Mar 26
16
Trusting God, Not Means
The Lord used ravens to feed Elijah, but Elijah never thought of trusting in the ravens. If we lean on instruments instead of the hand that used them, we bring down a curse upon ourselves, for it is written, “Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusted in man, and maketh flesh his arm and whose heart departeth from the LORD.” Jeremiah 17:5
Scott Richardson
God never said, “Do the best you can do.” God said, “Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2) “It shall be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no blemish therein.” (Leviticus 22:21). Perfection can never come at the hand of the sinner. Perfection comes at the hand of Christ the perfect Saviour. That is why His grace is always sufficient. For His strength is made perfect in our weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9)
David Eddmenson
“Art thou become like unto us?” Isaiah 14:10
What must be the apostate professor’s doom when his naked soul appears before God? How will he bear that voice, “Depart, you cursed; you have rejected me, and I reject you; you have played the harlot, and departed from Me—I also have banished you forever from my presence, and will not have mercy upon you!” What will be this wretch’s shame at the last great day when, before assembled multitudes, the apostate shall be unmasked? See the profane, and sinners who never professed religion, lifting themselves up from their beds of fire to point at him, “There he is,” says one, “will he preach the gospel in hell?” “There he is,” says another, “he rebuked me for cursing, and was a hypocrite himself!” “Aha!” says another, “here comes a psalm-singing Methodist—one who was always at his meeting; he is the man who boasted of his being sure of everlasting life—and here he is!”
No greater eagerness will ever be seen among Satanic tormentors, than in that day when devils drag the hypocrite’s soul down to perdition. Bunyan pictures this with the solemn grandeur of poetry, when he speaks of the back-way to hell. Seven devils bound the wretch with nine cords, and dragged him from the road to heaven, in which he had professed to walk, and thrust him through the back-door into hell. Mind that back-way to hell, professors!
“Examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith.” Look well to your state; see whether you are in Christ, or not. It is the easiest thing in the world to give a lenient verdict when oneself is to be tried; but O, be just and true here. Be just to all—but be rigorous in judging yourself. Remember if it is not a rock on which you build, when the house shall fall—and great will be the fall of it. O may the Lord give you sincerity, constancy, and firmness; and in no day, however evil, may you be led to turn aside.
C.H.Spurgeon
“For The Truth’s Sake”
2 John 2
I do not exaggerate, even slightly, when I say that the truth of God revealed in Holy Scripture means no more to the average church member than the words of Shakespeare to an infant. The church of this generation is very pragmatic. She becomes all things to all men that she might be any means increase her membership and fill her coffers. The house of worship has become a theatre for entertainment, a family life centre with some new, featured attraction every week or two. This religious generation has been brainwashed, both the pulpit and the pew, into believing that bigger is better and that God’s blessings can be measured by the number attending their services. The church of the twentieth century has therefore surrendered the truth of God, the worship of God and the glory of God. Her buildings may be filled to capacity with immortal souls, for whose everlasting destruction she is responsible, but God is not in her midst! Her name is Ichabod!
The singular mission of the church of Jesus Christ is to glorify God. She can fulfil her mission only as she and her children “walk in truth” (III John 4) and “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). It is the responsibility of the church in every age to preach and defend “the faith,” the glorious doctrines of the gospel of the grace of God, the truth of God. The truth that has been preserved and passed along to us by preceding generations of faithful men and women, must be preserved by us and passed along to the generations to come. We must add nothing to it. We must take nothing from it. Our business is simply to declare it without compromise. Particularly, those areas of Divine Truth most vehemently attacked by religious infidels must be sternly defended by us and declared most constantly – Divine Sovereignty – Human Depravity – Unconditional Election – Limited Atonement – Irresistible Grace – Perseverance of the Saints. We cannot bend. We cannot compromise. We cannot cease to declare the whole truth of God. Not one point can be given up or even toned down. We must do what we can “for the truth’s sake.” To compromise God’s truth is to compromise God’s glory! For the sake of God’s truth and his glory we must be absolutely intolerant of heresy.
Don Fortner
“We walk by faith, not by sight.” 2 Cor. 5:7.
This walk of faith takes in all the minute circumstances of every day’s history; a walking every step by faith; a looking above trials, above necessities, above perplexities, above improbabilities and impossibilities, above all second causes; and, in the face of difficulties and discouragements, going forward, leaning upon God. If the Lord were to roll the Red Sea before us, and marshal the Egyptians behind us, and thus hemming us in on every side, should yet bid us advance, it would be the duty and the privilege of faith instantly to obey, believing that, before our feet touched the water, God, in our extremity, would divide the sea and take us dry-shod over it. This is the only holy and happy life of a believer; if he for a moment leaves this path and attempts to walk by sight, difficulties will throng around him, troubles will multiply, the smallest trials will become heavy crosses, temptations to depart from the simple and uptight walk will increase in number and power, the heart will sicken at disappointment, the Holy Spirit will be grieved, and God will be dishonored. Let this precious truth ever be before the mind, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”
Octavius Winslow
All are more or less
deeply infected with it
J.C.Philpot
“And seekest thou
great things thyself?
Seek them not!” Jeremiah 45:5
As we are led aside by the powerful workings of our corrupt nature, we are often seeking great things for ourselves.
