Category: Bulletin Articles

By Edd Sterchi

For the ………………………But. . .
the wages (earned)…….gift (not earned)

of sin (unholiness)………of God (holiness)

is death (separation)……is eternal life (everlastíng fellowship)

That’s quite a stark contrast, isn’t it? You just can’t get
more diametric than those two statements. What makes
the difference between them? What is it that divides
them into polar opposites? The rest of the verse reveals
what puts one on one side or the other: “in Chríst Jesus
the Lord.” You see, if we are “in” Jesus Christ, then we
are given the gift of eternal life from a holy God.

Galatians 3:27 clearly reveals that we “put on Jesus”
(1e. become “in” Him) being baptized into Him. It is
then that we reach His soul-cleansing, sin-washing
sacrifice (Romans 6:3-5).

Are you “in” Jesus?

Via Bulletin Gold

By David R. Ferguson

Partaking of the Lord’s Supper is a very important action
when we come together as brothers and sisters in Christ. While
it is true the Lord is with us always, the Supper is a very special,
intimate time that we share with our Lord. As we partake of the
Lord’s Supper we bear witness to the body of believers in
Christ. No one is inferior, and no one is superior. We are all one
in Christ. The ground is always level at the foot of the cross of
Jesus. When we gather at His Table we recall the gift that
brought us here.

This backward glance is not a moment of despondency. It is
not a moment of self-deprecation. The Cross was not a moment
of defeat for Jesus. Rather, it was a moment of glorification. We
recall this as His crowning moment in life. When we remember
not only the Cross but all of Jesus’ ministry, then we remember
the depth of God’s love for us. The Cross is the revelation of
love (John 3:16; 1 John 3:16). At the Table I remember that, like
the woman caught in adultery and the thief who hung beside the
Lord, I am not condemned! When we look backward we see
reason to celebrate the victory of God.

By sitting at God’s Table we also look forward to the
future. We truly experience the Presence of the risen Christ at
the Table, but we also proclaim that His resurrection leads to a
time when He will return. In the Supper we have a foretaste of
the gloriousness of what Heaven will be like. At the Table of the
Lord all the saints of old are gathered in communion with us in
anticipation of when we will literally sit at the great banquet in
the age to come, once Jesus has gathered all of us home to be
with Him. John gives us a glimpse of this “wedding supper of
the Lamb” in Revelation 19:9.

Via Bulletin Gold

Bob Prichard Via Bulletin Gold

A tune was stuck in my head. It was a jazzy clarinet
tune. I was racking my brain trying to figure out
what it was, and where it came from, when I
happened to see a Land Rover TV commercial
playing the tune. I had picked up the tune without
paying attention.

Without even trying, our minds scoop up what we
see, hear, smell, and feel. God has created us in such
a way that we can remember an event from twenty-
five years ago like it happened yesterday.

Knowing it is possible for us to absorb so many
things without even thinking about it, shouldn’t we
be extra cautious about where we go, what we do,
and what we expose our minds to? The more we fill
our minds with good things, the more good things
there will be to well up into our conscious or
unconscious minds. We need David’s attitude:
How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, 0
God! how great is the sum of them!” (Psalm
139:17).

The song was “Baby Elephant Walk,” written by
Henry Mancini for the 1962 movie Hatari. Listen to
it, and it will probably get stuck in your head, too!
Why not spend some time this week putting good
things from God in your head!

Joe Slater – Via Bulletin Gold

Jesus respected the question of authority. On the morning after
He drove the merchants and money changers out of the temple,
the Sanhedrin demanded to know, “By what authority are you
doing these things? Or who is he who gave You this authority?”
(Luke 20:2). They viewed the temple as their own domain, and
they certainly hadn’t given Jesus permission to teach there, much
less to regulate what occurred on temple grounds. After all, He
had not graduated from rabbinical school, so they viewed Him as
intruder.

Jesus didn’t deny the need for authority, but neither did He
accept their demand for human approval. In an absolutely
brilliant maneuver, Jesus changed the focus to divine authority
and the Sanhedrin’s total lack of fitness to judge His credentials.
He asked a simple multiple-choice question: “The baptism of
John – was it from heaven or from men?” (Luke 20:4).

The Sanhedrin certainly hadn’t approved John’s work. He had
rebuked some of them, calling them a generation of vipers!
(Matthew 3:7). The people, however, correctly counted John to
be a prophet (thus having authority from God in heaven), Since
the Sanhedrin feared the people, they refused to state their true
convictions that John’s authority was from men, that is, he was
acting on his own. Instead, they claimed not to know, thereby
confessing themselves unfit to judge Jesus’ source of authority.

We should follow Jesus’ example of asking not for human
authority, but for divine authority. Every teaching and practice
should be put to the test: “Is this from heaven or from men?” Let
us teach and do what God authorizes in His word while rejecting
all that lacks divine sanction!

