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Grace Baptist Church of Danville July 6, 2014
Nothing but death can dissolve the law’s hold upon a sinner; and, blessed be God, “I through the law am dead to the law,” for I was crucified with Christ upon the cursed tree.
Daily Readings for the Week of July 6-13, 2014 Sunday Proverbs 16-19 Thursday Ecclesiastes 1-4 Monday Proverbs 20-22 Friday Ecclesiastes 5-9 Tuesday Proverbs 23-26 Saturday Eccles. 10-Song of Sol. 4 Wednesday Proverbs 27-31 Sunday Song of Sol. 5-Isaiah 1
· I am preaching today for Rescue Baptist Church in Rescue, CA, where Bro. Gene Harmon is pastor. · Bro. Frank Hall will preach the gospel to you today. — On Tuesday night Bro. Tom Harding will be here to minister to your souls. Bro. Harding is pastor of Zebulon Baptist Church in Pikeville, KY. · Conference offering – Our Bible Conference is scheduled for August 29-31. We will receive an offering in preparation for the conference on Sunday, July 27th.
Happy Birthday! Rex Bartley-9th Happy Anniversary: Doug & Faith Hacker-15th Tom & Gina Brice-17th David & Teresa Coleman-19th Roger & Bettina Criss-21st Frank & Stacy Hall-21st Larry & Carol Brown-31st Nursery Duty this Week Today: Celeste Peterson (AM) — Diane Campbell (PM) — Tuesday: Stephanie Wall
My soul with Christ is one! — Don Fortner (Tune: #33 — Stand Up and Bless the Lord —SM) 1. My soul with Christ is one. — He is my cov’nant Head; It was for me He left his throne, Obeyed the law, and bled! 2. My soul with Christ is one — In everlasting ties. Oh, matchless mercy, grace unknown, And love that never dies! 3. My soul with Christ is one. — Betrothed to Him in love. He takes this sinner for His own, And daily proves His love. 4. My soul with Christ is one. — Savior possess my heart, Until You take me to Your throne, For we can never part! “Dead to the Law” Romans 7:4
“Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.” — Here we are taught that God’s elect have been delivered from the law by the body of Christ. By his obedience in our nature, as our Representative and covenant Surety, the Lord Jesus Christ rendered to the law, in its precept and its penalty, by his life and by his death, all that the law required of us. Having died with Christ, in union with him, being crucified with him, every believing sinner is as free from the law, as a woman by death is loosed from the law of her husband (Romans 7:1-4).
Not Licentious Legalists scream, “Licentious doctrine! Such doctrine is antinomian. It opens the floodgates to sin and ungodliness!” “Not so,” says God the Holy Ghost. So far is this doctrine from leading to licentiousness, that it is essential to godliness. There is no godliness without it. — “For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God” (Galatians 2:19). Gospel life flows from legal death. I cannot live unto God except by having been crucified with Christ. Though we cannot be justified by the law, we are subject to its penalty, which is death. And we cannot live unto God, except by death to the law.
Holiness “I live,” says the believing soul, “yet not I.” Being crucified with Christ I died; “but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20). Christ dwells by faith in the hearts of his people. His living in us is our deliverance from sin’s dominion. Being made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), we live unto God. We are commanded to hold fast our confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end (Hebrews 3:6). That is to say, we are commanded to look away from self to Christ for everything pertaining to life and godliness. That does not mean that we are lawless rebels. Just the opposite. We are “not without law to God, but under the law to Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:21). The love of Christ constrains us to live not unto ourselves, but unto Christ who loved us and gave himself for us. In order to live in holiness and communion with God, we must have no connection to the law; we must have nothing to do with the law; we must be dead to the law, completely freed from the law. Religious legalists, following the wisdom of this world and not the revelation of God the Holy Spirit in Holy Scripture, denounce the gospel of God’s free grace in Christ as an encouragement to sin (Jude 4). Free grace appears to those who have never experienced it to remove every restraint to sin and give license to every imaginable wickedness. That we are sanctified as well as justified in Christ, by grace, and not by any works performed by us, is a mystery human wisdom can never fathom. Yet, this is the clearly stated doctrine of Holy Scripture. Is it not? Who can read 1 Corinthians 1:30-31 and Hebrews 10:10-14, and say otherwise?
“Dead to the Law” Galatians 2:19
“I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.” — By Adam's sin, all have come under condemnation. By the curse of God’s holy law which we have broken, all are cut off from God, and life, and light, and holiness, “dead in trespasses and in sins.” Under the curse of the law, we cannot have grace. The law’s curse is a barrier which excludes the purifying streams of divine grace.
Nothing Acceptable In this situation and condition nothing we do is acceptable to God. — “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 15:8; 21:7). — “The plowing of the wicked is sin” (Proverbs 21:4). Though fallen man, under the curse of the law, might bestow all his goods to feed the poor and give his body to be burned for Christ, it would profit him nothing. You may be very respectable and amiable in the eyes of men; but the holy Lord God will not receive you. He will not come to you; and he will not let you come to him. Until the law has no claim on you God will not accept you. The law is our jailor. It keeps us firmly bound until we pay the debt we owe. It is a debt we can never pay; but our inability does not free us from our obligation to sinless obedience, perfect righteousness and complete satisfaction. The debt remains. As transgressors, we are justly under the law’s condemning power. Thus the sinner is kept in chains.
Christ’s Obedience That is the situation in which the gospel finds us, under the curse of the law, without any apparent possibility of escape. Christ, the supreme Lawgiver, alone had power over the law. How did he exercise that power? He did not abrogate the law, set it aside, or require it to accept of less than justice demanded. That could not be, for God cannot deny himself. Instead, the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s darling Son assumed our nature, became our Substitute, went down into the pit in which his elect lay. He bore our curse. The Only-begotten not only yielded to the law the obedience it demanded, but endured its full penalty and drank the cup of divine wrath to the last bitter dregs. Being made sin, he died under the penalty of sin. Bearing our sin in his own body on the tree, he justly suffered all the fury of God’s holy wrath in the place of God’s elect.
End of the Law “Christ is,” therefore, “the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth” (Romans 10:4). He fulfilled it in its precept and its penalty; and his resurrection is the demonstration that the debt is paid and justice satisfied. The law has no claim upon the redeemed of the Lord! Its curse is gone! Its power is completely abrogated! In Christ, with Christ, when Christ died and we died in him, God’s elect have given the law full satisfaction. We have endured the curse. We have paid all which it demanded, and received a full discharge. By our indissoluble union with Christ God’s elect are dead to the law, that we may live unto God.
The Grace Bulletin
June 29, 2014
Grace Baptist Church of Danville 2734 Old Stanford Road-Danville, Kentucky 40422-9438 Telephone (859) 236-8235 - E-Mail don@donfortner.com
Donald S. Fortner, Pastor
Schedule of Regular Services
Sunday 10:00 A.M. Bible Classes 10:30 A.M. Morning Worship Service 6:30 P.M. Evening Worship Service
Tuesday 7:30 P.M. Mid-Week Worship Service
Television Broadcasts in Danville
Channel 6 - Sunday Morning 7:45 A.M. Channel 6 - Wednesday Evening 6:00 P.M. Channel 6 - Friday Evening 7:00 P.M.
Television Broadcasts in Harrodsburg Channel 6 - Sunday Afternoon 3:00 P.M. Channel 6 - Friday Evening 6:00 P.M.
Web Pages http://www.DonFortner.com http://www.FreegraceRadio.com http://www.Grace-eBooks.com
Don Fortner
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Pastor Fortner’s
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