CENTRAL BULLETIN August 13, 2017

Central Grace Church

3596 Franklin Street . Rocky Mount, Virginia

August 13^th , 2017

9:30 am ---------------Judgment of The World / Walking In Light – John 12:31-50

10:00 am -----------------------------------------------------The Upper Room – Acts 1:13

Birthdays: August: 13^th – John Sheesley Jr., 19^th – Henry Mahan, 20^th – Madelyn Holland

Cleaning: This Week – Ron & Tammy, Next Week – John & Earlene

Nursery: Wendy

Listen to WYTI Radio, 1570 AM - 104.5 FM, Sundays 8:00 am

Listen to live audio of services on: www.mixlr.com/centralgracechurch Website: www.centralgracechurch.com

A wonderful, prayerful resolve would be; Lord, let me look into the glorious glass of Thy Word and see the face of the Lord Jesus Christ, and let me conformed to His blessed image in all things. Let me see Christ in all Thy Word. Let me look to Him and look like Him. Deliver me from this present evil world, deliver me from the god of this world, deliver me from my sinful self, and receive me into Thy Kingdom forever. Let me be resolved to seek Thy will and do Thy will always.

– unknown

What Is Grace? – By Don Fortner

“I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain”(Galatians 2:21).

Paul tells us repeatedly that we are saved and justified, called and sanctified, preserved and glorified by the grace of God, without our works; but what is grace? Almost all professing christians say they believe that salvation is by grace. The Word of God lays such heavy emphasis upon the fact that salvation is by grace that it is very difficult for anyone to claim to believe the Bible and yet openly deny that salvation is by grace. Papists, pentecostals, and fundamentalists, all claim to believe in salvation by grace. But most people think and speak about grace in such a way that they frustrate the grace of God.

That is the reason Paul declared, "I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain!" The grace that most people talk about is not grace at all. It is so mixed with human merit and human works that it is "no more grace" (Rom. 11:6). Grace that looks to the worth of man, waits upon the will of man, or depends upon the work of man is frustrated grace; and frustrated grace is not the grace of God!

Grace is the unmerited favor of God. Grace is free! Grace is unconditional! Anything earned, merited, or deserved by you is not grace. The man who thinks he deserves God's salvation does not believe in grace. The person who imagines that his acceptance with God depends upon his will, his works, or his worth, does not believe in grace, as the Bible speaks of grace. He has fallen from grace (Gal. 5:2, 4). Such people may talk about grace, but grace does not mean to them what it does to poor, helpless, guilty, bankrupt, self-condemned sinners, whose only hope is Christ.

No one will ever honor and extol the grace of God until he has experienced it. It was only after he had experienced it that Paul declared, "By the grace of God I am what I am." Before that, though he was religious, he was a blasphemer who hoped for salvation by something he did. Paul took no credit for his conversion. He ascribed the whole of his salvation to God's free grace alone. He knew he did not make himself to differ from others. A great change had taken place in his heart. His opinions, affections, ambitions, desires, hopes, and motives had been radically changed; and he attributed the change to the grace of God alone.

“Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them,

I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.”– Matthew 7:24

The Rock, of course, is Christ, as the sand is self. But the test, the mark, the evidence, the proof of the two builders and the two buildings is the hearing of Christ’s sayings and doing them, or the hearing of Christ’s saying and doing them not. We may twist and wriggle under such a text, and try all manner of explanations to parry off its keen, cutting edge; we may fly to arguments and deductions drawn from the doctrines of grace to shelter ourselves from its heavy stroke, and seek to prove that the Lord was there preaching the law and not the gospel, and that we are saved by Christ’s blood and righteousness, and not by our own obedience or our good works, either before or after calling, all such tests and all such texts are inapplicable to our state as believers. But after all our questionings and cavilings, our nice subtle arguments to quiet conscience and patch up a false peace, there the words of the Lord stand, and what is more, will stand forever, backed as they are by that solemn declaration from the same Lips of Eternal Truth: “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:19-21) -- J.C. Philpot