Two Mites Enriched With Mighty Lessons

Posted on April 12, 2019 by The Editor

Mark 12:41-44

Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.

J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): The subject before us is peculiarly heart-searching…We learn, for one thing, from these verses, how keenly our Lord Jesus Christ observes the things that are done upon earth.

THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): We can hardly suppose, that at each of the chests there were officers placed to receive and count the money which the people offered, and to name the sum aloud before they put it in; it is more reasonable to believe, that each person put his own offering privately into the chest, through a slit in its top. Wherefore, by mentioning the particular sum which the poor widow put in, as well as by declaring that it was “all her living,” our Lord shewed that nothing was hidden from His knowledge.

JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): Christ still sits and sees the condition, gift, and mind of every almsgiver―and weighs all.

ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): What an awful thought for the rich! “God sees every penny I possess, and constantly observes how I lay it out.” What a comfortable thought for the poor and desolate! The eye of the most merciful and bountiful Jesus continually beholds my poverty and distress, and will cause them to work for my good.

CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): Much was there in the conduct of that poor widow that is deserving of imitation. We should dispense our charity secretly. We are well assured, that there was nothing of ostentation in her upon this occasion; else our Lord would not have bestowed such commendation upon her. She wanted none to be spectators of her liberality; it was sufficient for her that God was privy to it. Thus “our left hand should not know what our right hand doeth,” Matthew 6:3. There are occasions indeed, when, for the sake of example, it is necessary that our liberality should be known: but, when that is not the case, we should rather affect privacy, and be satisfied with approving ourselves to God.

H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): In the second place, we learn from this passage that heaven’s arithmetic―heaven’s method of bookkeeping―is altogether different from ours.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Christ measures what we really give by what we have left—by the proportion which what we give bears to what we possess.

JOHN TRAPP: A mite is valued of our money to be three parts of one cent. Her mite could weigh but little, but her heart weighed heavy; and so her heart, being put to her mite, gave it weight above the greater but far more heartless largesses of the Pharisees. Two mites from that poor widow went farther than two millions from some others.

ADAM CLARKE: Works of charity should be estimated, not by their appearance, but by the spirit which produces them.

CHARLES SIMEON: That which gives every thing its chief value is, it being done with an unfeigned desire to please and honour Him. Without that we may give all our goods to feed the poor, and yet have not one atom of that charity which will be approved of our God, 1 Corinthians 13:1-3.

WILLIAM GURNALL (1617-1679): The more of the heart and spirit is in any holy service, the more real goodness there is in it―the widow’s two mites surpas­sed all the rest, Christ Himself being judge.

ADAM CLARKE: She did this in a better spirit, having a simple desire to please God. Never did any king come near the liberality of this widow; she gave all that she had to provide for one day’s sustenance, and could have no more till by her labour she had acquired it. What trust must there be in the Divine Providence to perform such an act as this!

J. C. RYLE: How pleasing to Christ is self-denying liberality in giving.

CHARLES SIMEON: Benevolence is essential to the Christian character―and especially in administering relief to the Lord’s people. We should also impart liberally of what we possess. If any be disposed to set aside her example as singular, and not intended for our imitation, we appeal to similar conduct in the Churches of Macedonia; where, in the midst of “deep poverty,” they abounded unto the “riches of liberality;” and gave, not only according to their power, but even beyond their power, being willing of themselves, and praying the Apostle with much entreaty to be the distributor of their alms, 2 Corinthians 8:2-4.

C. H. SPURGEON: It is given to each member in his measure, to serve God by giving. Some are enabled, being made stewards of wealth, to give largely of their substance. They are bound to do so, but they should not give it merely as being bound, but feeling it to be their privilege to give whatever they can to Him who gave them their all, and who is their All. The poorest Christian is not exempted from this privilege. If he has but little, God accepts “according to that which a man has, and not according to that which he has not,” 2 Corinthians 8:12.

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Therefore we must follow this rule, that every one, considering how much is granted him, impart the same courteously with his brethren―for the poor who appear not to have the power of doing good, are encouraged by our Lord not to hesitate to express their affection cheerfully out of their slender means.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): And it is of great concernment that we not only do what is required, but do it as it is commanded―“He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver,” 2 Corinthians 9:6,7.

CHARLES BRIDGES (1794-1869): “The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself,” Proverbs 11:25. God has put a mark of distinguishing favour upon the exercises of that mercy, which is His own attribute. He scatters his blessings richly around, and those that partake of His Spirit do the same.

J. R. MILLER (1840-1912): The lesson is plain―the way to make sure of spiritual blessing is to seek to be a blessing. If your love is growing cold, help someone and it will become warm again. We cannot afford to shut our doors in the face of those God sends to us for sympathy and for the ministries of love. Such serving brings to us blessings which we must not miss.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD (1714-1770): Let us be faithful today, and our Lord will support us tomorrow.

 

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The Dark Places of the Earth, Past & Present

Posted on April 5, 2019 by The Editor

Psalm 74:20

The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.

JOHN HAMBLETON (1820-1889): Heathenism is cruel. It is not changed in character since the days when parents made their children to pass through fire to Molech, Jeremiah 32:35.

JOHN ANGELL JAMES (1785-1869): Rome and Greece, in the zenith of their glory, had neither a hospital for the sick, nor an asylum for the poor; they treated their enemies with the most insolent cruelty.

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): In ancient Greece, parents were at liberty to abandon their children to perish from cold and hunger―and such exposures were frequently practiced; they passed without punishment or censure. Wars were prosecuted with the utmost ferocity and the Greeks commonly sacrificed their captives at the tombs of their heroes. At Rome, Pompey turned five hundred lions into the arena to battle an equal number of his braves, and “delicate ladies” sat applauding and gloating over the flow of blood. Aged and infirm citizens were banished to an island in the Tiber. Almost two-thirds of the “civilized” world were slaves, their masters having absolute power over them. Human sacrifices were frequently offered on the temple altars. Destruction and misery were commonplace.

J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): But who can wonder? The times might well be dark, when men had not the light of the Bible.

THOMAS MANTON (1620-1677): Without the Word, men lie in darkness, whatever learning they have.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Evidence from history shows that God’s Word has imparted the light of civilization, liberty, holiness.

JOHN ANGELL JAMES: What a blessing has Christianity been to the whole world—It has suppressed polygamy, put a stop to the sale of children by their parents, and the abandonment and murder of aged parents, by their children; it has rescued women from their abominable degradation by the other sex, and raised them to their just rank in society; it has sanctified the bond of marriage, checked the licentiousness of divorce, destroyed slavery, mitigated the terrors of war, given new sanction to treaties, introduced milder laws, and more equitable governments; it has taught mercy to enemies and hospitality to strangers—it has made a legal provision for the poor; formed institutions for instructing the ignorant; purified the stream of justice; erected the throne of mercy. “These, O Jesus, are the triumphs and the trophies of your gospel! Which of your enemies—Paganism, Islamism, or Infidelity—has done, or could do the like?”

MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): All the Word of God is light, but especially the gospel.

JOHN ANGELL JAMES: Even avowed and inveterate opponents of the gospel, have been reluctantly compelled to acknowledge its excellence. Voltaire says expressly, “that religion is necessary in every community; the laws are a curb upon open crimes, and religion on those that are private.” “No religion,” says Bolingbroke, “ever appeared in the world, whose natural tendency was so much directed to promote the peace and happiness of mankind, as the Christian religion. The gospel of Christ is one continued lesson of the strictest morality, of justice, benevolence, and universal charity. Supposing Christianity to be a human invention, it is the most amiable and useful invention that ever was imposed upon mankind for their good.” Hume acknowledges, “that disbelief looses in a great measure the ties of morality, and may be supposed, for that reason, pernicious to the peace of civil society.” Rousseau confesses, “that if all were perfect Christians, individuals would do their duty, the people would be obedient to the laws, the rulers just, the magistrates incorrupt, and there would be neither vanity nor luxury in such a state.” Gibbon admits, “that the gospel discouraged suicide, advanced education, checked oppression, promoted the emancipation of slaves, and softened the ferocity of barbarous nations; that fierce nations received at the same time lessons of faith and humanity, and that even in the most corrupt state of Christianity, the barbarians learned justice from the law, and mercy from the gospel.” And yet with such concessions, and after having paid such a tribute of praise to the excellence of Christianity, these miserable men have been so vile and perverse as to conspire for her destruction.

CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): As the Scripture strongly expresses it, they “rebel against the light,” Job 24:13.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): They hate the light because it robs them of the good opinion they had of themselves, by showing them their sinfulness. This is the “light that shines in a dark place,” 2 Peter 1:19; and a dark place indeed the world would be without the Bible.

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564):  All are immersed in darkness, who do not attend to the light of the Word.

JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): Countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa, where the Gospel was once known, have been for many ages involved in Mohammedan darkness.

JOHN ANGELL JAMES: How completely Islamism has filled its votaries with the most ferocious bigotry and the most merciless intolerance, is known by universal testimony. The spirit of the system is everywhere visible in the absolute despotism of the governments of those countries in which it prevails. Where it is found, the arts and the sciences do not flourish, and liberty withers in its shade—and it is essentially and unalterably cruel.

THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Let us beware how we throw aside our Bibles, or treat them with a fashionable contempt and neglect; which, besides the danger of it to our constitution, must unavoidably be attended with a corruption of manners, widely spreading and increasing in proportion to it. For as there can be no sufficient curb to the inordinate passions of men without religion, so there can be no religion of sufficient authority to influence mankind, without a revelation―nor is there any other real revelation of the will of God beside that contained in the Holy Scriptures―they are the only true supports of true religion in the world.

J. C. RYLE: This is the book on which the well-being of nations has always hinged, and with which the best interests of every nation in Christendom at this moment are inseparably bound up. Just in proportion as the Bible is honoured or not, light or darkness, morality or immorality, true religion or superstition, liberty or despotism, good laws or bad, will be found in a land.

A. W. PINK: Blot the Bible out of existence and what would we know about God’s character, His moral attributes, His attitude toward us, or His demands upon us?

JOSEPH CARYL (1602-1673): The prophet Hosea shows that where there is no knowledge of God in a land, for want of means, there is no truth nor mercy in that land―that is, there is none exercised―but oppression, deceit, and falsehood bear down all, Hosea 4:1. How much more must it be so where there is no knowledge of God in a land because of the contempt of that means, and rebellion against the light?

A. W. TOZER (1897-1963): There are two degrees of darkness, according to our Lord, Matthew 6:23. First, there is the darkness that is absolute―where there has never been any light. That is the darkness of the heathen. But the second is another degree of darkness and more intense―the darkness that follows rejected light. How much more are they prepared for the acting of any wickedness who have thrust the light from them, and are in dark places of their own making?

A. W. PINK: It has ever been true, and still is today, that “the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.”

 

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Why Government Leaders Need Our Prayers

Posted on March 29, 2019 by The Editor

1 Timothy 2:1-4

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

EDWARD PAYSON (1783-1827): Those who are invested with authority, need, more than other men, our prayers; because they are exposed, more than other men, to temptation and danger. While they have a more than ordinary share of duties to perform, they are urged by temptations, more than ordinarily numerous and powerful, to neglect their duty. They have, for instance, peculiarly strong temptations to neglect those personal, private duties which God requires of them as men, as immortal and accountable creatures; and a performance of which is indispensably necessary to their salvation. They are exposed to the innumerable temptations and dangers which ever attend prosperity. The world presents itself to them in its most fascinating, alluring form; they are honoured, followed, and flattered; they enjoy peculiar means and opportunities for gratifying their passions; they seldom hear the voice of admonition or reproof; and they are usually surrounded by persons who would consider every expression of religious feeling as an indication of weakness.

WILLIAM ARNOT (1808-1875): It is fashionable in high places to laud religious indifference, and stigmatize as bigotry all earnest belief.

EDWARD PAYSON: How powerfully, then, must they be tempted to irreligion, to pride, to ambition, to every form of what the Scriptures call worldly-mindedness?

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): They have many difficulties to encounter, many snares to which their exalted stations expose them.

EDWARD PAYSON: How difficult must it be for them to acquire and maintain an habitual, operative recollection of their sinfulness, their frailty, their accountability to God, their dependence on His grace, and their need of a Saviour. How difficult, in the midst of such scenes and associates, as usually surround them; to keep death in view; to be in a constant state of preparation for its approach; to practice the duties of watchfulness, self-denial, meditation and prayer; and to preserve, in lively exercise, those feelings and dispositions which God requires, and which become a candidate for eternity. How strongly, too, must they be tempted to make the performance of their official duties, an excuse for neglecting those personal duties, which God requires of all men, in whatever station or circumstance they may be placed.

JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): It is hard for great ones to deny themselves.

EDWARD PAYSON: We may remark farther, that they have many powerful temptations to neglect, not only their personal, but their official duties. They are tempted to indolence and self-indulgence; tempted to prefer their own private interest, to the public good; tempted to pay an undue regard to the selfish wishes and entreaties of their real, or pretended friends; tempted to adopt such measures as will be most popular, rather than those which will be most beneficial to the community; tempted to forget the honour and the rights of Jehovah, and suffer them to be trampled on with impunity.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD (1714-1770): If we consider how heavy the burden of government is, and how much the welfare of any people depends on the zeal and godly conversation of those that have the rule over them: if we set before us the many dangers and difficulties, to which governors by their station are exposed, and the continual temptations they be under to luxury and self-indulgence; we shall not only pity, but pray for them.

