March 26, 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
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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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SUNDAY’S READING IN PROVERBS
Proverbs 4: 14: Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. 15: Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away. 16: For they sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall. 17: For they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of violence. 18: But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. 19: The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble.
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The Spirit with our Spirit
“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.” (Romans 8:16).
Here we learn from the Holy Scriptures that God’s Spirit testifies and gives evidence unto our spirit, that new spirit imparted in regenerating grace through the preaching of the Gospel, that we are God’s children, adopted in Christ Jesus. This blessed witness, the witness from God’s Spirit that the sheep are heirs of God’s grace and blessings and are joint-heirs with Christ, is a testimony of indescribable comfort and joy. The natural unregenerate man, the old man born in Adam, will not receive or believe the witness of the Gospel, it’s foolishness unto him, but to every one born from above, it is a witness willingly received by faith in the day of God’s power. Pastor Marvin Stalnaker
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His Blood Alone!
The vital thing to understand about the blood of Christ is this: IT IS ENOUGH! Nothing else is needed to accomplish the salvation of all for whom His blood was shed. Not His blood plus my works; not His blood plus my “decision;” not His blood plus the ordinances; not His blood plus church membership; not even His blood plus my faith - His blood purchased my faith. HIS BLOOD ALONE paid the price required by his justice, and His blood alone can make a sinner clean. “By His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having OBTAINED (not made possible) eternal redemption for us” (Heb. 9:12). – Pastor Don Bell
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GIFTS FOR THE REBELLIOUS
Ephesians 4:8: Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Psalm 68: 18: Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell among them.
When Joseph ascended from the lowest parts of Egypt to the chief seat of honor and government of Egypt, the ones he saved by his ascension were the ones who least deserved it, his rebellious brethren who hated him. They had conspired to kill Joseph. They sold him into slavery. All the servitude, imprisonment and sufferings Joseph endured was due to his brethren who hated him while in their rebellion. But they were the very ones for whom God raised up Joseph. Freely, Joseph graciously gave his rebellious brethren bread and saved them from famine.
It was for his rebellious, God-hating people that the Lord Jesus was despised, rejected, and slain. But they were the ones God has chosen from eternity. The very brethren he came to save are the rebellious who sold him, nailed him to a tree, for whom Christ was crucified. But as it was with Joseph, God overruled Christ’s crucifixion by us rebels for our eternal good. Christ satisfied justice for us and when Christ arose, he ascended up on high with the key to the storehouse of all grace for the very rebels who nailed him to the tree. The man of sorrows took possession of the throne of glory for the edification of his rebellious brethren. He gives us a famine of bread, draws us to Christ and Christ freely gives us free Bread, eternal life in him.
Sinner can you confess you are the rebellious and come to Christ to be saved by him alone? That is what the rebellious for whom Christ died do when God gives Christ’s gifts to them! What a Savior! He gives the rebellious all things freely and makes us turn from our rebellion in obedient gratitude for making us the friend of God by his blood.
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FROM A SERMON BY WILLIAM GADSBY ON THE FOLLOWING VERSE: “But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:” (2 Cor 1:9)
And if he has been a person brought up in what they call religion; if he has had religious instruction and his judgment is pretty well stored with religions knowledge, so that he can talk about election, predestination, redemption, final perseverance, and all the leading truths of the gospel, and is ready to think that, owing to the judgment that he has, though there must be some little change, it need not be very conspicuous, because he knows so much already and has got so far on in knowledge;—if ever God begins a work of grace in that poor sinner's heart, he will make him into a mere fool. All his knowledge will give way; the sentence of death will come upon him; and he will find, instead of his knowledge being of any real service when God sends his quickening Spirit and gives him divine life, it only seems to puzzle him, to confuse him…And thus comes the sentence of death upon all his knowledge and all his understanding of religious things; as it is said, “That we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.”
Now I have known men be very inquisitive concerning other people's practices, and be led to conclude they were not altogether walking very becomingly, and they have watched them cautiously that they might be able, as they thought, to give them seasonable rebuke and reproof; but they never dreamed that all the time in watching them they might create the same working in themselves, till it actually came, and they were in the very same snare, and felt that God had to give them a reproof; and thus cured them of self-trusting. And I would advise you, in the Name of the Lord, do not trust your eyes, do not trust your ears, do not trust yourselves, without the Lord being your Guide; for really we are not fit to be trusted for a moment. And so the Lord will bring us to have the sentence of death in ourselves, “that we should not trust in ourselves.” William Gadsby
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Repent and Be Baptized
“Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38).
C. H. Spurgeon once closed a sermon with these words; "I call upon every man here to do what Christ bids him. I call upon you, first of all, to prove that you believe in Christ by being baptized. ‘He that believeth in Christ and is baptized shall be saved.’ The first proof that you believe in Christ is to be given by yielding to the much despised ordinance of believers' baptism, and then, having done that, going on to the other means of which I have spoken. Oh! I charge you by your soul's salvation neglect nothing Christ commands, however trivial it may seem to your reason. Whatever he saith unto you, do it, for only by a child-like obedience to every bidding of Christ can you expect to have the promise fulfilled, "They that trust in him shall be saved."
Would not this be a fitting close for every message directed to the unsaved? Instead, we call on men to pray the sinner's prayer, to come forward, to pray through at an altar, and neglect the very command of Christ which says, "believe and be baptized"; the words of Peter in Acts 2:38 to "repent and be baptized"; or the words of Ananias in Acts 22:16 to "arise and be baptized." Pastor Henry Mahan
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Mr 16:16: He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.