Habitual Absence from the Lord’s Supper

Posted on May 2, 2014 by The Editor

I Samuel 20:27, 26
       Wherefore cometh not the son of Jesse to meat, neither yesterday, nor to day? Something hath befallen him, he is not clean; surely he is not clean.

J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): Our Lord Jesus most distinctly commanded His disciples to “eat bread” and “drink wine” in remembrance of Him. What right has any Christian to disobey this commandment?—It is impossible to say that any professing Christian is in a safe, healthy, or satisfactory condition of soul, who habitually refuses to obey Christ and attend the Lord’s table.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): “This do ye in remembrance of me,” He says, and yet some of you never come to His table. May I gently ask you, how you make this disobedience consort with genuine affection for Him? “If ye love me, keep my commandments,” John 14:15.

C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): There is too much lightness and indifference in the minds of Christians as to the matter of their attendance at the table of the Lord; and where there is not this indifference, there is an unwillingness arising from imperfect views of justification.

ZACHARIAS URSINUS (1534-1583): That some neglect the communion, or defer it even until death, arises no doubt from a wrong notion or influence, either because they will not commune with others, or because they think that they are not worthy.

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Some go to the extreme of urging a perfection that cannot be found anywhere.

J. C. RYLE: They wait and stand still, under the mistaken notion that no one is qualified for the Lord’s Supper unless he feels within him something like perfection. They pitch their idea of a communicant so high that they despair of attaining to it. Waiting for inward perfection they live, and waiting for it too often they die. Now such persons would do well to understand that they are completely mistaken in their estimate of what “worthiness” really is. They are forgetting that the Lord’s Supper was not intended for unsinning angels, but for men and women compassed with infirmity, dwelling in a world full of temptations, and needing mercy and grace every day.

RICHARD SIBBES (1577-1635): The Sacrament was ordained not for angels, but for men; and not for perfect men, but for weak men.

J. C. RYLE: A sense of our own utter unworthiness is the best worthiness we can bring. A deep feeling of our own entire indebtedness to Christ for all we have and hope for, is the best feeling we can bring with us…If they are waiting till they feel in themselves perfect hearts, perfect motives, perfect feelings, perfect repentance, perfect love, perfect faith, they will wait for ever. There never were such communicants—there never will be as long as the world stands.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): When you look within, it should be to see with grief what the filthiness is; but to get rid of that filthiness you must look beyond yourself. I remember D. L. Moody saying that a looking-glass was a capital thing to show you the spots on your face; but you could not wash in a looking-glass. You want something every different when you would make your face clean. So let your eyes look right on―“To the full atonement made, to the utmost ransom paid.” Forget yourself, and think only of Christ.

MARY WINSLOW (1774-1854): Precious friend, look full at Jesus. Look no longer to your own weak, sinful heart…All your trouble arises from your looking for evidences within; and when Satan blinds your eye, and you cannot find them directly you think you have no part or lot in this matter. Your salvation does not hinge in the slightest degree upon what is done in you or by you, but what Christ has done for sinners…Now, faith does not consist in believing that I am a believer, but in believing in Jesus Christ.

J. C. RYLE: Some object to be communicants because they see others coming to the Lord’s Table who are not worthy, and not in a right state of mind. Because others eat and drink unworthily, they refuse to eat and drink at all. Of all the ground taken up by non-communicants to justify their own neglect of Christ’s ordinance, I must plainly say, I know none which seems to me so foolish, so weak, so unreasonable, and so unscriptural as this―it is taking up ground for which there is no warrant in Scripture. Paul rebukes the Corinthians sharply for the irreverent behaviour of some of the communicants; but I cannot find him giving a single hint that when some came to the Table unworthily, others ought to draw back or stay away.

C. H. SPURGEON: I have known at the communion table a person to say, “I cannot sit down there, because in my judgment such a person is allowed to sit down who is unworthy.” Now, dear friend, your course is plain. If you are aware of anything wrong in a church member—grievously wrong—there are proper authorities of the church to whom, not in a spirit of gossiping, but in a spirit of righteous love for the purity of the church, you ought to communicate this fact. But you are not infallible yourself, and therefore it may happen that you have misjudged this individual, and your responsibility will cease when you have done what you believe to be your duty in that matter. If, then, it should seem to those who are set over the church that it is not a fault as you think it is, or that it is not proved, or if they think it not such a fault as should exclude the person, you have nothing further to do with it. It is your business to come to the table of the Lord, and to observe His command, whoever may be there; for, believe me, if you never come to a communion table unless you feel sure that everybody there is perfect, I think you ought to stop away if for no other reason than this—you are not perfect yourself.

J. C. RYLE: Perfect churches, perfect congregations, perfect bodies of communicants, are all unattainable in this world of confusion and sin…Let us not starve our own selves because others are ignorant sinners, and turn their meat into poison. If others are foolish enough to eat and drink unworthily, let us not turn our backs on Christ’s ordinance, and refuse to eat and drink at all.

C. H. MACKINTOSH: Beloved Christian reader, if you are in habit of absenting yourself―I pray you to ponder the matter before the Lord ere you absent yourself again. Reflect upon the pernicious effect of your absence in every way. You are failing in your testimony for Christ.

J. C. RYLE: The man who coolly and deliberately refuses to use an ordinance which the Lord Jesus Christ appointed for his profit, may be very sure that his soul is in a very wrong state.

 

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The Reality of Experiential Communion with God

Posted on April 28, 2014 by The Editor

I John 1:3
       Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.

EDWARD PAYSON (1783-1827): All true Christians enjoy a kind of fellowship or communion with God and Christ, to which mankind are, in their natural state, total strangers. Though I doubt not, that there are many here present, who from their own happy experience have learned the truth of this assertion, yet there are probably still more who will ridicule and deny it.

JOHN FLAVEL (1630-1691): Communion with Christ is frequent in the lips of many men, but a hidden mystery to the souls of most men.

EDWARD PAYSON: Those who are entirely unacquainted with experimental religion, and who deny the power of godliness, while they possess the form of it, will and must consider all pretenses to communion with God as the effects of superstition and enthusiasm, the dreams and reveries of weak and deluded minds. When the profane scoffer, the cold hearted infidel, the formal hypocrite, and the self righteous moralist, hear the Christian conversing on these subjects, they are ever ready to exclaim, with a mixture of indignation and contempt, “Thou art beside thyself; too much false religion has made thee mad!” With the utmost justice and propriety, however, may the Christian deny the charge; for he is not mad, nor enthusiastic, nor superstitious; but speaks the words of truth and soberness. That communion with God, of which he speaks, and which constitutes his supreme felicity, is no fancied delusion, no enthusiastic dream, but a blessed reality; it is heaven begun in the soul, and is enjoyed in a greater or less degree by all without exception, who will ever be admitted into the kingdom of heaven.

JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): They who worship Him in spirit, and in truth, have a real fellowship and communion with Him, that is known only to themselves. The world can neither understand nor believe it.

JOHN FLAVEL: There is a mutual, sweet, and intimate communion betwixt Jesus Christ and believers in this world…This atheistical age scoffs at, and ridicules it as enthusiasm and fanaticism; but the saints find that reality and incomparable sweetness in it, that they would not part with it for ten thousand worlds.

COLONEL JAMES GARDINER (1688-1745): There are some full communications from God as seem almost to swallow up the actings of faith from whence they take their rise.

JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703-1758): I have sometimes had a sense of the excellent fullness of Christ, and His meetness and suitableness as a Saviour; whereby He has appeared to me, far above all, the chief of ten thousand. His blood and atonement have appeared sweet, and His righteousness sweet; which was always accompanied with ardency of spirit; and inward strugglings, and breathings, and groanings that cannot be uttered, to be emptied of myself, and swallowed up in Christ. Once as I rode out into the woods for my health, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view, that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God, as Mediator between God and man, and His wonderful, great, full, pure, and sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension. This grace that appeared so calm and sweet, appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared also ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception―which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour; which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears, and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated, to lie in the dust, and to be full of Christ alone; to love Him with a holy and pure love; to trust in Him; to live upon Him; to serve and follow Him; and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure, with a divine and heavenly purity. I have several other times had views very much of the same nature, and which have had the same effects.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): God often manifests Himself to His people when they are out of the noise and hurry of this world. Silence and solitude befriends our communion with God.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): You may perhaps have read in the life of holy John Flavel, the extraordinary instance he records of the love of Christ being poured into his soul. He says that he was riding on a horse, going to some engagement, and he had such a sense of the love of Christ that he completely lost himself for several hours; and when he came to himself again, he found his horse standing quiet still, and discovered that he had been sitting on horseback all those hours, utterly lost to everything but a special revelation of the wonderful love of Jesus. You may also have heard of Gilbert Tennant, the mighty American preacher, and friend of George Whitefield, who was found, lost and absorbed, in a wood, to which he had retired, and his friends had to call him back, as it were, from the sweet fellowship he had been enjoying with Christ. You may remember, too, John Welsh, the famous Scotch preacher, who had to cry out, “Hold, Lord, hold! I am but an earthen vessel, and if I feel more of thy glorious love, I must e’en die; so stay thy hand a while.”
      There are such experiences as these, and I will not enquire whether you have ever known them; but if you have, I will tell you one thing. All the infidels in the world and all the devils in hell will never make you doubt the truth of the Scriptures if you have once been face to face with Christ, and have spoken with your Master as a man speaketh with his friend. Such things have happened unto those whose cloud-piercing eyes have been so fixed upon Christ that He at last has felt the mighty fascination of their loving and believing glances, and has revealed Himself in still greater measure unto them and made them even more blest than they were before.

AUGUSTUS TOPLADY (1713-1778): There are golden seasons when the soul is on the mount of communion with God; when the Spirit of His Son shines into our hearts, giving us boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him. Moreover, a person who is at all conversant with the spiritual life, knows as certainly whether he indeed enjoys the light of God’s countenance, or whether he walks in darkness, as a traveller knows whether he travels in sunshine or in rain.

JOHN FLAVEL: Certainly there is a felt presence of God, which no words can make another to understand…If there be truth in any thing in the world, there is truth in this, that there are real intercourses betwixt the visible and invisible world; betwixt Christ and the souls of believers, which we here call communion: “Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Christ Jesus.” It is really and truly so. We impose not upon the world―we tell you no more than we have felt.

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): O for felt sense of His presence, for a gracious manifestation thereof to the soul!

 

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Spiritual Marathon Runners

Posted on April 23, 2014 by The Editor

I Corinthians 9:24-27
       Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection.

JOHN GILL (1697-1771): The allusion in this is to the Grecian games, which consisted, among other things, of running of races, and of wrestling, combating, and fighting…The apostle makes use of these terms because they were well known to the Corinthians―the Isthmian games were performed in their neighbourhood, and doubtless had been seen by many of them, for the Corinthians were presidents of them. The race, or stadium in which they ran, was the space or interval between the place they set out from, and that which they ran unto, consisted of 125 paces, or 625 feet; it was the space of a furlong, and about the eighth part of a mile.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): My dear man―the Christian life is not a sprint; it is a marathon, and that is why Jesus says, “He who endures to the end shall be saved,” Matthew 10:22…Conversion is not the end, it’s the mere beginning,

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Here begins the narrative of a great soul battle, a spiritual Marathon, a hard and well fought field, in which the half defeated became in the end wholly victorious.

JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791): The race of faith.

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things: the reference is to the athletes who took part in the marathon races, willing to undergo the most self-denying discipline to be at their fittest, thereby hoping to win an earthly crown. This word rendered “strive” is translated “labouring fervently” in Colossians 4:12, and “fight” in I Timothy 6:2!

J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): You must make up your mind to a daily struggle—Sin, the world, and the devil must be actually mortified, resisted, and overcome.

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): We have every one in himself his own peculiar hindrances—weights which, if not laid aside, will clog the soul in her race.

J. C. RYLE: When Moses refused the pleasures of sin in Egypt, and chose affliction with people of God—he overcame the love of pleasure. When Micaiah refused to prophesy smooth things to king Ahab, though he knew he would be persecuted if he spoke the truth—he overcame the love of ease. When Daniel refused to give up praying, though he knew the den of lions was prepared for him—he overcame the fear of death. When Matthew rose from the receipt of custom at our Lord’s bidding, left all and followed Him—he overcame the love of money. When Peter and John stood up boldly before the council and said, “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard”—they overcame the fear of man. When Saul the Pharisee gave up all his prospects of preferment among the Jews and preached that very Jesus whom he had once persecuted—he overcame the love of man’s praise. They were men of like passions with yourself, and yet they overcame. They had as many trials as you can possibly have, and yet they overcame. They fought. They wrestled. They struggled. You must do the same.

MARY WINSLOW (1774-1854): Many I have seen set out well in this race, but I have lived to see them fall short at last of the prize. They forsook their first love, and sought their enjoyment in the poor wretched trifles of time and sense.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Perseverance is, therefore, the target of all our spiritual enemies. The world does not object to your being a Christian for a time, if she can but tempt you to cease your pilgrimage, and settle down to buy and sell with her in Vanity Fair. The flesh will seek to ensnare you, and to prevent your pressing on to glory. “It is weary work being a pilgrim; come, give it up. Am I always to be mortified? Am I never to be indulged? Give me at least a furlough from this constant warfare.”

