Welcome to Hope Baptist Church

Sunday 14th of June 2020

531 Elizabeth Dr Sunbury Service Sundays 10:30am today

www.hopebc.org.au

“For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort

of the scriptures might have hope”. Romans 15:4

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Sermon Notes Who Shall Deliver Me

The Understanding of The Cry (Rom 7:24, 7:15, 7:19, Eph 2:1, Rom 6:3, Heb 9:27) …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …….…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The Limits of the Answer (Rom 7:24, Acts 2:37, 16:29, Luke 3:10,12,14, Isa 9:6-7, Isa 53:3-6, Mat 20:28, Mrk 10:45, Heb 4:9-10) …….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The Comprehension of Our Status (Rom 7:24, Acts 8:20, Isa 64:6, Rom 8:3, Heb 7:18-19, Gal 5:3-4, 2:21, Rom 1:17, Gal 3:11, Heb 10:38, Hab 2:4, Gal 2:20-21, Ps 7:11, Ps 9:5, Ps 10:4, Rom 2:3-6) …….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …….………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The Key To Present and Everlasting Happiness (Rom 7:24-25, Jn 14:2-3, Jn 15:5, Jn 10:27-30, Jn 17:12, Jn 10:10) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …….…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

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176 Words.

“The righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting:

give me understanding, and I shall live.”

(Ps 119:144)

To what end are the words of God to our comfort and our joy if they cannot be

understood? The righteousness of the testimonies of the Lord are recognised as such, and yet, there is within this passage, an admission of ignorance as to the life-giving properties of the living word, “give me understanding and I shall live”.

Never can purposeful obscurity be justly charged against God for his words. Ignorant and foolish men have so charged that the words of God are too high, too elevated, too lofty for the meagre sinner to have understanding. but this is refuted by the scriptures themselves, for “the common people heard him gladly” (Mrk 12:37), Jesus was not sent to, nor called upon the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Lk 5:32) . The testimonies of the Lord were known of Timothy, that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures (2 Tim 3:15).

Nevertheless, it is the joy of the Lord who is the author of the scriptures that can bring understanding to his testimonies. The Word to bring knowledge of his life-giving words.

Pr Edi Giudetti ___________________________________________________________________________

A Word On The Word

“For it must be by the faith of Christ in my heart that I submit to the word of faith in the Bible, otherwise all is no profit”

- John Bunyan

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Proverbs 13:14

The Word Of Hope

MIGHTY “But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob; (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel:) (Gen 49:24)

“Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle” (Ps. 24:8).

“He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who hath hardened himself against him, and hath prospered?” (Job 9:4)

“Behold, God is mighty, and despiseth not any: he is mighty in strength and wisdom” (Job 36:5)

“Therefore saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts, the mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies:” (Isa. 1:24).

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6).

“The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 19 And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power” (Eph. 1:18–19).

“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time” (I Pet. 5:6).

GOLDEN THOUGHT

His name shall be called The mighty God.

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Persecuted For Righteousness Sake (Matt 5:10)

Crosses Removed from over 250 Churches in Anhui Province 09/06/2020

Provincial authorities ordered to eradicate crosses “no matter what,” and in four months, many state-run Protestant churches were left without them.

by Lu An

From January to April, crosses were removed from at least 250 Three-Self churches in Lu’an, Ma’anshan, Huaibei, and other cities in the eastern province of Anhui. A local believer revealed that in November and December last year, crosses were removed from 22 Three-Self churches in Bozhou, Huaibei, and two other cities.

“All Christian symbols are ordered to be removed as part of the government’s crackdown campaign,” a state employee from Ma’anshan city told Bitter Winter.

Numerous churches in Anhui had their crosses removed between January and April.

The Gulou Church in the center of Anhui’s Fuyang city is a state-run Protestant church with a history of 124 years. On April 1, ten officials from the city’s Religious Affairs Bureau, Public Security Bureau, and other government departments came to the church to oversee the removal of its cross. They were blocked by over 100 congregation members, who had been attempting to prevent the cross demolition for eight hours. After hours of pressuring the church’s director, the cross was removed at 5 a.m. the next day.

The cross was removed from the Gulou Church in Fuyang city.

