But there is forgiveness with Thee. Psalm 130:4.

This whisper also comes in opposition to the voice of despair, for despair says to a soul under a sense of sin, “There is no mercy for you! You have sinned beyond all limits. Your death warrant is signed, the verdict has been given against you, and there remains nothing for you but everlasting burnings!” No, Soul, God’s Word against your word any day! God’s Word says, “There is forgiveness,” Nothing can destroy despair except a message from God, Himself, and this passage is like a huge hammer to break in sunder the gates of brass and dash in pieces the bars of iron: “There is forgiveness.” “All manner of blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men.” In the greatness of His heart, Jehovah declares that He delights in mercy, and this is the song which went up to Him in the old Jewish church with many a repetition, and is just as true today—

“For His mercies shall endure, Ever faithful, ever sure!

He His chosen race did bless In the wasteful wilderness.

For His mercies shall endure, Ever faithful, ever sure.

He has, with a piteous eye, Looked upon our misery!

For His mercies shall endure, Ever faithful, ever sure.”

You have not gone beyond His mercy! You cannot go beyond His mercy if you will trust His Son! “There is forgiveness.” Let this whisper drive away despair! What a blessed whisper it is! “There is forgiveness.” “There is forgiveness.” Let it enter your soul and drive those grim hobgoblins of despair away into the sea of forgetfulness. “There is forgiveness.”

This whisper of hope is, further, the answer to conscience. When Mr. Conscience is really at work, he has a very terrible voice. There is no lion in the thicket that roars like a truly awakened conscience. Conscience says, “You knew your duty, but you did not do it. You have sinned away many a day of grace—you have refused gospel invitations, you have striven against the light of nature and the light of God—you will go down to hell well deserving your doom! When the millstone is about your neck, to sink you into the abyss, you will deserve to have it so, for you have earned all this for yourself by your iniquities.” I will not seek to stifle conscience, nor ask you to shut your ear to his voice. Let him speak, but still, do you not hear between his roars this sweet note as of a silver harp, “But-but-but-but there is forgiveness”? O conscience, there is forgiveness! I am as guilty as you say I am, and much more, for you cannot see all the sin that I have committed: “but there is forgiveness.”

Let me go still further and say that this whisper of hope is an answer, even, to the law of God. The law says, “The soul that sins, it shall die,” and the law knows no mercy—it cannot know any mercy. Sinai has never yet yielded one drop of water to cool the parched tongue of a guilty sinner! Never did a shower reach its craggy peaks! It is a mountain of fire and the thunder rolls over its summit with the sound of a trumpet exceedingly loud and long, making all who hear it to tremble! God, when He comes to judge, must judge according to justice: “but-but-but-but there is forgiveness”! There is another mountain besides Sinai—you have not come unto Mount Sinai—but you have come unto Mount Zion! There is another lawgiver besides Moses! There is Jesus, the Son of God! There is another covenant besides the covenant of Works—there is a covenant of rich, free, sovereign grace, and this is the essence of it: “There is forgiveness.” Oh, that I could convey that whisper into the ear of every sinner who is here! I can do that, but oh, that God the Holy Spirit would put it into your heart, that you might never forget, “There is forgiveness”!

C H Spurgeon

• We give thanks to the Lord that we are able to meet together for public worship. Please have patience as the ushers help everyone find a seat that has proper social distance from others. We request that you wear a mask when entering and leaving the sanctuary, and for singing. Please remain seated until you are released by the ushers. Please pay attention to you distance from others in your conversations before and after the service.
• The mission collection today will be for the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. Preparing students to serve Christ and His church through Biblical, experiential, and practical ministry.
• The elders have a few family visits to complete for this season and we will have these visits in the lower level of the church in order to have the visits safely. We will make the final contacts this week.

