Sovereign Grace Baptist Church

Free Grace Media

Of Princeton, New Jersey

 

AuthorClay Curtis
TitleWeekly Bulletin 10-22-2017
Bible TextMark 1:40-42
Date20-Oct-2017
Article Type Bulletin
 

October 22, 2017

Weekly Schedule of Services

Sunday:

10:15 AM

Bible Class

 

11:00 AM

Morning Service

Thursday:

  7:30 PM

Mid-week Service

 

Services Broadcast Live @ www.FreeGraceMedia.com/live

 

Web Address

Be sure to bookmark our website for daily articles and audio messages:

www.FreeGraceMedia.com

Weekly Meeting Location

251 Green Lane

Ewing, NJ, 08638

Mailing Address
7 Birch Street

Pennington, NJ 08534

Clay Curtis, pastor

Phone: 615-513-4464  |  Email: clay@freegracemedia.com

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to your email then send a note to the email address above.

Articles in this bulletin are by the pastor unless otherwise noted.

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


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