Friday, June 16, 2006

Worship Folder for July 16, 2006

Pastoral Welcome . . . . . . . . . . . . Pastor Colin SmithCall to Worship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Palm 135:5-6“Whatever the LORD pleases He does”5For I know that the LORD is great, and our Lord is above all gods. 6Whatever the LORD pleases He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deep places.“Praise to the Lord, the Almighty”. . . . Hymn No. 53Joachim Neander [1680] LOBE DEN HERREN“By Grace Alone” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modern HymnMartin Luther [1483-1546] David Ward [2002]Public Reading of the Scripture . . . . . . . . . . Mark 10Howard HicksPublic Pastoral PrayerOffering“O God beyond All Praising” . . . . . . . Hymn No. 660Michael Perry [1982] THAXTEDThis tune is Jupiter’s theme from Gustav Holst’s [1874-1934] The Planets [1918]. One of the loudest pieces of music ever written, and, in parts, one of the quietest, The Planets includes a piece of music for each of the seven planets that were known at the time. Holst’s music is considered a forerunner of the ‘Hollywood Space Movie’ style of composing. In particular, John Williams’ Star Wars film scores are heavily indebted to Holst’s orchestrations.Public Preaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pastor Colin SmithExpository Thoughts on Mark 10Mark 10:25 How hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the Kingdom of God! “The story of the rich young ruler in the Bible isn’t about wealth. It’s about idolatry. It’s about whatever it is, whatever those idols are for you. And the reason I specifically drew out things like houses and cars and security and stocks, is because those are the things that give us identity, that we put our faith in rather than Jesus. And for that man, it was his wealth. We put our identity in the kind of car we drive. We put our identity or our security in the fact that we have a pension, or we have a safety net financially. We have this house that keeps us safe, we have an alarm that we turn on and it retrains evil, or something. And all that stuff’s a fiction.”Derek Webb on his song “The Rich Young Ruler”Mark 10:26-27 “Who then can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said, “With men it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible.” “I do not come into this pulpit hoping that perhaps somebody will of his own free will return to Christ. My hope lies in another quarter. I hope that my Master will lay hold of some of them and say, ‘You are mine, and you shall be mine. I claim you for myself.’ My hope arises from the freeness of grace, and not from the freedom of the will.” Charles Spurgeon [1834-1892]

Thursday, June 15, 2006

The Triquetra and Description

The symbol on the front of the worship folder is the Triquetra [“three-cornered”], an early Christian symbol of the Trinity. Three equal arcs express eternity in their continuous form and indivisibility in their interweaving. In the center is a triangle, an ancient Trinitarian symbol.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Consider this ...

We can certainly say that we know the power of the words of Christ, "I will build My church." When four families began a Bible study in a living room only 18 months ago, they prayed that this promise would beome a reality for (what is now) Grace Baptist Church. From those families in that living room, to 40 people meeting at Nichols Village, to almost 100 people meeting at the Ramada Inn, to our present location at the Newton Recreation Center - Christ has built our church.We took the promises of Matthew 16 in order to build the kind of church that we saw in the New Testament: a congregation of immersed believers who love the Lord and who want carry out His Great Commission. Matthew was writing to Christians joined together in vibrant churches in order to show them the roots of their faith. The world changes, but the Bible remains as the power of God to save men from sin - because sin has undone our world just as it did to the world of Matthew's day. It seems that many of the churches of our day do not display the vibrant life of the churches of the New Testament, in large part, because they have lost sight of the power of those churches, the living Word of the living God.No one can start a church thinking that they will "get it right" and be different from other churches. Churches are started because believers want to obey the words of Christ and enjoy the kind fellowship that those words produce. You can't hide that kind of joy anymore than you can't fake it. Consider this an invitation to come and share our joy.