Saturday, November 12, 2011

My Other Reformed Website.

Be sure to visit my other reformed website,
http://reformedbiblicalstudies.org

Thanks,

Art

Pursue Holiness

“Without holiness no one will see the Lord.” Hebrews 12:14
The Word is a glass to show us our spots, and Christ’s blood is a fountain to wash them away. Pray for a holy heart. “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” Lay your heart before the Lord and say, “Lord, my heart is full of leprosy; it defiles all it touches; I am not fit to live with such a heart, for I cannot honor You; nor die with such a heart, for I cannot see You. Oh create in me a clean heart; send Your Spirit into me, to refine and purify me, that I may be a temple fir for You, the Holy God, to inhabit.” – Thomas Watson

Sin Shall Not Have Dominion Over You

Sin cannot get confirmed dominion over the child of God, because God hath promised that it shall not. “Sin shall not have dominion over you.” Oh! how I live these “shalls!” There seems something grand in them. “Sin shall not.” Ah! Satan may come with temptation, but when God says, “Sin shall not have dominion,” it is as when the sea comes up in the fullness of its strength, and the Almighty saith – “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther; here shall thy proud waves be stayed.”
If there were no other promise in the Bible but this one, and I knew no more theology than that promise teaches me, I would be most happy. “Sin shall not have dominion.” O my God, if thou sayest it shall not, then I know it shall not. Hath he said, and shall he not do it? Hath he promised it, and shall it not stand good? If you trust in Jesus Christ, before sin can ever fully rule over you, God’s promise must be broken, and, beloved, that shall never be.
~ CH Spurgeon

Be Careful How You Walk

“Be very careful, then, how you walk!” Ephesians 5:15

To honor Jesus in your thoughts, words, and every action should be your constant aim.

You are in an enemy’s land; surrounded by temptations; and have a heart that can be deceived.

This present world is not your home! Satan’s family are not to be your intimate friends. Riches, honors, or pleasure are not to be your objects of pursuit. You are walking in the midst of snares and traps! Be watchful, prayerful, depending upon Jesus, and cultivating fellowship with Him.

Keep your eyes on Jesus as your example! Walk by His Word as your rule. Do not be venturesome or presumptuous, but avoid the very appearance of evil. Never leave the Lord’s ways to join the world’s vanities or to please a carnal lust. Keep close to Jesus and follow on to know the Lord. Walk as a beloved child, who going home to his loving Father’s house! ”Be very careful, then, how you walk!”
- James Smith

Hallowed is His Name

Hallowed be your name. Matthew 6:9
There is in each of us an envy; O how hard a matter it is to rejoice in the gifts, graces, and labors of others, and be content in circumstances, when God casts us by as unworthy, and uses others to glorify his name! We are troubled if others glorify God, and not us, or more than us, or if they are more holy, more useful, or more serious; self will not yield to this. Now by putting up this prayer to God, we leave it to him to choose the instrument that he will employ. We should be content to be abased and obscure provided Christ is honored and exalted. Many times we must be content, not only to be active instruments but passive objects of his glory. If God will glorify himself by our poverty, or our disgrace, our pain and sickness, we must be content. We need to deal with God seriously about this matter that we may submit to the Lord’s will as Jesus: ‘Save me from this hour; but for this cause came I unto this hour: Father, glorify thy name’ (John 12:27-28). This was the humble submission of Christ Jesus, and it should be in us! The martyrs were contented to be bound to the stake, if that way God might use them for his glory. ‘My earnest expectation and hope . . . Christ . . . exalted in my body, whether by life or by death’ (Phil. 1:20). We need to deal with God that we may have the end, and leave the means to his own choosing; that God may be glorified in our condition, whatever it is. If he wills for us to be rich and full, that he might be glorified in our bounty; if he wills for us to be poor and low, that he may be glorified in our patience; if he will have us healthy, that he may be glorified in our labor; if he will have us sick, that he may be glorified in our pain; if he will have us live, that he may be glorified in our lives; if he will have us die, that he may be glorified in our deaths (Rom. 14:8).
Thomas Manton,Works, i:77

