June 22, 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
Be sure to check the order of service, announcements,
nursery schedule, etc., in the attachment.
All articles in the bulletin are by the pastor unless otherwise noted.
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Please, no
drinks or food in the service. Also, we have a nursery equipped with
a digital flat screen television broadcasting all services live, for children
four and under.
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Our
annual meeting is scheduled here Thurs-Sun, July 24-27. Don Fortner pastor of
Grace Baptist Church, Danville, KY is scheduled to preach Thursday night &
Friday night at 7:30 pm & Saturday morning following our first speaker.
Angus Fisher, pastor of Shoalhaven Gospel Church in Nowra, NSW, Australia is
scheduled to preach Saturday and Sunday morning at 10:15am. We will have ice cream after Fri night’s
service and a full meal after services Sat and Sun. All are invited.
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EVERY SERMON
Mt 28:20: Teaching them
to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you
Every sermon,
no matter the text or subject, must be preached with the awareness that there
are sinners listening who do not know Christ, do not know themselves to be
ruined in sin, nor do they know that God saves sinners by grace, through God’s
gift of faith in Christ, altogether by the finished work of Christ alone. Every
sermon must be preached with the awareness that the only way sinners, believers
or otherwise, are profited, reproved, corrected, and instructed in
righteousness, and that by the effectual grace of God, is by preaching Christ
and him crucified—absolutely no other way!
Therefore,
every sermon must clearly declare who Christ is, why Christ came, what Christ
accomplished, where Christ is now and what Christ is doing now. Every verse or
passage is best expounded by first, and as quickly as possible, declaring how
Christ fulfilled it, how Christ glorified the Father and how Christ
accomplished the salvation of the elect thereby. Then, if the verse or passage
applies to the believers walk, if God gives a spiritual understanding in the
heart, the believer will be comforted that Christ alone has made them the
righteousness of God thereby; their flesh will be mortified as they behold how
far short they come of heeding the instruction; and they will be given a desire
in the inward man to heed the instruction constrained only by the love of
Christ for them—our only motive.
Before every
sermon is preached it is best to ask oneself, “If I were a lost sinner, after
hearing this sermon will I be shut up to the truth that salvation is by God’s
sovereign grace alone, through God’s gift of life and faith in Christ alone,
and left with absolutely no room to conclude anything else but that my flesh
profits nothing.” If so the sermon will declare the one thing needful; if not,
it must be discarded for a sermon that does!
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IF BAPTISM DOES NOT SAVE, WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Baptism is a
ceremony, and nothing more. There is no saving efficacy in it nor is it a means
through which grace is conveyed. But, that does not take away from its
importance. The marriage ceremony does not cause a man and woman to love one
another. They love each other before they participated in the marriage
ceremony. But if they refuse to participate in the marriage ceremony, and live
together without it, they say by that, that they do not love one another enough
to be totally committed to one another. This shows how important the marriage
ceremony is. There is no true love without it. Baptism is the same. It does not
cause salvation. It speaks of a relationship that was already there before the
ceremony. And that relationship was caused by what baptism depicts: union with
Christ. For someone to refuse baptism is like someone who refuses the marriage
covenant and ceremony. That person says by their actions, “I do not love Christ
enough to commit to Him.” Love like that is not love at all! Yes, baptism is
important. “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16).
Todd Nibert is pastor of Todd’s Road Grace
Church, Lexington, KY
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WHAT IS THE NEW BIRTH?
In conversion the soul is ushered into a
new, spiritual world—emphatically born again. The first birth introduces us
into the natural world; the second introduces us into a spiritual world. The
first birth ushers us into a world of sin, and woe, and death; the second
birth, into a world of holiness, and happiness, and life. It is the birth of the
soul into grace…
The truly-converted soul is a living soul,
quickened from a death of sin into a life of righteousness. The life, the
new-born life, which now animates him, is the life of God, communicated in
virtue of his union with Christ, who is our Life, and by the agency of the Holy
Spirit, the Divine Quickener. All now is life: new, spiritual, holy, deathless
life. The bitterness of spiritual death is past, its sovereign dethroned, its
dominion destroyed and the glory, the reign, and the power of a divine and
new-born life triumphantly enter the soul; and from henceforth exists an empire
as lasting as the being of Him who created it…
And now the soul begins really to live. It
swims in an infinite sea of life, the life of God. As from and in Him, so to
and for Him that life is now lived. Christ is his life, and to Christ that life
is consecrated. Spiritual death—dead faith, dead obedience, dead hope—is
abolished, and the spiritually-quickened soul bathes itself in a divine ocean
of vitality and bliss…How precious are its actings! Prayer, is life breathing;
faith, is life trusting; love, is life adoring; service, is life laboring;
submission, is life patiently suffering. Life of God in the soul of man!...
The New Birth likewise consists in the
restoration of the Divine image to the soul. The moral image of God was effaced
in the fall of the first Adam…The righteousness and holiness in which God
originally created us gave place to the empire and reign of sin…But the New
Birth is a restoration of the lost image of God to man. By Christ, the Second
Man, it is effectually and indelibly recovered…
The New Birth, then, is the restoration of
the image of God to the soul of man. But the apostle puts it yet more
distinctly, "The new man, which after God [or, the image of God] is
created in righteousness and true holiness." (Eph 4:24.) We know not a
more correct, and at the same time a more precious, view of the New Birth than
this…"Partakers of the divine nature"—"Partakers of His holiness"—for
these are the expressions of the Holy Spirit. Octavius Winslow (1808-1878)