Sovereign Grace Baptist Church

Free Grace Media

Of Princeton, New Jersey

 

AuthorClay Curtis
TitleWeekly Bulletin 7-9-2017
Bible TextJohn 6:60-61
Date08-Jul-2017
Article Type Bulletin
PDF Format pdf
Word Format doc
 

July 9, 2017

SOVEREIGN GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH

 

MEETING LOCATION

251 Green Lane

Ewing, NJ, 08368

Clay Curtis, pastor

Telephone: 615-513-4464

 

MAILING ADDRESS:

7 Birch Street

Pennington, NJ, 08538

 

Schedule of Services

Sunday 10: 15 AM Bible Class

Sunday 11:00 AM Morning Service

Thursday 7: 30 PM Midweek Service

 

Services Broadcast Live @ www.FreeGraceMedia.com/live

 

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NURSERY

We have a nursery equipped with a digital flat screen television broadcasting all services live, for children four and under.  

All articles by the pastor unless otherwise noted.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE WEBSITE: watch videos of our full services—click here.

 

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

 

Brethren, I thank each of you for taking on the jobs on the list in the back so quickly.  Please check the list each week because I may add additional things as they are brought to my attention. As you take a job put your initials by it and as you finish a job please mark it off the list.

 

There will be no mid-week service Thursday, July 20. Our conference schedule is Friday, July 21, 7:30pm; Sat, July 21, 10:15 am and 6pm; Sun, July 22, 10:15 am. For more information check www.FreeGraceMedia.com or our sermon audio site.

 

Sunday, July 30, we are scheduled to have regular services at the church building.  Afterwards, we will plan to go to Ravi and Debbie’s house where we will baptize Kimberly Thacker.

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SUNDAY’S READING IN PROVERBS

Proverbs 9: 1: Wisdom [Christ] hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars: 2: She hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; she hath also furnished her table. 3: She hath sent forth her maidens: she crieth upon the highest places of the city, 4: Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him, 5: Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled. 6: Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding.

 

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ARE YOU A SINNER?

Luke 5:32: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

 

Recently, I read of an orphan walking down the street during the depression.  He came to a big window. Inside was a lunch line of hot food. A man said, “Come inside boy and eat!”  The little boy said, “I cannot, I am dirty. My clothes, my hands, my face is dirty!” The man said, “Are you an orphan?”  He said, “Yes sir.” The man said, “Son, this feast is prepared just for orphans.”

    Christ says his gospel feast is prepared just for sinners!  Never let it enter your mind that Christ will not receive you because you are a sinner. Sin does not disqualify but qualifies us to come to Christ. “Is your head, your feet, your whole-self nothing but sin?”  “Then come to Christ, son, this feast is prepared just for sinners!”

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OFFENDED? WHY?

 

John 6: 60: Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? 61: When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you?

 

The Lord Jesus preached so pointedly to these men that it was impossible for them not to recognize that he was preaching directly to them.  They passed themselves off as true disciples.  But Christ knew who were his and who would betray him.  So he got even more direct with them after this by saying, “There are some of you that believe not…Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come to me, except it were given unto him of my Father.”  Then when they walked away, he turned to those that remained and said, “Will ye also go away?”  Now, that is pointed preaching!

 

     From time to time as the preacher is declaring the word of God in spirit and in truth, we have a tendency to think the preacher is preaching pointedly to me, personally.  Sometimes, men become offended at this.  But why? When the preacher is declaring the word of God in spirit and in truth, why would I be offended, even if I think the preacher is preaching directly to me?  

 

When hearing the word of God preached remember these four things.  One, God is pleased to save his elect through the foolishness of preaching by the Spirit of God preaching God’s word directly to each one, personally.  Two (and think long on this), if I am offended by the word of God preached to me in spirit and in truth then the reason is because I am holding to doctrine or to a walk that is contrary to the word of God.  Three, if I am offended my first thought should be, not that the preacher is rebuking me, but that God is! Four, I should not be surprised that the preaching of the word of God always results in the two things it produced the day Christ preached this sermon—those who were offended  went back, and walked no more with him” while others said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” (John 6: 60-71) 

 

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1 John 5:1: Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.

 

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God’s people, sinners saved by the grace of God, are devoted to Christ, devoted to his gospel, and devoted to his church. Pastor Don Fortner

 

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True love for Christ in the heart will always show itself in faithfulness to Christ and acts of love for others. Pastor Frank Tate

 

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Better to be pruned to grow than cut up to be burned. John Trapp (1601-1669)

 

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OUR ASSEMBLIES

By John Owen (1616-1683)

 

Hebrews 10:25: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

 

     By God’s all-wise appointment, our assemblies are the life, the food, and the nourishment of our souls. It is the main way whereby we publicly identify with Christ and His Gospel. We evidence our love for Christ by our loyalty and support of one another in opposition to all false worship. Many things will rise up in competition to the diligent attendance of our assemblies. We must recognize and refuse to give in to anything that is opposed to what Christ commands. The total falling away of a graceless professor always begins with this neglect, this disassociation with God’s people.              

 

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SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS

By Stephen Charnock (1628-1680)

 

Man’s blameless outward carriage and freedom from the common sins of the times and places wherein they live, many times proves a snare of death to them, and makes them more cold and faint towards Christ: because they possess themselves with imaginations that Christ cannot but look upon them, though they never so much as set their faces toward him. And because they are not drenched in such villainies as others are, their consciences sit quiet under this moral carriage, and gall them not by any self-reflections. Therefore when the threatening’s of the law are denounced against such and such sins, these men wipe their mouths, being untainted from those sins that are thus cursed, and vainly glory in their gay and gaudy plumes, and bless God with the Pharisee, that they are not sinners of such a scarlet dye, and that they do such and such duties, and so go on without seeing a necessity of the new birth. By this means the strength of sin is more compacted and condensed in them.

 

    Naturally it is a harder matter to part with self-righteousness than to part with gross sins; for that is more deeply rooted upon the stock of self-love, a principle which departs not from us without our very nature. It has more arguments to plead for it; it has a natural conscience, as a patron for it. Whereas a great sinner stands speechless at reproofs, an outward law-keeper has the strong reinforcement of natural conscience within his own breast. It was not the gross sins of the Jews against the light of nature, so much as the establishing the idol of their own righteousness, that was the block to hinder them from submitting to the righteousness of God, Rom. 10:8.