Sovereign Grace Community Church - Denver, CO

07/23/2023

There is no surer symptom of mortification in the body than insensibility. There is no more painful sign of an unhealthy state of soul than utter absence of spiritual thirst. "Woe to that man of whom the saviour can say, 'thou knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked; (Rev 3:17)
A sense of sin, guilt, and poverty of soul, is the first stone laid by the Holy Ghost, when he builds a spiritual temple. He is convinced of sin. Light was the first thing called into being in the material creation (Gen, 1,3). Light about our own state is the first work in the new creation. Thirsting soul, I say again, you are the person that ought to thank God. The kingdom of God is near you. It is not when we begin to feel good, but when we feel bad, that we take the first step towards heaven. Who taught thee that thou wast naked? Whence came his inward light? Who opened thine eyes and made thee see and feel? Know this day that flesh and blood hath not revealed these things into thee, but our Father which is in heaven. Universities may confer degrees, and schools may impart knowledge of all the sciences, but they cannot make men feel sin. To realize our spiritual need, and feel true spiritual thirst, is the ABC in saving Christianity. Let him that knows anything of spiritual thirst not be ashamed. Rather let him lift up his head and begin to hope. Let him pray that God would carry on the work he has begun and make him feel more.--J.C. Ryle

05/18/2023

Your admission of Him into your inner man will surely not endanger any specific bent or characteristic whereby He who loves variety has diversified you from others. You bring your individuality to Him. "Just as you are ''---not merely as a sinner, but as His creature--you come". Your own individual soul you give to Him, believing that He has redeemed it. You believe that in all that discriminates you from others---not merely as numerically a different unit from them, but a distinct member in a boundlessly varied organism--you are an object of love and care to your redeemer. You believe that you have a place in the body, and services both in time and (Oh! how countless and inconceivably grand) in eternity---services before you which demanded, not merely in you, numerically one more member, one more agent--but the very member and agent which exactly your individuality makes you to be; and you believe that, by the gracious in-living of the Lord in your individuality, far from being injured or suppressed, is now for the first time, in a sense, necessary; that it is necessary now, because the Lord hath need of it (Matt. 21:3). Now, in fact, the chief end of its existence will come forward into view and be fulfilled.
For, the in-living Christ emancipates it from all perversion. Your entire surrender unto Him, your rejection of self and acceptance of Christ instead, brings it back to its creator-- to the author of it, who will be the finisher, the perfecter of it, too. He will perfect in you His own original idea of what He desired and decreed your individuality to be. --" Hugh Martin---

04/20/2023

"Let us learn not to expect too much from anybody or anything in this fallen world. One great secret of unhappiness is the habit of indulging in exaggerated expectation. From money, from marriage, from business, from houses, from children, from worldly honours, from political success, men are constantly expecting what they never find; and the great majority die disappointed. Happy is he who has learned to say at all times, "My soul, wait thou only upon god; my expectation is from him! (Ps. 62:5)--J.C.RYLE--

04/16/2023

A delightful gathering with the Sovereign Grace Community Church - Denver, CO saints. Great seeing everyone ❤️ Thank you Tim and Carla for hosting us 🙏

02/23/2023

"So there is a promise that God will give grace to the humble. An example of mercy in this kind we have in Manasseh, who, though a very wicked man, yet because he humbled himself, obtained mercy. Peter humbled himself, and David humbled himself, and both found mercy. And so likewise Josiah; yea, and in James 4 ;10, we are bid to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, and he will exalt us in due time.' There is the promise. Yea, every branch of humiliation hath a promise. As confession of sins, if we confess and forsake our sins, we shall have mercy and find pardon. So those that judge themselves shall not be judged.
A humble heart is a vessel of all graces. It is a grace itself, and a vessel of grace. It doth better the soul and make it holy, for the soul is never fitter for God than when it is humbled. It is a fundamental grace that gives strength to all other graces. So much humility, so much grace. For according to the measure of humiliation is the measure of other grace, because a humble heart hath in it a spiritual emptiness. Humility emptieth the heart of God to fill it. If the heart be emptied of temporal things, then it must be filled with spiritual things; for nature abhorreth emptiness; grace much more. When the heart is made low, there is a spiritual emptiness, and what fills this up but the Spirit of God? In that measure we are filled with the fullness of God. When a man is humbled, he is fit for all good; but when he is proud, he is fit for all ill, and beats back all good. God hath but two heavens to dwell in; the heaven of heavens, and the heart of a poor humble man. The proud swelling heart, that is full of ambition, high conceits, and self-dependence, will not endure to have God to enter; but he dwells largely and easily in the heart of the humble If we will dwell in heaven hereafter, let us humble ourselves now."--Richard Sibbs--

