October 22, 2017
Weekly Schedule of Services
Sunday:
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10:15 AM
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Bible Class
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11:00 AM
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Morning Service
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Thursday:
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7:30 PM
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Mid-week Service
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Services Broadcast Live @ www.FreeGraceMedia.com/live
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Web Address
Be sure to bookmark
our website for daily articles and audio messages:
www.FreeGraceMedia.com
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Weekly Meeting Location
251 Green Lane
Ewing, NJ, 08638
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Mailing Address
7 Birch
Street
Pennington, NJ 08534
Clay Curtis, pastor
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Phone:
615-513-4464 | Email:
clay@freegracemedia.com
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If you would like to
receive this bulletin sent weekly
to your email then
send a note to the email address above.
Articles in this bulletin are by the pastor unless otherwise
noted.
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SCHEDULE
OF SERVICES
10:15 a.m. Bible Class
11:00 a.m. Service
Opening
Hymns * Scripture Reading * Message*
Closing Hymn
Scripture
Today: Art D’Armiento; Scripture
Thurs: Kevin Thacker
Nursery Today: Debra K;
Kimberly T. Nursery Thurs: Christine K.
B’Days: Alyssa L–8th; Joshua D–9th;
Urmilla I–13th; Jacob I–16th; Jonathan D–21st;
Ravi I–29th;
October
Cleaning: The Kane Family
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SUNDAY’S READING IN PROVERBS
Proverbs 10:10: He that winketh with the
eye causeth sorrow: but a prating fool shall fall.
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THE WILL THAT CLEANSES
Mark 1:40: And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling
down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. 41: And Jesus, moved with compassion,
put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou
clean. 42: And as soon as he had
spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed.
Salvation
is not by the sinners will but by the will of the Lord Jesus Christ. This leper did not come to Christ making
demands or boasting of his will—he said
unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
This man knew he was full of leprosy. The Spirit of God must reveal to us our
desperate need. We only come to Christ asking his will to be done when we
believe we are nothing but sin and only Christ can cure us. The will of Christ by which we are saved begins
by Christ sending us the Holy Spirit to purge our conscience from dead works by
his blood and convince us that we are nothing but sin—a loathsome disease in
God’s sight.
Salvation is by the will of our Lord
giving us a new heart that is broken and believes on Christ. The leper did not come to the disciples. He
did not merely come to Christ’s teachings. He came to Christ. When you have a
little sniffle then you might get curious. You might pick up a book and try to
learn what causes these symptoms. But when you are deathly ill you go directly
to a physician! When a sinner is given
faith to believe God’s own word against him and taught that Christ alone is the
Righteousness of God who heals then he will come to the great Physician!
How does Christ receive the sinner that he
has made willing in the day of his power?
Our Lord Jesus moved with compassion.
He said, “I will have compassion
on whom I will have compassion.” Christ is our compassionate High Priest!
(Heb 4:15) Christ put forth his hand and touched him and cleansed him
immediately. We are cleansed by a living
union with Christ! We were in him on the cross and he is in us by the new birth
that we might be made perfect in one, Christ Jesus. (Jn 17:23)
HOW CAN CHRIST HEAL HIS PEOPLE?
Mark 1:40: And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling
down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. 41: And Jesus, moved with compassion,
put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou
clean. 42: And as soon as he had
spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed.
We see
many places in scripture where Christ healed men and women of their physical
sickness. Matthew tells us he healed “That
it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, ‘Himself
took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.’”
In order to speak the sin-cleansing
word—to absolve the sins of God’s elect lepers—Christ had to take and bare all
the leprous sin of his people in his own body on the tree. Have you ever noticed the
marginal reading of Isaiah 53:3? It says
“he hid as it were his face from us.” That is what the law of God required of the
leper. (Lev 13:45) In order to cleanse his leprous people, he had to bear the
wrath of God for his people as our Substitute whom the law looked upon as the
one leper who must be cut off outside the camp.
