LPBC Weekly Email- 12.15.14

Dear LPBC,

Yesterday, we had a wonderful gathering at LPBC. To God be the glory!

We gathered to praise our gracious God.

As we go through the Gospel of John, we specifically thought more about Jesus being God’s gift to the world from chapter 4. It is there we see how Jesus gives eternal life. He causes eternal life to spring up inside all who repent and believe.

Jesus calls us to go and proclaim this good news to the world. I pray we will call people to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray we will worship God in spirit and in truth. I pray that we will be the kind of people who have true faith that takes God at His word. I pray that people will see the life of God in us and ask us to share with them.

Here are a few announcements to go over this week-

1. Budget Proposal- Church members can pick up a copy of the 2015 proposed church budget from Regina’s office. This will be voted on in January. Please see me or the deacons if there are any questions.

2. Lessons and Carols- Dec 21^st- Lessons and Carols- An Advent Celebration- @6PM – Please pray for this event and invite friends to come as we celebrate and proclaim Jesus.

3. Financial Giving- Dec 28^th – This is the last Sunday to give on record with the church for 2014.

4. No Potluck in January.

Comments

John Stott on the "old man" and the "body ruled by sin" in Rom 6 v 6

There are, in fact, two quite distinct ways in which the New Testament speaks of crucifixion in relation to holiness. The first is our death to sin through identification with Christ; the second is our death to self through imitation of Christ. On the one hand, we have been crucified with Christ. But on the other we have crucified (decisively repudiated) our sinful nature with all its desires, so that every day we renew this attitude by taking up our cross and following Christ to crucifixion. The first is a legal death, a death to the penalty of sin; the second is a moral death, a death to the power of sin. The first belongs to the past, and is unique and unrepeatable; the second belongs to the present, and is repeatable, even continuous. I died to sin (in Christ) once; I die to self (like Christ) daily. It is with the first of these two deaths that Romans 6 is chiefly concerned, although the first is with a view to the second, and the second cannot take place w...

Berkoff: "The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. "

The giving of the law did not effect a fundamental change in the religion of Israel, but merely introduced a change in its external form. The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. Many of the Israelites, indeed, looked upon the law in a purely legalistic spirit and sought to base their claim to salvation on a scrupulous fulfillment of it as a body of external precepts. But in the case of those who understood its real nature, who felt the inwardness and spirituality of the law, it served to deepen the sense of sin and to sharpen the conviction that salvation could be expected only from the grace of God . L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 498–499.

F.F. Bruce: ...know their father's will...

The NT does not contain a detailed code of rules for the Christian. Codes of rules, as Paul explains elsewhere, are suited to the period of immaturity when the children of God are still under guardians; but children who have come to years of responsibility know their father’s will without having to be provided with a long list of “Do’s” and “Don’t’s.” What the NT does provide is those basic principles of Christian living which may be applied to varying situations of life as they arise. So, after answering the Corinthian Christians’ question about the eating of food that has been offered to idols, Paul sums up his advice in the words: “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). Phrases current in worship, like “to the glory of God” or (as here) “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” were given a practical relevance by being applied to the concerns of ordinary life. Bruce, F. F. (1984). The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the...

Search This Blog