Service Information Sunday 9:15am:  student Ben Hicks

Sermon: The City of Man Brought to Confusion
Text: Genesis 11

Psalter 3
Psalter 16:7-9
Psalter 223
Psalter 237

---

Service Information Sunday 6pm:  student Jacob-jan Matze

Sermon:
Text:

Psalter
Psalter
Psalter
Psalter

Service Information Ascension day 7pm:  student Jacob-jan Matze

Sermon: Highly Exalted
Text:  Philippians 2:1-11

Psalter  15
Psalter  235
Psalter  58
Psalter  265

• Mr. and Mrs. Chis Engelsma were blessed with the birth of a baby girl, Julia Ruth, last Friday. Heather and the baby are at home and doing well. “The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee. Ps. 102:14.
• Jane Mast plans to celebrate her 91^stbirthday this Friday, May 22. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14:27.
• We give thanks to the Lord that we can meet together again for public worship. Please have patience as the ushers help everyone find a seat that has proper social distance from others. Remember to sing with your mask on and remain seated until you are released by the ushers.
• The mission collection next week will be for the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. Preparing students to serve Christ and His church through Biblical, experiential, and practical ministry.

But there is forgiveness with Thee. Psalm 130:4.

My first head is taken from the first word of the text: “But.” Here is A WHISPER OF HOPE. “If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But”—Oh, the sweet music of that little word! It seems to come in when the terrible drum of alarm is being beaten and the dreadful clarion of judgment is sounding forth! There is a pause with this word, “But there is forgiveness.”

It is a soft and gentle whisper from the lips of love: “But there is forgiveness.” This comes into the soul after a full confession of sin. When you have knelt down before God and acknowledged your transgressions and your shortcomings, and your heart is heavy, and your soul is ready to burst with inward anguish, then may you hear this gracious Word of God, “But there is forgiveness.” When, under a sense of sin, it seems as if the very fiends of hell were shrieking in your ears because of the awful doom which is drawing near—when you shall be driven from hope and from the presence of God, then, when you fall on your face in the terror of your soul because of your iniquity, then comes this sweet Word of God: “But there is forgiveness.”

It is all true which your conscience tells you. It is all true which the Word of God threatens concerning you! Then acknowledge that it is true and bow yourself in the dust before God—and then you shall hear in your soul, not only in your ears, but in your heart, this blessed Word of God, “But there is forgiveness.”

Some of us remember when we first heard this Word. When it came, it was to us like the clear shining after rain: “But there is forgiveness.” Some of us were, perhaps, for weeks and months without any knowledge of this blessed truth of God—pining for it, hungering for it—and when the Lord brought it home with power into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, oh, there was no music like it! Angels could not sing any tune so sweet as these Words of God spoken to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, “But there is forgiveness.”

Go your way, my hearer, and confess before God all your sin! I will not say what it has been. Perhaps you have lived for many years in the pursuit of sinful pleasures. Perhaps you have been dominated by your own will—you have tried to be lord and master, or queen and mistress of your own wicked spirit. And, perhaps, you have done evil as often as you could, and you are sensible of your sin, and your wounds bleed before God because of it. Well, then, in comes this whisper of hope: “But there is forgiveness.” God make it as sweet to you to hear it as it is to me to tell of it!

This whisper of hope sometimes comes to the soul by the Spirit of God as the result of observation. A man, full of sin, thinks to himself, “Well, but others, also, have been full of sin, yet they have been forgiven. What if I have been a blasphemer and injurious? Yet so was Saul of Tarsus and he had forgiveness from the Lord. What if I have been a thief? Yet so was he who hung upon the cross, and that day was with his Lord in Paradise. What if I have been a fallen woman, and have been defiled with sin? Yet there is forgiveness, for she was forgiven who was a sinner, and came and washed Christ’s feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head, loving much because she had much forgiven. Into whatever sin I may have fallen, I observe that others like I have been snatched from these horrible pits—and why should not I be?” Sweet, then, is this whisper of hope arising out of observation of others: “But there is forgiveness.” C H Spurgeon

Service Information Sunday AM, 9:15am:  student Chris Engelsma

Sermon: The Glory of God Returns to the Temple
Text:  Ezekiel 43

Psalter  368
Psalter  174
Psalter  225
Psalter  417

---

Service Information Sunday PM, 6pm: student Chris Engelsma

Sermon:  Living Members of Christ’s Church
Text:  Psalm 87;  Conf. of Faith art. 28

Psalter 27
Psalter 69
Psalter 225
Psalter 50

• We plan to restart Sunday worship services together next Sunday, May 17. We will email the guidelines to everyone on the church email list tomorrow, the Lord willing. We are willing to address questions or concerns individually or on the Wednesday evening Zoom call.
• Please pray for Rev. Pronk and his family as he is still awaiting the opening of the US Consulate in Amsterdam so that he can have an interview and receive his visa.