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Paul teaches “that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all classes of men; for kings, and for all that are in authority”—in which duty many are woefully remiss—yet it is not for their salvation, but “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.”

JOHN GILL (1697-1771): Since the hearts of kings are in the hands of the Lord, and He can turn them as He pleases, prayer should be made to Him for them, that He would either convert them, and bring them to the knowledge of the truth, they now persecuted; or at least so dispose their hearts and minds, that they might stop the persecution, and so saints might live peaceably under them, enjoy their religious liberty, and be encouraged in their moral conversation.

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): It is our duty, therefore, not only to pray for those who are already worthy, but we must pray to God that He may make bad men good.

EDWARD PAYSON: It can scarcely be necessary to add, that persons who are exposed to temptations so numerous and powerful, peculiarly need our prayers. I will only add that the Scriptures intimate with sufficient clearness that those temptations are, in most instances, but too fatally successful. They inform us, that “not many mighty men, not many noble” are saved, 1 Corinthians 1:26. Our Saviour farther declares, that it is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God; and it would be easy to shew that the causes which render it difficult for a rich man, operate with equal force to make it difficult for men clothed with authority, to enter this kingdom.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Not many great men after the flesh, not many mighty are chosen and called!

JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791): Not many mighty—men of power and authority.

C. H. SPURGEON: Is it not an extraordinary thing that the Lord should ever have loved some of us? We are nothing in particular and there are mighty men, learned men, men of rank and station, yet He has passed them by.

JOHN CALVIN That man, however, were an arrant fool, who would infer from this, that God has in this manner abased the glory of the flesh, in order that the great and noble might be shut out from the hope of salvation. There are some foolish persons that make this a pretext for not merely triumphing over the great, as if God had cast them off, but even despising them as far beneath them.

JOHN TRAPP: Saith Martin Luther of Elizabeth, Queen of Denmark, who lived and died in the truth of the gospel: “God hath His, even among great ones, too.”

C. H. SPURGEON: True enough is that word―it was never said, “Not any great men, not any mighty are chosen.” God has selected a few in places of wealth, and power, and influence who have faith in their hearts, and that in an eminent degree.

FRANCES BEVAN (1827-1909): Lady Huntingdon said she was thankful for the letter “m.”

H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): When someone asked her what she meant, she stated that she was so thankful that Scripture does not say, “Not any noble are called.” It says, “Not many noble, ” and therefore she got into heaven by an “m.”

ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): As it is a positive maxim of Christianity to pray for all secular governors, so it has ever been the practice of Christians.

J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): Let us pray much for great men. They need great grace to keep them from the devil. High places are slippery places. No wonder that Paul recommends intercession “for kings and for all that are in authority.”

 

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“Battle Lines Being Drawn; Nobody’s Right, If Everybody’s Wrong”

Posted on March 22, 2019 by The Editor

Romans 14:1-6, 10

Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand. One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks…

But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): We have in this chapter an account of the unhappy contention which had broken out in the Christian church…It was not so much the difference itself that did the mischief as the mismanagement of the difference, making it a bone of contention. Those who were strong, and knew their Christian liberty, and made use of it, despised the weak, who did not. Whereas they should have pitied them, and helped them, and afforded them meek and friendly instruction, they trampled upon them as silly, and humoursome, and superstitious, for scrupling those things which they knew to be lawful: so apt are those who have knowledge to be puffed up with it, and to look disdainfully and scornfully upon their brethren.

JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): There is a principle of self, which disposes us to despise those who differ from us, and we are often under its influence, when we think we are only showing a becoming zeal in the cause of God.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): We must remember that men who are equally honest may differ.

THOMAS MANTON (1620-1677): Where men are right in the main, and give diligence to know God’s mind, there will be mistakes in lesser things.  All have not parts alike, and gifts and graces alike; and therefore there is some variety of opinions and interpretations of Scripture among the godly wise. Every man is not so happy to be so well studied, nor hath that ability to understand, nor so furnished with acquired helps of arts and tongues, nor such a degree of the Spirit. There is a difference in age, growth, and experience, among good men; some are babes, and some grown in years, in Christianity.

MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546): Give men time. I took three years of constant study, reflection, and discussion to arrive where I now am, and can the common man, untutored in such matters, be expected to move the same distance in three months?

WILLIAM JAY (1769-1853): Many religious people are blamable here…They want to effect everything at a stroke. They forget their own ignorance and slowness when God began to deal with them.  They forget Him who does not despise the day of small things. They forget Him who said to His followers, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,” John 16:12.

THOMAS GOODWIN (1600-1679): Yea, further, some of them were censorious, and judging all others rashly that were not of their minds.

MATTHEW HENRY: Those who were weak, and durst not use their Christian liberty, judged and censured the strong who did [use their liberty], as if they were loose Christians, carnal professors, that cared not what they did, but walked at all adventures, and stuck at nothing. They judged them as breakers of the law, condemners of God’s ordinance, and the like. Such censures as these discovered a great deal of rashness and uncharitableness, and would doubtless tend much to the alienating of affection.

ANDREW FULLER (1754-1815): Hence arise debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults. Thus the sweets of society, both civil and religious, are embittered; and, instead of the ills of life diminishing, they greatly accumulate in our hands.

THOMAS MANTON: Censuring is a pleasing sin, extremely compliant with nature.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: It is a self-righteous spirit. Self is always at the back of it, and it is always a manifestation of self-righteousness, a feeling of superiority, and a feeling that we are all right while others are not.  That then leads to censoriousness, and a spirit that is always ready to express itself in a derogatory manner.  And then, accompanying that, there is the tendency to despise others, to regard them with contempt.

JOHN NEWTON: Yea, I would add, the best of men are not wholly free from this leaven; and therefore are too apt to be pleased with such representations as hold up our adversaries to ridicule, and by consequence flatter our own superior judgments.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: It seems to me, further, that a very vital part of this spirit is the tendency to be hypercritical.  Now there is all the difference in the world between being critical and being hypercritical…The man who is hypercritical, which means that he delights in criticism for its own sake and enjoys it. I am afraid I must go further and say that he is a man who approaches anything which he is asked to criticize expecting to find faults, indeed, almost hoping to find them. The simplest way, perhaps, of putting all this is to ask you to read 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Look at the negative of everything positive which Paul says about love. Love “hopeth all things,” but this spirit hopes for the worst; it gets a malicious, malign satisfaction in finding faults and blemishes. It is a spirit that is always expecting them, and is almost disappointed if it does not find them; it is always on the look-out for them, and rather delights in them. There is no question about that, the hypercritical spirit is never really happy unless it finds these faults.  And, of course, the result of all this is that it tends to fix attention upon matters that are indifferent and to make of them matters of vital importance.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): If we really believe a truth, we shall be decided about it. But certainly we are not to show our decision by that obstinate, furious, wolfish bigotry which cuts off every other body from the chance and hope of salvation and the possibility of being regenerate or even decently honest if they happen to differ from us about the color of a scale of the great leviathan. Some individuals appear to be naturally cut on the cross; they are manufactured to be rasps, and rasp they will. Sooner than not quarrel with you they would raise a question upon the color of invisibility, or the weight of a nonexistent substance. They are up in arms with you, not because of the importance of the question under discussion, but because of the far greater importance of their being always the Pope of the party.

