One Woman’s Perceptive Garden Sign: Free Weeds, Pick Your Own

Posted on July 30, 2021 by The Editor

Proverbs 24:30-32; Luke 6:44; Song of Solomon 1:6

I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction.

Of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.

Mine own vineyard have I not kept.

JOHN BUNYAN (1628-1688): The vineyard of the slothful man is not fuller of briars, nettles, and stinking weeds, than he that is slothful for heaven, who hath his heart full of heart-choking and soul-damning sin.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Our souls are our fields and vineyards, which we are every one of us to take care of, to dress, and to keep—and a great deal of care and pains it is requisite that we should take about them. These fields and vineyards are often in a very bad state, not only no fruit brought forth, but all overgrown with thorns and nettles—scratching, stinging, inordinate lusts and passions, pride, covetousness, sensuality, malice—those are the thorns and nettles, the wild grapes, which the unsanctified heart produces.

JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): Men do not gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles. “Can a fig tree,” saith James, “bear olive berries? or a vine, figs?” James 3:12. Should not every man in like manner bear his own fruit, proper to his calling? Do his own work? Weed his own gardens?

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Every gardener should kill his own weeds…A great many men think they know the plague of other people’s hearts and there is a great deal of talk in the world about this family, that person and the other. I pray you think of your own evils…He would be a poor gardener who used his hoe on other men’s weeds and not on his own—if we could bring ourselves to feel that weeding our own garden, watering our own plants and fulfilling our own vocation is what God requires of us, how much better it would be for the entire Church of Christ!

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Before the plants and flowers will flourish in the garden, weeds must be rooted up, otherwise all the labours of the gardener will come to naught. As the Lord Jesus taught so plainly in the Parable of the Sower, where the “thorns” are permitted to thrive, the good Seed, the Word, is “choked.” He defined those choking “thorns” as “the cares of this life and the deceitfulness of riches; the lust of other things and pleasures of this life,” Mark 4:19; Luke 8:14. If those things fill and rule our hearts, our relish for spiritual things will be quenched, our strength to perform Christian duties will be sapped, and our lives will be fruitless—the garden of our souls being filled with briars and weeds.

JOHN TRAPP: Earthly mindedness sucketh the sap of grace from the heart, as the ivy doth from the oak, and maketh it unfruitful. Correct therefore this choke-weed.

ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): Remember that there are many kinds of evil.

C. H. SPURGEON: All land will grow weeds, but you will not find the same sort of weed equally abundant in every soil—so in one heart the deadly nightshade of ignorance chokes the seed—and in another the prickly thistle of malice crowds out the wheat. It is well if each of us, in examining himself, has found out what is his own peculiar transgression. It is well to know what evil weeds flourish most readily in the soil of our heart…Covetousness, discontent and murmuring, are as natural to man as thorns are to the soil.

ALEXANDER MacLAREN: Covetousness, or the greedy clutching at more and more of earthly good, has its roots in us all, and unless there is the most assiduous weeding, it will overrun our whole nature. So Jesus puts great emphasis into the command, “Take heed, and beware of covetousness,” Luke 12:15; which implies that without much ‘heed’ and diligent inspection of ourselves, there will be no guarding against the subtle entrance and swift growth of the vice. We may be enslaved by it, and never suspect that we are.

THOMAS COKE: Hypocrisy among professors is the most common and deadly weed—and this being the character which God especially abhors, we should be the more jealous over our own souls, that this rank weed of bitterness spring not up under the profession of godliness, and mar the whole.

C. H. SPURGEON: Pride grows apace like other ill weeds. Even in the renewed heart it all too readily takes root…Of all creatures in the world, the Christian is the last man who ought to be proud and yet, alas, we have had mournful evidence both in past history and in our own observation—and worst of all in our own personal experience—that Christian men may become lifted up to their own shame.

ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Depend upon it, nothing is more odious in the sight of God. When a child of God is tempted, after many humblings, by reason of sin, yet still to take up with the supposed idea of somewhat good in him. This dreadful weed, which is the very ground-soil of our nature is rooted in our very inmost affections. And the humblest of God’s people too often discover, when grace enables them to discern spiritually, the buddings forth again and again of the baleful blossom.

C. H. SPURGEON: Certain weeds may be indigenous to the soil of your nature and therefore it may be doubly difficult to extirpate them, but the work must be done.

THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Every vice—if allowed in the mind, will, as weeds, choke up the good seed.

ALEXANDER MacLAREN: Did you ever try to cure some trivial bad habit? You know what infinite pains and patience and time it took you to do that, and do you think that you would find it easier if you once set yourself to cure that lust, say, or that petulance, pride, passion, dishonesty, or whatsoever form of selfish living in forgetfulness of God may be your besetting sin? If you will try to pull the poison fang up, you will find how deep its roots are. It is like the yellow charlock in a field, which seems only to spread in consequence of attempts to get rid of it—as the rough rhyme says; “One year’s seeding, seven years’ weeding.”

C. H. SPURGEON: Unbelief is one of those things that you cannot destroy. “It has,” says John Bunyan, “as many lives as a cat.” You may kill it over and over again, but still it lives. It is one of those ill weeds that sleep in the soil even after it has been burned and it only needs a little encouragement to grow again…If you throw up the soil from 10 or 20 feet deep there will be found the seeds from which weeds grow. Now those seeds cannot germinate until they are put in a convenient place. Then let the sun shine and the dew fall—and these weeds begin to show themselves. There may be many weeds in our nature, deep down, out of sight—but should they be thrown up by some change of circumstances we shall find in ourselves evils we never dreamt of. Oh, let no man boast! Let no man say, “I should never fall into that particular sin.” How do you know, my Brother?

A. W. PINK: He who does not cultivate the garden of his soul, will quickly find it grown over with weeds.

C. H. SPURGEON: True revivals must begin at home. If you want to kill weeds, take the hoe into your own garden.

 

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God’s Special Providences

Posted on July 23, 2021 by The Editor

Exodus 1:22; Exodus 2:1-10

And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.

And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.

And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child’s mother.

And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): If Pharoah had not been transported with wrath and struck with blindness, he would have seen that the hand of God was against him; but the tyrant, finding that his snares and deceit availed nothing, now shakes off fear and flies to open violence, commanding the little ones to be torn from the breasts of their mothers and to be cast into the river. Lest there should be any lack of executioners, he gives this charge to all the Egyptians, whom he knew to be more than ready for the work.

THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): This was, most probably, enjoined under severe penalties, and not only upon the Egyptians, who were to see the order executed; but also upon the Israelites, who were to execute it themselves.

G. CAMPBELL MORGAN (1863-1945): Here a mother’s love is seen scheming for the life of her child.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): We ought to recognize God’s hand in everything.

C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): Are we to suppose, for a moment, that this “ark” was the invention of mere nature? Was it nature’s mere thought that devised it, or nature’s ingenuity that constructed it? Was the babe placed in the ark at the suggestion of a mother’s heart, cherishing the fond but visionary hope of thereby saving her treasure from the ruthless hand of death? Impossible.

ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): The writer of Hebrews lifts it beyond the category of instinctive maternal affection up to the higher level of faith, “By faith Moses when he was born was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment,” Hebrews 11:23.