God’s Saving Providences

Doth no man come to Jesus Christ by the will, wisdom, and power of man, but by the gift, promise, and drawing of the Father? Then here is room for Christians to stand and wonder at the effectual working of God’s providences, that he hath made use of, as means to bring them to Jesus Christ.
For although men are drawn to Christ by the power of the Father, yet that power puts forth itself in the use of means: and these means are divers, sometimes this, sometimes that; for God is at liberty to work by which, and when, and how he will; but let the means be what they will, and as contemptible as may be, yet God that commanded the light to shine out of darkness, and that out of weakness can make strong, can, nay, doth oftentimes make use of very unlikely means to bring about the conversion and salvation of his people. Therefore, you that are come to Christ — and that by unlikely means — stay yourselves, and wonder, and, wondering, magnify almighty power, by the work of which the means hath been made effectual to bring you to Jesus Christ. What was the providence that God made use of as a means, either more remote or more near, to bring thee to Jesus Christ? Was it the removing of thy habitation, the change of thy condition, the loss of relations, estate, or the like? Was it thy casting of thine eye upon some good book, thy hearing of thy neighbors talk of heavenly things, the beholding of God’s judgments as executed upon others, or thine own deliverance from them, or thy being strangely cast under the ministry of some godly man? O take notice of such providences! They were sent and managed by mighty power to do thee good. God himself, I say, hath joined himself unto this chariot: yea, and so blessed it, that it failed not to accomplish the thing for which he sent it.
God blesses not to every one his providences in this manner. How many thousands are there in this world, that pass every day under the same providences! but God is not in them, to do that work by them as he hath done for thy poor soul, by his effectually working with them. O that Jesus Christ should meet thee in this providence, that dispensation, or the other ordinance! This is grace indeed! At this, therefore, it will be thy wisdom to admire, and for this to bless God.
—John Bunyan “Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ”

Christ Alone is Sufficient

There are multitudes of baptized men and women who profess to honour Christ, but in reality do Him great dishonour. They give Christ a certain place in their system of religion, but not the place which God intended Him to fill. Christ alone is not “all in all” to their souls. No! It is either Christ and the Church, or Christ and the sacraments, or Christ and His ordained ministers, or Christ and their own repentance, or Christ and their own goodness, or Christ and their own prayers, or Christ and their own sincerity and charity, on which they practically rest their souls.
If any reader of this paper is a Christian of this kind, I warn him also plainly, that his religion is an offence to God. You are changing God’s plan of salvation into a plan of your own devising. You are in effect deposing Christ from His throne, by giving the glory due to Him to another.
~ J.C. Ryle

Arise and Come

The hand of a living Redeemer is now held out from heaven; but it may be withdrawn. The Fountain is open now; but it may be soon closed forever. “If any man thirst, let him come and drink” without delay. Though you have been a great sinner, and have resisted warnings, counsel, and sermons, yet come. Though you have sinned against light and knowledge, against a father’s advice, and a mother’s tears, though you have lived for years without a Sabbath, and without prayer, yet come. Say not what you know not how to come, that you do not understand what it is to believe, that you must wait for more light. Will a tired man say that he is too tired to lie down? or a drowning man, that he knows not h ow to lay hold on the hand stretched out to help him? Or the shipwrecked sailor, with a lifeboat alongside the stranded hulk, that he knows not ow to jump in? Oh, case away these vain excuses! Arise and come! The door is not shut. The Fountain is not yet closed. The Lord Jesus invites you. It is enough that you feel thirsting, and desire to be saved. Come: come to Christ without delay. Whoever came to the Fountain for sin and found it dry? Whoever went unsatisfied away?
But have you come to Christ already, and found relief? Then come nearer, nearer still. The closer your communion with Christ, the more comfort you will feel. The more you daily live by the side of the Fountain the more you shall feel in yourself “a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14). You shall not only be blessed yourself, but be a source of blessings to others.
~ J. C. Ryle

