Bethel Community Church

Reformed Baptist Congregation Exaltation | Edification | Evangelism

A REFORMED BAPTIST CONGREGATION
EXALTATION  |  EDIFICATION  |  EVANGELISM
Sarasota, Florida
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Take Care What You Worship

Before Israel became a nation, the people of the world attempted to build the Tower of Babel. They desired a unified one world order. That kind of thinking and acting has always had problems. Such a unity can never be achieved by people who are sinners. Babel sought to promote a religion of self and power, having no need for God. So God came down among them and dispersed them by confusing their language (Gen. 11:8, 9). The beauty of a unified people is exemplified by the Church in her New Covenant relationship with her risen Head and Husband, our Lord Jesus Christ. God’s people are always one in Christ, because Jesus and the Father are one (John 17:11, 20-23). When we consider Israel as a nation, we find that the nation was not permitted to intermarry with other nations because true worship would then be corrupted. In Exodus 34:12-16 God said: “Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods.” All of these sins were to be viewed as abominations.

Abiding Fruit Articles, An Abomination to the Egyptians, Genesis 43:32

Calvin’s Confession

I love Calvin’s statements to Sadolet regarding true faith and the burdens of his past life under the Roman Church. (See Vol. 1, Tracts and Letters, p.61, 62)

“Thou, O Lord, knowest, and the fact itself has testified to men, that the only thing I asked was, that all controversies should be decided by thy word, that thus both parties might unite with one mind to establish thy kingdom; and I declined not to restore peace to the Church at the expense of my head, if I were found to have been unnecessarily the cause of tumult. But what did our opponents? Did they not instantly, and like madmen, fly to fires, swords, and gibbets? Did they not decide that their only security was in arms and cruelty? Did they not instigate all ranks to the same fury? Did they not spurn at all methods of pacification? To this it is owing that a matter, which might at one time have been settled amicably, has blazed into such a contest. But although, amidst the great confusion, the judgments of men were various, I am freed from all fear, now that we stand at thy tribunal, where equity, combined with truth, cannot but decide in favor of innocence.” [Read more…]

A Factory of Fancies

Calvin points out that “man’s nature is a perpetual factory of idols” (Inst. I.11.8). Man’s mind is so full of pride and boldness that it dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity. And that capacity reveals itself in producing statues, pictures and anything else to represent God. Yet we know that God is invisible and cannot be represented by the visible. But we persist in this production, don’t we? Calvin says that man’s mind “sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance…it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God” (Inst. I.11.8). He further says that “to these evils a new wickedness joins itself, that man tries to express in his work the sort of God he has inwardly conceived. Therefore, the mind begets an idol; the hand gives it birth” (Inst. I.1.8). We still see this today in our superstitious culture. [Read more…]

Loving Your Enemies

Loving our enemies (Luke 6:27 – 42) involves:

  1. The loss of personal personhood
  2. The loss of personal privilege
  3. The loss of personal power
  4. The loss of personal possessions

We must:

  1. Forego
  2. Forgive
  3. Follow

The Servants of the Church (1 Timothy 3:8 – 13) May 18, 2025

The Savior of the Unsavable ( Mark 5: 1 – 20) May 11, 2025 (Tommy Valladares)

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