THOMAS COKE: The tender mother laid the ark in the flags or reeds, which grew in abundance by the side of the Nile; hoping, possibly, that they would detain it, so that she might come occasionally and suckle the child; or, if otherwise, that it would be borne safely down the stream, and would preserve the infant from drowning. They were not without hope, as the watch they set intimated, that in some way God might save him.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Had Moses been left to lie there, he must have perished in a little time with hunger, if he had not been sooner washed into the river or devoured by a crocodile.

ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Observe the gracious interposition of God. Moses shall not only be preserved in the moment of danger, but preserved by the very daughter of the man who sought his life.

JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): She was brought hither at this time by a special providence, to do that which she little dreamed of.

MATTHEW HENRY: Had he fallen into any other hands than those he did fall into, either they would not, or dared not, have done otherwise than have thrown him straightway into the river; but Providence brings no less a person than Pharaoh’s daughter just at that juncture, guides her to the place where this poor forlorn infant lay, and inclines her heart to pity it, which she dares do when none else dared. Never did a poor child cry so seasonably, so happily, as this did: The babe wept, which moved the compassion of the princess, as no doubt his beauty did.

ALEXANDER MacLAREN: She sees the child is a Hebrew. Her quick wit understands why it has been exposed, and she takes its part—still, it was bold to override the strict commands of such a monarch. But it was not a self-willed sense of power, but the daring of a compassionate woman, to which God committed the execution of His purposes.

C. H. MACKINTOSH: Little did she think that she was helping forward the purpose of “the Lord God of the Hebrews.” How little idea had she that the weeping babe, in that ark of bulrushes, was yet to be Jehovah’s instrument in shaking the land of Egypt to its very centre!

ALEXANDER MacLAREN: The great lesson of this incident is the presence of God’s wonderful providence, working out its designs by all the play of human motives. Around that frail ark, half lost among the reeds, is cast the impregnable shield of His purpose. All things serve that Will. The current in the full river, the lie of the flags that stop it from drifting, the hour of the princess’s bath, the direction of her idle glance, the cry of the child at the right moment, the impulse welling up in her heart, the swift resolve, the innocent diplomacy of the sister, the shelter of the happy mother’s breast, the safety of the palace—all these and a hundred more trivial and unrelated things are spun into the strong cable wherewith God draws slowly but surely His secret purpose into act.

C. H. MACKINTOSH: The beautiful faith of Moses’ mother here meets its full reward; Satan is confounded; and the marvelous wisdom of God is displayed…The devil was foiled by his own weapon, inasmuch as Pharaoh, whom he was using to frustrate the purpose of God, is used of God to nourish and bring up Moses, who was to be His instrument in confounding the power of Satan. Remarkable providence! Admirable wisdom!

ALEXANDER MacLAREN: It was needful that the deliverer should come from the heart of the system from which he was to set his brethren free. The same principle that sent Saul of Tarsus to be trained at the feet of Gamaliel, and made Martin Luther a monk in the Augustinian convent at Erfurt, planted Moses in Pharaoh’s palace and taught him the wisdom of Egypt, against which he was to contend. It was a strange irony of Providence that put him so close to the throne which he was to shake. For his future work he needed to be lifted above his people, and to be familiar with the Egyptian court and Egyptian learning. If he was to hate and to war against idolatry, and to rescue an unwilling people from it, he must know the rottenness of the system.

ROBERT HAWKER: May all believers learn from this how certain God’s purposes are!

JOHN FLAVEL (1630-1691): How great a pleasure is it to discern how the most wise God is providentially steering His people’s happiness, whilst the whole world is busily employed in managing the sails, and tugging at the oars, with a quite opposite design and purpose! To see how they promote His design by opposing it, and fulfill His Will by resisting it.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): What exactly do we mean by providence? I cannot think of a better definition than this: “Providence is that continued exercise of the divine energy whereby the Creator preserves all His creatures, is operative in all that comes to pass in the world, and directs all things to their appointed end.”*

ZACHARIAS URSINUS (1534-1583): What advantage is it to us to know that God has created, and by His providence doth still uphold all things? That we may be patient in adversity; thankful in prosperity; and that in all things, which may hereafter befall us, we place our firm trust in our faithful God and Father, that nothing shall separate us from His love; since all creatures are so in His hand, that without His will they cannot so much as move.**

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*Editor’s Note: Lloyd-Jones is quoting from Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof.

**Editor’s Note: Zacharias Ursinus is quoted from the Heidelberg Catechism. John Trapp’s mention of God’s providence concerning Pharaoh’s daughter, also notes this example of special Providence: “When Heidelberg was taken by the Imperialists, the copy of Ursinus’s Heidelberg Catechism enlarged by Pareus was among many other papers carried away by a plundering soldier; but happily it was dropped in the streets, and found the next day by a young student, who, knowing his master’s hand, restored it to his son Philip Pareus, who afterwards published that golden book, to the great glory of God, who had so graciously preserved it.”

 

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A Practical Lesson in True Wisdom

Posted on July 16, 2021 by The Editor

Exodus 1:8-21

Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.

Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel. And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.

And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah: And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them.

Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty. And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses.

G. CAMPBELL MORGAN (1863-1945): The policy of the new Pharaoh was politically selfish. He attempted to stay the growth and break the power of the people.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Reasons of state were suggested for their dealing hardly with Israel. Pharaoh’s project was secretly to engage the midwives to stifle the male children as soon as they were born.

JOHN GILL (1697-1771): “But if it be a daughter, then she shall live.” This the king chose to have done, having nothing to fear from them, being of the feeble sex, and that they might serve to gratify the lust of the Egyptians, and that they might be married and incorporated into Egyptian families, there being no Hebrew males; and so, by degrees, the whole Israelite nation would be mixed with, and swallowed up in the Egyptian nation, which was what was aimed at.

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Suppose this effort succeeded, what then? Why, the channel through which the promised Redeemer was to come would have been destroyed. If all the male children of the Hebrews were destroyed there had been no David, and if no David, no David’s Son. Just as Revelation 12:4 gives us to behold Satan working behind and through the wicked edict of Herod, Matthew 2:16, so we may discern him here working behind and through Pharaoh.

MATTHEW HENRY: When men deal wickedly, it is common for them to imagine that they deal wisely.

C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): In Pharaoh’s case, we see that he could accurately recount the various contingencies of human affairs, the multiplying of the people, the falling out of war, their joining with the enemy, their escape out of the land. All these circumstances he could, with uncommon sagacity, put into the scale; but it never once occurred to him that God could have anything whatever to do in the matter. Had he only thought of this, it would have upset his entire reasoning, and have written folly upon all his schemes. All this is the reasoning of a heart that had never learnt to take God into its calculations.

THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): The order itself was inhuman enough; but it becomes, if possible, ten times more so, by making the midwives the executioners; thus obliging them not only to be savagely bloody, but basely perfidious in the most tender trust.

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Reverence towards God had greater influence with them.

MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): They feared God more than the king, and therefore chose to obey God rather than the king…they would not offend God by murdering the children, which they might have done many times secretly, and therefore it was only the fear of God which restrained them from it.