This is the oneness his people have in Christ represented by Christ
touching the leper to heal him. We were in Christ on the cross. Then the Lord
Jesus enters us in Spirit in the new birth. He speaks his word, “I will; be thou clean” And as soon as he
speaks, immediately we are cleansed. Sinner, come to Christ casting all your
care upon him. “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one
with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.” (1
Jn 1:7)
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A TESTIMONY TO WHAT?
Mark 1:44: And saith unto him, See thou
say nothing to any man but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer
for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto
them.
What
was it that Christ made this leper a testimony of? All these things were God’s law of the leper
in the day of his cleansing. (Lev 14:1-3)
The day a leper was cleansed he was to be brought unto the priest. The priest was to go out of the camp and look
upon him and if he was healed then the priest would make a blood offering on
behalf of the leper.
In Israel, this law had never been fulfilled
because no leper had been healed by the priests or their washings. Why did God
give this law since leprosy was incurable by men? What was this leper bearing testimony unto
before the priests? Christ made this man
a testimony that Christ is the end of that law and all law. Christ is the High
Priest and the Offering who alone cleanses his lepers, which that law pictured.
All who Christ cleanses of sin are made a
testimony of these things. “For Christ is the end of the law for
righteousness to every one that believeth.” (Rom 10:4)
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Even if a man preaches the
true doctrine of Christ but his motive is merely to get us to believe an
irrelevant point in scripture which he makes the touchstone of whether one is
saved or deceived has ceased preaching Christ, no matter if that irrelevant
point is true or false. Scriptures
declare that even the true doctrine in which God’s saints know, we know in
part. How then are we saved? We are saved by God supernaturally giving us
a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as our only hope of salvation. Indeed this knowledge comes through
doctrine. But all true doctrine of
scripture delivered in spirit and truth by Christ’s true messengers shuts
sinners up only and always to Christ alone!
Christ never declared that except you believe this irrelevant fact then
you cannot be saved. Christ never even
declared that except you believe this point of true doctrine to a certain
degree then you cannot be saved. But constantly Christ declared “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man,
and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.”
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TWO SONGS
There are two songs that are a source of comfort. One has to
do with the providence of God over all things—over me. And the other has to do
with the atonement of Christ—what happened on the cross of Calvary. The first
one is “How Firm A Foundation.” The last portion of verse four
says, “The flame shall not hurt thee – I only design Thy dross to consume and
thy gold to refine.” Think about that dear child of God. How often does a fiery
trial threaten to destroy you—at least in your own eyes? The heat seems so
intense you begin to think it’s going to melt your poor soul. “Their soul is
melted because of trouble,” the Psalmist said (Ps.107:26). There are troubles
which come and go that you and I can cope with without much thought, but there
are those troubles that are deep and prolonged and melt our hearts like wax.
What if in the mist of such melting we
could remember this song and really take it to heart—“This flame shall not hurt
thee.” Well, this calms my fear, because that is exactly what I was thinking to
myself, “This flame will hurt me, it is hurting me.” But “No” the song says,
God has a purpose in putting you in the flame. He has designed it for
your good and his glory—“I only design thy dross to consume and
thy gold to refine.” We have all this
dross—this flesh and its schemes and self-will etc. and it keeps the gold of
Christ’s grace and power from shining. Putting fire to it is the only way
to accomplish a good end. Fire will not consume gold, only the dross. Repeat
this in every trial, “This flame shall not hurt thee.”
The second song is “It Is Well
With My Soul.” The third verse says, “My sin – O the bliss of this
glorious thought – My sin, not in part, but the whole, Is nailed to the cross
and I bear it no more: Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul.” This
gives me comfort to believe this because my sins often worry me. They
sometime make me afraid. I have these apprehensions of the holiness and justice
of God and death and the judgment to come and eternity. I have noticed there
are times when these things appear awful to my thoughts—even unbearable, but I
have noticed what makes them appear awful, it is the thoughts of my sins mixed
with the thoughts of these things. I don’t fear God’s face or fear facing
God when I remember the reality of this song; “My sin, not in part but the
whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more.” If it’s my sins that are
making me afraid, then fear not, “I bear them no more.” Jesus has borne them in
my stead and has satisfied for them in my stead too. Let this comfort you, dear
believer, as it has me. –Bruce Crabtree