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): As we grow older we have less patience with those who demand that others must adopt their interpretation of Scripture on all points.

MATTHEW HENRY: Well, this was the disease, and we see it remaining in the church to this day; the like differences, in like manner mismanaged, are still the disturbers of the church’s peace.

 

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The Weaned Child of God

Posted on March 15, 2019 by The Editor

Psalm 131:2,3

Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child. Let Israel hope in the LORD from henceforth and for ever.

JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): David was as a weaned child.

WILLIAM JAY (1769-1853): Weaned from what?

JOHN GILL (1697-1771): From the world―the riches, honours, pleasures, and profits of it; as well as from nature, from self, from our own righteousness, and all dependence upon it.

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): God’s design is to wean us from everything down here, to bring us to the place where we have no reliance upon material and human resources, to cast us completely upon Himself.

CHARLES BRADLEY (1789-1871): Let us inquire now into the sources of this frame of mind―how we get it. One thing is certain: it is not our work. We do not bring ourselves to it. No infant weans itself. The truth is, it is God that must wean us from the world. We shall never leave it of our own accord. It is God’s own right hand that must draw us from it.

JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): His daily providential dispensations are suited to wean our attachment from everything here, and to convince us that this cannot be our rest.

CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): Who does not see how trials wean us from the world, and purify us from our dross? Nothing tends more to wean us from the world, than the opposition we meet from worldly men.

WILLIAM JAY: We love the world, and it deceives us. We depend on creatures, and they fail us, and pierce us through with many sorrows. We enter forbidden paths, and follow after our lovers; and our way is hedged up with thorns.

CHARLES BRADLEY: At other times the Lord removes from us the thing we love. But He weans us most from the earth by giving us better food.

WILLIAM JAY: The enjoyment of a greater good subdues the relish of a lesser.

ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): All that is true. But there is something more than that.

ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Indeed there is.

CHARLES BRADLEY: Weanedness of soul differs essentially from that disgust with the world, to which its ill-usage and meanness sometimes give rise. It is one thing to be angry with the world, or ashamed of it, and another to be weaned from it. Alter the world, ennoble it, and many a proud mind that now despises it, would court it. It is different also from that weariness of spirit which generally follows a free indulgence in earthly enjoyments. There is such a thing as wearing out the affections. Solomon appears to have done this at one period of his life.

JAMES VAUGHAN (1774-1857): A mere apathetic state is the very opposite of obedience.

CHARLES BRADLEY: This weanedness of soul pre-supposes a power left in the soul of loving and desiring. It is not the destruction of its appetite, but the controlling and changing of it. A weaned child still hungers, but it hungers no more after the food that once delighted it; it is quiet without it; it can feed on other things: so a soul weaned from the world, still pants as much as ever for food and happiness, but it no longer seeks them in worldly things, or desires to do so. There is nothing in the world that it feels necessary for its happiness―it knows that it can do without them, and it is ready to do without them whenever God pleases.

THOMAS MANTON (1620-1677):  Though the weaned child has not what it would have, or what it naturally most desireth, the milk of the breast, yet it is contented with what the mother giveth: it rests upon her love and provision. So are we to be content with what providence alloweth us: Hebrews 13:5, “Let your conversation be without covetousness, and be content with such things as ye have;” and Philippians 4:11, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” With such a simplicity of submission should we rest and depend upon God.

ROBERT HAWKER: Yet it is a long time before they are fully weaned.

JAMES VAUGHAN: Observe, the “child”—which is drawn for us to copy―is “weaned:” the process is complete; it has been truly disciplined; the lesson is learned; and now it rests in its “weaning.” The whole image expresses a repose which follows a struggle.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): I was once conversing with a very excellent aged minister and while we were talking about our attitude and feelings, he said, “When I read that passage in the Psalm, ‘My soul is even as a weaned child,’ I wish it were true of me, but I think I should have to make an alteration of one syllable and then it would exactly describe me at times—‘My soul is even as a weaning, rather than a weaned child,’ for,” said he, “with the infirmities of old age, I fear I get fretful and peevish and anxious. And when the day is over I do not feel that I have been in so calm, resigned and trustful a frame of mind as I could desire.”

WILLIAM JAY: The very form of expression, “I have behaved and quieted myself,” reminds us of some risings which were with difficulty subdued. The task to the mother is trying and troublesome. The infant cries, and seems to sob out his heart. He thinks it very hard in her, and knows not what she means by her seeming cruelty, and the mother’s fondness renders all her firmness necessary to keep her at the process; and sometimes she also weeps at the importunity of his dear looks, and big tears, and stretched-out hands. But it must be done—So it is with us.

C. H. SPURGEON: Why is it desirable to be even as a weaned child? It is excellent in every way―for when you are weaned, your desires will no longer worry you. Curb desire and you have struck at the root of half your sorrow! He smarts not under poverty who has learned to be content. He frets not under affliction who is submissive to the Father’s will and lays aside his own. When your desires are held within bounds, your temptations to rebel are ended. You wanted this and you wanted that, and so you quarreled with God—and your Lord and you were seldom on good terms. He did not choose to pamper you and you wanted Him to and so you fretted like a weaning child. Now you leave it to His will and you have peace. The strife is over. Your soul is quieted and behaves itself becomingly. Now also, your resentments against those who injured you are gone. You were angry with a certain person, but your pettishness has ended with your weaning—you see that God sent him to do this which has troubled you and you accept his hard words and cruel actions as from God—and by His Grace, you are angry no more. You do not kick and struggle, now, against your condition and position. And you no longer murmur and complain from day to day as if you were harshly dealt with.

OCTAVIUS WINSLOW (1808-1878): Now the soul trusts in God; trusts Him at all times and under all circumstances; trusts Him in the darkest hour, under the gloomiest dispensation; trusts Him when His providences look dark and lowering, and God seems to hide Himself; yes, trusts Him “though He slay.”

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): This is a hard lesson, and a high attainment, but it is what Christ has called His people to.

 

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Honourable Humility: Thomas Manton

Posted on March 8, 2019 by The Editor

James 4:6

God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

THOMAS WATSON (1620-1686): Humility is the sweet spice that grows from poverty of spirit.

