Weekly Email 2.10.15

Dear LPBC,

I pray your week is going well, and by God’s grace your love of Christ is growing more. No matter how our week goes according to our plan, we can always trust our good God. He has not withheld His own Son, but freely given Him to us for our salvation.

Recap-

We gathered together on Sunday to glorify Him and we once again found Him to be full grace and truth.

During our Sunday School hour two courses were taught.

I taught a session on our church covenant in our Membership Matters course. We talked about how the church covenant is central to our identity as a church and how it helps clarify our relationship to one another. Please come out and learn more about our church this week as we study biblical basis for church membership. We begin at 9:30 A.M.

Andrew Nedimyer taught the other class called Meeting with God. This upcoming week, Lord willing, Nate Mouli will lead us in our next section of this class. I pray you will all be encouraged to grow in your personal devotions as result of this seminar. The class is at 9:30 A.M. Pray for Nate as he prepares and encourage him by attending as he leads us in this edifying study.

In the service, we looked at John 6 v60-71. We considered the distinction between true and false disciples. True disciples understand that in this fallen world, there is no better place to turn than to Christ. He alone has the words of eternal life.

Lord willing, this Sunday we will be in John 7. Read and pray in advance. Pray for the preaching of the Word.

In the evening, we gathered again for prayer and song. By grace, we prayed over many people. We asked God to work and use us to see people come to Christ. Sean Slick led us in a thoughtful application from Proverbs 5. Praise God for Sunday Nights! Praise God that we get to come together for prayer and encouragement!

Upcoming-

· Wednesday Night Study- Titus 1 v9 @ 7PM

· Sunday, Feb 15^th – Men in Prayer and Repentance @5PM

Prayer-

Pray that we would be great ambassadors for the King.

Pray for our love for one another.

Pray for all our services.

Pray for our expectant mothers.

Pray for God's guidance for me as a pastor.

Pray that our love Jesus would be greater than our love of sin.

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...

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