JOHN CALVIN: We must also observe the antithesis between the fear of God and the dread of punishment, which might have deterred them from doing right. Although tyrants do not easily allow their commands to be despised, and death was before their eyes, they still keep their hands pure from evil. Thus, sustained and supported by reverential fear of God, they boldly despised the command and the threatenings of Pharaoh. Wherefore those, whom the fear of men withdraws from the right course, betray by their cowardice an inexcusable contempt of God, in preferring the favour of men to His solemn commands.

MATTHEW HENRY: Note, If men’s commands be any way contrary to the commands of God, we must obey God and not man, Acts 4:19, Acts 5:29. No power on earth can warrant us, much less oblige us, to sin against God, our chief Lord. Again, Where the fear of God rules in the heart, it will preserve it from the snare which the inordinate fear of man brings.

ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Is it not a mark of grace in these women?

ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): Certain persons have spoken very unguardedly against this inspired record, saying, “The Hebrew midwives told palpable lies, and God commends them for it; thus we may do evil that good may come of it, and sanctify the means by the end.”

JOHN CALVIN: I hold, that whatever is opposed to the nature of God is sinful; and on this ground all dissimulation, whether in word or deed, is condemned.

THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): I see no sufficient reason to suppose, that there was the least prevarication in the midwives: for is it not natural to believe, that the same Divine Providence which so miraculously interposed for the multiplication of Israel, might grant an easy deliverance to the Hebrew women, and cause them to dispense with the assistance of midwives?

ROBERT HAWKER: I think it probable that the Hebrew women were distinguished with peculiar marks of divine favour in those seasons of child-bearing.

ADAM CLARKE: General experience shows that women, who during the whole of their pregnancy are accustomed to hard labour, especially in the open air, have comparatively little pain in parturition. The whole Hebrew nation, men and women, were in a state of slavery, and obliged to work in mortar and brick, and all manner of service in the field; and this at once accounts for the ease and speediness of their travail. With the strictest truth the midwives might say, “The Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women:” the latter fare delicately, are not inured to labour, and are kept shut up at home, therefore they have hard, difficult, and dangerous labours; but the Hebrew women are lively, are strong, hale, and vigorous, and therefore are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them.

MATTHEW POOLE: And so it might be—or, because the Hebrew women, understanding their danger, whereof they seem to have gotten notice, would not send for the midwives, but committed themselves to God’s providence. So here was nothing but truth, though they did not speak the whole truth, which they were not obliged to do.

ADAM CLARKE: The midwives boldly state to Pharaoh a fact—had it not been so, he had a thousand means of ascertaining the truth. And they state it in such a way as to bring conviction to his mind on the subject of his oppressive cruelty on the one hand, and the mercy of Jehovah on the other…Here then is a fact, boldly announced in the face of danger; and we see that God was pleased with this frankness of the midwives, and He blessed them for it.

C. H. MACKINTOSH: The closing verses present an edifying lesson in the conduct of those God-fearing women, Shiphrah and Puah. They would not carry out the king’s cruel scheme, but braved his wrath, and hence, God made them houses. “Them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed,” 1 Samuel 2:30. May we ever remember this, and act for God under all circumstances!

JOHN BOYS (1619-1625): Now, then: What is the most high and deep point of wisdom?

DANIEL de SUPERVILLE (1657-1728): “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,” Psalm 111:10. It is not only the beginning of wisdom, but the middle and the end. It is indeed the Alpha and Omega, the essence, the body and the soul, the sum and substance. He that hath “the fear of God,” is truly wise.

 

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Jacob’s Wrestling Match

Posted on July 9, 2021 by The Editor

Psalm 147:10,11; Genesis 32:24-31

He delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man. The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy.

And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh.

And [Jacob] said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh.

CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): Such manifestations of God under the angelic or human form were not uncommon in the earlier parts of the Jewish history: and it is generally thought the Lord Jesus Christ was the person who assumed these appearances—that it was not a mere man who withstood Jacob, is clear, from his being expressly called “God.”

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): I suppose our Lord Jesus Christ did here, as on many other occasions preparatory to His full incarnation, assume a human form, and came thus to wrestle with Jacob. We generally lay the stress upon the thought that Jacob wrestled with the Angel. No doubt he did, but the Bible does not say so—it says, “There wrestled a Man with him.”

C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): It was not Jacob wrestling with a man; but a man wrestling with Jacob. This scene is very commonly referred to as an instance of Jacob’s power in prayer. That it is not, is evident from the simple wording of the passage. My wrestling with a man, and a man wrestling with me, present two totally different ideas to the mind. In the former case I want to gain some object from him; in the latter, he wants to gain some object from me. Now, in Jacob’s case, the divine object was to bring him to see what a poor, feeble, worthless creature he was. When Jacob so pertinaciously held out against the divine dealing with him, “he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with him.”

C. H. SPURGEON: It was brave of Jacob thus to wrestle, but there was too much of self about it all. It was his own sufficiency that was wrestling with the God-man, Christ Jesus. Now comes the crisis which will make a change in the whole of Jacob’s future life. What can Jacob do now that the main bone of his leg is put out of joint? He cannot even stand up any longer in the great wrestling match; what can he do?

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Jacob was now brought to the end of his own resources. One swift stroke from the Divine hand and he was rendered utterly powerless.

C. H. SPURGEON: It is evident that, as soon as he felt that he must fall, he grasped the other “Man” with a kind of death-grip, and would not let him go.

C. H. MACKINTOSH: This is a turning point in the history of this very remarkable man. To be left alone with God is the only true way of arriving at a just knowledge of ourselves and our ways…We have seen Jacob planning and managing during his twenty years sojourn with Laban; but not until he “was left alone,” did he get a true idea of what a perfectly helpless thing he was in himself. Then, the seat of his strength being touched, he learned to say, “I will not let Thee go.” This was a new era in the history of the supplanting, planning, Jacob. Up to this point he had held fast by his own ways and means; but now he is brought to say, “I will not let Thee go.” Now, Jacob did not express himself thus until “the hollow of his thigh was touched.” This simple fact is quite sufficient to settle the true interpretation of the whole scene. God was wrestling with Jacob to bring him to this point.

MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): It was done that Jacob might see that was not his own strength, but only God’s grace which got him this victory, and could give him the deliverance which he hoped for.

C. H. SPURGEON: Now, in his weakness, he will prevail. While he was so strong, he won not the blessing; but when he became utter weakness, then did he conquer. “And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob,” that is, a “supplanter,” as poor Esau well knew. “And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel,” that is, “a prince of God.” “For as a prince hast thou power with God and with men and hast prevailed.”

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): “And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” The simple meaning then is, that he saw God in an unusual and extraordinary manner.

C. H. MACKINTOSH: I would remark that the book of Job is, in a certain sense, a detailed commentary on this scene in Jacob’s history. Throughout the first thirty-one chapters, Job grapples with his friends, and maintains his point against all their arguments; but in Job 32, God, by the instrumentality of Elihu, begins to wrestle with him; and in Job 38, He comes down upon Him directly with all the majesty of His power, overwhelms him by the display of His greatness and glory, and elicits from him the well-known words, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes,” Job 42:5,6. This was really touching the hollow of Job’s thigh. And mark the expression, “mine eye seeth thee.” He does not say, “I see myself,” merely; no; but “Thee.” Nothing but a view of what God is, can really lead to repentance and self-loathing.