02/02/2023

"Slippage in our consciousness of sin, like most fashionable follies, may be pleasant, but it is also devastating. Self-deception about our sin is a narcotic, a tranquilizing and disorienting suppression of our spiritual central nervous system. What's devastating about it is that when we lack an ear for wrong notes in our lives, we cannot play right ones or even recognize them in the performances of others. Eventually we make ourselves religiously so unmusical that we miss both the exposition and the recapitulation of the main themes God plays in human life. The music of creation and the still greater music of grace whistle right through our skulls, causing no catch of breath and leaving no residue. Moral beauty begins to bore us. The idea that the human race needs a Savior sounds quaint.
Culpable disturbance of shalom suggests that sin is unoriginal, that it disrupts something good and harmonious, that (like a housebreaker) it is an intruder, and that those who sin deserve reproach. To get our bearings, we need to see first that sin is one form of evil (an agential and culpable form) and that evil, in turn, is the disruption or disturbance of what God has designed.
Sin offends God not only because it bereaves or asults God directly, as in impiety or blasphemy, but also because it bereaves and assults what God has made. In sum, shalom is God's design for creation and redemption; sin is blamable human vandalism of these great realities and therefore an affront to their architect and builder. "Cornelius Plantinga Jr."

12/09/2022

https://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=12922137167677

Kit Culver | Sovereign Grace Community Church

12/08/2022

Believers also shall have a glorified human nature, when we see him as he is, we shall be like him. But our glorified human nature will not be as glorious as his. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory'(ICor. 15:41).
The way to behold the glory of Christ is by the steady exercise of faith on the revelation of this glory of Christ given to us in Scripture. It is our duty, therefore, constantly to meditate on the glory of Christ. This will fill us with a joy which will, in turn, move us to meditate on his glory more and more.
We are so selfish that we tend not to look any further than our own concerns and interests. So long as we are pardoned and saved we care little about Christ's interests and concerns. But this attitude is not born of a true faith in and love for God. The chief duty of faith and love is to lead us to prefer Christ above ourselves, and his concerns above our own."
--John Owen--

12/01/2022

"To speak of sin by itself, to speak of it apart from the realities of creation and grace, is to forget the resolve of God. God wants shalom and will pay any price to get it back. Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way. Moreover, to speak of sin by itself is to misunderstand its nature: sin is only a parasite, a vandal, a spoiler. Sinful life is a partly depressing, partly ludicrous caricature of genuine human life. To concentrate on our rebellion, defection, and folly--- to say to the world "I have some bad news and I have some bad news"--- is to forget that the center of the Christian religion is not our sin but our Savior. To speak of sin without grace is to minimize the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fruit of the Spirit, and the hope of shalom.
But to speak of grace without sin is surely no better. To do this is to trivialize the cross of Jesus Christ, to skate past all the struggles by good people down the ages to forgive, accept, and rehabilitate sinners, including themselves, and therefore to cheapen the grace of God that always comes to us with blood on it. What had we thought the ripping and writhing on Golgotha were all about? To speak of grace without looking squarely at these realities, without painfully honest acknowledgment of our own sin and its effects, is to shrink grace to a mere embellishment of the music of creation, to shrink it down to a mere grace note. In short, for the Christian church (even in its recently popular seeker services) to ignore, euphemize, or otherwise mute the lethal reality of sin is to cut the nerve of the gospel. For the sober truth is that without full disclosure on sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary, and finally uninteresting".

--Cornelius Plantings Jr.--

11/30/2022

https://www.sermonaudio.com/source_detail.asp?sourceid=SGCCdenver

Kit Culver | Denver, Colorado

11/03/2022

"Solomon bids us buy the truth (Prov. 23, 23), but does not tell us what it must cost, because we must get it though it be never so dear. We must love it, both shining and scorching. Every parcel of truth is precious as the filings of gold; we must either live with it, or die for it. As Ruth said to Naomi, 'Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge, and nothing but death shall part thee and me' (Ruth I; 16,17); so must gracious spirits say, Where truth goes I will go, and where truth lodges I will lodge, and nothing but death shall part me and truth. A man may lawfully sell his house, land and jewels, but truth is a jewel that exceeds all price, and must not be sold; it is our heritage: 'Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for ever' (Ps. 119:111). It is a legacy that our forefathers have bought with their blood, which should make us willing to lay down anything, and to lay out anything, that we may, with the wise merchant in the Gospel purchase this precious pearl, which is more worth than heaven and earth, and which will make a man live happily, die comfortably, and reign eternally."
--Thomas Brooks--
CHRIST IS TRUTH

10/25/2022

We disobey, God convicts and restores. We doubt. God works to make us people of faith. We hunger. God feeds us with the bounty of his grace.

Plenteous grace
is what we're given;
grace that is deeper,
fuller,
richer,
greater
than our sin.
This grace does not
suspend operations
in the face of our disobedience.
It will not turn its back in the face of our doubt.
It will not stand
idly by
in the face of our hunger.
No, this is
rich grace,
perseverant grace
tender grace,
powerful grace.
There really is nothing
like it,
because it comes from the hand of Jesus.
-Paul David Tripp