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: There is no such thing as a holiday in the spiritual life.

C. H. SPURGEON: Satan will make many a fierce attack on your perseverance; it will be the mark for all his arrows. He will strive to hinder you in service: he will insinuate that you are doing no good; and that you want rest. He will endeavour to make you weary of suffering.

JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703-1758): God has appointed this whole life to be all as a race or a battle; the state of rest, wherein we shall be so out of danger as to have no need of watching and fighting, is for another world.

A. W. PINK: Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of faith, Hebrews 12:1…They must be encouraged to “look unto Jesus”―for only thus will they be furnished with both incentives and strength to run the race that is set before them.

EDWARD PAYSON (1783-1827): If this be the case, it is at once your duty, your interest, and your happiness to believe―to be certain―that you love Christ, and that He loves you; and in proportion as you believe this, will be your progress in the Christian race.

C. H. SPURGEON: Then let us pray much and pray in faith…As the runner gains strength for the race by daily exercise, so for the great race of life we acquire energy by the hallowed labour of prayer―an earnest pleader cometh out of his closet, even as the sun ariseth from the chambers of the east, rejoicing like a strong man to run his race.

GEORGE MÜLLER (1805-1898): The great fault of the children of God is that they do not continue in prayer; they do not go on praying; they do not persevere.

C. H. SPURGEON: Again, our Saviour reminded His disciples of the personal responsibility of each one of them in such a time of trial and testing as they were about to pass through. He would have them remember that it is not the man who starts in the race, but the one who runs to the goal, who wins the prize: “He that shall endure to the end shall be saved.” If this doctrine were not supplemented by another, there would be but little good tidings for poor, tempted, tried, and struggling saints in such words as these. Who among us would persevere in running the heavenly race if God did not preserve us from falling, and give us persevering grace? But, blessed be His name, “The righteous shall hold on his way,” Job 17:9. “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ,” Philippians 1:6.

MARY WINSLOW: But now remember, you have just begun to run the race—a race for a crown of glory. “So run that you may obtain.”

 

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Examining Official Policy on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ

Posted on April 19, 2014 by The Editor

Matthew 27:62-66; Matthew 28:2-7 & 11-15
       The chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first. Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can. So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.
       And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as now: and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead.
       Now, when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were done. And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): The chief priests apprehended that if the doctrine of Christ’s resurrection be once preached and believed, the last error will be worse than the first―a proverbial expression, intimating no more than this, that we shall all be routed, all undone. They think it was their error, that they had so long connived at His preaching and miracles, which error they thought they had rectified by putting Him to death.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD (1714-1770): Had He not risen again, they might have justly said, we know that this man was an impostor.

MATTHEW HENRY: But if people should be persuaded of His resurrection, that would spoil all again…That which really they were afraid of was His resurrection, [and] His enemies did what they could to prevent His resurrection.

MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): All imaginable care taken to prevent a cheat in the case.

MATTHEW HENRY: They sealed the stone; probably with the great seal of their sanhedrim, whereby they interposed their authority, for who durst break the public seal?

ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): The guard was to take care that the disciples should not steal him away…So every thing was done which human policy and prudence could, to prevent a resurrection.

JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): And now they seemed to dance on Christ’s grave, as thinking themselves cock-sure of Him.

J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): They little thought what they were doing; they little thought that unwittingly they were providing the most complete evidence of the truth of Christ’s coming resurrection. They were actually making impossible to prove that there was any deception or imposition. Their seal, their guard, their precautions, were all to become witnesses, in a few hours, that Christ had risen.

MATTHEW POOLE: Vain men! As if the same power that was necessary to raise and quicken the dead, could not also remove the stone, and break through the watch which they had set. But by this excessive care and diligence, instead of preventing Christ’s resurrection, as they intended, they have confirmed the truth and belief of it to all the world. So doth God take the wise in their own craftiness, and turn their wisdom into foolishness, and that He may set His King upon His holy hill of Zion.

JOHN FLAVEL (1630-1691): See how they promote His design by opposing it, and fulfill His will by resisting it!

MATTHEW HENRY: We have here the confession of the adversaries that were upon the guard; and there are two things which strengthen this testimony―they were eye-witnesses, and did themselves see the glory of the resurrection, which none else did―and, they were enemies, set there to oppose and obstruct His resurrection.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Some of the watch, having recovered from their fright, came into the city to report the startling scenes they had witnessed. It is noteworthy that they did not go to Pilate; they had been placed at the disposal of the chief priests, and therefore the soldiers went to their ecclesiastical employers, and showed unto them all the things that were done. A startling story they had to tell; and one that brought fresh terror to the priests, and led to further sin on their part. For money Christ was betrayed, and for money the truth about His resurrection was kept back as far as it could be.

MATTHEW HENRY: Large money―probably a great deal more than they gave to Judas.

C. H. SPURGEON: The lie put into the soldiers’ mouths was so palpable that no one ought to have been deceived by it: Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept.

MATTHEW HENRY: This was so thin a lie as one might easily see through.

ADAM CLARKE: On one hand, the terror of the disciples, the smallness of their number―only eleven―and their almost total want of faith; on the other hand, the great danger of such a bold enterprise, the number of armed men who guarded the tomb, and the authority of Pilate and of the Sanhedrin, must render such an imposture as this utterly devoid of credit.

MATTHEW HENRY: A sorry shift is better than none, but this is a sorry one indeed. The sham was ridiculous, and carried along with it its own confutation. If they slept, how could they know any thing of the matter, or say who came? If any one of them was awake to observe it, no doubt, he would awake them all to oppose it; for that was the only thing they had in charge.

ADAM CLARKE: Is it likely that so many men would all fall asleep, in the open air, at once? Is it at all probable that a Roman guard should be found off their watch, much less asleep, when it was instant death, according to the Roman military laws?

C. H. SPURGEON: A Roman soldier would have committed suicide sooner than confess that he had slept at his post of duty.

MATTHEW HENRY: If really these soldiers had slept, and so suffered the disciples to steal Him away, as they would have the world believe, the priests and elders would certainly have been the forwardest to solicit the governor to punish them for their treachery; so that their care for the soldiers’ safety plainly gives the lie to the story.

