Nov 24
19
Faith and Repentance
If our faith be of God, it is evidenced by our turning away from all hope of salvation outside of Christ. Saving faith can have no confidence in the flesh. It is a complete rejection of our will, our works, or our wisdom having any contribution in our salvation. It confesses clearly and loudly; “Christ is all and in all.” True faith and true repentance are never separated. You cannot walk in one direction, without at the same time, be walking away from the opposite direction. Greg Elmquist
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… a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. Matt. 17:5
Men only counterfeit that which has value. Is there anything on earth of more value to mortal man than a message of salvation from The Eternal, Immortal God of Heaven? The evidence of its value is seen in the abundance of its counterfeits. Many false prophets have gone out into the world. The problem is not that God has not spoken. He spoke clearly. The problem is that man does not want to hear what God has said. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved. The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us. God is pleased only with Him. The message from God is clear and simple. It does not require a high IQ. It does require “I will”. That must come from God. Left to ourselves we will not have that man reign over us. God has spoken. Hear ye Him.
Greg Elmquist
Encouragement For Weary Pilgrims
David’s pen never wrote more sweetly than when dipped in the ink of affliction. The hot furnace is our Lord’s workshop; the most excellent vessels of honour are formed there. Affliction is God’s forge, where He melts and softens the hard heart. There is no dealing with the iron while it remains in its native coldness and hardness; put it in the fire, melt it, and you may stamp it into any figure you please. Job said, “God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me” (Job 23:16).
Those whom He loves, He takes to pieces and then puts them together again. We rise in glory as we sink in pride, but our Lord must perform the work. Whoever heard of a calf weaning itself voluntarily? The husbandman plows his lands, and the gardener prunes his trees to make them fruitful. The jeweller cuts and polishes his diamonds to make them shine the brighter. The refiner flings his gold into the furnace that it may come out purer. And our God afflicts His people to make them better. To thank God for mercies is the way to increase them; to thank God for miseries is the way to remove them.
Author Unknown
Private prayer is very important. Private devotion is very important. However, the gathering of God’s people together to worship the Lord is far more important. Psalm 87:2 “The LORD loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.” Let us love what our LORD loves more than all else, our gathering together to worship Him in Spirit and in truth.
~John Chapman
Peculiar People
(Don Fortner)
Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity,
and purify unto himself a PECULIAR PEOPLE, zealous of good works.
-Titus 2:14
The Holy Spirit declares that God’s elect, once they are called and
converted by his sovereign grace, are made to be a ‘peculiar people’.
The word “peculiar” (v. 14) means “distinctively excellent, valuable,
and honourable.” We are Christ’s portion, the lot of his inheritance,
the jewels of his crown, his fullness (Eph. 1:23), his peculiar people.
Grace has distinguished God’s elect from all others-
They are a people loved by God with a peculiar love (Jer. 31:3),
with a love which he does not have for the rest of Adam’s race.
Let men talk all they wish about “universal benevolence,”
“universal grace,” and “universal love,” -the Word of God
declares plainly that God’s love for his own people is a peculiar,
distinct love (Isa. 43:3-4; Rom. 9:13). It is the distinctiveness
of God’s love for us, who deserve his wrath as fully as Satan
himself, which forms the great motive for our consecration to
our God and his glory (Rom. 12:1-2).
We are the objects of God’s peculiar delight-
The Lord God has made us “accepted in the Beloved.” Being accepted
in Christ, because of Christ, and for Christ’s sake, washed in his
blood and robed in his righteousness, we are a people with whom God
is well pleased, even delighted (Zeph. 3:17).
Being the objects of his love, chosen to eternal salvation and
accepted in Christ, every believer has been blessed with all
the peculiar blessings of God’s free, covenant grace from eternity
(Eph. 1:3-4), and supplied with all the provisions of the Father’s
house day by day and forever.
Every believer has been SEPARATED from the world by peculiar grace-
Electing grace (2 Thess. 2:13-14), redeeming grace (1 Cor. 6:19-20),
regenerating grace (Isa. 43:1-5), preserving grace (1 Pet. 1:5),
and providential grace (Rom. 8:28-30), are the things which make
us to differ from the rest of the world. The distinction is not the
work of our will or of our obedience.
It is the work of God’s grace alone.
“Zealous of Good Works”
Yet, Christ’s peculiar people are made by the grace of God to be
zealous of good works. God the Father ordained that we should walk
in good works (Eph. 2:10). God the Son redeemed us that we should
walk in good works. And God the Holy Spirit effectually teaches
every chosen, ransomed sinner to be zealous of good works.
“Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.” 1 Peter 1:21
J.C.Philpot
Observe the special mark which is here given of those for whom Christ was manifested. It is said of those who “by him they believe in God.” If this be their distinctive mark, we may well inquire what is intended by it. It must surely be a very great thing to believe in God with a faith that brings salvation with it. It is easy to believe that there is a God in nature, or a God in providence, or a God in grace, according to the mere letter of the word, and this is what thousands do who have no manifested interest in redeeming love and atoning blood. In fact, it is the great delusion of the day, the religion of that religious multitude who know neither God nor themselves, neither law nor gospel, neither sin nor salvation. All this is a believing about God, or a believing of God, such as that he exists, or that he is such a God as the Scriptures represent him to be; but this is a very different thing from believing in God. This is a special and peculiar faith, and implies a spiritual and saving knowledge of God, such as our Lord speaks of (John 17:3); and as none can thus know him unto eternal life but from some discovery of himself, some personal manifestation of his presence, some coming near of himself in the power of his word and the operations of his grace, so none can believe in him without a faith of divine operation. To believe, therefore, in God is not an act of the natural mind, but it is the gift and work of God, bestowed upon us through the mediation of Christ, and therefore, as the Apostle says, “given in the behalf of Christ” (Phil. 1:29).
“But we see Jesus.” Hebrews 2:9
J.C.Philpot
Did your eyes ever see him? Do look into conscience–did your eyes ever see Jesus? I do not mean your natural, your bodily eyes; but the eye of faith, the eye of the soul. I will tell you what you have felt, if you ever saw Jesus. Your heart was softened and melted, your affections drawn heavenward, your soul penetrated with thankfulness and praise, your conscience sprinkled with atoning blood, your mind lifted up above all earthly things to dwell and centre in the bosom of the blessed Immanuel. Do you think, then, you have seen Jesus by the eye of faith? Then you have seen the perfection of beauty, the consummation of pure loveliness; you have seen the image of the invisible God; you have seen all the perfections and glorious character of the Godhead shining forth in him who was nailed to Calvary’s tree.
I am sure such a sight as that must melt the most obdurate heart, and draw tears from the most flinty eyes; such a sight by faith of the beauty and glory of the only-begotten Son of God must kindle the warmest, holiest stream of tender affection. It might not have lasted long. These feelings are often very transitory. The world, sin, temptation, and unbelief soon work; infidelity soon assails all; the things of time and sense soon draw aside; but while it lasted, such, in a greater or lesser degree, were the sensations produced.
Now, if you have ever seen Jesus by the eye of faith, and ever had a tender affection going out toward him, you will see him in glory. But you will never see him in glory, if you have not seen him in grace; you will never see him eye to eye in the open vision of eternal bliss, unless you have seen him now upon earth by the faith of God’s elect in your heart.
“Fools die for want of wisdom.” Proverbs 10:21
J.C.Philpot
There is such a connection between true wisdom, which is “a knowledge of the holy” (Prov. 30:3), and the fear of the Lord; and such a connection between ignorance of the Lord and sin, that saved saints are called “wise,” and lost sinners are called “fools,” not only in the Old Testament, as continually in the Proverbs, but in the New. Many of the Lord’s people look with suspicion upon knowledge, from not seeing clearly the vast distinction between the spiritual, experimental knowledge for which we are now contending, and what is called “head knowledge.” They see that a man may have a well-furnished head and a graceless heart, that he may understand “all mysteries and all knowledge,” and yet be “nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2); and as some of these all-knowing professors are the basest characters that can infest the churches of truth, those who really fear the Lord stand not only in doubt of them, but of all the knowledge possessed by them. But put it in a different form; ask the people of God whether there is not such a divine reality, such a heavenly blessing, as being “taught of God” (John 6:45); having “an unction from the Holy One, whereby we know all things” (1 John 2:20)–knowing the truth for oneself, and finding it makes free (John 8:32); whether there is not a “counting of all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord,” and a stretching forth of the desires of the soul to “know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings;” whether there is not “a knowledge of salvation by the remission of sins” (Luke 1:77); “a knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6); a being “filled with the knowledge of his will” (Col. 1:9); an “increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10); “a growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18);–ask the living family of God whether there be not such a knowledge as this, and if this knowledge is not the very pith and marrow, the very sum and substance of vital godliness, and they will with one voice say, “It is!”
Chasing bubbles on perdition’s brink?
(Henry Law, “The Golden Lampstand”)
Without Christ, the affairs of this world are
but a puzzled maze. Poor blinded man sees
nothing as it really is. He does not know the
true end of his being.
He imagines the tinsel to be gold.
He counts the true gold as dross.
He treasures up the chaff as wheat.
All his view is bounded by time’s narrow line!
All his heart is fixed on vanity’s vain trifles!
He chases bubbles on perdition’s brink!
He profits no one and he ruins himself!
You will be lost if you trust to your good works,
as surely as if you trusted in your sins.
There is a road to perdition along the ‘highway of
morality’, as surely as down the ‘slough of vice’.
(Spurgeon)
Brazen Hypocrisy
John 13:2
Nothing in all the world is more corrupt or more callous than the heart of a hypocrite. There sat Judas at the table with the Son of God and his disciples. But he had already struck his deal with the Jews’ priests to betray the Saviour. — What brazen hypocrisy! Judas stands as a beacon to warn us of what deep corruption may be found in the hearts of very religious people. Still, we must not be overly disturbed when we find such hypocrites among God’s saints. Not all who are washed in the waters of baptism have been washed in the blood of Christ (John 13:10). — “They are not all Israel which are of Israel” (Romans 9:6).
Don Fortner