Weekly Email 1.26.15

God’s people are doubly his children, they are his offspring by creation, and they are his sons by adoption in Christ. Hence they are privileged to call him, “Our Father which art in heaven.” - Spurgeon

Dear Church,

We are the most blessed people because God has made us His children. I pray you will find encouragement in that amazing truth. I pray that God will use you to see more become His adopted children.

Recap-

In Sunday School, we finished week #2 of our new class Meeting With God. Come back this upcoming Sunday for more on this encouraging topic. I pray your quiet times will bless you and others around you.

In the service, we gathered to praise our satisfying God. We studied John 6 v16-35. It was there we thought about how Jesus alone can satisfy our hearts. Christ is the bread from heaven who gives eternal life. Praise His name!

Lord willing, we will be in John 6 v36-59. Read and pray in advance.

In the evening service we gathered for song and prayer. We then heard a brief devotional from Proverbs 5. Sunday nights are a great time for us to prepare for the week ahead.

Upcoming-

Sunday, Feb 1^st – Lord’s Supper and Potluck
Membership Matters Course will be taught Sunday Feb 1^st, 8^th, 15^th, 22^nd @ 9:30 AM.
Sunday, Feb 8^th - Theological Reading Group @5PM

Prayer-

Pray for Dari and Pat.

Pray for Don Herndon who is having eye surgery done next week.

Pray that we would be a holy, loving, and united people.

Pray for the preaching of the Word and the Lord's Supper this Sunday.

Pray for our Sunday School hour.

Pray for our Women's Small Group.

Pray for me.

Pray for the expecting mothers.

Pray for our evangelism and witness.

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