C. H. SPURGEON: The chief priests and elders were not afraid of Pilate hearing of their lie; or if he did, they knew that golden arguments would be as convincing with him as with the common soldiers…This lie, which had not a leg to stand upon, lived on till Matthew wrote his Gospel, and long afterwards. Nothing lives so long as a lie, except the truth.

J. C. RYLE: In an age of abounding unbelief and skepticism, we shall find that the resurrection of Christ will bear any weight that we can lay upon it.

 

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The Lamb of God

Posted on April 15, 2014 by The Editor

John 1:29
       The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Now, I want to talk to you a little about beholding this Lamb of God, taking a hasty run through various Scripture references to the Lamb…
      How was the Lamb of God first seen in the world? It was the case of the lamb for one man, brought by one man for himself…You all know that I refer to Abel, who was a shepherd, and brought of the firstlings of his flock―that is, a lamb―and he brought this lamb for himself, and on his own account, that he might be accepted by God, and that he might present to God an offering well-pleasing in His sight. Cain brought of the fruit of the ground as an offering to God. I think that there was a difference in the sacrifice, as well as in the man bringing it, for the Holy Ghost says little about the difference of the man, but He says, “By faith Abel offered unto to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain,” Hebrews 11:4, and he was accepted because he brought a more excellent sacrifice.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Abel brought a sacrifice of atonement, acknowledging himself to be a sinner who deserved to die, and only hoping for mercy through the great sacrifice.

JOHN GILL (1697-1771): Abel’s sacrifice was a lamb, a type of Christ, the Lamb of God. Abel looked through his sacrifice to the sacrifice of Christ; not so Cain.

EDWARD PAYSON (1783-1827): Cain presented nothing but a gift of the fruits of the earth, disbelieving the great truth, that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin, Hebrews 9:22; and showing that he did not regard himself as a sinner who needed an atonement. The consequences was such as might have been expected. The sacrifice of Abel, offered in faith and in obedience to the requisitions of God, was accepted; while the offering of the self-righteous Cain was rejected.

C. H. SPURGEON: Pass on to Abraham. What is one of the most memorable sayings of the father of the faithful? “My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering,” Genesis 22:8. Did not Abraham then, by faith, see Christ’s day? Yea, he saw it afar off, and was glad; he knew that the great Jehovah-jireh would provide a wondrous Substitute, who would die in the place of his people, even as the ram took the place of Isaac…God provided a sacrifice which should be the representative of Christ, inasmuch as the sacrifice died instead of the sinner.

J. C. PHILPOT (1802-1869): In fact, all the various rites and ceremonies of the Levitical law, together with the sacrifices which were offered up, were all types of the Lord Jesus Christ.

JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): Each, in their place, pointed to “the Lamb of God who was to take away the sins of the world;” they derived their efficacy from Him, and received their full accomplishment in Him.

C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): Every sacrifice pointed forward to “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world,” and not one more strikingly than the passover. The paschal lamb, with all the attendant circumstances, forms one of the profoundly interesting and deeply instructive types of Scripture.

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): That it was a type thereof is clear from I Corinthians 5:7, “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.”

EDWARD PAYSON: This atonement, which Christ, the Lamb of God, intended to make in the fullness of time, was typically represented by the sacrifice of a lamb without spot or blemish.

C. H. SPURGEON: And was not Jesus Christ even such from his birth? Unblemished, born of the pure virgin Mary, begotten of the Holy Ghost, without a taint of sin; his soul was pure, and spotless as the driven snow, white, clear, perfect; and His life was the same. In Him was no sin. He took our infirmities and bore our sorrows on the cross, Isaiah 53:4,5. He was in all points tempted as we are, but there was that sweet exception, “yet without sin.” A lamb without blemish…Thus the Paschal Lamb might well convey to the pious Hebrew the person of a suffering, silent, patient, harmless Messiah.

A. W. PINK: The Lamb of God is the one great object and subject of the Prophetic Word.

C. H. SPURGEON: Think of the prophet Isaiah, and as you remember him, and his prophecy, does not the thought of the Lamb of God rise up to your mind at once? “He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth,” Isaiah 53:7…How fine a picture of Christ. No other creature could so well have typified him who was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. Being also the emblem of sacrifice, it most sweetly portrayed our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ…Though you will find other emblems which set forth different characteristics of His nature, and admirably display Him to our souls, yet there is none which seems so appropriate to the person of our beloved Lord as that of the Lamb.

ISAAC WATTS (1674-1748): Not all the blood of beasts, on Jewish alters slain,
                                                  Could give the guilty conscience peace, or wash away the stain…
                                                         But Christ, the heavenly Lamb, takes all our sins away;
                                                          A sacrifice of nobler name, and richer blood then they.

JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791): Thus look unto Jesus. There is the Lamb of God who taketh away thy sins.

C. H. SPURGEON: I pray you to behold Him tonight. It is but a little while, and the death-film will gather about your eyes; and if you have not seen the Lamb while yet you have mortal eyes, you will see Him―you will certainly see Him. But your vision will be like than of Balaam, “I shall see Him, but not now: I shall behold Him, but not nigh,” Numbers 24:17. If it is with you “not now,” it may be “not nigh.” It will be an awful thing to see the Lamb with a gulf between yourself and Him, for there is a great impassable gulf fixed in the next world; and when you see Him across that gulf, how will you feel? Then shall you cry to the mountains and rocks, Revelation 6:16: “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb!” Jesus will still be a Lamb, even to the lost; it is “the wrath of the Lamb” that they will dread. The Lamb is always conspicuous; He may be neglected, rejected, refused tonight, but He will be beheld in eternity, and beheld to your everlasting confusion and unutterable dismay if you refuse to behold Him now. Let it not be so with any of you.

A. W. PINK: There is only way of finding peace, and that is through faith in the shed blood of God’s Lamb.

 

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The Harmonious Details of the Old & New Testaments

Posted on April 11, 2014 by The Editor

Hebrews 12:5,6
       And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord; nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

WILLIAM ARNOT (1808-1875): This passage is taken entire out of the Old Testament and inserted in the New Testament. “My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary of His correction: for whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth,” Proverbs 3:11,12.
      In quoting the words from the Old Testament, Paul perceived, and pointed out a tender meaning in the form of the expression, “my son.” That formula occurs often in the Proverbs, and a careless reader would pass it as thing of course. Not so this inspired student of the Scripture: he gathers a meaning from the form of the word before he begins to deal with its substance; “the exhortation,” he says, “speaketh unto you as unto children.”
      “My son.” The spirit in Paul recognized this as a mark of God’s paternal tenderness, and used it as a ground of glad encouragement to desponding believers. Of design, and not accident, was the word thrown into that form, as it issued at first from the lips of Solomon. God intended thereby to reveal Himself as a Father, and to grave that view of His character in the Scripture as with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond, that the most distant nations and the latest times might know that “as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him,” Psalm 103:13.

MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): And whereas it is spoken singularly, My son, it is to every child of God in Christ Jesus, and so collectively includeth all of them.

LORD SHAFTESBURY (1801-1885): How deeply evangelical is that Book of Proverbs! How plainly one may see and feel Christ speaking under the Old Testament as under the New Testament!

STEPHEN CHARNOCK (1628-1680): The Old Testament is therefore to be read for the strengthening of our faith. Our blessed Saviour Himself draws the streams of His doctrine from the Old Testament: He clears up the promise of eternal life, and the doctrine of the resurrection, from the words of the covenant, I am the God of Abraham, etc. Matthew 22:32. And our apostle clears up the doctrine of justification by faith from God’s covenant with Abraham, Romans 4. It must be read, and it must be read as it is writ: it was writ to a Gospel end, it must be studied with a Gospel spirit.

WILLIAM ARNOT: Incidentally, we obtain here a lesson on the interpretation of Scripture. Some would confine themselves to the leading facts and principles, setting aside as unimportant whatever pertains merely to the manner of the communication. By this method much is lost. It is not a thrifty way of managing the bread that cometh down from heaven. Gather up the fragments, that none of them be lost.

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): No detail in Scripture is meaningless.

JOHN WYCLIFFE (1330-1384): It shall greatly help to understand Scripture if thou mark, not only what is spoken or written, but of whom, to whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, and with what circumstances, considering what goes before and what follows.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): When I get a passage of scripture to meditate upon, I like, if I can, to see its drift; then I like to examine its various parts, and see if I can understand each separate clause; and then I want to go back again, and see what one clause has to do with another.

A. W. PINK: There is nothing meaningless nor superfluous in God’s Word, and every syllable in it should be given its due force and weight.―[Acquire] the habit of noting carefully each detail in a verse, and not hurriedly and carelessly generalizing, as is the custom of so many in this rushing and superficial age. God’s Word is made up of words, each one of which is selected with divine discrimination and precision, and we cannot obtain even the surface and grammatical meaning of any verse except by noting and giving due weight to each term in it. When three or four consecutive verses are before us, often an important truth or lesson is acquired by our observing a change from ‘we’ to ‘ye’, or from the singular to the plural―‘thou’ to ‘you’ or ‘them’; or the tense of the verb.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: Every jot and tittle, everything has meaning.

ROBERT HALDANE (1764-1842): In the Scriptures there are many things which, considered only in themselves, appear to be of no value, or, at least, of very little importance; but in reality the Bible contains nothing superfluous—nothing which does not contribute to its perfection, and to the evidence of its divine origin.

C. H. SPURGEON: Those who reject verbal inspiration must in effect condemn the great apostle of the Gentiles, whose teaching is so frequently based upon a word. He makes more of words and names than any of us should have thought of doing, and he was guided therein by the Spirit of the Lord, and therefore he was right. For my part, I am far more afraid of making too little of the Word than of seeing too much in it…Let us learn to read our Bibles with our eyes open, to study them as men do the works of great artists, studying each figure, and even each sweet variety of light and shade.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): We must never drive a wedge between the Old Testament and the New. We must never feel that the New makes the Old unnecessary. I feel increasingly that it is very regrettable that the New Testament should ever have been printed alone, because we tend to fall into the serious error of thinking that, because we are Christians, we do not need the Old Testament. It was the Holy Spirit who led the early Church, which was mainly Gentile, to incorporate the Old Testament Scriptures with their New Scriptures and to regard them all as one. They are indissolubly bound together, and there are many senses in which it can be said that the New Testament cannot be truly understood except in the light that is provided by the Old. For example, it is almost impossible to make anything of the Epistle to the Hebrews unless we know our Old Testament Scriptures.

AUGUSTINE (354-430): The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is by the New revealed.

JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): They agree all in one truth. There are above two hundred places in the Old Testament cited in the New Testament; so that almost in every needful point the harmony is expressed. The Psalms are cited fifty-three times, Genesis forty-two times, Isaiah forty-six times, etc. This shows the wonderful agreement betwixt the books of both Testaments.

THOMAS WATSON (1620-1686): The two testaments are the two lips by which God hath spoken unto us.

JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): Thus the Old and New Testament do mutually illustrate each other; neither can be well understood singly.

 

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Assurance: Some Biblical Test Questions

Posted on April 7, 2014 by The Editor

Romans 14:22
       Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God.

WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800): ’Tis a point I long to know;
                                                                       Oft it causes anxious thought;
                                                                          Do I love the Lord or no?
                                                                            Am I His, or am I not?

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): “Am I really a child of God?” Now, I will say what some of you may think a strong thing; but I do not believe that he is a child of God who never raised that question.

JAMES DURHAM (1622-1658): There are some serious souls, that think because they have some unbelief, that therefore they have no faith at all…and there are others that think they have no faith at all, because they feel corruption struggling more, and growing more troublesome to them.

RICHARD SIBBES (1577-1635): Some think they have no faith at all because they have no full assurance, whereas the fairest fire that can be will have some smoke. The best actions will smell of the smoke. The mortar wherein garlic has been stamped will always smell of it; so all our actions will savour something of the old man.

JOHN FLAVEL (1630-1691): Well then, let not the upright be unjust to themselves in censuring their own hearts; they are bad enough, but let us not make them worse than they are, but thankfully own and acknowledge the least degrees of grace and integrity in them. And possibly our uprightness might be sooner discovered to us, if, in a due composure of spirit, we would sit down and attend the true answers of our own hearts to such questions as these:
      Question 1. Do I make the approbation of God, or the applause of men, the very end and main design of my religious performances, according to 1 Thessalonians 2:4, Colossians 3:23? Will the acceptation of my duties with men satisfy me, whether God accept my duties and person or not?

JOSEPH ALLEINE (1634-1668): When the main thing that ordinarily moves a man to religious duties is some carnal end—as to satisfy his conscience, to get the reputation of being religious, to be seen of men, to show his own gifts and talents, to avoid the reproach of being a profane and irreligious person, or the like—this reveals an unsound heart.

THOMAS BROOKS (1608-1680): Self-ends are the operative ingredients in all a hypocrite does.

JOHN FLAVEL: Question 2. Can I truly and heartily rejoice to see God’s work carried on in the world, and his glory promoted by other hands, though I have no share in the credit and honour of it, as Paul did? Philippians 1:18.

OBADIAH SEDGWICK (1600-1658): Self-love, pride, and vainglory fill the sails of the hypocrite.

