August 8, 2021
Upcoming Events and Notices
We have resumed in-person worship service. Please join us at 11 AM. You can find the order of worship and songs here
Please join us as we read another collection of great books for the year 2021. You can find the list here.
August 8 (Lord’s Day): Please join us for our monthly fellowship meal after the worship service!
We will begin a new mid-week study of Revelation starting in September. We will follow the outlines of “Let’s Study Revelation” by Derek Thomas.
Thank you for your continued support of Grace Fallbrook (PCA). Your loving support makes the proclamation of the gospel and the building up of the saints possible. Please continue to mail in your gifts and offerings to our church treasurer, Bruce Summers. In addition, our church website now features online giving. Please visit the church website and click on "Give" which you will find in the upper left corner of our church's website. When you click on "Give Online Now" button on that page, you will be directed to the PCA Foundation where you can give towards Grace Fallbrook (PCA).
Before We Worship
English poetry often utilizes rhymes and meters. Thus the repetition of sounds and the cadence of words play important roles. Hebrew poetry (i.e. Psalms), on the other hand, do not utilize rhymes and meters. Instead, one of the most prominent features of the Hebrew poetry is parallelism, where the same idea is expressed in the adjoining lines using different words. These parallel lines together convey one message and complement an idea that cannot be expressed within a single line. For example, Psalm 98:2 states, “The LORD has made known his salvation; he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations.” Here “has made known” is paralleled in the next line as “revealed.” Likewise,“his salvation” is paralleled in the next line as “his righteousness.” For the psalmist God’s “salvation” and his “righteousness” are overlapping concepts that explain one another.
Indeed, the Bible closely correlates salvation with righteousness. The reason is obvious. We need salvation because we have failed the standards of God’s righteousness. Thus for salvation to be real, God’s righteousness must be satisfied. But who does the satisfying? Who meets the conditions of salvation and supply the righteousness that is lacking? Many say that man contributes righteousness towards his salvation through his works. But notice who receives the praise. “Oh sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.” Psalm 98 gives glory to God for meeting the condition of our salvation. God supplied the righteousness that saves us. God has done this ultimately in Jesus. Thus the New Testament teaches us that we are “Clothed in His righteousness alone, Faultless to stand before his throne.”
What should be our response to this? First, we give entire glory for our salvation to God. God took the first and the last steps of our salvation, and every step in between. Our salvation owes nothing to man, but everything to God. Second, we “sing to the LORD a new song.” We are tempted to favor the old and familiar songs. But God commands us to find new ways to express what he has done. There is nothing inherently great about a song just because it is new. A new song may be just as bad as bad old songs. The point is that we cannot fully ascribe to God the glory he deserves with a few old songs, and that the generations of the past have not utterly exhausted stating and rejoicing in the glorious things God has done. So every generation happily takes up that task to give to God the glory he deserves anew, and sing new songs.