A. W. PINK: And this is the purpose God has before Him in His dealings with us. One of the principal designs of our gracious heavenly Father in the ordering of our path, in the appointing of our testings and trials, in the discipline of His love, is to bring us to the end of ourselves, to show us our own powerlessness, to teach us to have no confidence in the flesh, that His strength may be perfected in our conscious and realized weakness.

JOHN CALVIN: It is only when our weakness becomes apparent, that God’s strength is duly perfected. “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness,” 2 Corinthians 12:9.

JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791): It was not in his own strength that Jacob wrestled, nor by his own strength that he prevails; but by strength derived from heaven. That of Job illustrates this, Job 23:6—Will He plead against me with his great power? No.”—Had the angel done so, Jacob had been crushed; “but he would put strength in me.” And by that strength Jacob had power over the angel, Hosea 12:3,4.

G. CAMPBELL MORGAN (1863-1945): This is certainly a story of Jacob’s victory, but it was a victory won when, conscious of a superior power, he yielded and, with strong crying and tears, out of weakness was made strong. Jacob’s limp was a lifelong disability, but it was also the patent of his nobility.

C. H. SPURGEON: Jacob was the prince with the disjointed limb, and that is exactly what a Christian is. He wins, he conquers, when his weakness becomes supreme, and he is conscious of it. “The God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people,” Psalm 68:35. He is strong, and makes strong: blessed are they who draw from His resources, they shall renew their strength. While the self-sufficient faint, the All-sufficient shall sustain the feeblest believer.

 

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Religious Liberty & Politically Correct Tyranny

Posted on July 2, 2021 by The Editor

2 Corinthians 3:17; Judges 21:25

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): I think worldly men ought to be told that if religion does not save them, yet it has done much for them—the influence of religion won them their liberties.

JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): We have reason to be thankful for our religious liberty, to the good providence of God—We breathe the air of civil liberty.

MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546): There is also another kind of “liberty,” when people obey neither the laws of God nor the laws of men, but do as they please. This carnal liberty the people want in our day.

C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): It opens the door for every form of licentiousness.

PHILIP MAURO (1859-1952): We have, in the days of the Judges, the only democratic period of the history of Israel. Therefore, while those who believe God and look to His Word for their light and guidance in this dark world will study the period of the Judges mainly for the spiritual lessons to be learned, it would be the part of wisdom for those who are shaping—or trying to shape, at least, the political destinies of the world at this critical hour, to learn from that book what conditions must inevitably develop in any society where there is no king, and where every man claims liberty to do “that which is right in his own eyes.”

WILLIAM JAY (1769-1853): In reading their history, we may peruse our own.

C. H. SPURGEON: I have heard very stupid people say, “Well, I do not care to read the historical parts of Scripture.” Beloved friends, you do not know what you are talking about when you say so.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): A man who has no respect for history is a fool, and he will soon discover that, when he finds himself repeating the errors of those who have gone before him—“As they were in the days of Noah,” Christ says, “even so they shall be in the days of the Son of Man,” Luke 17:26. “As they were in Sodom,” He says, “even so they shall be.” That’s our Lord’s view of history.

PHILIP MAURO: According to man’s most cherished notions, the change from the autocracy of Moses and Joshua to the democratic era of the Judges was a great advance, and it should have introduced a period of unparalleled prosperity and progress in all departments of human activity. No conditions could be imagined more favourable to the development of all the possibilities of what is called “self-government.” The people of Israel had a splendid start, a land abounding in the richest products of the earth, and the incomparable advantage of good laws.

JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): But although they lived in God’s good land, yet because [they lived] not by God’s good laws, nor had any supreme magistrate, therefore all was out of order.

PHILIP MAURO: The days of the Judges were days of increasing moral corruption and violence.

ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Sodomites were also in the land, Judges 19:22,23.

CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): “They do what is right in their own eyes,” without inquiring whether it be right in God’s sight or not.

JOHN MILTON (1608-1674): Licence they mean when they cry Liberty.

WILLIAM PRINGLE (1790-1858): Licentious freedom.

THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): They who are slaves to their lusts are the worst of slaves.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: From the point of view of morality, the problem is not so much immorality but the total absence of morality—amorality, a tendency to doubt all types of moral standards. Indeed, some would go so far as to say that all those who acknowledge moral standards live an incomplete life and do an injustice to their personalities. These people claim that what was once called sin is nothing but self-expression. The old foundations are being shaken, and the old boundaries and hedges are being swept away. This has become an amoral or a non-moral society. The very category of morality is not recognized at all, and men and women are virtually in the position of saying ‘evil be thou my good.’

CHARLES SIMEON: The language of their hearts is, “Who is Lord over us?”

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): When wickedness abounds, and goes barefaced, under the protection and countenance of those in authority―then “the wicked walk on every side,” Psalms 12:8; they are neither afraid nor ashamed to discover themselves; they declare their sin as Sodom and there is none to check or control them.

JOHN TRAPP: Now may they do what they will―for no man must find fault.

C. H. SPURGEON: Deep is our shame when we know that our judges are not clear in this matter, but social purity has been put to the blush by magistrates of no mean degree.

HORATIUS BONAR (1808-1889): Nay, we glory in this as “progress,” “culture,” and “enlightenment,” as freedom from the bigotry of other centuries and the narrowness of our half-enlightened ancestors.

C. H. SPURGEON: Sodomites cannot have much love for righteous men.

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Innate corruption always carries with it a contempt for religion, and a spirit of licentiousness.

JOHN NEWTON: The religion of the Gospel was, perhaps, never more despised and hated than at present.

JOHN CALVIN: “Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time,” Amos 5:13. When therefore Amos says, that the time would be evil, he means, that such audacity would prevail, that all liberty would be denied to wise men. They would then be forced to be silent, for they could effect nothing by speaking, nay, they would have no freedom of speech allowed them: and though they attempted to discharge their office, yet tyrannical violence would instantly impose silence on them. Similar was the case with Lot―he was constrained, I have no doubt, to be silent after having often used free reproofs; nay, he doubtless exposed himself to many dangers by his attempts to reprove the Sodomites. Such seems to me to be the meaning of the Prophet, when he says, that the prudent would be silent, because these tyrants would impose silence on all teachers—visiting them with some punishment, or loading them with reproaches, or treating them with ridicule as persons worthy of contempt.

C. H. SPURGEON: What is this but trampling upon liberty of conscience with arrogant tyranny?

THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Wicked men ever study to dress up religion and its professors in the most forbidding colours, while every glaring vice is palliated with some soft name, or pleaded for as commendable.

ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): “Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, ‘We ought to obey God rather than men,” Acts 5:29. “For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard,” Acts 4:20. Their grand words are the Magna Charta of the right of every sincere conviction to free speech.

JOHN ANGELL JAMES (1785-1869): The very genius of Christianity is a spirit of freedom, and all its precepts are opposed to tyranny.

C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): No man has any right to enforce his opinions upon his fellow. This is plain enough and we have to bless God for the inestimable privilege of civil and religious liberty.

J. H. MERLE d’AUBIGNÉ (1794-1872): The necessity of liberty for the Gospel, and of the Gospel for liberty, is now acknowledged by all thoughtful men.