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): All who are desirous of vain-glory are called hypocrites.

JOHN FLAVEL: Question 3. Is there no duty in religion so full of difficulty and self-denial, but I desire to comply with it? And is all the holy and good will of God acceptable to my soul, though I cannot rise up with like readiness to the performance of all duties according to that pattern, Psalm 119:6?

THOMAS MANTON (1620-1677): Christ subjected Himself to the moral law, and did apply the precepts to Himself, no less than to us; and so is a pattern of obedience to us, that we ought to direct and order all our actions according to the law and word of God.

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): It ought to be the great care of every one of us to follow the Lord fully. We must in a course of obedience to God’s will, and service to his Honour, follow Him universally, without dividing; uprightly, without dissembling; cheerfully, without disputing; and constantly, without declining; and this is following Him fully.

JOHN FLAVEL: Question 4. Do I make no conscience of committing secret sins, or neglecting secret duties? Or am I conscientious both in the one and the other, according to the rules and patterns of integrity, Matthew 6:5,6; Psalm 19:12?

WILLIAM GURNALL (1617-1679): It is the trick of the hypocrite to strain himself to the utmost in duty when he hath spectators, and to be careless alone.

THOMAS BROOKS: No hypocrite is totally divorced from the love and liking of every known sin. There is still some secret lust, which as a sweet morsel he rolls under his tongue, and will not spit it out.

WILLIAM GURNALL: A sincere Christian abhors all sin: “Order thou my steps in thy word; and let not any iniquity have dominion over me,” Psalm 119:133.

JOHN FLAVEL: Question 5. Is it the reproach and shame that attends sin at present, and the danger and misery that will follow it hereafter, that restrains me from the commission of it? Or is it the fear of God in my soul, and the hatred I bear to it as it is sin, according to Psalm 19:12 and Psalm 119:113?

GEORGE HARPUR (died 1899): Many a one hates iniquity, not for its own sake, but for the sake of its consequences.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD (1714-1770): A man, perhaps, will not get drunk for fear of making his head ache; a man may be honest because it would spoil his reputation to steal.

C. H. SPURGEON: The ungodly, if they do right after a fashion, do it from fear of punishment or hope of reward; but the true-born children of God find the love of Christ their sole motive. They are obedient not because they are afraid of being lost—they know they never shall be; not because they hope to get to heaven by their good works—they have heaven already by the works of another, guaranteed to them by the promise of God; but they serve God out of pure gratitude for what they have received, rejoicing as they work in the service of one they love so well.

MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546): Goodness motivated by fear of punishment or selfish desire for reward, are idle damnable sins.

JOHN FLAVEL: Question 6. Am I sincerely resolved to follow Christ and holiness at all seasons, however the aspects of the times be upon religion? Of do I carry myself so warily and covertly as to shun all hazards for religion; having a secret reserve in my heart to launch out no farther than I may return with safety; contrary to the practice and resolution of upright souls, Psalm 116:3; Psalm 44:18,19; Revelation 22:11?

WILLIAM GURNALL: The hypocrite shifts his sails, and puts forth such colours as his policy and worldly interest adviseth. If the coast be clear, and no danger at hand, he will appear religious as any; but no sooner he makes discovery of any hazard it may put him to, but he tacks about, and shapes another course, making no bones of juggling with God and man. He counts that his right road which leads to his temporal safety.

C. H. SPURGEON: Let each of us ask this question—Am I more decisive for right? At the same time, am I more meek in standing up for it?

JOHN FLAVEL: A few such questions solemnly propounded to our own hearts, in a calm and serious hour, would sound them, and discover much of their sincerity towards the Lord.

 

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The Marks of Spiritual Regeneration by the Holy Ghost

Posted on April 2, 2014 by The Editor

Acts 19:2
       Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?

GEORGE WHITEFIELD (1714-1770): I shall lay down some Scripture marks whereby we may know whether we have thus received the Holy Ghost or not…First I shall mention, is our having received a spirit of prayer and supplication; for that always accompanies the spirit of grace. No sooner was Paul converted, but “behold he prayeth.” And this was urged as an argument, to convince Ananias that he was converted. And God’s elect are also said to “cry to Him day and night.”

MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Regenerating grace evermore sets people on praying; you may as soon find a living man without breath as a living Christian without prayer; if breathless, lifeless; and so, if prayerless, graceless.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD: A second Scripture mark of our having received the Holy Ghost is not committing sin. “Whosoever is born of God sinneth not, neither can he sin, because his seed remaineth in him,” I John 3:9. Neither can he sin. This expression does not imply the impossibility of a Christian’s sinning, for we are told, that “in many things we offend all,” James 3:2. It can only mean thus much, that a man who is really born again of God, does not wilfully commit sin, much less live in the habitual practice of it, for how shall he that is dead to sin, as every converted person is, live any longer therein?

ROWLAND HILL (1744-1833): The Holy Ghost first enlightens us, and then makes us abhor sin as detestable and odious. No child of God, no heir of heaven can love sin, or live in it. He groans under it, and looks on the right hand, and on the left, for a way of escape. As I never can reconcile my flesh to allow a hot burning coal to be applied to it; so, if I be a child of God, I never can be reconciled to the power of sin in my soul.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD: It is true a man that is born again of God may, through surprise, or the violence of a temptation, fall into an act of sin: witness the adultery of David, and Peter’s denial of his Master. But then, like them, he quickly rises again, goes out from the world, and weeps bitterly; washes the guilt of sin away by the tears of a sincere repentance, joined with faith in the blood of Jesus Christ; takes double heed to his ways for the future, and to perfect holiness in the fear of God.

ALEXANDER COMRIE (1706-1774): Believers are holy―godly―not perfect; the best have their faults.

JOHN OWEN (1616-1683): Holiness indeed is perfected in heaven: but the beginning of it is invariably confined to this world.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD: A third mark whereby we may know, whether or not we have received the Holy Ghost is our conquest over the world. For whosoever is born of God―says the apostle―overcometh the world, I John 5:4. By the world, we are to understand, as John expresses it, all that is in the world: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. And by overcoming of it is meant our renouncing these, so as not to follow, or be led by them: for whosoever is born from above has his affections set on things above: he feels a divine attraction in his soul, which forcibly draws his mind heavenwards.