Description of Mr. Fearing from Pilgrim’s Progress Part 2 by John Bunyan

But when he was come to the entrance of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I thought I should have lost my man; not for that he had any inclination to go back–that he always abhorred,–but he was ready to die for fear. ‘Oh, the hobgoblins will have me, the hobgoblins will have me!’ cried he; and I could not beat him out of it. He made such a noise and such an outcry here, that, had they but heard him, it was enough to encourage them to come and fall upon us.

“But this I took very great notice of: that this valley was as quiet while he went through it, as ever I knew it before or since. I suppose those enemies here had now a special check from our Lord; and a command not to meddle until Mr. Fearing was passed over it.

“It would be too tedious to tell you of all, we will therefore only mention a passage or two more. When he was come at Vanity Fair, I thought he would have fought with all the men in the fair; I feared there we should both have been knocked over the head, so hot was he against their fooleries. Upon the enchanted ground he was also very wakeful. But when he was come at the river where was no bridge, there again he was in a heavy case; now, now, he said, he should be drowned forever, and so never see that face with comfort that he had come so many miles to behold.

“And here also I took notice of what was very remarkable: the water of that river was lower at this time than ever I saw it in all my life; so he went over at last not much above wetshod. When he was going up to the gate, Mr. Great-Heart began to take his leave of him, and to wish him a good reception above; so he said, ‘I shall, I shall.’ Then parted we asunder, and I saw him no more.”

Honest. Then it seems he was well at last.

Great-heart. Yes, yes; I never had a doubt about him. He was a man of a choice spirit, only he was always kept very low; and that made his life so burdensome to himself, and so troublesome to others.

He was, above many, tender of sin; he was so afraid of doing injuries to others, that he often would deny himself of that which was lawful because he would not offend.

Honest. But what should be the reason that such a good man should be all his days so much in the dark?

Great-heart. There are two sorts of reasons for it: one is, the wise God will have it so; some must pipe, and some must weep.

Now Mr. Fearing was one that played upon the bass. He and his fellows sound the sackbut, whose notes are more doleful than the notes of other music are. Though, indeed, some say, the bass is the ground of music. And for my part, I care not at all for that profession that begins not in heaviness of mind. The first string that the musician usually touches is the bass, when he intends to put all in tune; God also plays upon this string first when he sets the soul in tune for himself. Only here was the imperfection of Mr. Fearing: he could play upon no other music but this till towards his latter end.

I make bold to talk thus metaphorically for the ripening of the wits of young readers; and because, in the book of the Revelation, the saved are compared to a company of musicians that play upon their trumpets and harps, and sing their songs before the throne.

Honest. He was a very zealous man, as one may see by what relation you have given of him. Difficulties, lions, or Vanity Fair, he feared not at all; it was only sin, death, and hell that were to him a terror, because he had some doubts about his interest in that celestial country.

• Pastor and Mrs. Van den Berg have decided to cancel their trip to the United States in early June due to the concerns regarding Covid-19.
• We plan to restart Sunday worship services together on Sunday, May 17. For protection from Covid-19, we will need to follow additional rules during our worship services. We will provide the rules by the end of the week. Please take the time to understand them and follow them.
• The offerings for April 2020 are as follows:

General $8,930.00

Benevolent $6,000.00

CEF $   941.00

Building $1,000.00

Sumba $3,300.00

• We would like to thank the congregation for the outpouring of love and support following the loss of our father and grandfather.  Even though the current restrictions have limited personal contact, we have felt your love and support through emails and cards. The Lord rules over all circumstances and we have seen His gracious hand throughout the pastfive years of our father’s/grandfather’s declining health, and also in allowing a funeral to take place.  Psalm 84.  The Barnard Family.