Covenant Protestant Reformed Church
83 Clarence Street, Ballymena BT43 5DR
Rev. Angus Stewart
Lord’s Day, 8 May, 2022
“… walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us
an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Eph. 5:2)
Morning Service – 11:00 AM
Solomon: Israel’s Wisest King (33)
Solomon’s Many Women [youtube]
Scripture Reading: I Kings 11:1-22
Text: I Kings 11:1-3
I. The Massive Number
II. The Foolish Behaviour
III. The Failing Type
Psalms: 63:1-8; 29:1-5; 127:1-5; 128:1-6
Evening Service – 6:00 PM
Solomon: Israel’s Wisest King (34)
Solomon’s Heathen Women [youtube]
Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 7:1-15
Text: I Kings 11:1-4
I. Who?
II. Why?
Psalms: 111:1-6; 29:5-11; 45:10-15; 1:1-6
For CDs of the sermons and DVDs of the worship services, contact Stephen Murray
If you desire a pastoral visit, please contact Rev. Stewart or the elders
CPRC Website: www.cprc.co.uk • Live Webcast: www.cprc.co.uk/live-streaming
CPRC YouTube: www.youtube.com/cprcni
CPRC Facebook: www.facebook.com/CovenantPRC
Quotes to Consider
Philip Ryken: “In those days it was customary for kings to take many wives, but Solomon took more than most. He was called to be a one-woman man, just as Christian husbands today are called to give all of their affection to the one woman that God has called them to love by sacrifice (Eph. 5:25-31). In a godly marriage, there is only room for one main emotional connection, one overriding passion, one sexual bond. Instead, Solomon foolishly squandered his affections on women he was forbidden to touch. Obviously he could not truly love these women in any meaningful sense of the word love. When the Bible says that he ‘clung to these [women] in love’ (I Kings 11:2), the connotation is frankly sexual. This was a foolish sin of marital infidelity” (King Solomon: The Temptations of Money, Sex, and Power, pp. 176-177).
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley: “Of all the institutions of an Oriental monarchy, the most characteristic and the most fatal is polygamy. It is not on Solomon, but on David, that the heavy responsibility rests, of having first introduced polygamy on an extended scale into the court of Israel. But Solomon carried it out to a degree unparalleled before or since, and his wider intercourse with foreign nations gave him a wider field for selection. The chief Queen, no doubt, was the Egyptian Princess. But she was surrounded by a vast array of inferior wives and concubines, all of them, as far as appears, of foreign extraction; from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Phoenicia, and the old Canaanitish races” (Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church: Samuel to the Captivity, pp. 249-250).
John G. Butler: “Some like to be clever and spread out their multiplicity of wives by using divorce as a means of having more than one wife. But Paul condemned that practice when he said, ‘For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth … So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man’ (Romans 7:2, 3). One wife (or husband) is the limit unless she (or he) dies. That is God’s rule and God’s rule is for man’s best. Those who ignore this rule do so to their own confusion and condemnation. The rules have not changed since creation. Solomon did what was a popular practice but that did not make it right. His father, David, had a number of wives and some concubines, too, but that did not make it right nor help his morals. Adding wives only added more woes for David” (Solomon: The King of Splendour, pp. 268-269).
Philip Ryken on Solomon’s marriages: “Our own sins may seem equally small and even easier to justify. ‘Maybe I didn’t need to buy that,’ we might say, ‘but it really wasn’t all that expensive.’ ‘These pictures do not show enough skin to count as pornography.’ ‘I know I’m getting emotionally attached, but it’s appropriate to have a good working relationship with my co-worker.’ ‘I don’t care if he’s not a Christian; he’s a nice person and besides, maybe I’ll get a chance to share the gospel.’ Before we know it, we get pulled into self-indulgent spending, or a habit of sexual sin, or an adulterous affair, or a match that was never made in heaven. Long before most people ever fall into disgrace, they sow the seeds of their own destruction by making lots of little spiritual compromises” (King Solomon: The Temptations of Money, Sex, and Power, p. 181).
Announcements (subject to God’s will)
Standard Bearers are available on the back table for subscribers.
The Council will hold its monthly meeting tomorrow, 9 May, at 7:30 PM.
Tuesday Bible study at 11 AM will meet to discuss faith’s unique role of receiving Christ and all His benefits.
Family visitation starts this week. Please try to make the dates and times work as much as possible, since rearranging slots means rearranging schedules for other members. If you do need to reschedule or if you are not a member but would like to be included in family visitation, talk to Rev. Stewart or one of the elders.
Wednesday, 11 May
7 PM – J. McCaugherns (Crossett/Rev. Stewart)
8 PM – B. McCaugherns (Crossett/Rev. Stewart)
Friday, 13 May
7 PM – Kennedys (Reid/Rev. Stewart)
8 PM – Kuhs (Reid/Rev. Stewart)
9 PM – Debbie (Reid/Rev. Stewart)
Membership Class: Thursday, 11 AM with the Goulds.
The Reformed Witness Hour broadcast next Lord’s day (Gospel 846 MW at 8:30 AM) by Rev. R. Kleyn is entitled, “When It Seems That Everything Is Against You” (Gen. 42:26-43).
Have you booked your place at the BRF Conference at Castlewellan Castle from 9-16 July? Booking forms should be completed and full payment made by 8 June.
Offerings: General Fund: £1,069.22.
Translation Additions: 2 Polish.
PRC News: Rev. Marcus accepted the call to Peace PRC. Prof. Gritters declined the call from Grace PRC. Grace PRC’s new trio is Revs. Decker (Grandville, MI), Guichelaar (Randolph, WI) and W. Langerak (Trinity, MI).