J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): Sin, the world, and the devil must be actually mortified, resisted, and overcome. This is the road that saints of old have trodden in, and left their record on high…What was the secret of their victory?—their faith. They believed on Jesus, and believing were made strong. They believed on Jesus, and believing were held up. In all their battles, they kept their eyes on Jesus, and He never left them nor forsook them. “They overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and the word of their testimony,” Revelation 12:11, and so may you…Resolve, by the grace of God, to be an overcoming Christian.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD: A fourth Scripture mark of our having received the Holy Ghost is our loving one another. We know we are passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren, I John 3:14. And by this―says Christ Himself―shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one towards another, John 13:35…By this love we are not to understand a softness and tenderness of mere nature, or a love founded on worldly motives―for this a natural man may have; but a love of our brethren, proceeding from love towards God: loving all men in general, because of their relation to God; and loving good men in particular, for the grace we see in them, and because they love our Lord Jesus in sincerity…Fifth Scripture mark―loving our enemies. I say unto you―says Jesus Christ―love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to those that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, Matthew 5:44.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): It is the Christian alone who can rise to this. Your natural ethics and morality can make a passive resister; but the Christian is a man who positively loves his enemy, and goes out of his way to do good to them that hate him, and to pray for them that use him despitefully and malign him.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD: Many other marks are scattered up and down the Scriptures, whereby we may know whether or not we have received the Holy Ghost: such as, “to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace,” Romans 8:6. Now the fruits of the Spirit are joy, peace, longsuffering, meekness, with a multitude of texts to the same purpose. But as most, if not all of them, are comprehended in the duties already laid down, I dare affirm that whosoever, upon an impartial examination, can find the aforesaid marks on his soul, may be as certain, as though an angel were to tell him, that his pardon is sealed in heaven. As for my own part, I had rather see these divine graces, and this heavenly temper, stamped upon my soul, than to hear an angel from heaven saying unto me, “Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee.”

ROWLAND HILL: Examine your Christianity by your Bibles; and remember the way to do that is, to see whether the precious graces of the Spirit of God are to be found dwelling within your hearts, and written upon your consciences.

J. C. RYLE: When the Holy Ghost raises a man from the death of sin and makes him a new creature in Christ Jesus, the new principle in that man’s heart requires food, and the only food which will sustain it is the Word of God…Just as a child born into the world desires naturally the milk provided for its nourishment, so does a soul “born again” desire the sincere milk of the Word, I Peter 2:2,3. This is a common mark of all the children of God—they “delight in the law of the Lord,” Psalm 1:2.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: If you don’t enjoy the Bible at all, then I make free to suggest that you’re not a child of God at all.

 

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Satan’s Opposition Against a Soul Coming to Christ

Posted on March 29, 2014 by The Editor

Luke 9:42
       And as he was yet a coming, the devil threw him down, and tare him. And Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and healed the child, and delivered him again to his father.

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): When this child came to Christ to be healed, the devil threw him down and tare him. Now this is an illustration of what Satan does with most, if not all sinners, when they come to Jesus to seek light and life through Him; he throws them down and tears them.

ALEXANDER COMRIE (1706-1774): So soon as a soul begins to give ear unto Jesus, there is much astir—the world allures, Satan threatens, the evil heart attempts to oppose the words of Jesus: many difficulties are suggested—that will help, this will harm.

RALPH ERSKINE (1685-1752): Whenever conviction begins and the soul comes to be troubled for sin and under fear of hell and wrath, Satan indeed fishes in the muddy water, and mixes his temptations with the Spirit’s convictions; and if he can bring all convictions to nothing, either by force or fraud, he will do it, that the convinced soul may never come to Christ for a cure; Satan will stand at his right hand to resist him.

C. H. SPURGEON: The Holy Ghost tells you that you are a lost sinner, and undone; “Ah!” says the devil, “you are, and you cannot be saved;” and thus again under the very garb of the Spirit’s operations he deceives the soul―“Oh,” says Satan, “it is true Christ died, but not for you; you are a peculiar character.” I remember the devil once made me believe that I was one alone, without a companion. I thought there was no one like myself. I saw that others had sinned as I had done, and had gone as far as I had, but I fancied what there was something peculiar about my sin. Thus the devil tried to set me apart as if I did not belong to the rest of mankind, I thought that if I had been anybody else I might have been saved.

THOMAS WATSON (1620-1686): The devil would make us wade so far in the waters of repentance that we should get beyond our depth and be drowned in the gulf of despair.

C. H. SPURGEON: Then, if the devil cannot overcome you there, he tries another method; he takes all the threatening passages out of God’s Word, and says they all apply to you. He reads you this passage: There is a sin unto death; I do not say that ye should pray for it, I John 5:16. “There,” says the devil, “the apostle did not say he could even pray for the man who had committed certain sins.” Then he reads, that sin against the Holy Ghost shall never be forgiven, Luke 12:10. “There,” he says, “is your character: you have committed sin against the Holy Ghost, and you will never be pardoned.” Then he brings another passage: Let him alone; Ephraim is joined unto idols, Hosea 4:17. “There,” says Satan, “you have had no liberty in prayer lately; God has let you alone; you are given unto idols; you are entirely destroyed.”

A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Satan will tell you that it is no use to resist indwelling sin any longer, that it is useless to pray any more. He seeks to produce a despair, and tells many harassed souls they might as well commit suicide and put an end to their misery.

C. H. SPURGEON: But do not believe him my dear friends. No man has committed the sin against the Holy Ghost as long as he has grace to repent; it is certain that no man can have committed that sin if he flies to Christ and believes on him.

ALEXANDER COMRIE: It is Satan’s own work to keep us away from the Saviour who is offered to us. This he does either by magnifying our sins so much that it seems that they are committed against the Holy Spirit and thus are unpardonable, or, if this is not possible, by coming as an angel of light to torment our soul by urging the necessity of repentance and contrition. And since our legalistic heart and unbelief have a delight in this and agree with it, we are starved and kept back from the gospel.

BROWNLOW NORTH (1810-1875): It is a great error to try to conquer our corruptions before we try to conquer our unbelief. The devil says, “Conquer your sins, and faith will follow.” The Scripture says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and sin shall not have dominion over you.”

A. W. PINK: How can one distinguish between the harassing doubts which the Devil injects, and the convictions of sin and piercings of conscience which the Holy Spirit produces? By the effects produced.

