November 30, 2014
SOVEREIGN
GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH
LOCATION
Rocky Hill Firehouse,
2nd Floor
150 Washington Street
Rocky Hill, New
Jersey, 08553
Clay Curtis, pastor
Telephone:
615-513-4464
Schedule
of Services
Sunday 10: 15 AM
Bible Class
Sunday 11:00 AM Morning
Service
Thursday 7: 30 PM
Midweek Service
Sermons on Video @
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTMz0BLtC8MXNnhcHi_KXjA
?-----------------------------?
NURSERY
We have
a nursery equipped with a digital flat screen television broadcasting all
services live, for children four and under.
Check the announcements.
?-----------------------------?
All articles in the bulletin are by the pastor unless
otherwise noted.
?-----------------------------?
Proverbs
22: 6: Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will
not depart from it.
If God has made
us faithful fathers and mothers then we spend a great deal of our time training
our children. But in what do we spend
the most time training them? We
certainly train them how to be mannerly, give them the basics of respect and of
caring for themselves. Also, we spend
much time training them in their school work.
Unknowingly, as they watch us, we train them to sin and we are masters
at teaching them this. But how much
training do we give them in “the Way” they should go, Christ Jesus? It is amazing how much we will spend for
higher education so that our children can be trained up in the world’s way but
then allow them to go without any training in the scriptures. Men and women
will spend hours researching a college but then allow their child to attend any
church service without any research to find out if the doctrine they preach is
according to the scriptures.
If God has made
us faithful fathers and mothers then let us give ourselves to train up our
children in Christ the Way. Only God can
bless it; only God can create them anew; only God can bring them to faith in
Christ. But knowing God is able should
make us eager to train them up in the gospel!
If God reveals Christ in their hearts this will be the most important
training they ever receive. By God’s
keeping grace, when they are old, they will not depart from it. Think of this. Everything we train them in
will be left behind when they leave this world. But if God blesses the gospel
to their hearts, when they depart this life, the training we gave them will
still be with them. God give us grace to
train up our children in the Way everlasting.
?-----------------------------?
SERVING OUR GENERATION
“David served his own generation by
the will of God”-Acts 13:36
David served his own generation very
well and he has been serving all generations ever since. How many
of us has he ministered unto by the words he pinned down thousands of years
ago. His writings have given us light as we walk through the valley of
the shadow of death. In our sorrows he has encouraged us to hope in God
who is the help of our countenance. King David is dead but he yet is
speaking and serving us till this very day.
…when it comes to serving
your own generation, you may be very useful, if it be God’s will. We
can’t write a book but we can pray. Prayer to God has accomplished more
than all the books of man combined. “The effectual fervent prayer of a
righteous man availeth much.” The Lord may never inspire you to write a
song but if he gives you a heart to come to the throne of grace and plead for
your generation that may well accomplish much.
Don’t all of us have neighbors who are lost? Don’t we have loved ones
who are without Christ and hope? Who knows if God may use us as an
instrument to win them. John Bunyan overheard two ladies speaking of the
love of Christ to their souls and it was God’s will to use their words in the
conversion of Mr. Bunyan. And look how that man has served so many
generations. Oh, if God wills it, one word spoken from your feeble lips
may well bring down the kingdom of Satan in a poor sinner’s heart.
You are not called to travel
and preach the gospel, but there are nursing homes just a few miles away with
people who need the Holy Scriptures read to them. I know a lady who took
time to go to the nursing home daily for a year or more to read the word of God
to a person dying of cancer. One man told me he had gone to visit a man
in the hospital who had only days to live. He read the forth chapter of
John to the dying man and hearing that the Savior had saved the sinful
Samaritan woman, the man began then and there to seek the Lord himself and
confessed that very day that the Lord Jesus had saved him too.
You and I may feel like we can do very little. But
little is much if God is in it. Let us be like that dear woman in the
gospels who did what she could. Let us do what we can to serve our own
generation, and eternity may witness that it was more then we could ever
imagined – simply because it was God’s will. Oh, is not our God’s will
sovereign? Don’t the Bible say that none can resist his will? By
his grace then let us serve our generation and leave it all in God’s will to do
nothing with it or little or if he is pleased do great things.
God’s will is all that matters. Nothing else is worth talking about.
Let us serve our
families by being patient when everything seems so dysfunctional. Let us
be kind and tender hearted and forgive one another daily. Let us be
faithful to the public worship of our God and Savior. This pleasure seeking
generation has little regard for public worship. What a service it may be
to them to see and hear of the saints forsaking not the assembling of
themselves together. Above all else, tell them of Jesus the mighty to
save. Preach to them that through this man there is forgiveness of all sins and
all that believe in him are justified from all things. God give us grace to
serve our own generation. Bruce Crabtree, Pastor of Sovereign Grace
Church, New Castle, IN
?-----------------------------?
How Lost Were We?
How utterly abominable and wicked we must
be, that nothing less than God coming down and taking unto Himself human flesh,
and "being made in the likeness of sinful flesh", so that He would
have a body in which He could suffer death on the cross.
How awful sin must be, and how horribly
sinful we must be, that Christ Jesus our Lord must be the one “Who his own self
bare our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24), and “pour out his
soul an offering for sin”. Sin is indeed exceeding sinful that it would take
such a sacrifice.
How utterly
lost, helpless, and without any ability to better ourselves before an
infinitely holy and righteous God we must be, that Christ, God's dear Son would
take our place before His Holy Father on the cursed tree and there bear what I
could not bear, which is the infinite righteous wrath and justice of God
against us and our sin.
By his suffering in our stead, He consumed
the wrath of God which was against us, and he satisfied God's infinitely
righteous justice for us. Yet after Christ, having done all this in our room
and stead, we are totally unable to see these things, or to know these blessed
truths, or even care about them unless we are born again! Our carnal minds were
enmity against God, we were enemies in our minds by wicked works, and so how
are our minds changed from enmity and our wills brought into subjection to God?
It will take
omnipotent power to make us willing to be saved; we must be drawn to God
because we are unwilling to come. We must be given new hearts, new wills, new
minds, new desires, new loves, and new natures if we are to enter the kingdom
of God. None of these things can we do for ourselves. But blessed be God, He
loved us and gave His Son for us, and with him he freely gives all things, he
sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts and we cry Abba Father. Our gracious
God, in making his Son’s death effectual to us, makes us new creatures In
Christ. He brings into existence a new man. It is this new man that is able to
see, to believe, and to walk and commune with God in Christ. Donnie Bell, Pastor of Lantana Grace Church,
Crossville, TN