THOMAS BROOKS (1608-1680): The most holy men are always the most humble men.

WILLIAM HARRIS (1675-1740): There is a remarkable passage to this purpose in Thomas Manton’s Exposition of James, in which he expresses the humble acknowledgment of his fault. He delivered it with tears in his eyes. It is on James 1:19, “Be slow to speak.” “I remember,” says he, “my faults this day; I cannot excuse myself from much of crime and sin in it. I have been in the ministry these ten years, and yet not fully completed the thirtieth year of my age—the Lord forgive my rash intrusion.”

WILLIAM BATES (1625-1699): Thomas Manton was deeply affected with the sense of his frailty and unworthiness. He considered the infinite purity of God, and the perfection of His law, the rule of duty; and by that humbling light discovered his manifold defects.

WILLIAM HARRIS: He was born in the year 1620, at Lawrence-Lydiat, in the county of Somerset. His father and both his grandfathers were ministers. He was qualified to enter academic learning at the age of fourteen, which was very unusual in those days. But his parents, either judging him too young, or loath to part with him so soon, kept him a year longer before he was sent to Oxford. He was placed in Wadham College in the year 1635, and took his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1639. By a course of unwearied diligence, joined with great intellectual endowments, he was early qualified for the work of the ministry, and took orders much sooner than was usual, and than he himself approved upon maturer thoughts, after he had more experience.

STEPHEN CHARNOCK (1628-1680): Manton was the best collector of sense of the Puritan age.

WILLIAM BATES: I heard the greatest men of those times sometimes preach a mean sermon, but I never heard Thomas Manton do so on any occasion.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Manton once preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral; a great crowd went to listen to him.

WILLIAM HARRIS: While he was minister at Covent Garden, he was invited to preach before the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen, and the Companies of the city at St. Paul’s. He chose some difficult subject, in which he had opportunity of displaying his judgment and learning, and appearing to the best advantage. He was heard with the admiration and applause of the more intelligent part of the audience; and was invited to dine with the Lord Mayor, and received public thanks for his performance. But upon his return in the evening to Covent Garden, a poor man gently plucked him by the sleeve, and asked if he had preached that day before the Lord Mayor. He replied, he was. “Sir,” says the man, “I came with earnest desires after the Word of God, in hopes of getting some good to my soul, but I was greatly disappointed; for I could not understand a great deal of what you said; you were quite above me.” Manton replied, with tears in his eyes, “Friend, if I did not give you a sermon, you have given me one; and, by the grace of God, I will never play the fool to preach in such a manner again.”

A. W. TOZER (1897-1963): An humble man will never be a heretic: show him his error, and he will soon retract it.

JAMES USSHER (1581-1656): Manton was one of the best preachers in England―a voluminous preacher.

WILLIAM HARRIS: Not that he was ever long, or tedious; but he had the art of reducing the substance of whole volumes into a narrow compass, and representing it to great advantage…This will appear the less surprising, if we consider the great care he took about them. He generally wrote the heads and principle branches first, and often wrote them over twice afterwards. When his sermon did not please him, nor the matter open kindly, he would lay it aside for that time, though it were Saturday night; and sit up all night to prepare a sermon upon an easier subject, and more to his satisfaction. If a good thought came into his mind in the night, he would light his candle, and put on his gown, and write sometimes for an hour together at a table by his bedside.

C. H. SPURGEON: That which cost thought is likely to excite thought.

JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): Humility is very necessary to a profitable perusal of the Scriptures…A proud Christian, that is, one who has a high conceit of his own abilities and attainments, is no less a contradiction, than a sober drunkard, or a generous miser.  All other seeming excellencies are of no real value, unless accompanied with this; and though a person should appear to have little more than a consciousness of his own insufficiency, and a teachable dependent spirit, and is waiting upon the Lord in His appointed way for instruction and a blessing, he will infallibly thrive as a tree planted by the waterside; for God, who resisteth the proud, has promised to give grace to the humble.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): God delights to advance the humble.

J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): Manton occupied for several years a very prominent position. Did Oliver Cromwell require a minister to offer up prayer at the public ceremony of his undertaking the Protectorship? Manton was the minister. Did the Long Parliament want a special sermon preached before its members? Manton was frequently ordered to be the preacher. Did the famous Westminster Assembly want a commendatory preface written to their Confession and Catechisms of world-wide reputation? They committed the execution of it to the pen of Thomas Manton. Was a committee of Triers appointed to examine persons who were to be admitted into the ministry? Manton was a leading member of this committee. Was a movement made by the Presbyterians, after Cromwell’s death, to restore the monarchy and bring back Charles II? Manton was a leader in the movement. Was an effort made after the Restoration to bring about a reconciliation between the Episcopal Church and the Nonconformists? Manton was one of the commissioners to act in the matter in the unhappy Savoy Conference.

WILLIAM HARRIS: Though he was a man of great gravity, and of a regular unaffected piety, yet he was extremely cheerful and pleasant among his friends, and upon every proper occasion…He greatly disliked the forbidding rigours of some good people, and the rapturous pretensions of others; and used to say that he had found, by long observation, that they who would be over-godly at one time, would be under-godly at another.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD (1714-1770):  A good woman, charmed with Manton, said, “Oh, sir, you have made an excellent sermon today; I wish I had your heart.” “Do you?” said he, “good woman, you had better not wish for it; for if you had it, you would wish for your own again.”

J. C. RYLE: Humility is to make a right estimate of oneself.

 

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Am I a Child of God?

Posted on March 1, 2019 by The Editor

Ephesians 1:15; 1 John 3:14

I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints.

We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.

WILLIAM GURNALL (1617-1679): Love to the brethren is oft given as a character of a true saint.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): Why is this so important? Why is this loving of the brethren something that comes in as an acid test immediately after faith in the Lord Jesus?

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Faith cannot be separated from love.

JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): Upon this single evidence, John grounds an assurance of heaven—the Apostle having said, “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you,” immediately subjoins, “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” By the manner of his expression, he sufficiently intimates that the want of this love is so universal, till the Lord plants it in the heart, that if we possess it, we may thereby be sure He has given us of His Spirit and delivered us from condemnation.

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Why is love for the brethren an infallible evidence and assurance of regeneration?

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: Oh, I’ll tell you, it is an absolute proof of life―this love. You see, by nature, we all hate one another. You dispute that? Well, the apostle Paul says so, and I think he’s saying the truth―this is how he puts it: “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful―and hating one another,” Titus 3:3…The natural man, the man who’s not a Christian, the man who is not born again, he has no interest in Christian people, he dislikes them, he finds them dull, uninteresting, downbeat―those are his terms about them. And he certainly wouldn’t like to spend a number of hours in the presence of such a person.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): If we do not love the brethren, we are still dead.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: Therefore, you see, if it can be said of a man that he loves the saints, you can be absolutely sure that the man has been given a new nature; he’s been born again.