RALPH ERSKINE: Hence see the difference between the conviction of the Spirit and the temptation of Satan; and the difference between the distress of soul that arises from a law-work before conversion, and that which arises from the assault of the enemy of our salvation.
      The convictions of the Spirit are before a man come to Christ, and tend as a severe school master to lead him to Christ, Galatians 3:24. But the temptations of the devil are especially when a man is coming to Christ, in order to keep him from coming. If the Spirit of God by a law-work seem, as it were, to cast down the man, and tear him to pieces, the design is to oblige him to go to Christ for help and healing, and to provoke him to come to the Saviour and fly to the city of refuge. But the design of the devil’s temptations, when he throws down and tears the soul is, when he is coming, or as he is coming to Christ in order to detain him from coming, or discourage him in coming.
      The convictions of the Spirit are humbling, tending to make the soul despair of help in himself, or in God out of Christ. The temptations of the enemy are terrifying, tending to make the soul despair of help in Christ, or in God through Him…Let me exhort all that hear me, to come to our Lord Jesus Christ, whatever opposition from hell stands in your way; and though the devil should throw you down and tear you as you are coming, yet Christ will lift you up and heal you.

JAMES DURHAM (1622-1658): Sinners need not fear to anger Christ, by coming to Him; but when they come not, He is angry. It is said He was wroth at this sin, Matthew 22:7; and it is on this ground that we are bidden, Psalm 2:12, Kiss the Son, lest he be angry―that is, to exercise faith in Him; for if we do it not, He will be angry, and we will perish.

C. H. SPURGEON: You may be always sure that that which comes from the devil will make you look at yourselves and not at Christ. The Holy Spirit’s work is turn our eyes from ourselves to Jesus Christ.―Up, poor soul! If Satan is trying to tear thee, tell him it is written, “He is able to save to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him;” that “whosoever cometh he will in no wise cast out;” and it may be that thus God will deliver thee from that desperate conflict into which, as a coming sinner, thou hast been cast.

 

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The Word of God in the Power of the Holy Spirit

Posted on March 25, 2014 by The Editor

Hebrews 4:12; Acts 18:24, 25, 28
       The Word of God is quick, powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
       And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord…for he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publickly, shewing by the scriptures that Jesus was Christ.

WILLIAM GURNALL (1617-1679): We read of Apollos, that he “mightily convinced the Jews:” he did, as it were, knock them down with the weight of his reasoning. And out of what armoury fetched he the sword with which he so prevailed? See the same verse, “showing by the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ:” and he therefore is said to be “mighty in the Scriptures.”

C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): The great means of the conversion of sinners is the Word of God, and the more closely we keep to it in our ministry, the more likely are we to be successful.

THOMAS BROOKS (1608-1680): Preaching is not a matter of parts, words, or wit; it is Scripture demonstration that works upon the conscience, and that God owns and crowns.

J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): The Bible applied to the heart by the Holy Ghost, is the grand instrument by which souls are first converted to God. That mighty change is generally begun by some text or doctrine of the Word brought home to a man’s conscience.

HENRY MOORHOUSE (1840-1880): When I was brought to Christ about sixteen years ago, I was in business, working up till eleven at night, consequently I had very little time to read my Bible; I used to carry a small pocket Bible in my pocket, and take it out during the dinner hour and read it, and I learnt John 3:16: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. I was so full of joy that I wanted everybody to share it.
       I was staying at Southport at the time. I went to see an old woman, and said, “I wish you would ask the ministers to come and preach in the open air.”
      “Go thyself, lad,” said the old woman, “and I’ll go wi’ thee.”
      So we went, and got a large number of people together, and I began to talk about Pharaoh and the Red sea, till I got their attention, and every now and then I would stop and say, “My friends, that is not the gospel,” and then I would repeat John 3:16. After which I would go on talking of things that had no more to do with the gospel than cheese has to do with the stars; every now and then stopping, when I saw the interest of the people was at its height, to give them the gospel.
      For years after, I came across people who had been converted at Southport. It is very nice to use illustrations to get the ears of the people, but this is the gospel—“Christ died for us and rose again.” It does not take much to make a man a preacher of the gospel—it may take a long time to get to preach sermons. Let us stick right to the Book—we cannot get far wrong if we do that.

C. H. SPURGEON: M’Cheyne somewhere says, “Depend upon it, it is God’s Word, not man’s comment on God’s Word, which converts souls.” I have frequently observed that this is the case. A discourse has been the means of conviction or of decision; but usually upon close inquiry I have found that the real instrument was a Scripture quoted by the preacher. A large fruit may contain and nourish a tiny seed; when the fruit falls into the ground and the shoot springs up, the real life was in the central pip, and not in the juicy fruit which encompassed it. So the divine truth is the living and incorruptible seed; the sermon is as needful as the apple to its pip; but still the vitality, the energy, the saving power, was in the pip of the Word, and only in a minor sense in the surrounding apple of human exposition and exhortation.

ROBERT MURRAY M’CHEYNE (1813-1843): Is not the Word the sword of the Spirit? Should not our great work be to take it from its scabbard, to cleanse it from all rust, and then to apply its sharp edge to the consciences of man? It is certain the fathers used to preach in this manner. John Brown of Haddington used to preach as if he had read no other book than the Bible. It is the truth of God in its naked simplicity that the Spirit will most honour and bless.

C. H. SPURGEON: We should resolve also that we will quote more of Holy Scripture―our own words are mere paper pellets compared with the rifle shot of the Word.

D. L. MOODY (1837-1899): Now I want to call your attention to a fact. You never in your life saw a man full of God who wasn’t full of Scripture. You see a minister in the pulpit that is filled with the Spirit of God and he will talk Scripture right along. Mary was filled with the Holy Ghost, and that Magnificat flowed from her lips, Luke 1:46-55. And any man full of the Holy Ghost will talk Scripture.

C. H. SPURGEON: Moreover, we shall evermore keep to the Word of God, because we have had experience of its power within ourselves. It is not so long ago that you will have forgotten how, like a hammer, the Word of God broke your flinty heart, and brought down your stubborn will. By the Word of the Lord you were brought to the cross, and comforted by the atonement. That Word breathed a new life into you; and when, for the first time, you knew yourself to be a child of God, you felt the ennobling power of the gospel received by faith. The Holy Spirit wrought your salvation through the Holy Scriptures.
      You trace your conversion, I am sure, to the Word of the Lord; for this alone is “perfect, converting the soul,” Psalm 19:7. Whoever may have been the man who spoke it, or whatever may have been the book in which you read it, it was not man’s word, nor man’s thought upon God’s Word, but the Word itself, which made you know salvation in the Lord Jesus. It was neither human reasoning, nor the force of eloquence, nor the power of moral persuasion, but the omnipotence of the Spirit, applying the Word itself, that gave you rest and peace and joy through believing. We are ourselves trophies of the power of the sword of the Spirit.

JOHN BROWN (of Haddington) (1722-1787): So far as I have observed God’s dealings with my soul, the flights of preachers have entertained me; but it was Scripture expressions that did penetrate my soul, and that in a manner peculiar to themselves.

 

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