April 30, 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 6: 6 Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: 7: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, 8: Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. 9: How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? 10: Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: 11: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.
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What the believer does in this world in no way changes the fact that we are complete in Christ. But what Christ has done for us, and in us, changes everything that we do in this world. We have no good works in which to glory but may all our works be for the glory of our Lord.
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GOD SHOW THYSELF!
Psalm 18: 25: With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful; with an upright man thou wilt show thyself upright; 26: With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure
From eternity, Christ became Surety of his people because he is the Merciful Man. He assumed our nature to bear our sin so that justice and mercy harmonize because he is the Upright Man. In order to be the last Adam, the only other man to begin life without sin that he might represent his people, he was born of a virgin declaring he is the Pure Man.
No mercy could be given Christ while he suffered the wrath of divine justice in place of his people. But satisfaction being made, redemption accomplished, God the Father raised him from the dead to his right hand along with all his people who he shall call to himself. Therefore, in God the Father’s work toward Christ his Son and in Christ’s work making us merciful, upright and pure in him, we see, “With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful; with an upright man thou wilt show thyself upright; With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure.”
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A man cannot depend upon Power and Grace which he has not been conquered by himself! Christ’s preachers and people declare the gospel of God’s Power and Grace to do everything in the salvation of his elect and they wait on God to quicken and call his people through the gospel because they themselves have been conquered by the Power and Grace of God through the preaching of that same gospel.
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A CAVEAT AGAINST UNSOUND DOCTRINES
Ask almost any man whether he hopes to be saved eternally. He will answer in the affirmative. But enquire again on what foundation he rests his hope. Here too many are sadly divided. The Pelagian hopes to get to heaven by a moral life and a good use of his natural powers. The Arminian by a jumble of grace and free-will, human works, and the merits of Christ. The Deist by an interested observance of the social virtues.
Thus merit-mongers, of every denomination, agree in making any thing the basis of their hope, rather than that foundation which God’s own hand hath laid in Zion.
But what saith Scripture? It avers, again and again, that Jesus alone is our hope: to the exclusion of all others, and to the utter annihilation of human deservings.
Beware, therefore, of resting your dependence partly on Christ, and partly on some other basis. As surely as you bottom your reliance partly on the rock and partly on the sand, so certainly, unless God gives you an immediate repentance to your acknowledgment of the truth, will your supposed house of defense fall and bury you in its ruins, no less than if you had raised it on the sand alone.
Christ is the hope of glory.
– Augustus Montague Toplady (1740-78), author of hymn Rock of Ages, cleft for me
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“The scriptures explain themselves.”—the last words of Arthur W. Pink
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The preaching of the letter declares sinners can and must keep the law given at Mt. Sinai. One way the letter killeth is by sin deceiving men into thinking they can keep the letter of the law, as it once deceived the apostle Paul. (Rom 7: 11) “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just and good.” (Rom 7: 12) “Wherefore” refers to the prior verses where Christ made Paul hear the law declare Paul’s law-keeping as only sin and death. “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just and good,” not because it tells me I am holy, just and good, but because even after all my very best effort to keep the law it declares I am not.
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The thing that made my children’s disobedience so frustrating and offensive to their mother and I was the fact that it was against us and our wishes and desires for them as their parents. We forbade them to do certain things because it was not to and for their best interest to do them. We forbade them to do things that we thought would be harmful to them. To do them anyway was a slap in the face to us, the very ones who loved them dearly and had their best interest at heart. That is what we do to our heavenly Father when we disobey His Word. May God teach us to “know that the Lord He is God.” “It is He that has made us, not we ourselves.”
Pastor David Eddmenson
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As we drove the nails in his hands and stuck a spear through his side, he was redeeming us from our sin. God purposed our salvation, and he saves us in spite of us, because he delights to show mercy. The Lord Jesus Christ finished the work his Father gave him to do, and he shall be glorified forever. Praise his holy name, he overrules our evil for good! Brother Cody Henson
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No more soul-destroying doctrine could well be devised than the doctrine that sinners can regenerate themselves, and repent and believe the gospel just when they please…as it is truth both of Scripture and of experience that the unrenewed man can do nothing of himself to secure his salvation, it is essential that he should be brought to a practical conviction of that truth. When thus convinced, and not before, he seeks help from the only source from whence it can be obtained.
Charles Hodge (1797-1878), second principle of Princeton Theological Seminary, buried in Princeton Cemetery.
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PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE
In II Peter 1:4 we see that the children of God are made “partakers of the divine nature.” This divine nature is the nature of Christ, and the holiness of God. It is the imparting to us of God Himself by the Holy Spirit in the soul.
This divine nature befits us for heaven. Without it, heaven would be hell. If an unregenerated person should go to heaven without bring born again, without this divine nature, heaven would be a hell to him, and not only that, but he would make heaven a hell for everybody else. How do you think an ungodly person would feel in a holy heaven, in the presence of a holy God, and in the presence of holy angels with all of the saints and the angelic hosts singing “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts”? You see we must have a nature to befit us for heaven. This nature is given us in the new birth.
– B. B. Caldwell (1899-1976) preached in the historic Sovereign Grace Conference in Ashland, KY in 1954 with Rolfe Barnard, George Fletcher, Clarence Walker, and Henry Mahan, host pastor.