Jul 26
20
The religious professor receives doctrines because he sees them in the Bible. The believer not only sees them in the Book, but he feels them in his heart, put there by the Holy Spirit. The believer gets at truth through trouble. He arrives at the banquet of mercy through sharp pangs of hunger. He lays hold of the robe of righteousness chilled by nakedness.
He comes to the cross because he is guilty and there is nowhere else to go. Thus the religionist and the believer (however they may resemble one another) have an eternal distinction which the hand of God has drawn between the living and the dead.
JC Philpot
Never try to make the scripture say what it does not say and never try to
explain away what it does say. Clay Curtis
Living Commentary!
Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe: and I will have respect unto thy statutes continually. – Psalm 119:117
We are poor, weak, inconsistent creatures if left but a little to ourselves. When I think how cold, dull and heartless I have been; how often I have wandered, how often trifled upon the brink of temptation; when I consider what powerful, vigilant, and subtle enemies are combined against me; and how many professors have fallen on my right hand and my left – I am amazed at the greatness of His mercy in preserving me! I am a living commentary, that there is forgiveness with Him – and that He is able to save to the uttermost!
John Newton
“He shall sit as a Refiner.”–Malachi 3:3.
Simple is the process of refining. Its purpose is clear. It purifies from dross the ore submitted to its test. A furnace is prepared. The metal is placed within. Fire is strongly applied. The action of the overpowering heat produces liquefaction. The worthless parts, which before were intermixed, are thus separated. Impurity is disentangled. The Refiner gains his object. He has parted the precious from the vile. Unadulterated ore remains.
This process is a mirror to show Christ. It is a page of Gospel-lessons. May it be our special joy to mark and learn with profit!
To infer that Christ is here exhibited is no conceit of vain imagination, no dream of fancy. It is the sound conclusion from clear Scriptures. The Spirit speaks to us in the sacred page. In it we read, “He is like a Refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap.” And again, “He shall sit as a Refiner and Purifier of silver–and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.” (Mal. 3:2, 3.) Can this be other than the Lord? To Him Isaiah pointedly refers, “I will turn My hand upon you, and purely purge away your dross, and take away all your tin.” (Isa. 1:25.) Faith hears, and gladly receives Christ Jesus as the Refiner. To Him and to His work attention is now sought.
Let it be noticed that the Refiner places valuable metal in his melting forge. Believers are marked by this similitude. “The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!” (Lam. 4:2.) “I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried–they shall call on My name, and I will hear them–I will say, it is My people; and they shall say, The Lord is my God.” (Zech. 13:9.) Job testifies, “When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” (Job 23:10.) How grand, too, is the assurance, “Since you were precious in My sight, you have been honorable, and I have loved you.” (Isa. 43:4.) Believer, realize the comfort! As gold is valued upon earth, and counted as most precious treasure, so Jesus esteems you as His riches, and ranks you as of inestimable price.
Henry Law
“Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” 1 Peter 1:5
This salvation takes in all the circumstances of a child of God. It is not only a salvation from wrath to come—that were an immeasurable act of grace—but it is a present salvation, anticipating and providing for every exigency of the life that now is, including deliverance from all evil, help in all trouble; comfort in all sorrow, the supply of all want, and through all conflicts, assaults, and difficulties, perfect safety and final triumph. The present and certain security of the believer is provided for in the covenant of grace, made sure in Jesus the covenant Head, and revealed in the glorious covenant plan of salvation. May the Holy Spirit unfold to us this great and consoling truth, that in the midst of all their weakness, waywardness, and tendency to wander, the Lord is the keeper of His people, and that they whom He keeps are well and eternally kept.
The Lord could not in truth be said to be the keeper of His people, if there were anything of self-power in the believer, any ability to keep himself—if he were not weakness, all weakness, and nothing but weakness. Of this the believer needs to be perpetually put in remembrance. The principle of self-confidence is the natural product of the human heart; the great characteristic of our apostate race is a desire to live, and think, and act independently of God. What is the great citadel, to the overthrow of which Divine grace first directs its power? what is the first step it takes in the subjection of the sinner to God? what, but the breaking down of this lofty, towering, independent conceit of himself, so natural to man, and so abhorrent to God? Now, let it be remembered, that Divine and sovereign grace undertakes not the extraction of the root of this depraved principle from the heart of its subjects. The root remains to the very close of life’s pilgrimage; though in a measure weakened, subdued, mortified, still it remains; demanding the most rigid watchfulness, connected with ceaseless prayer, lest it should spring upward, to the destruction of his soul’s prosperity, the grieving of the Spirit, and the dishonouring of God. Oh how much the tender, faithful discipline of a covenant God may have the subjection and mortification of this hateful principle for its blessed end, who can tell? We shall never fully know until we reach our Father’s house, where the dark and, to us, mysterious dealings of that loving Father with us here below shall unfold themselves in light and glory, elevating the soul in love and praise!
What an affecting confirmation do the histories of some of the most eminent of God’s saints afford to this most important truth, that the creature, left to itself, is perfect weakness! If the angels in their purity, if Adam in his state of innocence, fell in consequence of being left, in the sovereign will of God, to their own keeping, what may we expect from a fallen, sinful, imperfect creature, even though renewed? Do we look into God’s blessed word, and read what is there declared, touching the power of a renewed creature to keep itself? How affecting, and at the same time conclusive, these declarations are: “Having no might;” “Without strength;” “Weak through the flesh;” “Out of weakness were made strong”! Could language more forcibly set forth the utter weakness of a child of God? An what are their own acknowledgments? “The Lord is the strength of my life;” “Hold You me up, and I shall be safe;” “Hold up my goings in Your paths, that my footsteps slip not;” “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me;” “By the grace of God I am what I am.” And what are the examples? Look at the intemperance of Noah, the unbelief of Abraham, the adultery and murder of David, the idolatry of Solomon, the self-righteousness of Job, the impatience of Moses, the self-confidence and trimming, temporising policy of Peter. Solemn are these lessons of the creature’s nothingness; affecting these examples of his perfect weakness!