For the Downcast Soul

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.” Psalm 42:11
Moreover we see that a godly man can cast a restraint upon himself, as David here stays himself in falling. There is a principle of grace, that stops the heart, and pulls in the reins again when the affections are loose. A carnal man, when he begins to be cast down, sinks lower and lower, until he sinks into despair, as lead sinks into the bottom of the sea. “They sunk, they sunk, like lead in the mighty waters,” Exodus 15:5. A carnal man sinks as a heavy body to the center of the earth, and stays not if it be not stopped: there is nothing in him to stay him in falling, as we see in Ahithophel and Saul, 2 Samuel 17:23, who, wanting a support, found no other stay but the sword’s point. And the greater their parts and places are, the more they entangle themselves; and no wonder, for they are to encounter with God and his deputy, conscience, who is King of kings, and Lord of lords. When Cain was cast out of his father’s house, his heart and countenance was always cast down, for he had nothing in him to lift it upwards. But a godly man, though he may give a little way to passion, yet, as David, he recovers himself. Therefore as we would have any good evidence that we have a better spirit in us than our own, greater than the flesh or the world, let us, in all troubles we meet with, gather up ourselves, that the stream of our own affections carry us not away too far.
~ Richard Sibbes

True Christian Love

And as there is a monstrous disproportion in the love of some, in its exercises towards different persons, so there is in their seeming exercises of love towards the same persons. Some men show a love to others as to their outward man, they are liberal of their worldly substance, and often give to the poor; but have no love to, or concern for the souls of men. Others pretend a great love to men’s souls, that are not compassionate and charitable towards their bodies. The making a great show of love, pity and distress for souls, costs them nothing; but in order to show mercy to men’s bodies, they must part with money out of their pockets. But a true Christian love to our brethren extends both to their souls and bodies; and herein is like the love and compassion of Jesus Christ. He showed mercy to men’s souls, by laboring for them, in preaching the gospel to them; and showed mercy to their bodies in going about doing good, healing all manner of sickness and diseases among the people. We have a remarkable instance of Christ’s having compassion at once both to men’s souls and bodies, and showing compassion by feeding both, in Mark 6:34, “And Jesus when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion towards them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.” Here was his compassion to their souls. And in the sequel we have an account of his compassion to their bodies, because they had been a long while having nothing to eat; he fed five thousand of them with five loaves and two fishes. And if the compassion of professing Christians towards others does not work in the same ways, it is a sign that it is no true Christian compassion.

~ Jonathan Edwards

Mortify Sinful Deeds

Romans 8:13 “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”
Here we have laid on us as saints and children of God the responsibility to put to death those sinful deeds of the body. Though redeemed, though washed in the precious blood of Christ, though secure in the arms of our Sovereign Lord, we must not rest while in this continuing battle. The security a true believer enjoys is a security that compels us towards being the bride that Christ will present “to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Ephesians 5:27) It is only the false professors that can go on living in sin, falsely comforted in their deceived state.
Dear brother and sister, we are never to rest in this daily battle against sin. Our flesh, the world, and the Devil with his demons confront us this morning with a three-pronged attack. We must stand firm. (Ephesians 6:13) We will do well to cry out for God’s sufficient grace this morning, to pray God’s Spirit fill us afresh, and to put on the whole armor of God, standing armed and ready for the day’s trouble. (Matthew 6:34) Will you stand against Satan’s tactics today? Will you grasp the shield of faith (Ephesians 6:16) to keep you safe from the fiery arrows being shot your way? Will you mortify the sins of the flesh, refusing to give in to carnal and temporal desires?
How incredible it is that we do not hate sin more than we do! Sin is the cause of all the pain and disease in the world. God did not create man to be an ailing and suffering creature. It was sin, and nothing but sin, which brought in all the ills that flesh is heir to. It was sin to which we owe every racking pain, and every loathsome infirmity, and every humbling weakness to which our poor bodies are liable. Let us keep this ever in mind. Let us hate sin with a godly hatred.” ~ J.C. Ryle
May we shun our natural complacency and forsake every destructive notion that would keep us from the task at hand. Christ is more than sufficient for your battle and He will give you strength which flows from an unending supply. “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9)
~ Lee Dodd