C. H. SPURGEON: And if we are ever to maintain our liberty—as God grant we may—it shall be kept by religious liberty—by religion!

 

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The Severity of a Merciful God

Posted on June 25, 2021 by The Editor

Deuteronomy 7:1,2; Deuteronomy 20:16-18

When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them…

In the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee: That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714):  They must “show them no mercy.” Bloody work is here appointed them, and yet it is God’s work, and good work, and in its time and place needful, acceptable, and honourable.

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): How does God, the Father of mercies, give His sanction to indiscriminate bloodshed?

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): “There was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel, save the Hivites the inhabitants of Gibeon: all other they took in battle. For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that He might destroy them utterly, and that they might have no favour, but that He might destroy them, as the Lord commanded Moses,” Joshua 11:18-20. What could be plainer than this? Here was a large number of Canaanites whose hearts the Lord hardened, whom He had purposed to utterly destroy, to whom He showed “no favour.” Why did not Jehovah command Israel to teach the Canaanites His laws and instruct them concerning sacrifices to the true God? Plainly, because He had marked them out for destruction.

JOHN CALVIN: When God had destined the land for His people, He was at liberty utterly to destroy the former inhabitants, so that its possession might be free for them. We must then go further, and say that He desired the just demonstration of His vengeance to appear upon these nations. Four hundred years before He had justly punished their many sins, yet He had suspended His sentence and patiently borne with them, if haply they might repent. That sentence is well known, “The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full,” Genesis 15:16. After God showed His mercy for four centuries, and this clemency had increased their audacity and madness, so that they had not ceased to provoke His wrath, surely it was no act of cruelty to compensate for the delay by the grievousness of the punishment.

C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): In God’s dealings with the nations, in connection with His people Israel, we are reminded of the opening words of Psalm 101, “I will sing of mercy and of judgment.” We see the display of mercy to His people, in pursuance of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and we see also the execution of His judgment upon the nations, in consequence of their evil ways. In the former, we see divine sovereignty; in the latter, divine justice; in both, divine glory shines out.

JOHN GILL (1697-1771): “Behold therefore the goodness, and severity of God,” Romans 11:22. The consideration of both the grace and kindness of God to some, and His severity or strict justice towards others, is very proper to abate pride, vain glory, and haughtiness of spirit; and to engage to humility, fear, care, and caution.

JOHN CALVIN: Why should we wonder that God in His character of Judge exercised extreme severity?

C. H. MACKINTOSH: We have the deluge in the days of Noah, when the whole earth, with all its inhabitants, with the exception of eight persons, was destroyed by an act of divine government. Then we have in the days of Lot, the cities of the plain, with all their men, women and children consigned to utter destruction, overthrown by the hand of Almighty God.

ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Is not this total destruction of the enemies of the church, a lively emblem of the everlasting overthrow of the ungodly in the day of God’s vengeance? See 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9.

A. W. PINK: “The Lord hath made all things for Himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil,” Proverbs 16:4. That the Lord made all, perhaps every reader will allow: that He made all “for Himself” is not so widely believed. That God made us, not for our own sakes, but for Himself; not for our own happiness, but for His glory, is nevertheless repeatedly affirmed in Scripture—see Revelation 4:11. But Proverbs 16:4 goes even farther: it expressly declares that the Lord made the wicked for the Day of Evil: that it was His design in giving them being. But why? God has made the wicked that, at the end, He may demonstrate His power by showing what an easy matter it is for Him to subdue the stoutest rebel and to overthrow His mightiest enemy.

C. H. MACKINTOSH: The seven nations of Canaan, men, women, and children, were given over into the hands of Israel, for unsparing judgment; nothing that breathed was to be left alive. Now, the question is, Are we competent to understand these ways of God in government? Is it any part of our business to sit in judgment upon them?

ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): Our conceptions of right are not the absolute measure of the divine acts.

C. H. MACKINTOSH: Can we—are we called upon, to account for the tremendous fact of helpless babes involved in the judgment of their guilty parents?

ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): For this action I account simply on the principle that God, the Author and Supporter of life, has a right to dispose of it when and how He thinks proper, Romans 9:21-23; and the Judge of all the earth can do nothing but what is right, Genesis 18:25.

CHRISTOPHER NESS (1621-1705): Infants are not innocents, being born with original sin—otherwise infants would not die, for “death is the wages of sin,” Romans 6:23

C. H. MACKINTOSH: Some persons, influenced by a morbid feeling and false sentimentality, rather than by an enlightened judgment, find difficulty in the directions given to Israel in reference to the Canaanites. It seems to them inconsistent with a benevolent Being to command His People to smite their fellow-creatures, and to show them no mercy. They cannot understand how a merciful God could commission His people to slay women and children with the edge of the sword. It is very plain that such persons could not adopt the language of Revelation 15:3,4. They are not prepared to say, “Just and true are thy ways, thou King of nations.*” They cannot justify God in all His ways; nay, they are actually sitting in judgment upon Him. They presume to measure the actings of divine government by the standard of their own shallow thoughts. In short, they measure God by themselves. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” This, we may rest assured, is the only true way in which to meet such questions. If man is to sit in judgment upon the actings of God in government—if man can take upon himself to decide as to what is, and what is not worthy of God to do, then, verily, we have lost the true sense of God altogether.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Depend upon it, God will never do an unjust thing.

JOHN CALVIN: Away, then, with all temerity, whereby we would presumptuously restrict God’s power to the puny measure of our reason.

C. H. SPURGEON: “The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works,” Psalm 145:17. Let His doings be what they may, they are in every case righteous and holy. This is the confession of the godly who follow His ways, and of the gracious who study His works.

C. H. MACKINTOSH: Is the reader troubled with difficulties on this subject? If so, we should much like to quote a very fine passage which may help him. “O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever…To him that smote Egypt in their first-born; for his mercy endureth for ever.” Psalm 136:1,10.

___________________

*Editor’s Note: In the King James Bible, the phrase of Revelation 15:3 is translated “thou King of Saints,” but the margin note more accurately translates it as “nations” instead of “saints.”

 

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The Goodness of Our Heavenly Father

Posted on June 18, 2021 by The Editor

John 20:17—John 16:27; Matthew 7:11

Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God…For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Christ declares that we have this in common with Himself, that He who is His God and His Father is also our God and our Father. “I ascend,” says He, “to my Father, who is also your Father.”

OCTAVIUS WINSLOW (1808-1878): We are so prone to fix our admiring and adoring gaze on the incarnate Son, so prone to attach our exclusive affections to Him, Who for us “loved not his life unto the death,” and thus come short of the stupendous and animating truth that all the love, grace, and wisdom that are prominent and striking in salvation have their fountain head in the heart of God the Father! May we not trace the holding of this bias to the hard and injurious thoughts of the Father’s character and those crude and gloomy interpretations of His government which so many of us bear towards Him?

JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): He knows what little understanding we have of Him.

THOMAS SCOTT (1747-1821): Our heavenly Father “knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust,” Psalm 103:14; and He pities us under all our sorrows and trials.