Riches, worldly
comforts, respectability, to be honoured, admired, and esteemed by men, are the objects most passionately sought after by the world. And so far as the children of God are under the influence of a worldly principle, do they secretly desire similar things.
Nor does this ambition depend upon station in life. All are more or less
deeply infected with it, until delivered by the grace of God. The poorest man in these towns has a secret desire in his soul after “great things,” and a secret plotting in his mind how he may obtain them.
But the Lord is determined that His people shall not have great things. He has purposed to pour
contempt upon all the pride of man. He
therefore nips all their hopes
in the bud, crushes their
flattering prospects, and makes them for the most part, poor, needy, and despised in this world.
Whatever schemes or projects the Lord’s people may devise that they may prosper and get on in the world, He rarely allows their plans to thrive. He knows well to what consequences it would lead; that this ivy creeping round the stem would, as it were, suffocate and strangle the tree.
The more that worldly goods increase . . .
the more the heart is fixed upon them,
the more the affections are set upon idols,
the more is the heart drawn away from the Lord.
He will not allow His people to have their portion here below. He has in store for them a better city,
that is a heavenly one, and therefore will not allow them to build and plant below the skies.
A child of God may be secretly aiming at great things, such as respectability, bettering his condition in life, rising step by step in the scale of society. But the Lord will usually . . .
disappoint these plans,
defeat these projects,
wither these gourds,
and blight these prospects.
He may reduce him to poverty, as He did Job; smite him with sickness, as He did Lazarus and Hezekiah; take away wife and children, as in the case of Ezekiel and Jacob; or He may bring trouble and distress into his mind by shooting an arrow out of His unerring bow into the
conscience.
God has a certain purpose to effect by bringing this trouble, and that is to pull him down from “seeking great things.” For what is the secret root of this ambition? Is it not the pride of the
heart? When the
Lord, then, would lay this ambition low, He makes
a blow at the root. He strips away fancied hopes,
and breaks down rotten props, the great things
(so through ignorance esteemed) sought for
previously, and perhaps obtained, fall to pieces.
“And seekest thou great things for thyself?
Seek them not!” Jeremiah 45:5
Job’s
religion
“Oh that I knew where I might find Him!” Job 23:3
What a mere shallow pretence to vital godliness satisfies most ministers, most hearers, and most
congregations!
But there was a reality in Job’s
religion.
It was not of a flimsy, notional, superficial nature. It was not merely a sound Calvinistic creed, and
nothing more. It was not a religion of theory and speculation, nor a well-compacted system of
doctrines and duties. There was something deeper, something more divine in Job’s religion than any
such mere pretence, delusion, imitation, or hypocrisy.
And if our religion be of the right kind, there will be something deeper in it, something more powerful, spiritual, and supernatural, than notions and doctrines, theories and speculations, merely passing to and fro in our minds, however scriptural and correct.
There will be a divine reality in it, if
God the Spirit be the
author of it. And there will be no trifling with the solemn things of God, and with our own immortal souls.
J.C.Philpot
“Deceitful Workers”
2 Corinthians 11:13
In his “History of Middle Tennessee Baptists” J. H. Grime writes about a faithful pastor, (W.H. Haile). Near the end of Haile’s life and ministry, after labouring faithfully as pastor of Shady Grove Baptist Church, near Hartsville, TN for 30 years (1851-1881), one of those “deceitful workers”, we are warned of so often in Scripture (J. H. Jackson), wormed his way into the church and into the pulpit. Grimes wrote, “He was a very bewitching speaker and had all the brass, deception, and treachery, which usually belong to false teachers. He soon succeeded in deceiving the majority of the congregation. “Wounded and forsaken by his brethren, to him dearer than life itself, for the sake of a glaring fraud, broken hearted, this father in Israel,” the faithful Pastor Haile, was compelled to leave his “unfaithful brethren and children in the Lord, and the scenes of his life’s work.” A short while later, at age 78, “he died in the blissful hope of immortal glory; but with a heart saddened by having been wounded in the house of his friends.” — Let every local church and every child of God be warned.
Beware of any man who seeks to worm his way into any pulpit. Any man who is anxious to be made your pastor has not been sent of God to be your pastor and should never be put in the office, no matter how attractive his gifts or his personality may appear to be. The man who is called and sent of God will not seek to make a way for himself. He will wait for God to put him where he would have him serve.
Beware of any man who seeks to turn you against the man by whom God was pleased to teach you the gospel. Rarely, will a man openly oppose the pastor he seeks to supplant. False prophets usually exercise great subtlety and “cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” They are skilled in the art, being directed by the Deceiver. If God has used a man to reveal Christ to you, to teach you, your children, and your children’s children the gospel, you would be wise to hold any man and any doctrine in suspicion by which you are inclined to disavow your allegiance, devotion, and gratitude to one who has spent his life faithfully serving your soul.
Beware of any man who seeks to enrich himself by the gospel. Faithful men do not seek their own things; and they certainly do not seek the things of others. Those who follow Christ serve. Those who follow Satan seek to be served. Faithful men spend themselves and gladly have their lives spent in the cause of Christ. False prophets manipulate others into lavishing riches upon them. Faithful men are men who are used. False prophets are men who use others to their own advantage.
As you care for your soul, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves!”
Don Fortner