Jun 17
2
WHEN THE LORD SPEAKS
Acts 2:37
When the Holy Spirit pricks a sinner in the heart, beginning in
regeneration and throughout the life of the believer, we cease to hear
the words of a man. We hear the words of our Lord himself. That is what
happened on the day of Pentecost. An earthen vessel was speaking, but
whose word was being preached? It was a sinner preaching but whose
Spirit sent forth the Word? Who did they hear? They heard what the
apostles heard, the Lord Jesus Christ say, “Follow me.” Sinners always
obey his voice.
Clay Curtis.
One of the prevailing errors of our day is that your heart can be right,
even though your head is wrong. Or, you can believe in your heart what
you do not believe in your head. This thinking is used for so many
different reasons. But the naked truth about this is that it is man’s
attempt to excuse his own refusal to bow to what God says in His Word.
“My heart can be right, even if my head is wrong.” You cannot believe in
your heart what you do not believe in your head any more than you can
come back from a place you have never been. Remember, unbelief and false
doctrine are not intellectual problems. They are born from sin and
rebellion.
Todd Nibert
The heart and the mouth
Romans 10:10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and
with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
The faith itself is not righteousness, but it is UNTO righteousness
because it connects us to Christ, Who is our righteousness. Salvation is
an eternal act of God’s will in its origin and it is a powerful work of
God on the heart of a sinner, in its application. With the heart man
believeth. Not with the heart of flesh, for the flesh profiteth nothing
(John 6:63). But that new heart that God promised He would give His
people. The new man is the one who believes, not the old. The one
created in Christ Jesus unto good works.
And then, what happens in the heart is expressed by the mouth. The
Psalmist exhorted in Psalm 107:2, Let the redeemed of the LORD say [so].
And we do and shall. The Lord instructed the man, out of whom He had
cast the legion of devils, “Go home to thy friends, and tell them how
great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on
thee.” And we do and shall.
Confession includes everything that is believed. It is owning our sin as
Job did when he said, “behold, I am vile!” It is acknowledging our
helplessness as Peter did, when he cried, “Lord, save me!” It is
declaring His sufficiency as the leper did who begged, “Lord, if you
will, you can make me clean.” It is proclaiming the power of His blood,
like the publican who prayed, “God, be propitious to me, the sinner.” It
is bowing to His sovereignty as the thief who said, “Lord, remember me,
when you come into your kingdom.”
Chris Cunningham
Circumcision of the Heart
Tommy Robbins
For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and
rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Php 3:3
Circumcision was the distinguishing mark of the Jewish nation. It was a
physical reminder of God’s covenant with Abraham. It had a spiritual
meaning as well. It signified purification of the heart, inward
circumcision effected by the Spirit of the Living God. Although Paul was
a Jew, he was making reference to the latter. This inward circumcision
of the heart has at least three characteristics which distinguishes the
“Holy Nation” of God from all others, even the earthly Jewish nation.
The first thing we see is that only the true, Spiritual circumcision
worship the true and living God. All others worship false gods. Only
those whom God has given Spiritual life in His Son in regeneration
worship Him. And they all worship Him in spirit and in truth.
Secondly, we see that Spiritual Israel rejoices in Christ Jesus. The
true child of God joys in Christ and salvation in Him – “Whom having not
seen, ye love; in Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye
rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” 1Peter 1:8. Worshipping
God and rejoicing in Christ Jesus is truly a heart work gendered by the
Holy Spirit of God. It is not a ceremonial or physical effort.
Thirdly, we see that those who worship God in Spirit and rejoice in
Christ Jesus have no confidence in the flesh. The flesh is the natural
man – our self. To have confidence in self as pertaining to salvation in
any respect is to have no confidence in Christ. The true circumcision
looks to Christ alone by God given faith in regeneration. We look upon
the flesh as vile, deplorable, wretched and miserable. The flesh is not
to be trusted – “The heart (the natural man) is deceitful above all
things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9. These
three characteristics are the undeniable marks of a true child of God.
We worship God in Spirit and in truth, and rejoice and have confidence
in Jesus Christ alone.
Born Again
I cannot recall the exact words, but John Owen once said something like
this: ‘The two greatest soul damning delusions in the world are: (1) Men
and women think they can be in the kingdom of God and go to God’s heaven
without being born again; (2) Men and women that think they can be born
again and not be new creatures in the Lord Jesus Christ.’
This, sad to say, describes the majority of Baptists in our day. They
teach (and practice!) that sinners may enter the kingdom of God through
a simple change of mind, giving mental assent to a few chosen verses of
Scripture, and/or repeating some form of a so-called sinner’s prayer.
But the Scripture is plain and clear, “You must be born again.”