But why speak of others? Let the reader, if he is a professing child of God, pause and survey the past of his own life. What marks of perfect weakness may he discover, what evidences of his own fickleness, folly, immature judgment, may he trace, what outbreakings of deep iniquity, what disclosures of hidden corruption, what startling symptoms of the most awful departure and apostasy from God, does the review present! And, this, too, let it be remembered, is the history of a believer in Jesus, a renewed child of God, a partaker of the Divine nature, an expectant of eternal glory! Holy and blessed are they who, relinquishing all their fond conceit of self-power and self-keeping, shall pray, and cease not to pray, “Lord, hold You me up, and I shall be safe!” “Let him that thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall.”
Octavius Winslow
Building Upon The Foundation
1 Corinthians 3:10-15
It takes no more than a casual reading of 1 Corinthians 3 to realise that the message of this chapter is primarily directed to gospel preachers. Paul is not addressing himself to false prophets, but to men who preach the gospel. God the Holy Spirit inspired the apostle to tell us how we are to build upon the Foundation God has laid, the Lord Jesus Christ, our crucified Redeemer.
The Builders
Gospel preachers are instruments in the hands of God by which he builds his house (Ps. 127:1; Eph. 4:11-16). They know and gladly acknowledge that their usefulness as his servants is altogether of God, “according to the grace” God has given them (1 Cor. 3:5-9; 15:10). Like Paul, as wise master builders, they build upon Christ, the Foundation God has laid. In preaching the gospel all true gospel preachers constantly lay before eternity bound sinners the same Foundation God has laid, building God’s church upon the crucified Saviour. — “But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon” (v.10).
The Foundation
“For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (v. 11). — Christ is the only Foundation of the church. The church at Corinth had been rightly built and founded upon Christ through Paul’s preaching (1 Cor. 1:23, 24; 2:1-5). Christ alone is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30). Every other foundation is sand; and all that is built upon sand will perish (Isa. 28:16).
God the Father laid Christ as the Foundation of his house when he set him forth and appointed him to be the Savior and Redeemer of his people in his eternal purpose of grace. He has laid this Foundation in Holy Scripture. In the fulness of time, at the appointed time of love and grace, he lays the Foundation in the hearts of his elect, when he sends his Spirit to reveal Christ to them and forms him in them. And he does so by the preaching of the gospel, building his church upon “the Foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the Chief Cornerstone” (Eph. 2:19-20).
The Lord Jesus Christ, our God-man Mediator, is the only Foundation upon which God builds his church, the only Foundation upon which every believer is built. Christ alone is the Foundation of the covenant of grace. He is the Foundation of eternal salvation, the Foundation of all true faith hope, joy, peace, and comfort. Christ is the Foundation of all the building of God, both in this world and in the world to come.
The Materials
“Now if any man build upon this Foundation” (v. 12), let him take heed how he build. Remember. Paul is talking about gospel preachers, not false prophets. He is saying to men who know and believe the gospel, take heed how you go about the business of building God’s house. Every gospel preacher must make it his business to build just as Paul, the other apostles, and the prophets did, with lasting materials, the “gold, silver, precious stones” of pure gospel truth. God’s house must be built by the bold, simple, clear preaching of the gospel, “not with the enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (1 Cor. 2:4-5).
God’s servants must be conscientiously and constantly determined to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified relentlessly! If we build the church by constantly laying before men the Foundation God has laid, by the “gold, silver, precious stones” of pure gospel doctrine, that which we build (that which God builds by our labors) will stand the tests of time and of judgment.
Other Materials
Sadly, there are some who labor and build with “wood, hay, stubble.” The wood, hay and stubble they employ is not heresy or false doctrine. Those who preach heretical doctrine do not build upon Christ the Foundation. They build upon a foundation of sand. Paul is here talking about men who believe and preach the gospel. They are not sinister, deceitful, self-serving men. They preach the gospel; but the preaching of the gospel, with such men, is not their singular message. They also defend creeds, rehearse history, debate issues, promote denominations, advance political causes, tickle men’s brains with philosophy, tickle their ears with eloquence, and entertain them with ceremonies, religious customs, and the observance of days and programs that honor and exalt men. They allow empty, useless, trifling things to supplant the preaching of the gospel.
Work Made Manifest
“Every man’s work shall be made manifest” (v. 13). The fiery trials of the day will soon reveal whether we have built with gold, silver, and precious stones of the gospel, or with something (anything) else. That which is built by the gospel will last. Everything else will, in time, be burned. If the preacher’s work stands the fire of time, if those who profess faith in Christ under his ministry continue in the faith to the end, he shall have his reward (v. 14; 1 Thess. 2:19).
Those who gain a following and build a church by mixing other things with the preaching of the gospel shall see everything for which they have labored burned and destroyed. “He shall suffer loss.” Vanity produces vanity, nothing else! “But he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire” (v. 15). He will be made to see the folly of allowing other things to supplant the preaching of “Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Yet, notwithstanding all the faults and imperfections of his ministry, he himself, being built upon Christ the Foundation, shall be saved. He will be like a man burned out of house and home, who escapes with his own life, but loses his entire house.