Nov 24
11
Religion is to know biblical facts; life is to know God (I John 5:20). Religion is to know what I believe; life is to know Whom I believe (II Timothy 1:12). Religion is to be baptized into the church; Life is to be baptized into Christ (Romans 6:3). Religion is to be reformed, life is to be regenerated (John 3:3). Religion is to be a new convert; life is to be a new creature in Christ (II Corinthians 5:17). A man was asked, “And what is your religious persuasion?” He replied, “I am persuaded that nothing can separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). ~Henry Mahan
Some preachers want to arouse man’s activity. We want to kill it once and for all, to show him that he is lost and ruined, and that his activities are not able to save him. Some seek to make the man stand up. We seek to bring him down and make him feel that he is in the hands of God and that his business is to submit to God, bow to the claims of Christ, and cry, “ Lord save me or I perish.” We hold that a man is never so near grace as when he feels that he can do nothing at all but cry for mercy. But, when he says, “I can pray, I can believe, I can do this or that,” the marks of self- sufficiency are still on his brow.
Henry Mahan
Who Must We Know?
John 17:3
In recent weeks and months I have read numerous articles and heard several sermons on the general subject, “How Much Must You Know Before You Can Be Saved?” In essence the men were attempting to prove that Arminians, free-willers and legalists are saved people and are to be embraced as brethren. Upon the surface that seems to be a charitable thing. And I am sure it is the intention of those men to be charitable. But I fear their charity is a delusion. I know it is contrary to both the spirit and letter of Holy Scripture (Rom. 11:6; Gal. 1:6-9; Phil. 3:18; Col. 2:23; Gal. 5:1-4). Anyone who believes that salvation is determined by his free will rather than God’s sovereign will is lost. Anyone who believes that salvation is dependent upon his works to any degree rather than upon Christ’s finished work alone is lost. To tell them that they are saved is not charity, but cruelty! Would you think a doctor charitable who saw a man dying with cancer, if he told the man he was in good health, because he did not want to hurt his feelings? Of course not! Only in the name of religion can a man be applauded for such senseless cruelty.
The issue of a man’s salvation has nothing to do with how much he must know. The issue is who we must know! No man can be saved who does not know the one true and living God as he is revealed in Christ by the gospel. And the Arminian, free-will, works religionist does not know the living God, his Christ, or his gospel. GOD IS SOVEREIGN. If the god you worship can be resisted, defeated, or controlled, you worship a false god, an idolatrous figment of your own imagination. THE LORD JESUS CHRIST IS GOD ALMIGHTY. If the Christ you trust is a failure, he is not God, he is a false Christ. If he lived and died to redeem and save a multitude of sinners whom he fails to save, he is a failure. And a failure cannot be God!
The gospel of the grace of God is the revelation of God in Christ. It is a declaration of Christ’s finished work of redemption for sinners. The gospel does not present the possibility of salvation upon some condition to be met by the sinner. It declares the accomplishment of salvation by Christ for every sinner who trusts him. Salvation is not in how much you know, but in who you know. Do you know the Christ of God?
Don Fortner
While the vast majority of religious people throughout the United States and the world are promoting and glorying in a “lesser god or gods,” gods that have desires and plans, but can only fulfil them by man’s permission and cooperation, I am so very thankful for the one true and living God of Holy Scripture, the One who is absolutely sovereign over all things. I was by nature spiritually dead, and He gave me life. I was without repentance and faith, and He miraculously worked both in me. I am unable to keep myself from falling, but He keeps me safe under the shadow of His wings. I could never raise my dead body from the grave, but by His almighty power and grace, He will – according to His promise, which by His grace I believe.
Dear soul, think about it: if there is one germ somewhere out there in the universe that is not under His control, then my health, my life, is just a matter of chance or fortune – good or bad! If there is one demon spirit out there some place that is not under God’s control, then my hope of salvation would dry up like Jonah’s gourd. I would have no assurance at all, for I have no confidence in me (Phil. 3:3).
I am so thankful that when the religious heathen ask me about my God, I can answer with the psalmist, “Our God is in the heavens; he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased” (Psalm 115:2, 3). It hath pleased Him to save His people (Matt. 1:21); and He shall not fail (Isa. 42:4). “Salvation” in its entirety, “is of the Lord” (Jonah 2:9; Phil. 1:6). The God of the Bible “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” and makes “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Eph. 1:11; Rom. 8:28).
“I hold onto the Lord as tightly as I can,
But my assurance is that I am in His hand!”
Maurice Montgomery
The most excellent study for expanding the soul!
C.H.Spurgeon
The proper study of God’s elect, is God. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God-is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father! There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity!
