December 23, 2012
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
Order of service, announcements, nursery
schedule, etc., are in attachment. All
articles in the bulletin are by the pastor unless otherwise noted.
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The scriptures do not contradict each other. If one text seems to conflict with another
then use the text with the obvious meaning to determine the meaning of the
unobvious.
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I WAS NOT THERE WHEN ADAM DIED
Taken from
a sermon by JC Philpot
But you may say, "If Adam sinned and fell, I was not in
Paradise, how could I help his sinning against God? I was not there to hold
back his hand from taking the forbidden fruit. Why then should I, an innocent
man, suffer for his transgression? If a man now commit theft or murder, the law
does not punish the innocent with the guilty." Then, I suppose, you have
no personal sins of your own, and can stand before God perfectly holy and
innocent? "No," you say, "I don't mean that, for I know that I
am a sinner." But how did you become a sinner? Don't you see how in the
fall the seed of sin was deposited by Satan in the very nature of Adam; that
this alienation was dropped, as it were, from Satan's hand into his heart, as
an acorn may fall into the earth, where it struck root and grew, and so filled,
so to speak, the whole of his nature that it thrust out, like an overgrown
tree, everything that was good. But you may say, "How could one sin
do this?" Cannot a grain of poison, say strychnine, diffuse itself through
a whole vessel full of water? So sin spread itself through the whole of Adam's
body and soul, killing the life of God therein and corrupting his nature
throughout. But still the question arises, "How can this reach us?"
Why, as like can only beget like, the alienation that Satan sowed in the heart
of man in the fall in infecting him infected the whole of the race that should
spring from him. Do we not read that "Adam begat a son in his own
likeness, after his image?" (Gen. 5:3.) A fallen son must come from a
fallen sire. Thus we come into the world alienated from the image of
God, and this alienation is our birthright, our portion, our miserable
inheritance; all that we can really call our own..
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THE MIDDLE CLASS
By Bruce Crabtree
“Give me neither poverty nor riches” (Prov. 30:8)
What a blessing it is to be in the middle
class. Agur realized this. “Give me neither poverty nor riches” (Vr.8). Why not
poverty? Poverty can be a hard life. Poverty is painful for the mind as well as
the body. I don’t want to have to work so hard and long just to exist; with no
time or energy left over to sit and read. So tired I can’t stay awake in the
worship service - or have to work on the Lord’s day and unable to go.
There are temptations involved in being
broke. Verse nine tells us one; “lest I be (so) poor, and steal, and take the
name of my God in vain.” I don’t want to be so poor I have to beg or steal or
go on some kind of public assistance.
But why does Agur ask not to be rich? What
an easy question that is to answer; “They that will be rich fall into
temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown
men in destruction and perdition.”(1 Tim. 6:9-10) The super rich are often high
minded and trust in their riches, our Lord said ‘how hard is it for them that
trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God’. Agur realized it wasn’t good
to have too much lest “I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD?”
(Vr.9).
‘Feed me with food convenient for me’.
What a blessing to have a convenient life, one without financial troubles that
makes the rest of life so difficult, money enough to meet the needs of the
family, enough to give a little extra when the Church has a project, enough to
take an old friend out to dinner and enjoy some good fellowship, enough to buy
the grandchildren Bibles, or order a bunch of gospel tracts to hand out, enough
to take a few days off and go to a Bible Conference, enough to take a vacation
with the family to relax and rest the body and mind, to do all this without
causing difficulty and hardship to myself.
Lord,
I don’t want to be rich, I don’t trust myself but, Lord, I don’t want to live
in poverty and hardship either. The middle class: that is the best class to be
in. Thank God for the middle class.
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Seek Preeminently
the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness
The Word of Jesus Christ the Son of God
Lay not up for yourselves
treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break
through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither
moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For
where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is
the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of
light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If
therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! No
man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other;
or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve
God and mammon.
Therefore I say unto you, Take no
thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for
your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body
than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they
reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not
much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto
his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the
field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto
you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore,
if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast
into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore
take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal
shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for
your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye
first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be
added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall
take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof. (Mt 6: 19-34)
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A man may be
weary of life, but never of Divine love. Histories tell us of many that have
been weary of their lives, but no histories can furnish us with an instance of
any one that was ever weary of Divine love. As the people prized David above themselves,
saying, “Thou art worth ten thousand of us;” so they that indeed have God for
their portion, oh, how do they prize God above themselves, and above everything
below themselves l and, doubtless, they that do not lift up God above all, they
have no interest in God at all.
Thomas Brooks