A. W. PINK: Love to the brethren is the fruit and effect of a new and supernatural birth, wrought in our souls by the Holy Spirit, as the blessed evidence of our having been chosen in Christ by the Divine Father, before the world was―we love the brethren, because they have been made “partakers of the Divine nature,” 2 Peter 1:4.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: So you see, if we love the saints, it is a proof that the Holy Spirit is in us…I ask myself, why do I love these saints? And the answer is I love them because they are in the same relationship to God as I am.  These are the people who have been segregated out of the world, chosen of God, translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son. These people and I are walking together through this world of sin in the direction of heaven!  I’m going to spend my eternity with people like this…We belong to the same Father, to the same household, to the same family, we are going to the same home.

MARY WINSLOW (1774-1854): I have this one evidence, if I have no other, of my election of God—I love all the saints in the bowels of Jesus Christ. I feel a oneness with them that I feel to no other.

C. H. SPURGEON: Have you a love towards the saints? Well, then you are a saint yourself! The goats will not love the sheep. And if you love the sheep, it is an evidence that you are a sheep yourself…Hypocrites do not love one another—Listen to them! They are always denouncing other people—and this is no mark of love to the brethren. They have a keen eye for the imperfections of others, but they have no love to those they censure. We must love the brethren or we lack the most plain and most necessary evidence of salvation.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: You see, a Christian is a man who’s got a new test―he’s only interested in one thing: Is he a child of God? Is he my brother? Is this my sister? Are we related?

OCTAVIUS WINSLOW (1808-1878): Here is a test of our relationship to the family of God that never fails.

JOHN NEWTON: But as the heart is deceitful, and people may be awfully mistaken in the judgment they form of themselves, we have need to be very sure that we rightly understand what it is to love the brethren, before we draw the Apostle’s conclusion from it, and admit is as an evidence in our own favour, that we have passed from death unto life.

THOMAS WATSON (1620-1686): It is possible to love a saint, yet not to love him as a saint; we may love him for something else—for his ingenuity, or because he is affable and bountiful.  A beast loves a man, but not as he is a man, but because he feeds him, and gives him provender.

JOHN NEWTON: A “party” love is also common. The objects of this are those who are of the same sentiment, worship in the same way, or are attached to the same minister. They who are united in such narrow and separate associations, may express warm affections, without giving any proof of true Christian love.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD (1714-1770): As soon as the love of God was shed abroad in my soul, I loved all, of whatsoever denomination, who loved the Lord Jesus in sincerity of heart.

A. W. PINK: Wherever the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, the affections of that soul will necessarily flow unto all His people…If we love one saint as a “saint”—for what we see of Christ in him—we shall love all saints.

JOHN CALVIN: If we would so love the saints as to please God, we must bear in mind that their names are written in heaven and on Christ’s heart; otherwise we shall love some because they are lovely, and dislike others because of their blemishes.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: All the saints. Not only some of them. Not only the ones you happen to like, but all the saints. Not only the clever ones. Not only the learned ones. Not only the pleasant ones. Not only the ones who belong to a particular social strata. No, no, all of the saints.

C. H. SPURGEON: Yes, a love even to the bad-tempered ones, the irritating ones, the unsaint-like “saints.”

OCTAVIUS WINSLOW (1808-1878): Then, let every Christian professor test his religion by this grace. Let him who has been prone to retire within his own narrow enclosure ask himself the question, “If I love not my brother whom I have seen, how can I love God whom I have not seen?”

RALPH ERSKINE (1685-1752): But how may we know, if our love toward the children of God be of the right sort?  This is answered, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments,” 1 John 5:2.

H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): Do I show evidence of a regenerate soul? Do I love the brethren? Do I love the commandments of God? Is the Word of God sweet to me, and do I delight to feed on it?

 

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God’s Delights

Posted on February 22, 2019 by The Editor

Proverbs 11:20; Psalm 147:11; Jeremiah 9:24

They that are of a froward heart are abomination to the LORD: but such as are upright in their way are his delight.

The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy.

But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.

MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): “In these things I delight”―both in Himself and others.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): It concerns us to know what God hates and what He loves, that we may govern ourselves accordingly, may avoid His displeasure and recommend ourselves to His favour. Now here we are told that nothing is more offensive to God than hypocrisy and double-dealing, for these are signified by the word which we translate “frowardness.” And that nothing is more pleasing to God than sincerity and plain-dealing: “such as are upright in their way,” such as aim and act with integrity.

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Integrity and uprightness, indeed, give God delight.

HENRY HAMMOND (1605-1660): “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts,” Psalm 51:6. The Hebrew word אמת, [translated] truth, ordinarily signifies sincerity, uprightness, and integrity; and so “truth in the inward parts” is equivalent to a hearty sincere obedience, not only of the actions, but of the very thoughts and affections to God―this God is said to will, or “desire,” or delight in, and so to command and require of us.

JOHN CALVIN: In all things God delights in truth, but especially in the worship due to His majesty―God delights in the pure and sincere worship of the faithful.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): God delights in the prayers and praises of Christian families and individuals, but He has a special eye to the assemblies of the faithful, and He has a special delight in their devotions in their church capacity. The great festivals, when the crowds surrounded the temple gates, were fair in the Lord’s eyes, and even such is the general assembly and church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven…Know you not that Christ’s delights are with the sons of men and that the holiness, the patience, the devotion, the zeal, the love and the faith of His people are precious to Him? The whole creation affords no fairer sight to the Most High than an assembly of His sanctified people in whom He sees the beauty of His own Character reflected.

JOHN CALVIN: The Lord takes the highest delight in the true observation of the Sabbath―Nothing can be more pleasing or acceptable to God, than the observation of the Sabbath, and sincere worship.

C. H. SPURGEON: Spiritual qualities are His delight. He cares most for those emotions which centre in Himself, the fear which He approves is fear of Him, and the hope which He accepts is hope in His mercy…And especially if there is one thing in a saint which delights God more than another, it is the choice grace of faith.

THOMAS GOODWIN (1600-1679): He delights more in our knowing Him to be merciful and to be gracious, which indeed is seen in our believing on Him, than in all our obedience which we perform to Him.

MATTHEW HENRY: A humble confidence in the goodness of God’s nature is very pleasing to Him, as that which turns to the glory of that attribute in which He most glories―the reasons why God pardons sin, and keeps not His anger for ever, are all taken from within Himself; it is because “He delights in mercy,” Micah 7:18…God delights to show kindness.

JOHN CALVIN: God then is said to take delight in doing good because He is, in His nature, inclined to goodness and mercy.

ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): Nothing can please Him better than having the opportunity, from the return and repentance of the sinner, to show him that mercy without which he must perish everlastingly.

JOHN GILL (1697-1771): Mercy is natural to Him, abundant with Him, and exercised according to His sovereign will and pleasure, very delightful to Him; He takes pleasure in showing mercy to miserable creatures, and in those that hope in it; this is the spring of pardon, which streams through the blood of Christ…it is what God delights in, and therefore He pardons freely; it is large and abundant, and hence He pardons fully.

C. H. SPURGEON: He is at home in this blessed work! With God, it is His nature to forgive—He is Love—and mercy is a drop from the honeycomb of love. God must be just, but to punish is His left-handed labour, while to forgive is His right-handed work. He is happy at it! He finds pleasure in man’s turning to Him and finding life.

ADAM CLARKE: God delights in mercy―God delights not in the rod; judgment is “His strange work,” Isaiah 28:21.

JOHN CALVIN: God delights in judgment as well as in mercy―for as His judgment is right, He delights in it.

WILLIAM KELLY (1821-1906):  God delights to manifest Himself in all His fulness.

MATTHEW HENRY: “The LORD loveth judgment,” Psalm 37:28. He delights in doing justice Himself and He delights in those that do justice…Those that are elevated God delights to abase, and commonly does it in the course of His providence: The proud, that magnify themselves, bid defiance to the God above them and trample on all about them, are such as God resists and will destroy—see how God delights not only to bring down proud men, but to bring them down in such a way as is most mortifying, and pours most contempt upon them. Herod is not only destroyed, but destroyed by worms, that the pride of his glory may be effectually stained, Acts 12:23.

JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): God delights to cross such vain boasters, and to confute their confidences, that speak and live as if their lives were riveted upon eternity.

THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): They who abuse their power, and walk in pride, God delights to abase.

JOHN TRAPP: God delights to retaliate to bloody and deceitful men especially; as were easy to instance in the Egyptians, Adonibezek, Agag―Thus God delights to retaliate and proportion jealousy to jealousy, provocation to provocation; so frowardness to frowardness, contrariety to contrariety. God delights to give men their own, as good as they brought, to pay them home in their own coin, or, with the merciful to show Himself merciful, and with the froward to wrestle, Psalm 18:25,26.

JOHN CALVIN: If we framed our life in obedience to God, we should be His delight, and, on the other hand, He would be our delight.

WILLIAM KELLY: The spirit of a Christian servant is not doing merely what is commanded, but the doing whatsoever delights God: the desire of the servant should be to please the Master.

CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): In particular, consult the sacred records, and see what those things are in which your God delights. Does He delight to honour His only dear Son? Let your whole soul engage in this blessed work, looking to Him for all that you want, “receiving every thing out of His fulness,” and devoting yourselves in body, soul, and spirit, to His service. Does God delight in holiness? Seek it in its utmost heights, that ye may “be holy as he is holy, and perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

C H. SPURGEON: Beloved, nothing so delights God, next to the Person of His own dear Son, as the sight of one of those whom He has made like unto the Lord Jesus!

 

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The Dangers of Solitude

Posted on February 15, 2019 by The Editor

Genesis 2:18; Ecclesiastes 4:9

And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.

Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.

THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Learn here, solitude is not suited for man―though man was possessed of all the bliss of Paradise, one thing was still wanting to his felicity. He was alone; nor amidst the various orders of creatures could find any like unto himself. Angels were rational spirits, but incorporeal; beasts corporeal, but irrational. In his state of innocence society was needful.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Though there was an upper world of angels and a lower world of brutes, and he between them, yet there being none of the same nature and rank of beings with himself, none that he could converse familiarly with.

JOHN GILL (1697-1771): As it holds true in things natural and civil, so in things spiritual and religious; man is a sociable creature, was made to be so; and it was the judgment of God, which is according to truth, and who can never err, that it was not good for man to be alone.

JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): It is neither for his profit, nor his comfort.

MATTHEW HENRY: It is not for his comfort―It is a pleasure to him to exchange knowledge and affection with those of his own kind, to inform and to be informed, to love and to be beloved. What God here says of the first man, Solomon says of all men that “two are better than one, and woe to him that is alone.” If there were but one man in the world, what a melancholy man must he needs be! Perfect solitude would turn a paradise into a desert, and a palace into a dungeon.

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): But although God pronounced, concerning Adam, that it would not be profitable for him to be alone, yet I do not restrict the declaration to his person alone, but rather regard it as a common law of man’s vocation, so that every one ought to receive it as said to himself, that solitude is not good, excepting only him whom God exempts as by a special privilege.

CHARLES BRIDGES (1794-1869): If in a state of innocence “it was not good for a man to be alone,” much more in a world of care and trouble “two are better than one” for mutual support, helpfulness, and sympathy.

JOHN CALVIN: In our best state in this world we have need of one another’s help; for we are members one of another, and “the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee,” 1 Corinthians 12:21.

MATTHEW HENRY: Those therefore are foolish who are selfish and would be placed alone in the earth…Hence Solomon infers the mischief of solitude: “Woe to him that is alone.” He lies exposed to many temptations which good company and friendship would prevent and help him to guard against; he wants that advantage which a man has by the countenance of his friend, as iron has of being sharpened by iron.―Virtuous and gracious affections are excited by good society, and Christians warm one another by provoking one another to love and to good works.

WILLIAM KELLY (1821-1906): Interchange of affection and interest is good for Man. No wonder that solitude is in general a most severe punishment short of death.

MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546): Solitude is of itself a certain cross, and especially so in such great torments, in which it is most grievous to be immersed without an example and without a companion.

JOHN MILTON (1608-1674): Loneliness is the first thing which God’s eye named not good.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Lonely sorrow falls to the lot of not a few.

ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): We hear a great deal about the solitude in which men of genius live, and how all great souls are necessarily lonely. That is true, and that solitude of great men is one of the compensations which run through all life, and make the lot of the many little, more enviable than that of the few great. ‘The little hills rejoice together on every side,’ but far above their smiling companionships, the Alpine peak lifts itself into the cold air, and though it be ‘visited all night by troops of stars,’ it is lonely amid the silence and the snow.

C. H. SPURGEON: There are perils in company, but there are perils, likewise, in our loneliness…Guard yourselves in solitude, lest selfishness and pride creep in.

MARTIN LUTHER: I have my worst temptations when I am by myself.

C. H. SPURGEON: When we mix with the world, we know that we shall be tempted. In our business in the banking-house, on the farm, on the vessel, in the street, we expect that in the world we shall have temptation. But if you could get out of the world, you would still be tempted! Jesus Christ went right away from human society into the wilderness and, “then” was He tempted by the devil. Solitude is no preservative against temptation from Satan!

