March
28, 2021
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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7:00 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
and mailing address
251 Green Lane
Ewing, NJ, 08638
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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Proverbs 16:6: By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by
the fear of the LORD men depart from evil.
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THE
OFFENSE
Galatians 5:11: And I, brethren,
if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the
offence of the cross ceased.
The
offense of the gospel is Christ. This
word “offence” means stumblingblock, snare, trap. God declared Christ would be
a stumblingblock and a snare to many (Is 8:14-15). But he is only a snare to the workers of
iniquity. Iniquity is an outward obedience
that does not equal the righteousness God requires. Workers of iniquity require an outward
sign. They trust only in outward works
of the law performed by men which they can see.
But God looks on the heart in which sinners break the law continually. In addition, those God saves must die under
God’s justice. Therefore workers of
iniquity stumble and are snared when they hear Christ alone is the
righteousness of God who saves through faith apart from the sinners works (1
Cor 1:22-23). Those who believe on
Christ obtain the righteousness imputed freely to those who believe on Christ,
though they never did one work to make themselves righteous. But those seeking
righteousness by their works of iniquity stumble and perish at the gospel of
Christ because they seek righteousness by their iniquity (Rom 9:30-33). Christ is the Righteousness of God. Believe on Christ and you shall be saved (Rom
10:9-11).
?-----------------------------?
‘Whether ye be in the faith’
Read 2 Peter 1:1-11
Paul
admonishes all of us to make our calling and election sure. He says, ‘Examine
yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your
own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?’ He does
not admonish us to examine one another, but he does tell us to examine
ourselves. Here are three points by which I examine my own faith. I urge you to
do the same.
1.
Is my faith
based upon the Word of God? I know
this: ‘Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God’ (Rom. 10:17).
If my faith is genuine, it is born in my heart by the Word of truth. True faith
arises from a proper knowledge of God, as he is revealed in Christ, in his holy
and sovereign character (John 17:3). True faith arises from a proper knowledge
of Christ, the incarnate God, in the glory of his efficacious, sin-atoning
sacrifice as our Substitute. And true faith arises from a proper knowledge of
ourselves, our guilt, our depravity and our inability. Until a man knows what
the Bible says about God, about Christ and about himself, he cannot exercise
saving faith.
2.
Does my faith
cause me to have a well-grounded hope of a saving interest in Christ? True faith causes a man to have a good hope through
grace. Trusting the merits of Christ’s righteousness and shed blood, the true
believer has a confident, assured hope of eternal salvation and acceptance with
God in Christ. True faith does not depend upon feelings, works or desires. True
faith trusts Christ alone and enjoys peaceful hope of eternal glory in him.
3.
Does my faith
produce a principle of love in my heart for Christ and his people? Faith causes a man to love Christ as he is and love
the people of God as they are in Christ. This love is a self-denying,
self-sacrificing commitment to Christ and his people. Any faith that lacks this
love is a false faith.
–Don Fortner
?-----------------------------?
Learn
from the repentant thief on the cross. Christ was made his Wisdom so he believed
Christ. Christ was made his Righteousness so he was righteous. Christ was made
his Sanctification so he had that holiness without which no man shall see God. Christ
was made his Redemption so he entered that day into the glorious liberty of the
sons of God. All of this was through the simplicity of believing on Christ. May
God nail our hands and feet to the cross so the only confidence we have is
Christ.
?-----------------------------?
Martin Luther
said, “I never preach a sermon where I do not preach against fleshly
self-righteous. But no matter how much I
preach against it, I can’t keep it down.”
?-----------------------------?
“The fire shall try every man’s
work of what sort it is.” The fire I
shall treat of is the temptations of Satan… “Above all, taking the shield of
faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.”
…I myself have been for years exercised in this way…for I have clearly appeared
at such times to be the very hypocrite that God’s word has described; and at
such seasons text upon text of Scripture have run in my mind…If under much
bondage, “You are one of Hagar’s family, never made free by the Son of God.” If
I have fallen by a besetting sin, “You are led captive by Satan at his will.”
And if the same sin is slipped into again and again, then “You are a servant of
corruption, an Antinomian.” If enmity has arisen under sore trials, “You hate
Zion, God, and His cause.” If covetousness has worked up, “You will be in time
proved to be like Ananias and Sapphira.”…Satan first tempts, then accuses, and
then shoots his fiery darts…Our feeling these corruptions arise is in order
that we may be well instructed…and kept sensible of our real need of Jesus
Christ, in all His office characters: as a fountain to cleanse us as the end of
the law for righteousness…that he may be all to us, and all in us; wisdom to
fools; righteousness to condemned criminals; sanctification to the unholy;
redemption to them that feel the captivity of Satan and the reigning power of
their own lusts; reconciliation to enemies; light to them that sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death; life to the dead; health to the sick; food to the
hungry; and salvation to the lost. And not only at first, but these things are
kept up…Here it is that we greatly err; for we conclude that these feelings
altogether, have to do with God’s first work in convincing us of sin; and when
He is pleased to deliver us, we expect after this to get more holy, and more
and more righteous in ourselves. But,
alas when the old man arises, he at once contradicts this, and we find that in
ourselves we are very devils. This keeps us out of confidence in our own
tabernacle, and the longer we live, the worse we see and feel ourselves to be;
and the viler we are in our own eyes, the more precious will Christ Jesus be
every time faith is in exercise. Hence the church says in the song, “I am
black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar,” and yet
declares that Jesus Christ her Beloved was “the chiefest among ten thousand and
the Altogether Lovely.”
–John
Rusk