JOHN TRAPP: So great is the goodness of God to His people, that He dealeth with us as with His little children. “I taught Ephraim also to go,” Hosea 11:3. A child he was, and like a child I dealt with him, teaching him how to set his feet—pedare, to foot it, as nurses do their little ones: “He will keep the feet of His saints,” 1 Samuel 2:9; He “guideth their feet in the way of peace,” Luke 1:79. And He takes us up in His own arms, when we come to a foul or rough place, helping us over the quagmires of crosses, and the difficulties of duties.

THOMAS SCOTT: But He will also rebuke and correct us for our sins.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Our heavenly Father is no Eli: He will not suffer His children to sin without rebuke, His love is too intense for that…When God sees men doing wrong, He often permits the wicked to go unpunished in this life; but as for His own people, it is written, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities,” Amos 3:2. Our heavenly Father’s hand still holds the rod, and uses it when necessary; but it is in love that He corrects us. Your father loves you quite as much when he treats you roughly as when he treats you kindly. There is often more love in an angry father’s heart than there is in the heart of a father who is too kind. Give me a father that is angry with my sins and that seeks to bring me back, even though it be by chastisement. Thank God you have got a Father that can be angry, but that loves you as much when He is angry as when He smiles upon you.

THOMAS SCOTT: He will indeed thwart our wayward inclinations, and will not indulge us to our hurt.

MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): Our children, through their want of knowledge and judgment to discern between things that are good or evil for their bodies, may ask of us, and cry unto us, for things that are hurtful, yet we, who know that they would not ask for them if they had the use of their reason, and well knew their noxious quality, considering their circumstances, will not give them to them. So our heavenly Father, though He heareth us crying for such things as He knoweth, considering our circumstances, would be mischievous and hurtful to us, yet He will not give us any thing of that nature.

THOMAS GOODWIN (1600-1679): Earthly fathers know but what are earthly good things, and of them they give to their children such things as they judge best; but God judges as a heavenly Father, and so of what is best as in relation to heaven, and thy coming thither, and His thoughts are herein as far above earthly fathers as heaven is above earth. He hath also declared, that all things shall work together for thy good; but what particular dispensation shall work for good to thee, and how, this He says not, nor dost thou know. It may be the contrary to what thou desirest shall work for good.

WILLIAM GOUGE (1575-1653): If God speaks to them as to children, they have good ground to fly to God as to a Father and in all time of need to ask and seek of Him all needful blessings; yea, and in faith to depend on Him for the same, Matthew 6:31,32. What useful things shall they want? What hurtful thing need such to fear? If God deal with us as with children, He will provide for them every good thing; He will protect them from every hurtful thing, He will hear their prayers, He will accept their services, He will bear with their infirmities, He will support them under all their burdens, and assist them against all their assaults.

THOMAS SCOTT: And He cannot want power to relieve His afflicted children.

WILLIAM GOUGE: Though, through their own weakness, or the violence of some temptation, should they be drawn from Him, yet will He be ready to meet them in the midway of their turning to Him—instance the mind of the father of the prodigal towards his son, Luke 15:20.

JOHN TRAPP: Whereas we fall seven times a day, and in many things fail all; He taketh us up after that we have caught a knock, and cherisheth us in His bosom.

JOHANN TARNOW (1586-1629): We are supported, admonished, taught, led, guided, protected, assembled, forgiven, carried, and comforted.

THOMAS GOODWIN: If, therefore, we at any time think we may have any degree of confidence upon the mercies and pities that are in creatures, even in the nearest and dearest relation to us, as fathers—of whom Christ says, “Though evil, they yet know how to give good things to their children,” and so likewise to pity them, then how much more may we be encouraged to rely on God, who is an heavenly Father to us, the only true and loving Father, as He only is the true and living God, and is withal styled “the Father of mercies,” 2 Corinthians 1:3.

C. H. SPURGEON: Essentially, He is goodness itself—He is good beyond all others; indeed, He alone is good in the highest sense; He is the source of good, the good of all good, the sustainer of good, the perfecter of good, and the rewarder of good. For this He deserves the constant gratitude of His people. “For He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever.” When God calls Himself our Father, He means it. There are some fathers in this world, who do not act at all as fathers should—shame upon them! But that will never be said of our Heavenly Father. He is a true Father and He has a heart of compassion towards His children.

JOHN CALVIN: It is, unquestionably, an invaluable blessing, that believers can safely and firmly believe, that He who is the God of Christ is their God, and that He who is the Father of Christ is their Father. And certainly we ought to imitate the goodness of our heavenly Father.

 

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Matthew Henry’s Commentary

Posted on June 11, 2021 by The Editor

Ephesians 4:8,11,12; 1 Peter 4:10,11

When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men…And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.

As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Being fully persuaded of these things, I conclude that whatever help is offered to good Christians in searching the scriptures is real service done to the glory of God, and to the interests of His kingdom; it is this that hath drawn me into this undertaking, which I have gone about in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling, lest I should be found exercising myself in things too high for me, and so laudable an undertaking should suffer damage by an unskillful management.

WILLIAM LINDSAY ALEXANDER (1808-1884): Matthew Henry was the Prince of Commentators.

ALEXANDER WHYTE (1836-1921): Matthew Henry’s Commentary should be in every household in the land.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): It is the poor man’s commentary, the old Christian’s companion, suitable to everybody, instructive to all.

JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791): He is allowed by all competent judges, to have been a person of strong understanding, of various learning, of solid piety, and much experience in the ways of God. And his exposition is generally clear and intelligible, the thoughts being expressed in plain words: It is also found agreeable to the tenor of Scripture, and to the analogy of faith. It is frequently full, giving a sufficient explication of the passages which require explaining. It is in many parts deep, penetrating farther into the inspired writings than most other comments do. It does not entertain us with vain speculations, but is practical throughout: and usually spiritual too, teaching us how to worship God, not in form only, but in spirit and in truth.

C. H. SPURGEON: He is most pious and pithy, sound and sensible, suggestive and sober, terse and trustworthy. You will find him to be glittering with metaphors, rich in analogies, overflowing with illustrations, superabundant in reflections. He delights in apposition and alliteration; he is usually plain, quaint, and full of pith; he sees right through a text directly…He is deeply spiritual, heavenly, and profitable; finding good matter in every text, and from all, deducing most practical and judicious lessons.

MATTHEW HENRY: I desire that I may be read with a candid, and not a critical eye. I pretend not to gratify the curious; the summit of my ambition is to assist those who are truly serious, in searching the Scriptures daily. I am sure the work is designed, and hope it is calculated, to promote piety towards God and charity towards our brethren, and that there is not only something in it which may edify, but nothing which may justly offend any good Christian.

RICHARD CECIL (1748-1810): The man who labours to please his neighbour for his good to edification, has the mind that was in Christ. It is a sinner trying to help a sinner. How different would things be if this spirit prevailed!

MATTHEW HENRY: If any desire to know how so mean and obscure a person as I am, who in learning, judgment, felicity of expression, and in all advantages for such service, am less than the least of all my Master’s servants, came to venture upon so great a work, I can give no other account of it than this: It has long been my practice, in what little time I had to spare in my study from constant preparations for the pulpit, to spend it in drawing up expositions upon some parts of the New Testament, not so much for my own use as purely for my entertainment; because I knew not how to employ my thoughts and time more to my satisfactions. “Every man that studies hath some beloved study, which is his delight above any other;” and this is mine. It is that learning which it was my happiness from a child to be trained up in by my ever honoured father, whose memory must always be very dear and precious to me. He often reminded me, that a good textuary [one well informed in the Bible] is a good divine; and that I should read other books with this in my eye, that I might be better able to understand and apply the Scripture.