A congregation member told Bitter Winter that local officials claimed that the cross-removal campaign was being implemented in line with a national policy, which requires to eliminate all Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, and other religious symbols. Such orders are being passed down from one government

level to another, and every cross in Anhui will be eradicated eventually, the believer added.

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“We support the state and comply with its regulations,” the congregation member continued. “We can have a dialogue with the government if it thinks that we have done something wrong, but they can’t persecute us this way. Officials did not show any documents, fearing that people would implicate them with anything in writing. They only conveyed verbal orders and forced us to obey them.”

In April, the government forcibly removed crosses from two Protestant churches with a history of over 100 years in Hefei, the capital of the province.

According to an elder from a Three-Self church in Ma’anshan’ Hanshan county, the city government convened two conferences earlier this year to discuss central government’s orders to remove crosses using a

variety of pretexts: for being too tall, too large, too wide, or too eye-catching. The government publicly criticized the Ma’anshan city authorities for not removing crosses rapidly enough.

In mid-April, officials from the county’s United Front Work Department and other government institutions removed crosses from all the 33 Three-Self churches in the county. As the cross of the largest church in the county was being removed, believers attempted to save it. Still, the demolition proceeded as planned because local officials feared repercussions from higher authorities for disobeying their orders.

“The fact that all church crosses in the county have been taken off makes us very sad because the cross is the primary symbol of our faith,” the elder from Hanshan county added. “But we don’t dare to disobey central government orders: little fish don’t eat big fish.”

Two of the churches in Hanshan county before and after their crosses were removed.

In Lu’an, a prefecture-level city in Anhui with a relatively large Christians population, crosses were removed from 183 churches in the first four months of the year. On March 14, officials from the city’s Huoqiu county government ordered the director of the Three-Self Garden Church to remove its cross, claiming that it might fall and injure people. The director refused initially, but officials threatened to imprison her and shut down the church.

A congregation member told Bitter Winter that local government officials declared at the end of last year that because of the animosity between the United States and China, the government fears that Christians, whose number is growing in China, will “unite with foreigners against the state.”

“As crosses are being removed throughout the country, those who refuse to cooperate will be accused of opposing the Communist Party,” the Christian added. “We are pressured to give up our faith, but we will persevere.”1

1 https://bitterwinter.org/crosses-removed-from-over-250-churches-in-anhui-province/

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See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise.

Eph: 5:15

The Hair Trigger

A hair trigger, commonly called a ‘hair pin trigger’, originally referred to a purposeful modification of a handgun that fires its shot with the slightest touch of the trigger itself. No longer would there be a need to squeeze the trigger in any resolute or determined manner, the slightest touch could send a bullet firing out of the gun with potentially disastrous consequences. This is a reasonable correlation to the saga transpiring before us today related to one individuals unlawful death on May 25th, in a nation very far from our own.

A purposeful media frenzy surrounding the matter that was transferred around the world claiming systemic racism in every western continent, without any purposeful consideration on the truth of the claim, triggering disastrous consequences with riots and tens of additional deaths and hundreds of injuries, even calling for the complete disbandment of an entire City police force by its own legislative body. We live in an age where we have all grown up in multicultural societies, so much so that large percentages of marriages are witnessed between culturally diverse people. As children, we did not see colour, nor do my own children now see colour, yet apparently systematic racism is seen as the norm by those rioting and protesting around the world.

Incredibly, the events that transpired seemed strategically planned to take advantage of that very crisis, almost poised and waiting. The curiosity of piles bricks stacked in protest zones without any construction in sight, raised conspiracy concerns.

"VideosfromNewYorkCity,KansasCity,DallasandFayettevilleinNorthCarolinaallappeartoshowpilesofbricksunattendedinthemiddleofprotests.”2

This, together with a number of videos showing individuals inciting a greater intensity of riot, even requesting people to overturn vehicles and set fire to bins in the streets while cameras were poised at the ready to take all its footage. Such things lead me to think motivated parties are taking full advantage of every event, to trigger an alternative agenda.

None of this is new, however. We see this in all forms of political debate today, from the Climate Change agenda, the feminist agenda, the gender agenda, same sex marriage to even personalising the use of pronouns ‘he, she, they, z, zir’ ad-nauseum, but what is this all about? Why is the notably ‘western world’ becoming so inwardly divided?