Other subjects we can compass and grapple with, in them we feel a kind of self-contentment, and go our way with the thought, “Behold I am wise!” But when we come to this master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height-we turn away with the thought that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild donkey’s colt; and with the solemn exclamation, “I am but of yesterday, and know nothing!” No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God.
The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing will so magnify the whole soul of man-as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity. While humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory.
Oh, there is in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound!
In musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief.
In the influence of the Holy Spirit, there is a balsam for every sore.
Would you lose your sorrows?
Would you drown your cares?
Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea!
Be lost in His immensity, and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated.
I know nothing which can . . .
so comfort the soul,
so calm the swelling billows of grief and sorrow,
so speak peace to the winds of trial,
as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead!
Psalm 115:3 “But our God is in the Heavens; He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased!”
Psalm 135:5-6 “For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is greater than all gods! Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did He in Heaven, and in earth, in the seas and all deep places!”
Hell is full of the Divine holiness!
(Winslow, “Holiness, the Fruit of the Chastening of Love”)
Hell is full of the Divine holiness; holiness
in the manifestation of justice; holiness in
its most glorious exercise.
How fearfully are the lost now learning this truth!
Think it not a trifling matter, unconverted reader,
to look into the bottomless pit, and to know that
there is but a step and you are there! You walk to
the end of the treacherous plank, and you are gone!
O solemn thought! but one step between you and
the quenchless flame! but one step between you
and endless torment!
Throughout eternity the lost soul will be testifying
to this truth: “God is holy; I was a sinner; I rejected
His salvation, I turned my back upon His gospel,
I despised His Son, I hated God Himself, I lived in
my sins, I loved my sins, I died in my sins, and now
I am lost! to all eternity lost! And God is righteous
in my condemnation!”
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.”
Isaiah 6:3
When Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon his throne, high and lifted up, he heard the seraphims continually chanting one to another and in unison, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.” These seraphims represent God’s messengers: prophets, apostles, evangelists, pastors, and missionaries. In every age, in every place, God’s messengers are sent into the world to declare who God is and what he has done, so that men and women might know him, the only true and living God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. It is this knowledge of God which is eternal life.
All of God’s servants have the same message. Their message is, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.” What does this message tell us about the character of God?
1. There are three Persons in the Godhead. — We worship one God in the trinity of his sacred Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. “The Lord of hosts” is one God. But in that one God there are three separate and distinct Persons (Revelation 4:8). All God’s messengers and all God’s people are Trinitarians (1 John 5:7).
2. This great and glorious triune God is the sovereign ruler of the universe. — He is here called “the Lord of hosts.” That is to say, he is the Lord of all creatures, the Lord of all beings, the Lord of all things. He who is “the Lord” (Jehovah) is Lord of all. That means, God is in absolute control of all things at all times. Any man who preaches a god who is something less than a total, absolute sovereign is a false prophet. And the god he preaches is no God at all. The God of the Bible is an unrivalled sovereign; and all his messengers always declare his glorious sovereignty (Isaiah 46:9-11; Daniel 4:35-37; Romans 9:11-24; 11:33-36).
3. And the whole earth is full of the glory of God. — God’s messengers see God’s glory everywhere and declare plainly that everything in God’s creation is but the reflection of his glory and shall be the praise of his glory (Revelation 4:9-11). God’s creation is full of his glory. God’s providence is full of his glory. And God’s salvation is full of his glory.
Don Fortner
On our learning this lesson, depends our comforting walk heavenward
William Romaine
When the Holy Spirit takes of the things of Christ and preaches them to the heart-oh, what a sweet peace follows! The believer then finds himself saved from all the miseries of sin, and entitled to all the blessings of eternal glory.
Being thus persuaded of his safety by believing in the sin-atoning death of our Great High Priest, the Holy Spirit then teaches him how to live upon Christ, and how to make use of Christ’s fullness. On our learning this lesson, depends our comforting walk heavenward. For Christ does not give us a stock of grace and expect us to improve it by being faithful to grace given. No, no, that is not His way. Our souls must depend upon Him, just as our bodies do upon the elements of this world. We must live by faith in Jesus, and be every moment receiving grace upon grace out of His fullness.
And this is our happiness-to have all in Christ!
A beggar in myself, but rich with unsearchable eternal riches in Him.
Ignorant still in myself, but led and taught by His unerring wisdom.
A sinner still, but saved by His blood and righteousness.
Weak and helpless still, but kept by His Almighty love.
Nothing but sorrow in myself, nothing but joy in Him.
Oh, this is a blessed life!
No tongue can tell what a Heaven it is, thus to live by faith in the Son of God. Thanks be to Him, that I do know a little of it. Surely I could not have thought, some years ago, that there was such a Heaven upon earth as I now find.
“The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me!” Galatians 2:20