Grace Baptist Church

God welcomes you into His family. The church is a family of brothers and sisters adopted into God's glorious home. As we improve our family relationships, we improve as a church family. As we grow into healthy husbands and wives, children and parents, we model a healthy family to the world around us.

When satan leads the charge to assassinate our character before the throne of God, he has quite a bit of ammunition. Each day we do or think things, or fail to do or think things, that could be brought against us. And yet God's grace and mercy continue to pour out still, and the accuser of the brethren has no way to condemn us. Why? What do we have before the Lord? We have a great High Priest! He is our Advocate, our Attorney Who pleads our case. He justifies us. Let us join in praise for a God Who fully pardons!

God gives to us freely and abundantly. In fact, all things work together for good, because ... God gives all things. All things that we have are given to us from God's gracious, omnipotent, caring hand. What is the proof of that? We find that so clearly expounded in the third question in our Romans 8 list of Glorious Gospel questions.

As we move on to our second glorious Gospel question of grace. God is for us… Then who can be against us?! These questions become affirmations of confidence before the Lord. So, who is against you? Is God for you? Have you joined His side? You cannot fight against God. Join His winning side, and nothing can be against you!

When we consider all that God has given us in Christ, we cannot doubt that He would withhold from us anything that we need. He knows best and gives best. Romans 8 unpacks the Gospel's benefits for us in seven rhetorical questions that affirm God's great love in Christ. This Sunday we'll begin with the first of these seven questions. Be sure to come this Sunday and praise the Lord for His great love for us as demonstrated in the Gospel.

Our meeting together for worship is an essential part of Christianity. The Bible illustrates this in many ways. One of the primary ones is that we are a temple of stones. We'll examine this imagery tomorrow from the letter of Peter to the scattered abroad saints.

When you haven't seen someone who you love for so long and you finally are able to meet again it's such a sweet experience! We all await a meeting with Someone Who has given everything for us. We will meet Him in person, face to face, when we die. But it may be that we will meet Him while living when He comes again to receive us to Himself. What an amazing experience that will be! What effect should this truth have on us? Jesus shares this truth in several parables. We'll look at one final parable this Sunday in our series on: Looking unto Jesus - - this parable is exactly that. What happens when look at Jesus. Are you ready? How can you be ready? Let us praise the Lord for His coming and dive into this parable through the Preaching of God's Word. See you there!

In Matthew 13:44–46, Jesus tells two short parables about the kindomg of heaven- a hidden treasure and a pearl of great value. One man discovers the treasure unexpectedly; the other spends his time searching for something valuable. Yet when each recognizes what he has found, both respond by giving up everything to possess it. Let us consider what the kingdom of heaven is, its value, and the response required from us.

Jesus tells the Parable of the Dinner Guests in during His final days in Jerusalem to warn Israel's religious leaders that although God's kingdom had been offered to them through the Messiah, their rejection of the Son would bring judgment, while God's gracious invitation would extend to the nations and that merely accepting the invitation outwardly is not enough; one must truly belong to Christ.

As our Lord gave His parable on the different soils, representing the conditions of the human heart, He explained how God's Word affects and even changes His hearers. This Sunday we will praise the Lord for His Word that gives Spiritual Life to hearers. We will also take some time to consider the four different reactions the Word of God produces in its hearers as we look at Jesus' Parable of the Soils. Let us ask the Lord for grace to have good soil in our hearts and the hearts of everyone who hears His Word.