{"id":6274,"date":"2022-10-17T09:51:29","date_gmt":"2022-10-17T09:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=6274"},"modified":"2022-10-17T09:51:29","modified_gmt":"2022-10-17T09:51:29","slug":"bulletin-edition-october-2022-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=6274","title":{"rendered":"Bulletin Edition October 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWhere\nIs He?\u201d       <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

John\n7:11<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Everyone\nknew that the Lord Jesus would be at Jerusalem during the feast of tabernacles.\nThe whole city seems to have been buzzing with this question. Some sought him\nto kill him, others to make him a king. Some were curious about him. Some wanted\nto see his miracles, some to hear his doctrine, and some to experience his\ngrace. Are you interested in knowing where the Lord Jesus Christ is today? Are\nyou concerned about finding him for yourself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\nWord of God <\/strong>tells us plainly where he is. The Lord Jesus Christ is in\nthe bosom of the Father (John 1:18). He is the centre of heaven. He is the\nglory of glory. (Read Rev. 4 and 5).He is on the throne of\nuniversal dominion (John 17:2; Rom. 14:9). There he sits in the serenity of\ntotal sovereignty. There he must reign until he has made all his foes his\nfootstool. Jesus Christ is Lord of all forever! He is at the right hand of the\nmajesty on high, in the place of representation and advocacy as our great High\nPriest (Rom. 8:27, 34). The Lord Jesus Christ is on the throne of grace,\ndispensing mercy to helpless, guilty, needy sinners. The Son of God is within\nthe reach of needy sinners like you and me. He is a God accessible to all who\nseek him (Heb. 4:15-16).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I\nhave found by experience that the Lord Jesus will be found of all who seek\nhim. <\/strong>I have found him at the mercy-seat when, in the closet of my\nheart, I have cried to him in secret prayer (Isa. 65:24), in his Word(John\n5:39; Lk. 24:44-47), in the assemblies of his people (Matt. 18:20), at his\nTable, in the bread and in the wine, and in the field of his service (Matt.\n28:18-20). As we serve the interests of his kingdom, his people, his gospel,\nand his glory, as we seek to do his will and honour his name, as we endeavour\nto serve the souls of men, as we try to serve our generation by the will of\nGod, our Saviour says, \u201cI am with you always!\u201d He is with us in sympathy to\nguide us, strengthen us, protect us, and to make our way prosperous and\nsuccessful, according to the will of God. I have found him in every\nfiery furnace of trial, lion\u2019s den of persecution, storm of difficulty, and\nriver of woe to which I have been exposed. <\/strong>I have been a lot of\nplaces. I have experienced a lot of things. I have known a few troubles along\nthe way. But I have never been in any place of need without him who is my Rock\nand my Salvation (Isa. 43:1-5). I have always found my Redeemer to be a God at\nhand (Phil. 4:4-7).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don Fortner<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who cares for pebbles \u2014 when\njewels glitter before him?<\/strong>
\n
\n(Charles Spurgeon<\/a>,\n“Flowers from a Puritan’s Garden” 1883)
\n
\n“To rule a kingdom, is a nobler matter than to play with\nmarbles.”
\n
\nWhat, then, is the folly of the worldling’s choice, when he prefers\nto be contending among men for earthly toys \u2014 instead of seeking those things\nwhich are above!
\n
\nHow great is the degradation of professing Christians, when\ntheir minds are taken up with fashionable trivialities<\/em> \u2014\ninstead of living alone to glorify their God, and acting as those whom Jesus\nhas made to be kings and priests!
\n
\nWho cares for pebbles \u2014 when jewels glitter before him?<\/strong>
\n
\nWho would choose toys and rattles \u2014 when the wealth of the\nIndies is offered him?
\n
\nLet us be no longer children or fools \u2014 but act as men who have\nput away childish things.
\n
\nIf ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are\nabove, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2 <\/sup><\/strong>Set\nyour affection on things above, not on things on the earth. Colossians\n3:1-2<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n Coming up from the\n wilderness<\/strong>
\n
\n (J. C. Philpot, “Coming up from the Wilderness<\/a>”\n 1857)
\n
\n Who is<\/em> this that cometh up from the\n wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?Song of Solomon 8:5
\n
\n To come up from the wilderness, is to come up out
\n of OURSELVES; for we are ourselves the wilderness.
\n It is our wilderness heart<\/strong> that makes the\n world
\n what it is to us . . .
\n   our own barren frames;
\n   our own bewildered minds;
\n   our own worthlessness and inability;
\n   our own lack of spiritual fruitfulness;
\n   our own trials, temptations, and exercises;
\n   our own hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
\n
\n In a word, it is what passes in our own bosom<\/strong>
\n <\/strong>that makes the world to us a dreary desert.<\/strong>
\n
\n Carnal people find the world no wilderness. It is an
\n Eden to them! Or at least they try hard to make it so.
