object of the death of Christ, every one being fully assured that His death shall be profitable to them that believe in Him and obey Him." After saving faith has been exercised, "it lies on a believer to assure his soul, according as he find the fruit of the death of Christ in him and towards him, of the good–will and eternal love of God to him in sending His Son to die for him in particular"; but not before. The task to which the gospel calls him is simply to exercise faith, which he is both warranted and obliged to do by God's command and promise.

Some comments on this conception of what preaching the gospel means are in order.

First, we should observe that the old gospel of Owen contains no less full and free an offer of salvation than its modern counterpart. It presents ample grounds of faith (the sufficiency of Christ, and the promise of God), and cogent motives to faith (the sinner's need, and the Creator's command, which is also the Redeemer's invitation). The new gospel gains nothing here by asserting universal redemption. The old gospel, certainly, has no room for the cheap sentimentalizing which turns God's free mercy to sinners into a constitutional soft–heartedness on His part which we can take for granted; nor will it countenance the degrading presentation of Christ as the baffled Saviour, balked in what He hoped to do by human unbelief; nor will it indulge in maudlin appeals to the unconverted to let Christ save them out of pity for His disappointment. The pitiable Saviour and the pathetic God of modern pulpits are unknown to the old gospel. The old gospel tells men that they need God, but not that God needs them (a modern falsehood); it does not exhort them to pity Christ, but announces that Christ has pitied them, though pity was the last thing they deserved. It never loses sight of the Divine Majesty and sovereign power of the Christ Whom it proclaims, but rejects flatly all representations of Him which would obscure His free omnipotence. Does this mean, however, that the preacher of the old gospel is inhibited or confined in offering Christ to men and inviting them to receive Him? Not at all. In actual fact, just because he recognizes that Divine mercy is sovereign and free, he is in a position to make far more of the offer of Christ in his preaching than is the expositor of the new gospel; for this offer is itself a far more wonderful thing on his principles than it can ever be in the eyes of those who regard love to all sinners as a necessity of God's nature, and therefore a matter of course. To think that the holy Creator, who never needed man for His happiness and might justly have banished our fallen race for ever without mercy, should actually have chosen to redeem some of them! and that His own Son was willing to undergo death and descend into hell to save them! and that now from His Throne He should speak to ungodly men as He does in the words of the gospel, urging upon them the command to repent and believe in the form of a compassionate invitation to pity themselves and choose life! These thoughts are the focal points round which the preaching of the old gospel revolves. It is all wonderful, just because none of it can be taken for granted. But perhaps the most wonderful thing of all––the holiest spot in all the holy ground of gospel truth––is the free invitation which "the Lord Christ" (as Owen loves to call Him) issues repeatedly to guilty sinners to come to Him and find rest for their souls. It is the glory of these invitations that it is an omnipotent King Who gives them, just as it is a chief part of the glory of the enthroned Christ that He condescends still to utter them. And it is the glory of the gospel ministry that the preacher goes to men as Christ's ambassador, charged to deliver the King's invitation personally to every sinner present and to summon them all to turn and live. Owen himself enlarges on this in a passage addressed to the unconverted.

"Consider the infinite condescension and love of Christ, in His invitations and calls of you to come unto Him for life, deliverance, mercy, grace, peace and eternal salvation. Multitudes of these invitations and calls are recorded in the Scripture, and they are all of them filled up with those blessed encouragements which divine wisdom knows to be suited unto lost, convinced sinners . . . In the declaration and preaching of them, Jesus Christ yet stands before sinners, calling, inviting, encouraging them to come unto Him.

"This is somewhat of the word which He now speaks unto you: Why will ye die? why will ye perish? why will ye not have compassion on your own souls? Can your hearts endure, or can your hands be strong, in the day of wrath that is approaching?... Look unto Me, and be saved; come unto Me, and I will ease you of all sins, sorrows, fears, burdens, and give rest unto your souls. Come, I entreat you; lay aside all procrastinations, all delays; put Me off no more; eternity lies at the door... do not so hate Me as that you will rather perish than accept of deliverance by Me.

"These and the like things doth the Lord Christ continually declare, proclaim, plead and urge upon the souls of sinners . . He doth it in the preaching of the word, as if he were present with you, stood amongst you, and spake personally to every one of you . . . He hath appointed, the ministers of the gospel to appear before you, and to deal with you in His stead, avowing as His own the invitations which are given you in His name, 2 Cor. v.19,20."