C. H. SPURGEON: Every minister ought to read Matthew Henry entirely and carefully through once at least—you will acquire a vast store of sermons if you read with your notebook close at hand; and as for thoughts, they will swarm around you like twittering swallows around an old gable towards the close of autumn. If you publicly expound the chapter you have just been reading, your people will wonder at the novelty of your remarks and the depth of your thoughts, and then you may tell them what a treasure Henry is. William Jay’s sermons bear indubitable evidence of his having studied Matthew Henry almost daily. Many of the quaint things in Jay’s sermons are either directly traceable to Matthew Henry or to his familiarity with that writer. I have thought that the style of Jay was founded upon Matthew Henry: Matthew Henry is Jay writing, Jay is Matthew Henry preaching.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD (1714-1770): How sweetly did my hours in private glide away in reading and praying over Matthew Henry’s Commentary upon the Scriptures! Whilst I am musing on and writing about it, the fire I then felt again kindles in my soul.*

MATTHEW HENRY: If any receive spiritual benefit by my poor endeavours, it will be a comfort to me, but let God have all the glory, and that free grace of His which has employed one utterly unworthy of such an honour, and enabled one thus far to go on in it who is utterly insufficient for such a service. Having obtained help of God, I continue hitherto in it, and humbly depend upon the same good hand of my God to carry me on in that which remains—one volume more, I hope, will include what is yet to done; and I will go on with it, as God shall enable me, with all convenient speed.

ARCHIBALD ALEXANDER (1772-1851): Matthew Henry did not live to put a finishing hand to the exposition. He had made ample preparations for the completion of the work, but the providence of God, though mysterious, is always wise.**

C. H. SPURGEON: The latter part of his Commentary was completed by other hands. The writers were Evans, Brown, Mayo, Bays, Rosewell, Harriss, Atkinson, Smith, Tong, Wright, Merrell, Hill, Reynolds, and Billingsley, all ministers. They have executed their work exceedingly well, have worked in much of the matter which Henry had collected, and have done their best to follow his methods, but their combined production is far inferior to Matthew Henry himself, and any reader will soon detect the difference.

WILLIAM JAY (1769-1853): Good Matthew Henry said, as he was expiring, to his friends in the room, “You have heard and read the words of many dying men―and these are mine; I have found a life of communion with God, the happiest life in the world.”

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*Editor’s Note: During his lifetime, George Whitefield read through Matthew Henry’s Commentary four times, often on his knees, as he prayed over what he was reading.

**Editor’s Note: Matthew Henry began writing his Bible Commentary in 1704, and began publishing it in 1710. By Henry’s death in 1714, he had completed Genesis to Acts. Working from Henry’s own notes, his minister friends completed Romans to Revelation.

 

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The Promise of God’s Great Covenant Oath

Posted on June 4, 2021 by The Editor

2 Corinthians 1:20; Psalm 89:3,4; Psalm 89:28-36

All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.

I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant, thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations. Selah.

My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed also will I make to endure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven. If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless, my loving kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once I have sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me.

OCTAVIUS WINSLOW (1808-1878): Why did God not swear by His truth, His wisdom, or by His Power? He was about to proclaim a great truth to the house of David, and, intending to impart the greatest force, solemnity, and beauty to that truth, He swears by His “holiness.”

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564):  It appears that it was not a matter of small importance; it being certain that God would not interpose His holy name in reference to what was of no consequence. He affirms that He sware “by His holiness,” because a greater than Himself is not to be found, by whom He could swear.

JOHN ANGELL JAMES (1785-1869): It is the beauty of the Divine Being Himself; not so much a separate attribute of His nature, as the perfection of all His attributes.

OCTAVIUS WINSLOW: It is as if He said, “Holiness is my most illustrious perfection, my grandest attribute; and by it I swear that I will make good my word, that I not lie unto David.” For as “men, verily swear by the greater,” Hebrews 6:16, so He swears by His holiness, His greatest perfection and highest glory.

AUGUSTUS TOPLADY (1713-1778): Do you suppose that this was spoken to David, in his own person only? No, indeed; but to David as the antitype, figure, and forerunner of Jesus Christ…And they are the “sure mercies” of our spiritual David—Christ. “Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David,” Isaiah 55:3.

OCTAVIUS WINSLOW: Saints of the Most High who are standing in the region of doubt and are enshrouded by dark providences and are led to ask, “Will God make good the promise upon which He has caused my soul to rest?” should look much to this great truth: God has sworn by His holiness that He will not lie.

CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): In seasons of deep affliction, when, through unbelief, we are ready to think that God has forsaken and forgotten us, it is well to look back to God’s covenant engagements, whereon, as on a rock, we may stand firm amidst the tempest that surrounds us.

THOMAS LYE (1621-1684):  When our heavenly Father is forced to put forth His anger, He then makes use of a father’s rod, not an executioner’s axe. He will neither break His children’s bones, nor His own covenant. He lashes in love, in measure, in pity and compassion.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): “If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments, then will I visit their transgression with the rod.” Not with the sword, not with death and destruction; but still with a smarting, tingling, painful rod. Saints must smart if they sin, and God will see to that. He hates sin too much not to visit it, and He loves His saints too well not to chasten them.

WOLFGANG MUSCULUS (1497-1563): He does not say, I will visit “them” with the rod; but, I will visit “their transgression” with the rod. We ought to think perpetually, what it is that the rod of God visits in us, that we may confess our transgressions, and amend our lives.

JEAN DAILLÉ (1594-1670): God here says two things—first, that He will chastise them; Next, that He will not, on that account, cast them out of His covenant. “Nevertheless, my loving kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.”

ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): What a blessed “nevertheless” this is, and how sweetly doth it come in here, to give relief to a poor sin-beaten, tempted, and fallen soul! Though poor and wretched, and wanderers from the Lord, as the best of Christ’s children are in themselves, yet in Jesus are they still viewed—and in Him, the Beloved, they are accepted. God the Father hath an eye to His covenant engagements, to His word, to His oath, to His own free everlasting love, and to the ransom which He hath received for their redemption…There is everlasting efficacy, everlasting worth and virtue in the blood of the Lamb; and His blood and righteousness plead more for thee than all thy infirmities cry against thee. Oh, precious Jesus! Oh, gracious God and Father in Christ!

JEAN DAILLÉ: The heavenly Father loves the blood and the marks of His Christ which He sees upon them, and the remains of faith and godliness which are preserved hidden in the depth of their heart; this is why He will not cast them off.

AUGUSTUS TOPLADY: “His seed also will I make to endure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven.” Therefore, the promise imports that Christ shall reign, not simply as a person in the Godhead (which He ever did, ever will, and ever must); but relatively, as a mediator, and in His office-character as the deliverer and king of Zion. Hence it follows, that His people cannot be lost.

