THE KING’S BUSINESS
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say anything that would hurt Jeshs, and we must remember it always hurts Jesus when ever we let our tongues say wrong things. Now next Sunday I am going to see how many in the class are going to be real doers o f God’s word about their tongues, and I will also tell you how God helped me to have my tongue say just the right words (D o not fail to ask the children the following Sunday. Make these..lessons a reality and help, the boys and girls to be real-little Christian^). Closing Prayer .—Thanking Jesus for His word, and asking Him to help us to be doers.
know you get into mischief and _whyn mother asks you about it you tell her you did not do it, God says our tongues are very naughty, and we can not always make them say-kind and loving words to mother, and always tell the truth, without someone to help us. And our ^tory tells us that Jesus is the only one that can help us. Now 1 when you feel cross and ugly, or when you want to tell a story that is not true, you just close your little tongue in behind your teeth, d o s e your lips, and then ask Jesus to help you, and He will, for after you ask Him you will not want to let the tongue.
not having the outward sign o f circum cision in their bodies—Rom. 2:27; 13:14) is added by Paul to soften the matter some what, showing that he recognized that it was only in the outward and not in the heart that they were Gentiles. He adds, however, that they endured the further dis grace o f being “called Uncircumcision,” which was a terrible reproach and scorn applied by the Jews to the Gentiles. The Jews, with self-satisfaction, called them selves “ Circumcision.” Paul in passing can not refrain, though it is altogether aside from his main purpose, from hinting what he elsewhere emphatically teaches, that mere outward circumcision is not o f so much account after all, for it is only outward, “in the flesh,” and “made by hands” (i. e., human hands, not God’s), while real cir cumcision is in the heart and made by God Himself (cf. Rom. 2:28, 29; Col. 2:11; Phil. 3:3, R. V .). Paul tells the Ephesians to remember that they were not only Gen tiles and called Circumcision, but further more, “at that time (more accurately, season)” they were “ separate from Christ.” ' The Christ 1 belonged to the Jews, and as Gentiles, until made nigh by the 'atoning
Monday, July i. , Epk. 2 : i i, 12 .
In verses 1 to 10 Paul has drawn the con trast between what all men, both Jews and Gentiles, are by nature and what they become by the grace o f God in Christ. But those to whom Paul was writing were Gen tiles, and he now points out their further wretchedness (not merely as unregenerate, but as Gentiles) before they were in Christ, and by contrast with it, “the glorious posi tion into which they were brought in Christ.” It is hard for us to realize in our day what a disgrace and calamity it was in the eyes o f the Jew o f Paul’s time to be a Gentile. Their literature is full of it. And it really was a calamity. Before Christ came and was rejected by the Jew, the Jew possessed inestimably privileges above the nations (i. e., above the Gentiles —see vs. 11, 12;, Rom. 3:1, 2; 9:4, S). To increase the gratitude o f the Ephesians Paul bids them remember their lowly and wretched origin. “Remember,” he says, “that afore time ye, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision,' etc.” The qualifying clause, “in the flesh” (i. e., in the outward,
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