These invitations are universal; Christ addresses them to sinners as such, and every man, as he believes God to be true, is bound to treat them as God's words to him personally and to accept the universal assurance which accompanies them, that all who come to Christ will be received. Again, these invitations are real; Christ genuinely offers Himself to all who hear the gospel, and is in truth a perfect Saviour to all who trust Him. The question of the extent of the atonement does not arise in evangelistic preaching; the message to be delivered is simply this-that Christ Jesus, the sovereign Lord, Who died for sinners, now invites sinners freely to Himself. God commands all to repent and believe; Christ promises life and peace to all who do so. Furthermore, these invitations are marvelously gracious; men despise and reject them, and are never in any case worthy of them, and yet Christ still issues them. He need not, but He does. "Come unto Me . . . and I will give you rest" remains His word to the world, never cancelled, always to be preached. He Whose death has ensured the salvation of all His people is to be proclaimed everywhere as a perfect Saviour, and all men invited and urged to believe on Him, whoever they are, whatever they have been. Upon these three insights the evangelism of the old gospel is based.

It is a very ill–informed supposition that evangelistic preaching which proceeds on these principles must be anemic and half–hearted by comparison with what Arminians can do. Those who study the printed sermons of worthy expositors of the old gospel, such as Bunyan (whose preaching Owen himself much admired), or Whitefield, or Spurgeon, will find that in fact they hold forth the Saviour and summon sinners to Him with a fullness, warmth, intensity and moving force unmatched in Protestant pulpit literature. And it will be found on analysis that the very thing which gave their preaching its unique power to overwhelm their audiences with broken–hearted joy at the riches of God's grace––and still gives it that power, let it be said, even with hard-boiled modern readers––was their insistence on the fact that grace is free. They knew that the dimensions of Divine love are not half understood till one realizes that God need not have chosen to save nor given His Son to die; nor need Christ have taken upon Him vicarious damnation to redeem men, nor need He invite sinners indiscriminately to Himself as He does; but that all God's gracious dealings spring entirely from His own free purpose. Knowing this, they stressed it, and it is this stress that sets their evangelistic preaching in a class by itself. Other Evangelicals, possessed of a more superficial and less adequate theology of grace, have laid the main emphasis in their gospel preaching on the sinner's need of forgiveness, or peace, or power, and of the way to get them by "deciding for Christ." It is not to be denied that their preaching has done good (for God will use His truth, even when imperfectly held and mixed with error), although this type of evangelism is always open to the criticism of being too man–centred and pietistic; but it has been left (necessarily) to Calvinists and those who, like the Wesleys, fall into Calvinistic ways of thought as soon as they begin a sermon to the unconverted, to preach the gospel in a way which highlights above everything else the free love, willing condescension, patient long–suffering and infinite kindness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And, without doubt, this is the most Scriptural and edifying way to preach it; for gospel invitations to sinners never honour God and exalt Christ more, nor are more powerful to awaken and confirm faith, than when full weight is laid on the free omnipotence of the mercy from which they flow. It looks, indeed, as if the preachers of the old gospel are the only people whose position allows them to do justice to the revelation of Divine goodness in the free offer of Christ to sinners.

Ladies of Faith Presbyterian Church:

 L.A.M.B.S. (Ladies AM Bible Study) will resume Thursday, March 6^th, at 9:30 a.m. All ladies are welcome to attend. L.A.M.B.S. meets every first and third Thursday of each month in the fellowship room. Each lesson they do is independent of the others so you can join the group at any time! If you already have a lesson book please prepare Lesson #4. If you are interested in joining the group please see Melinda Althuis or just come join the group on March 6^th!   

Have you ever wondered why there is a basket in the hallway bathroom? The basket is for donations to Akron Pregnancy Services. APS need diapers (of all sizes), Similac formula, baby clothes, blankets, and any other baby items (wipes, soap, lotion, etc.) Please place your donations in the basket and they will be delivered to APS for you. Thank you for sharing in this WIC project. 

W.I.C. (Women in the Church) will hold their March meeting on Saturday, March 9^th. Breakfast will be provided beginning at 9:00 a.m. Following breakfast Kelly Rastetter will lead the group in a devotion. All ladies of Faith Church, members and visitors, are welcome and encouraged to attend.

MESS HALL:

✦Mess Hall will meet at Pastor Scholten’s home on Thursday, March 13^th, at 7:00 p.m. for a time of singing, study and fellowship.

✦Mess Hall will have a fun activity later in the month of March. At the time the newsletter was published the activity was still “under construction”. More details will be sent to you closer to the time of the activity.

Mess Hall Parents: There will be a short meeting for all parents of Mess Hall kids on Sunday, March 16^th, following morning worship service.

Romans 12:3-5

    For through the grace given to me I say to every man among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.