2 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8377069/Bricks-randomly-appear-protests-sparking-theories-planted-stoke-violence.html

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“Americaislikeahealthybodyanditsresistanceisthreefold:Itspatriotism,Itsmoralityanditsspirituallife.Ifwecanunderminethesethreeareas,Americawillcollapsefromwithin”

Joseph Stalin

Interpreting the events of any given timeframe is always fraught with challenges, not least of which is the growing tendency toward speculation and unverifiable conspiracy, but the Bible is not such a source. Its writings are plain to all who reads them, and its warnings are such “that he may run that readeth it” (Hab 2:2). The Bible speaks very plainly of the days that are before us. Related to the aforementioned event, both the evident effort creating division and the not so underlying effort toward a global political system, are clearly expressed in the Bible and provide understanding in these confusing times. Like the picture on the box of a jigsaw puzzle, the Bible provides the perfect picture for the placement of each and every piece of the puzzle of mankind today. The world is confused and the smartest people in the world can’t begin to determine which piece goes where, yet the lowly Biblical Christian can do so with little trouble. The Bible predicts Global DIVISION Daniel 2 gives to us a picture of the final kingdom on the earth; one he describes as pictured in the feet of the image he identifies; And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided…And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken (Dan 2:41-42) From the trite words of John Lennon’s song “Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do…”, to the express intentions of the United Nations;

"Mankind's problems can no longer be solved by national government. What is needed is a World Government. This can best be achieved by strengthening the United Nations system."3

We see nationalism to be displaced by globalism. The love of ones own country must be turned against and transferred to a collective love of a “global village”. Sadly, such a global system the world will come to desire, will eventually find itself governed by a kingdom the Bible speaks of as “dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly…” (Dan 7:7). That is, the Kingdom of antichrist, a one world global government that will be the final system of world order just prior to the return of Christ.

3 1994 -- In the Human Development Report, published by the UN Development Program, there was a section called "Global Governance For the 21st Century". The first line in the report quoted by administrator James Gustave Speth

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Dissatisfaction is The Motivation There must be a motivating factor that will lead people toward a global government system and away from nationalism; every salesperson knows that in order to sell something not needed, he sows dissatisfaction in that which you have. Every ‘Western’ nation is being sown hatred in themselves, we are seeing that in the United States and the same hatred is beginning to manifest in Australia over the last few years. A clear example of Australia’s building self-loathing is Australia Day, now being termed ‘invasion day’ by university students triggered by their teachers, why? To foster discontent and eventually hatred for the nation.

It is this hatred for nationalism that will one day tip the scales toward a Global system of political power, most likely after yet another “global crisis”. But lest we be fooled into thinking those who are triggered by narrative and agenda know what they are doing, we should temper those considerations with a biblical understanding of the end game. Very few of those who undertake these protests know that end game, they truly believe that the issue they are fighting for is the issue, but many are simply ‘blind leaders of the blind’. David Horowitz, writing on the changed socialist motives of the Democratic party in the USA, wrote of their press in line with Saul Alinsky’s book “Rules For Radicals” and states;

AnSDSradicaloncewrote,"theissueisnevertheissue.Theissueisalwaystherevolution."Inotherwords,thecauseofapoliticalaction-whethercivilrightsorwomen’srights-isnevertherealcause;women,blacksandother“victims”areonlyinstrumentsinthelargercause,whichispower.4

That “power” David Horowitz refers to is global in its scope and vision, that power has a source and that power is written of in the Bible as the underlying motive that explains the direction of the world toward the last days. (See Isaiah 14:12-20) Interestingly, according to the Bible, religion will also have a great role to play in this final world order. Beloved, there is a picture on the box that shows with clarity the direction of the world, don’t be triggered by the efforts of the world to respond in kind. We do have a task to undertake, and it is not a political task, it is not a political battle for the Christian soldier. The Bible says;

No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. (2 Tim 2:4)

Our battle is to save the souls of many, do not be distracted by the flash and the glare of pistol shots engaged by a hair trigger. We serve Christ, and we serve in love for the lost. Pr Edi Giudetti

4 https://genius.com/David-horowitz-a-modern-machiavelli-2-lyrics

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yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel! 1 Corinthians 9:16