MARTIN LUTHER: Whosoever is in honest company is ashamed to sin, or at least has no opportunity for it―more and greater sins are committed when people are alone than when they are in society. When Eve, in paradise, walked by herself, the devil deceived her. In solitary places are committed murders, robberies, adulteries, etc.; for in solitude the devil has place and occasion to mislead people.

C. H. SPURGEON: I am afraid that, sometimes, solitude is a help to temptations.

MATTHEW HENRY: Solitude has its temptations as well as company, and particularly to uncleanness.

THOMAS SCOTT (1747-1821): The remainder of corrupt nature often renders solitude as dangerous, as the world itself can be.

MARTIN LUTHER: I myself have found that I never fell into more sin than when I was alone.

C. H. SPURGEON: Beware of falling into solitary sin. Certain young men and women, when alone, pull out a wicked novel which they would not like to be seen reading. Others will have their sly nips though they would be reputed very temperate. If a man is right with God, he is in his best company when alone, and he seeks therein to honour his God and not to grieve Him. Surely, when I am alone with God, I am bound to use my best manners. Do nothing which you would be afraid to have known. Be in the fear of the Lord when you are so much alone that you have no fear of men.

ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): O, what can be hidden from the all-seeing eye of God? “Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance,” Psalm 90:8. Those committed in darkness and privacy are easily discovered.

THOMAS BROOKS (1608-1680): A Christian is never out of the view of God’s eye.

C. H. SPURGEON: You are alone—maintain the fear of the Lord in your solitude.

 

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Enoch’s Prophesy & the Prophetic Symbolism of His Departure

Posted on February 9, 2019 by The Editor

Genesis 5:24; Hebrews 11:5; Jude 14,15

Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.

By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. .

Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied…saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): Enoch, the seventh from Adam, is expressly called a prophet; and Jude has preserved a fragment of one of his prophecies, relative to the corruption of the ante-diluvian world, and the approaching judgments of God.

CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): This prophecy is not recorded in the Old Testament.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): We read in Deuteronomy 33:2 of the Lord’s coming “with ten thousands of saints.”

JOHN GILL (1697-1771): That Enoch wrote a prophecy, and left it behind him in writing, does not appear from hence, or elsewhere―Enoch’s prophecy was not written, as we know of.

ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Perhaps it was not written, but oral.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Some say that this prophecy of Enoch was preserved by tradition in the Jewish church; others that the apostle Jude was immediately inspired with the notice of it: be this as it may, it is certain that there was such a prophecy of ancient date, of long standing, and universally received in the Old Testament church; and it is a main point of our New Testament creed.

C. H. SPURGEON: When Enoch thus prophesied, we do not know. That he did so was revealed to Jude and he, here, tells us of it―how Jude knew that Enoch said that, I cannot tell—it is another instance of Divine Inspiration.

CHARLES SIMEON: Whatever means Jude attained the knowledge of it, whether by tradition, or by some written memorial, or by immediate inspiration, we may be sure that it was delivered by Enoch; and we may be thankful that such a precious fragment of inspired truth has been preserved to us.

THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Enoch prophesied that God would come, and, with a flood, punish that impious race among whom he lived, as well as punish the impenitent with everlasting destruction. By a parity of reason, Jude intimates, that the wicked of his day―and of all ages―may also expect to meet with the due reward of their deeds.

ROBERT HAWKER: It should seem from what is here said, that there were characters in those days not unlike the scoffers the Apostle Peter describes that should come in the last days, who derided the day of the Lord’s coming, 2 Peter 3:3,4―“There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming?”

JOHN GILL: With respect to Christ’s coming to judgment, that is certain from prophecies, particularly from the prophecy of Enoch―this being prefaced with a “Behold,” shows the certainty of His coming, which nothing is more certain, and to be depended on, as appears from Enoch’s prophecy, and others of the Old Testament; from Christ’s own promise; from the testimony of angels; from the words of the apostles; and from the institution of the Lord’s supper―“till He come,” 1 Corinthians 11:26―and from the general expectation of the saints.

C. H. SPURGEON: It is clear that Enoch encountered opposition. I am certain that he did so from the context in Jude, because the passage in Jude has to do with “murmurers” and “complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaking great swelling words”―It is clear that they spoke against Enoch, they rejected his testimony, they grieved his spirit and he mourned that in this they were speaking against God. For he speaks “of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”

CHARLES SIMEON: He was a bold and faithful witness for God, and doubtless incensed many against him. And “God took him” from a persecuting and ungodly world, who probably enough were seeking to destroy him on account of his pungent admonitions. It is said “he was not found.” This may refer to some search made by his friends―see 2 Kings 2:16;  or rather, by his enemies―see 1 Kings 18:10.

C. H. SPURGEON: Enoch’s departure was a testimony. What did the Blessed Spirit say by the fact that, “he was not, for God took him,” but this—there is a future state. Men had begun to doubt it, but when they said, “Where is Enoch?” and those who had witnessed his departure said, “God took him,” it was to them an evidence that there was a God and that there was another world. And when they asked, “But where is his body?” there was another lesson―that the body is capable of immortality!

CHARLES SIMEON: While Enoch was in the body, he could not endure the full splendour of the divine glory―but God translated him, both in body and soul, to the highest heavens; making him thereby not only an eminent type of Christ’s ascension, but an earnest and pledge to us, that our bodies shall hereafter be raised.

C. H. SPURGEON: He could not bear testimony to the resurrection, for he did not die.

D. L. MOODY (1837-1899): Andrew Bonar has said that Enoch took a long walk one day, and has not got back yet. With one bound he leaped the river of death, and walked the crystal pavement of heaven…Moses, the great earthly chronicler, tells us nothing of the manner of his translation, beyond this―“he was not, for God took him.”

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): What God did for Enoch, He can, and will yet do, for a whole generation of saints.

MATTHEW HENRY: Those that are alive at our Lord’s coming will be caught up into the clouds, without dying, 1 Thessalonians 4:11. But it is plain from 1 Corinthians 15 that it will not be without changing from corruption to incorruption. The frame of their living bodies shall be thus altered, as well as those that are dead; and this “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye”―this corruptible body must be made incorruptible, this mortal body must be changed into immortal body.

D. L. MOODY: Those simple, yet mysterious words, “he was not, for God took him” seem written in anticipation of that coming mystery, when the world shall wonder because from the bed, or the mill, or the open field, one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.

THOMAS COKE: How illustrious was the prophesy with which Enoch was inspired―and which shall surely be accomplished in its season! The day is now much nearer, when the Lord will come with ten thousands of his saints: may the ungodly remember it, and suppress in time their speeches which will then assuredly be reproved, and repent of their deeds, which, if unrepented of, however forgotten now, will be brought into open view, and draw down upon their heads the destruction which at present seems to linger.

 

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