Furthermore, they teach that once the sinner has gone through this
ritual of decision making, then he or she is certain for heaven, though
they show no interest in God, His Word, His gospel, His glory, or His
people. But the Scriptures are plain and clear, “If any man be in
Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold; all
things are become new.”
Precious soul, if the faith you have has not caused you to think
differently, love differently and live differently than you did before
you possessed it, then the sooner you get rid of it the better. God’s
people are born again, born of the Spirit of God, created in
righteousness and true holiness. That precious faith which God gives to
His elect is a “working faith,” a faith which “works by love” (Galatians
5:6; I Thessalonians 1:2-10).
Maurice Montgomery
All Spiritual Blessings
“Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath
blessed us with ALL spiritual blessings in heavenly places IN CHRIST.”
Eph. 1:3
The Holy Spirit uses this phrase over and over again – IN CHRIST. The
whole of the word of God is to reveal to us the Lord Jesus and his
accomplished salvation. The whole of God’s word is to teach us what we
have IN CHRIST.
When Our Lord Jesus Christ said, “Come unto me, and you shall find rest
for your souls” He is telling us there is no other place, other than in
Him, to find rest for our soul – rest from the guilt and power of sin.
When Christ said, “Come unto me”, He didn’t say come to a particular
position on doctrine, come to election, or come to imputed
righteousness. He didn’t say come to total depravity, or to God’s
Sovereignty. He told sinners to COME UNTO ME! Why? Because when a sinner
comes to Christ they receive all that he did in his work, all that he is
in His person. We were chosen in HIM, and accepted in HIM. Redemption is
through HIS blood, we obtained an inheritance in HIM, and we were
quickened together with HIM, raised up to sit together in heavenly
places in HIM. The long and the short of it beloved is that if we have
Christ we have ALL WE NEED, and we have it where it counts, before God
Almighty who demands perfection. Blessed be his name for he has provided
us perfection IN CHRIST. “And ye are COMPLETE IN HIM, which is the head
of all principality and power”.
We need righteousness – Christ is our righteousness. We need wisdom –
Christ is our wisdom. We need sanctification – Christ is our
sanctification. We need redemption and Christ is our redemption. God
made Him so unto us (1Cor. 1:30).
Christ said: COME UNTO ME, in coming to Him you will have all that is IN
HIM and you will spend the rest of your life learning about all you have
IN HIM!
Don Bell
THE mere presentation of truth to the unrenewed mind, either in the form
of threatening, or promise, or motive, can never produce any saving or
sanctifying effect. The soul of man, in its unrenewed state, is
represented as spiritually dead; insensible to all holy, spiritual
motion. Now, upon such a mind what impression is to be produced by the
mere holding up of truth before its eye? What life, what emotion, what
effect will be accomplished? As well might we spread out the pictured
canvas before the glazed eye of a corpse, and expect that by the beauty
of the design, the brilliancy of the coloring, and the genius of the
execution, we would animate the body with life, heave the bosom with
emotion, and cause the eye to swim with delight, as to look for similar
moral effects to result from the mere holding up to view divine truth
before a carnal mind, “dead in trespasses and sins.” And yet there are
those who maintain the doctrine, that divine truth, unaccompanied by any
extraneous power, can effect all these wonders! Against such a theory we
would simply place one passage from the sacred word: “Except a man be
born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The sacred word, inspired
though it be, is but a dead letter, unclothed with the life-giving power
of the Holy Spirit. Awful as are the truths it unfolds, solemn as are
the revelations it discloses, touching as are the scenes it portrays,
and persuasive as are the motives it supplies, yet, when left to its own
unaided operation, divine truth is utterly impotent to the production of
spiritual life, love, and holiness in the soul of man. Its influence
must necessarily be passive, possessing, as it does, no actual power of
its own, and depending upon a divine influence extraneous from itself,
to render its teaching efficacious. The three thousand who were
converted on the day of Pentecost were doubtless awakened under one
sermon, and some would declare it was the power of the truth which
wrought those wonders of grace. With this we perfectly agree, only
adding, that it was truth in the mighty hand of God which pricked them
in the heart, and wrung from them the cry, “Men and brethren, what shall
we do?” The Eternal Spirit was the efficient cause, and the preached
truth but the instrument employed to produce the effect; but for His
accompanying and effectual power, they would, as multitudes do now, have
turned their backs upon the sermon of Peter, though it was full of
Christ crucified, deriding the truth, and rejecting the Savior of whom
it spoke. But it pleased God, in the sovereignty of His will, to call
them by His grace, and this He did by the effectual, omnipotent power of
the Holy Spirit, through the instrumentality of a preached gospel.
Octavius Winslow.