\n They seek all their pleasure from, and build all their
\n happiness upon it. Nor do they dream of any other
\n harvest of joy and delight, but what may be repaid
\n in this ‘happy valley’, where youth, health, and good
\n spirits are ever imagining new scenes of gratification.
\n
\n But the child of grace, exercised with a thousand
\n difficulties, passing through many temporal and
\n spiritual sorrows, and inwardly grieved with his own
\n lack of heavenly fruitfulness, finds the wilderness
\n within.
\n
\n But he still comes up out of it, and this he does
\n by looking upward with believing eyes to Him who
\n alone can bring him out.
\n
\n He comes up out of his own righteousness<\/strong>, and
\n shelters himself under Christ’s righteousness.
\n
\n He comes up out of his own strength<\/strong>,
\n and trusts to Christ’s strength.
\n
\n He comes up out of his own wisdom<\/strong>,
\n and hangs upon Jesus’ wisdom.
\n
\n He comes up out of his own tempted, tried,
\n bewildered, and perplexed condition, to find rest
\n and peace in the finished work of the Son of God.
\n
\n And thus he comes up out of the wilderness of<\/strong>
\n <\/strong>self<\/strong>, not actually, but experimentally. Every desire
\n of his soul to be delivered from his ‘wilderness
\n sickening sight’ that he has of sin and of himself
\n as a sinner. Every aspiration after Jesus, every
\n longing look, earnest sigh, piteous cry, or laboring
\n groan, all are a coming\n up from the wilderness<\/strong>.
\n
\n His turning his back upon an ungodly world; renouncing
\n its pleasures, its honors, its pride, and its ambition;
\n seeking communion with Jesus as his chief delight;
\n and accounting all things but loss and rubbish for
\n the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus his Lord
\n as revealed to his soul by the power of God; this,
\n also, is coming\n up from the wilderness<\/strong>.\n <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\n\n\n\n

Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth:<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>for I am<\/em> God, and there is<\/em> none\nelse. <\/strong>Isaiah 45:22<\/strong>
\n
\nOctavius Winslow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A true spiritual beholding of the Lord Jesus, in the great\nmatter of our eternal salvation, requires that we look from every other object\nthat would divide our attention, to Him alone. We must look from ourselves.\nThis is, perhaps, the most common and insidious object that comes between the\neye of the soul and Jesus. When God was ejected from the heart of man, self\nvaulted into the vacant throne, and has ever since maintained a supremacy. It\nassumed two forms, from both of which we are to look, in looking savingly to\nJesus. We must look from righteous self; from all works of righteousness which\nwe can perform\u2014from our almsgivings, from our charities, from our religious\nobservances, our fastings, and prayers, and sacraments\u2014from all the works of\nthe law, by which we are seeking to be justified; from all our efforts to make\nourselves better, and thus to do something to commend ourselves to the Divine\nnotice, and to propitiate the Divine regard; from all this we must look, if we\nrightly look unto Jesus, to be saved by His righteousness, and by His alone.\nThe noble language of the apostle must find an echo in our hearts\u2014” What\nis more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of\nknowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider\nthem rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a\nrighteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through\nfaith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”
\n
\nWe must equally, too, look unto Jesus from unrighteous self. Our\nsins, and transgressions, and iniquities\u2014red as crimson, countless as the\nsands, and towering as the Alps\u2014are not for one moment to intercept or obscure\nour looking unto Jesus for salvation. Jesus is a Saviour, as His precious name\nsignifies. As such, He came to save us from our sins, be those sins never so\ngreat for magnitude, or infinite for number. It is impossible that we can look\nunto Jesus, and feel the joy of His salvation flowing into our hearts, while at\nthe same time we are looking at the number and the turpitude of our sins. We\nmust not look at the sin and at the Saviour at the same time; but beholding by\nfaith Him who “bore our sins in His own body on the tree,” who was\n“made a sin-offering for us,” who was “wounded for our\ntransgressions, and was bruised for our iniquities,” who shed His precious\nblood that the guiltiest may be cleansed and the vilest saved, and between whom\nand the penitent sinner, though he were another Manasseh, another Saul of Tarsus,\nanother dying malefactor, no transgression and no crime can interpose an\neffectual barrier, we shall see the exceeding greatness and sinfulness of sin\nin a clearer and more searching and solemn light than we possibly could,\nviewing it apart from the cross. Look unto Jesus, then, from your sins: their\nmagnitude and their number interpose no difficulty, and form no real\ndiscouragement to your immediate approach to Christ. No argument based upon\nyour unworthiness can avail to exclude you from an interest in His great\nsalvation. He came into the world to save sinners, even the chief. It is His\nwork, it is His joy, it is His glory to save sinners. For this He exchanged\nheaven for earth, relinquished the bosom of His Father for the embrace of the\ncross. He was never known to reject a poor sinner that came to Him; He has\nnever refused to take within His sheltering side, to hide within His bleeding\nbosom, the penitent that sought its protection, fleeing from the condemnation\nof the law to the asylum of the cross. “Whoever comes unto me, I will in\nno wise cast out.” With such a declaration as this, flowing from the lips\nof Jesus, who can refuse to look from the greatness of his own sin and guilt,\nto the greatness of His love, the greatness of His grace, the greatness of His\nsalvation, “who came into the world to save sinners”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are as moths <\/em>near\na burning candle!<\/strong>
\n
\n(Charles Spurgeon<\/a>)
\n
\nTurn away mine eyes from beholding vanity\nPs 119:37<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nDear friends, do not gaze<\/em> upon any sin . . .