01 June 2020 (For MAY 2020) Dear Pastors and Praying Friends! Greetings from Mindanao, Philippines! It is our prayer that you will be safe and taking care of yourselves. Thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts for your unfailing support in prayers and in finances. We are all experiencing the same problems regarding this health pandemic these days, but we believe that God will see us through (Matthew 24:6), and it is our prayer that God will keep His people safe and that nothing will happen to His children without His permission. SOUL WINNING! God is still in the business of winning souls. On the way home from visiting a sick member of the church, we stopped by a store along the road to buy vegetables and fruits. I graciously shared the gospel to the owner and heartily accepted Jesus as her Saviour. During my Morning walk routine, I approached a new security guard assigned to our area. Gave him the 5-kilo rice that was given to us by our local government (this man needs it more). With a gospel tract I shared to him how to go to heaven in case the covid 19 hits him, he trusted Christ as his Saviour, please pray for him, his name is Jake. Twice this month, I preached on a funeral service (with the same family). Three souls accepted Christ as Their Lord and Saviour during the Invitation. A Total of 5 souls that God gave us this month. Angels are rejoicing in heaven. Initao Outreach Ministry. Please pray for the Believers in this area. Pray that the travel restrictions would ease up so we can travel to the area and continue the outreach ministry. PRAYER REQUESTS!! 1.) Souls to be saved and be baptized 2.) G_o_d_’s_ _p_r_o_t_e_c_t_i_o_n_ 3.) Bible Institute 4.) Outreach Ministry and the Bible Study in Initao. Your Missionaries to the Philippines Arne, Mary Ann, and Kent Timothy

The Babia Family Missionaries to the Island of Mindanao

PHILIPPINES

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Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice (Philippians 4:4)

Exalting the Word “Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.” (Job 23:12)

HERE is a great testimony regarding the Word of God. The speaker is Job, and he is answering one of his critics who had unjustly charged Job with evil. In the midst of Job’s speech comes this declaration about the Word of God. In it is the esteem for the Word, the essentialness of the Word, and the endurance of the Word,

Esteem for the Word. “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my

necessary food.” Job so values the Word of God that it is more important to him than physical food. Many despise the Word of God, and others simply ignore it. But Job saw its real value, and he gave it the honor we all should give it. This sort of attitude in people will make them really faithful to church attendance at a church where the Scriptures are faithfully proclaimed. They will not be off doing other things if they so esteem the Word of God.

Essentialness of the Word. “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my

necessary food.” Job shows the essentialness of the Word in that he says it is greater than “necessary food.” Job did not say he thought the Word more important than just some other non-essential thing, but he went farther and said it was more important than even the most essential things of life. Food is indeed very essential. It is “necessary” or our physical body will die. But the Word is even more important. For it feeds the spiritual being, and the spiritual is more important than the physical!

Endurance of the Word. “Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his

lips.” In spite of his great troubles, Job had not junked the Word of God. In spite of his great troubles, Job still obeyed the Word and still esteemed the Word above even the essential things of life. Obviously then, the Word of God had not failed Job in trial. Many other things fail us in our darkest hours, but the Word of God will not fail. The Word of God will endure all our troubles and trials. It will never let us down. It will always be of help.5

5 John G. Butler, Daily Bible Reading: Sermonettes, (Clinton, IA: LBC Publications, 2004), 2:165.

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Announcements and Things to Come

Studies and Encouragements.

• Communion, July 5th at 10am and possibly 3:30pm. • Church recommence at Community Center. TBA (Likely 21st June,

morning and afternoon) • Prayer meeting / Bible Study every Wednesday evenings 7:30pm, at

Pastors home, please see Pr Edi. • Birthdays:

o Emmeline Brereton 10th June o Liliana Brereton 13th June o Natalie Giudetti 22nd June

• Kings Kids, TBA • Getting Deeper Studies TBA…..Topic? • Apt To Teach. Fortnightly from Saturday, 4th July 7:30am – 9:30am. Breakfast

Included (Gold coin donation would be wonderful). • Ladies Bible Study Tuesday 23rd June 1:30pm. At Nat’s home. See Maria. • Prayer & Praise List

Missionaries (Babia Family) Sunbury Government Christian Persecution. The Gospel to Friends/Family