The Free Offer and the Nature of God
Rev. Ron Hanko (an excerpt from “Some Further Objections to the Free Offer of the Gospel”)
One place where free-offer teaching does not fit into Reformed theology is in the whole area of theology proper, i.e., the doctrine of God. Implicitly or explicitly, a divine desire to save the reprobate denies fundamental truths regarding the nature of the Most High Himself. To put the matter bluntly, free-offer teaching leads to a different conception of God than does the theology of those who reject it. This alone, if true, ought to be enough to condemn free-offer teaching in the mind and heart of every Reformed person.
The free offer denies, first, a basic truth about revelation—the truth that all God’s revelation is self-revelation, God’s making Himself known to us. No matter what the content of that revelation, no matter how it is given, it all, in the end, reveals who and what God is.
All God says and does, therefore, is a revealing of who He is in Himself. That means, in turn, that God’s revelation cannot contradict what He is in Himself. What He says cannot be different from what He is. What He does cannot contradict who He is. For example, since God is a just God, then none of His works and words, whereby He reveals Himself, can be unjust. We may not be able always to demonstrate to unbelievers why God’s ways are always just but because they are part of His revelation of Himself they cannot be unjust.
The logic of this is that, if any of God’s works or ways are unjust, then He is also unjust in Himself, an unjust God. And, if He is an unjust God, He is not God at all. So with all His attributes.
The defenders of the free offer deny this, often explicitly. They say in defence of the free offer that God can be something different in His dealings with men from what He is in Himself. Free-offer teaching says that He can desire to save everybody, love them and be gracious to them in the gospel, and yet be in Himself from eternity of a different mind, will and heart concerning them. His revelation of Himself in the gospel can and does contradict what He is in Himself.
If this is true, then revelation is not really revelation, an uncovering and showing of who and what God is in Himself. In fact, revelation would then tell the very opposite of the truth about the nature and will of God—it would be a lie. Put a bit more kindly, free-offer teaching says that God does not tell those who perish the truth—especially not the whole truth—about Himself. He speaks to them of love and grace and mercy. He even does loving, gracious and merciful things for them, the free offer claims, but in His own heart, mind and will there is no grace or love or mercy for them. He not only did not choose to save them but He did not even intend to have His Son die for them or to give His Spirit to them. What He says and shows in the gospel is not the truth about who and what He is from eternity and in Himself.
Yet those who believe in the well-meant offer are not afraid of saying this. They speak of two wills in God, a revealed will to save absolutely all who hear the preaching (expressed in the free offer of the gospel in time) and a secret will not to save them (determined in eternal reprobation). They may even say that God both hates (Rom. 9:13) and loves those who perish. That, however, only raises further problems with Jehovah’s other attributes.
For one thing, it denies God’s oneness. His oneness means that He is, in Himself and in His revelation, one and indivisible. This is denied by those who hold to the free offer.
They hold that God is of two minds, two wills, two hearts concerning those who perish (contrary to Job 23:13). He loves reprobate sinners and He does not love them (Ps. 11:5). He wills their salvation (in the gospel) and does not will it (in eternal election). Nor are His revelation and His eternal mind and will one and the same. In his revelation He is one thing—in Himself another. No defender of the free offer has ever shown how such teaching can be reconciled with the fundamental teaching of Scripture, the great “Shema” of Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” Indeed, it cannot be reconciled with God’s oneness. It is a piece that does not fit Reformed theology.
Another aspect of God’s oneness is His absolute simplicity. This means that there is no disharmony, no contradiction, no imperfection, in God. In this sense also He is one and undivided in His nature and revelation, His words and works, and in all His attributes. The “theology” of the free offer cannot be reconciled with God’s simplicity. It flatly contradicts this crucial attribute by teaching that there are contradictions and imperfections in God. Think for example of the two-wills teaching, which is at the heart of free-offer theology. Not only do the two wills contradict each other but one will always remains unfulfilled and unrealized with respect to all those who perish.
Nor are these the only attributes of God that are contradicted by the free-offer teaching. Such teaching also denies God’s unchangeableness (James 1:17). He changes His mind and will and His word about those who perish, showing a sincere desire for their salvation in the gospel and then, in the end, damning them. He promises them eternal life in the gospel but then does not give it, for He does not even give them the necessary means in the death of Christ and the work of His Spirit.
Free-offer teaching opposes the eternity of the Most High too (Ps. 90:2). It teaches that there is love, a grace, a mercy of God, which lasts as long as the gospel is preached, whereas God’s “mercy endureth for ever” (Ps. 136:1-26). His eternal will, so they say, is only revealed in predestination.
The free offer even contradicts His sovereignty (Isa. 46:9-10) in that it teaches that there are in the gospel a resistible grace and a divine love that do not save.
The truth is that the free offer of the gospel fits none of God’s attributes. Is a grace that well-meaningly offers salvation but does not give the means of salvation an infinite grace? Is telling men that God loves them, while He does nothing either in the cross or by the Spirit to save them, in keeping with His truthfulness (Deut. 32:4)? Is it divine wisdom well-meaningly to offer salvation to those whom He excluded from it by eternal reprobation (Rom. 9:17-18, 22)? Is it really love to say to them that God passionately desires their salvation while He secretly planned otherwise?
What then? The free offer does not fit with revelation. It does not fit the attributes of God. It does not fit the doctrine of God. It fits nowhere. Nor can any defender of the offer make it fit without bending or ruining other pieces of the picture.