OLIVER CROMWELL (1599-1658): God is bound in faithfulness to Christ, and in Him, to us. The Covenant is without us; a transaction between God and Christ. Look up to it. God engageth in it to pardon us; to write His law in our heart, to plant His fear so that we shall never depart from Him. We, under all our sins and infirmities, can daily offer a perfect Christ; thus we have peace and safety, and an apprehension of love, from a Father in Covenant—Who cannot deny Himself. And truly in this is all my salvation; and this helps me to bear my great burdens.

JOHN CALVIN: It is a token of singular loving-kindness for Him, upon seeing us prone to distrust, to provide a remedy for it so compassionately. We have, therefore, so much the less excuse if we do not embrace, with true and unwavering faith, His promise which is so strongly ratified, since in His deep interest about our salvation, He does not withhold His oath, that we may yield entire credence to His Word. If we do not reckon His simple promise sufficient, He adds His oath, as it were, for a pledge—the oath is irrevocable, and that therefore we have not the least reason to be apprehensive of any inconstancy.

ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): And there needs no second oath, the one already made is of endless obligation.

OCTAVIUS WINSLOW: He has bound Himself by this solemn oath to make good to the letter His very precious promise.—You have the warrant and the encouragement to trust in God, to confide in His Word, and to resign yourself and all your interests into His Fatherly, faithful, though chastening hands.

WILLIAM GREENHILL (1591-1677): Man’s faith may fail him some; but God’s faithfulness never fails him: God will not suffer His faithfulness to fail.

JOHN STEVENSON (1798-1858): Who dares deny that the promise of the living God is an absolute security?

HUDSON TAYLOR (1832-1905): He means just what He says, and will do all that He has promised.

ROBERT HAWKER: Think of these things; give thyself wholly to the meditation of them.

 

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The Cure for the World’s Deadliest Virus

Posted on May 28, 2021 by The Editor

Psalm 51:1-5

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): The expression intimates that we are cherished in sin from the first moment that we are in the womb.

ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): I believe David speaks here of what is commonly called original sin; the propensity to evil which every man brings into the world with him—The Hebrew word translated “shapen,’ means more properly, I was “brought forth” from the womb; and the word translated “conceive” signifies “made me warm,” alluding to the process of the formation of the fetus in the uterus—the formative heat which is necessary to develop the parts of all embryos; to incubate the ova in the female, after having been impregnated by the male; and to bring the whole into such a state of maturity and perfection as to render it capable of subsisting and growing. “As my parts were developed in the womb, the sinful principle diffused itself through the whole, so that body and mind grew up in a state of corruption and moral imperfection.”

THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Nor do I see how it could be otherwise, when she first cherished him in her womb. I shall not easily be persuaded to think, that parents, who are sinners themselves will be very likely to produce children without transmitting to them those corruptions of nature with which they themselves are infected—“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one,” Job 14:4.

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Man’s very nature is corrupted…Thus it is clear that when Christ declared, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” John 3:6, He signified that which is propagated by fallen man is depraved, that whatever comes into this world by ordinary generation is carnal and corrupt, causing the heart itself to be deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” Jeremiah 17:9.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): That child which has just experienced the first birth has been made partaker of “corruptible seed.” The depravity of his parent lies sleeping within him. Could he speak, he might say so—he receives the evil virus which was first infused into us by the Fall—the virus of evil is in him.

CHRISTOPHER NESS (1621-1705): Infants are not innocents, being born with original sin— otherwise infants would not die, for “death is the wages of sin,” Romans 6:23; and the reign of death is procured by the reign of sin, which hath reigned over all mankind except Christ. All are sinners, infected with the guilt and filth of sin.

RICHARD CAPEL (1586-1656): Hence no sooner do we speak, but we lie. “The wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies,” Psalm 58:3. As we are in the body, subject to all diseases, but yet, some to one sickness rather than to another: so in the soul, all are apt enough to all sin, and yet some rather more to one vice than to another—but all are much inclined to lying.

A. W. PINK: No child has to be taught to lie—it comes naturally to him—he is born corrupt at the core of his being. This is the just entail of the Fall. Our first parents preferred the Devil’s lie to God’s Truth—and all of their descendants inherit the poisonous virus which then entered into them. By nature both writer, and reader, are liars.

JOHN CALVIN: Indeed, every sin should convince us of the general truth of the corruption of our nature.

H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): You see, the trouble with all mankind is not that they become sinners by sinning, but they sin because they are sinners. We are born in sin and are shapen in iniquity. The virus of sin is in our being, from the moment we draw our first breath. We readily disobey God and go from one sin to another because of the sinful nature with which we are born.

THOMAS COKE: And I should think that there is need of no other proof that we are all born in such a state, than our own experience, and the present condition of the world we live in.

JOHN ANGELL JAMES (1785-1869): As united fires burn the fiercer, and the concentrated virus of many people thrown into the same room infected with the plague, renders the disease more malignant—so a sinful community grows in impiety, as every member joins his brother’s pollution to his own. Nothing is so contagious as bad morals!

H. A. IRONSIDE: We do not all sin in exactly the same way, but the Scriptures say that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23.

A. W. PINK: Precisely, what is the nature of human depravity?

C. H. SPURGEON: The virus of sin lies in its opposition to God—that it is sin against God.

A. W. PINK: This supplies the key to such passages as we have just quoted above in Psalm 51…Here, then, is the terrible nature of human depravity—that his heart is desperately wicked, that his mind is filled with enmity against God, that his will is antagonistic to Him, that he is altogether unconscious of the deadly virus of sin which has corrupted every part of his inner being, and which has completely unfitted him for any communion with the thrice Holy One.

C. H. SPURGEON: The sin that lies within us is not an accumulation of external defilement, but an inward, all-pervading corruption! The taint of secret and spiritual evil is in man’s natural life. Every pulse of his soul is disordered by it. The eggs of all crimes are within our being—the accursed virus, from whose deadly venom every foul design will come—is present in the soul. Not only a tendency to sin, but sin itself has taken possession of the soul, and blackened and polluted it through and through till there is not a fiber of the heart unstained with iniquity!

A. W. PINK: The criminal darkness and delusion which fill every soul in which sin reigns cannot be removed by any agent but God the Spirit—by His giving a new heart and enlightening the understanding to perceive the exceeding sinfulness of sin…Awakened souls were made to feel iniquity cleaving to them like a girdle, and inward corruption like a deadly virus poisoning their very nature, breaking out continually in unholy tempers, defiling all they did or attempted, and thus destroying all hope of justification or acceptance with God on the ground of personal conformity to His requirements. Alive to the truth of an ineffably holy and infinitely perfect God, they were also alive to painful misgivings and fears of guilt; and hence their confessions of sin, sobs of penitence, and cries for mercy.

C. H. SPURGEON: Beloved, if you would be cured of any sin, however spreading its infection, fly to Jesus’ wounds!—“With His stripes we are healed,” Isaiah 53:5. It is a universal medicine. There is no disease by which thy soul can be afflicted but an application of the bruises of your Lord will take out the deadly virus from your soul.

HORATIUS BONAR (1808-1889): “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin,” 1 John 1:7. Remember it is all sin—even yours. It can wash, it can pardon, it can justify even thee. Take it now, for cleansing and salvation.

 

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