• God’s Grace – Ephesians 2:8
• Christ’s Blood – Romans 5:9
• The Gospel – Romans 1:16
• Sinners Faith – Acts 16:31
• Sinner’s Repentance – Luke 13:3
• Sinner’s Confession – Romans 10:10
• Believers Baptism – I Peter 3:21
• Christian’s Work – James 2:24
• Christian’s Hope – Romans 8:24
• Christian’s Endurance – Revelations 2:10

Gerald Cowan Via Bulletin Gold

Before the hills appeared,
Before the rivers and the seas,
Before the clouds were formed,
Before the stirring of the breeze;
Before a man was born,
Or any other living thing;
Before the rain or snow first fell,
Before the flowers of spring;
Before the paths of earth
By mortal men were trod-
Before it all, from everlasting was
The Great Eternal God.

When everything on earth
Decays and disappears,
As darkness of the night
Dissolves when daylight nears;
When all the starry universe
Burns up and fades away
With nothing left to measure time,
No sense of night or day;
When challengers and skeptics all
Lie dead beneath the sod –
Through everlasting there will be
The Great Eternal God.

Bob Priclhard Via BulletinGold

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in
the night; in the which the heavens shall pass
away with a great noise, and the elements shall
melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the
works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Peter
3:10).

In the World Trade Center rubble after 9/11,
President Bush rallied the people: I can hear you!
The rest of the world hears you! And the people …
who knocked these buildings down will hear all of
us soon.”

The heavens shall pass away with a great noise.”
That great noise, literally a roar,” will come as the
elements melt with fervent heat, and the earth and
its works are burned up.

Jeremiah prophesied, “At the noise of the taking
of Babylon the earth is moved, and the cry is heard
among the nations” (50:46). After marching quietly
around Jericho, on the seventh time, “Joshua said
unto the people, Shout; for the LORD hath given
you the city” (Joshua 6:10), a fearful noise as the
walls fell.

At the day of the Lord, those who were deaf to
the will of God will hear and understand that God
was serious about His commands and promises.
Will we hear?

Ron Adams Via Bulletin Gold

Paul lived long before the Brothers Grim published their fairy
tale about Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold. The apostle
did, however, hold out hope that straw could be transformed into
spiritually (not gold but materially).

Likening the Corinthian church to a building, Paul compared
himself to a wise master builder” who laid the foundation (1
Corinthians 3:10). That is, he had come to Corinth and preached
Christ’s gospel, leading many to faith and obedience.

Others (Apollos, for example) had built on that solid foundation.
A knowledgeable, eloquent teacher, Apollos had skillfully
begun.

But builders can use only those materials which are available
to them. Paul wrote of using “gold, silver, precious stones, wood,
hay, straw” (3:12). Individual Christians in Corinth and
elsewhere would fit these categories. The first three types would
stand the test of fire while the latter three would burn. In other
words, on Judgment Day some would be saved but others lost.

In Corinth, many had fallen victim to petty disputes and
divisions, fornication (and tolerance of it), corrupt worship, and
blatant false doctrine. What a mess! No doubt some were like
straw. Yet God hadn’t given up on them, and neither would Paul.

Could straw become gold? Yes, it could happen then in Corinth,
and it can happen today right here! Jesus, not Rumpelstiltskin,
can and will transform you when you repent and submit to His
will.

Ron Adans Via Bulletin Gold

“Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do,
and does not do it, to him it is sin.”
James 4:17

Those who say:
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” “I never hurt anyone,” or
“I never even bothered anyone,”
fall short of “doing right” and “helping.”

Righteousness is not just the absence of sin–
it’s the presence of right-doing.
The absence of wrong-doing leaves a void that
is to be filled with righteous deeds.
Faith without works is dead!

Jesus said to those on His left:
“Depart from Me …
for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat;
I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink;
I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in;
naked, and you did not clothe Me;
sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me. ..
to the extent that you did not do it to one of
the least of these, you did not do it to Me.”
Matthew 25:43-45

By Joe Slater Via Bulletin Gold

 

“And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high
time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is
nearer than when we first believed” (Romans 13:11).
Saturdays and Sundays used to be my opportunities to “sleep
in.” School was out, and church wasn’t a priority. On school
days, however, my parents would say, “It’s time to get up! You
don’t want to be late for school.”

Some of the Christians to whom Paul wrote in Romans needed
to wake up! Physical sleep wasn’t the problem; Paul used sleep
as a metaphor for their spiritual lethargy.

Who knows why they had become sluggish? Being the capital
of the empire, the city of Rome contained every vice, every
philosophy, and every strange religion you can imagine.
Christians might well struggle to stay true to the gospel. How
should they interact with different religious groups? What should
their relationship to the government be? How should they treat
fellow Christians and people in general? Wrestling with such
issues can make you tired and sleepy!

Paul exhorts: “Wake up!” Why? Because “now our salvation
is nearer than when we first believed.” This salvation refers not
to our initial cleansing at baptism, but our ultimate salvation
when the Lord takes us to Heaven. Paul wasn’t saying that Jesus’
return was imminent, but our departure to be with Christ
(Philippians 1:23) draws nearer every day.

Our challenges aren’t identical to those of the Romans, but
vice and false religions confront us too. And the same lethargy
infects us, especially after we’ve been in Christ several years.
Time draws shorter for each of us every day. That being so, may
God help us to wake up!