\n  for looking<\/em> breeds longing,
\n  and longing <\/em>begets lusting,
\n  and lusting <\/em>brings sinning!<\/em>
\n
\nKeep your eyes right \u2014 and you may keep your heart right.
\n
\nIf that first woman<\/em> had not looked upon the\nforbidden tree and seen “that the tree was good for food, and that it was\npleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise,” she\nwould not have plucked and eaten the forbidden fruit \u2014 and we would not have\nbeen the children of sin and sorrow!
\n
\nO friends, if we begin to look upon iniquity<\/em>, we\nshall almost certainly fall! There are some sins that we poor, frail creatures\ncannot endure to look at. We are\nas moths <\/em>near a burning candle<\/strong> \u2014\nthe only safety for us is to get out of the room and fly into the open air. But\nif we go near the candle \u2014 we shall certainly burn our wings and, perhaps, even\ndestroy ourselves!
\n
\nJust so, we must take care that we do not get used to\nsin. <\/em>I believe that even the common reading in the newspapers of accounts\nof evil things<\/em> is defilingto us. If we habitually read\nsuch things, we shall come, at last, to think less and less of the coarser\nforms of vice than we ought to do.
\n
\nNothing can keep us away from the fangs of sin<\/em>, like\nfalling into the embraces of Christ. Looking unto Jesus, is the great remedy\nagainst looking unto sin!
\n
\nTurn away my eyes from vanity, my Lord, by filling them full\nwith a vision of Yourself and holding me spellbound with that grandest\nspectacle that eyes of men, or angels, or even of God, Himself ever saw \u2014 the\nspectacle of God Incarnate bearing our sin in His own body on the Cross!
\n
\nKeep your eyes fixed there \u2014 and all will be well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Reformation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hear a lot about \u201creformation\u201d in our day. There are reformed\nchurches, reformed doctrine, reformed preachers and reformed believers,\neverything seems to be \u201creformed.\u201d The word \u201creform\u201d means to \u201cimprove or to\nmake better.\u201d If \u201creformation\u201d means to improve myself or make myself better,\nthen, I do not need reformation! What I need is a perfect righteousness. I\nsurely cannot find any hope of eternal life in trying to make myself better,\nespecially when God requires perfection. I do not need \u201creformation\u201d; I need\n\u201cregeneration.\u201d I do not need to get my heart right; I need a new heart that is\nright. The lost sinner does not need to just change their way; they need to\nchange their God. I do not need to make myself \u201cbetter\u201d, I need to be made\n\u201cperfect.\u201d I do not need reformation, I need a \u201cnew creation\u201d, which can only\nbe found in Christ.                \n                     \n  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 ~David Eddmenson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhere Is He?\u201d        John 7:11             Everyone knew that the Lord Jesus would be at Jerusalem during the feast of tabernacles. The whole city seems to have been buzzing with this question. Some sought him to kill him, others to make him a king. Some were curious about him. Some wanted to see his miracles, some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bulletin-editions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6275,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6274\/revisions\/6275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

The duty, the privilege, the\nsafety, the unspeakable happiness!<\/strong>
\n
\n(John Newton<\/a>)
\n
\n“Looking unto Jesus!”<\/em> Hebrews\n12:2
\n
\nLook unto the Lord Jesus Christ!
\n
\nLook unto Him as He hung exposed, wounded, bleeding, dead, and\nforsaken upon the cross!
\n
\nLook unto Him again as He now reigns in glory, possessed of all\npower in Heaven and in earth, with thousands of thousands of saints and angels\nworshiping Him! And then compare . . .
\n  your sins \u2014 with His blood,
\n  your needs \u2014 with His fullness,
\n  your unbelief \u2014 with His faithfulness,
\n  your weakness \u2014 with His strength,
\n  your inconstancy \u2014 with His everlasting love!
\nIf the Lord opens the eyes of your understanding, you would be\nastonished at the comparison!
\n
\n“Looking unto Jesus” is the duty, the privilege, the safety, the unspeakable happiness<\/strong>, of a\nbeliever \u2014 are all comprised in that one sentence!
\n
\nIt is by looking to Jesus, that the believer is enlightened and\nstrengthened, and grows in grace and knowledge of Him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n