Quotes | A People for His Name

Flavel on Providence

April 5, 2011

John Flavel’s remarks on God’s providential care for His own deserve our sober contemplation:

     How woeful your case had been if the Lord had not mercifully saved you from many thousand temptations that have assaulted you! I tell you, you cannot estimate the mercies you possess by means of such providences. Are your names sweet, and your consciences peaceful, two mercies as dear to you as your two eyes? Why surely you owe them, if not wholly yet in great measure, to the aids and assistances Providence has given you all along the way you have passed through the dangerous tempting world to this day.
     Walk therefore suitably to this obligation of Providence also. And see that you thankfully own it. Do not impute your escapes from sin to accidents, or to your own watchfulness or wisdom.
     See also that you do not tempt Providence on the other hand, by an irregular reliance upon its care over you, without taking all due care of yourselves. ‘Keep yourselves in the love of God’ (Jude 21); ‘Keep thy heart with all diligence’ (Prov. 4.23). Though Providence keep you, yet it is in the way of your duty.
     Thus you see what care Providence has had over your souls in preventing the spiritual dangers and miseries that otherwise would have befallen you in the way of temptations (The Mystery of Providence, 93-94).

“The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished” (2 Pet. 2:9). Let us praise the Lord for His providential care for us and be diligent to be godly by His grace.

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Chafer on the Return of Christ

April 3, 2011

Lewis Sperry Chafer highlights the doctrinal importance of the Return of Christ by writing,

The general theme concerning the return of Christ has the unique distinction of being the first prophecy uttered by man (Jude 1:14, 15) and the last message from the ascended Christ as well as being the last word of the Bible (Rev. 22:20, 21).

Likewise, the theme of the Second Coming of Christ is unique because of the fact that it occupies a larger part of the text of the Scriptures than any other doctrine, and it is the outstanding theme of prophecy in both the Old and the New Testaments. In fact all other prophecy largely contributes to the one great end of the complete setting forth of this crowning event—the Second Coming of Christ (Major Bible Themes, 62-63).

In view of these facts, it seems plain that we will not evangelize or disciple people properly apart from a Spirit-filled focus on the Return of Christ.

In Discipleship, Evangelism, Quotes

Hiebert on Apostolic Proclamation of the Return of Christ

April 2, 2011

Paul writes that the Thessalonians “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus which delivered us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:9-10). Commenting on 1:10, D. Edmond Hiebert stresses the importance of apostolic evangelistic proclamation of the return of Christ:

This anticipation of Christ’s return characterized the Christian church from its very beginning. Acts makes it clear that it was an essential part of the preaching of the gospel. That Paul laid considerable emphasis upon this hope in his preaching at Thessalonica seems clear from the perverted charge against the Christians in Acts 17:7 when read in light of the Thessalonian epistles. This eschatological hope is the keynote of these epistles. It had taken a firm hold on the Thessalonian believers. If their serving a living and true God distinguished them from the Gentiles, this expectant hope for Christ’s return distinguished them from the Jews.
Much of modern Christendom has lost this expectant waiting for the return of Christ, much to its own impoverishment. This expectancy is an essential part of a mature Christian life. . . . That the return of the risen Christ was being awaited by the Thessalonians implies the teaching concerning His ascension and present enthronement at the right hand of the Father . . . An eschatological reference precedes and follows [the] mention of Christ’s resurrection. Paul thus firmly ties the hope of the second advent to the crowning event of the first advent. . . . Jesus Christ’s resurrection . . . was an event that stands alone in history and confirms the validity of the gospel of salvation through Him. . . . The resurrection of Christ is therefore the ground and guarantee of His return. . . . This concise reference to the ‘wrath’ implies that the readers would understand its significance and indicates that the preaching of divine wrath coming upon sin and idolatry was an essential part of the apostolic preaching (1 & 2 Thessalonians, 73-75).

Our preaching of the gospel should also emphasize the return of Christ in connection with the resurrection and the wrath of God. Acts 17:30-31 is the best Pauline passage to teach us how to do so. Whenever possible, I use these statements when I evangelize people, and I believe that doing so is a vital part of biblical evangelism.

In Discipleship, Evangelism, Gospel, Quotes

"Convenient Food"

March 26, 2011

In his chapter, “Convenient Food,” William Arnot’s comments on Proverbs 23:1-3 about what to do when dining with a ruler challenge us all about an issue that we all need repeated reminders. Although the verses that he comments on pertain directly to that specific situation, the principles apply to all our eating and drinking:

It is of the Lord that hunger is painful, and food gives pleasure; between these two lines of defence the Creator has placed life, with a view to its preservation. If eating had been as painful as it is pleasant to our nature, the disagreeable duty would have been frequently forgotten or neglected, and the world, if peopled at all, would have been peopled by tribes of walking skeletons. The arrangement which provides that the necessary reception of aliment into the system gives pleasure to the senses, is wise and good; it is an ungrateful return for our Maker’s kindness when the creature turns his bounty into licentiousness. The due sustenance of the body is the Creator’s end; the pleasantness of food the means of attaining it. When men prosecute and cultivate that pleasure as an end, they thwart the very purposes of providence. When the pleasure is pursued as an object, it ceases to serve effectually as a means of healthfully maintaining the living frame.
When the appetite is strong, and the food enticing, the danger of sinning and suffering is great,—greater than most of us care to observe, and acknowledge to ourselves. The warning here is strongly expressed, and all its strength is needed. “Put a knife to thy throat,” is in form similar to the injunctions of the Great Teacher, to pluck out the offending right eye, and cut off the offending right hand. “Be not desirous of his dainties, for they are deceitful meat.” They are of a set purpose made deceitful: they are prepared by an artist of skill, whose whole life is devoted to the study. Resisting virtue in the guests must be strong indeed, for the temptation is as powerful as wealth and experience can make it (Studies in Proverbs, 464-65).

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"The Attributes of God"

March 24, 2011

In his book The Attributes of God: A Journey into the Father’s Heart, A. W. Tozer writes,

A great old theologian once said, “Don’t reject a fact because you don’t know a method.” Don’t say it isn’t so because you don’t know how it’s so. There is much you can’t explain. If you come to me and ask the how of things, I’ll ask you twenty-five questions, one after the other, about yourself—your body, your mind, your hair, your skin, your eyes, your ears. You won’t be able to answer one question. Yet you use all those things even though you don’t understand them. I don’t know how God can suffer. That is a mystery I may never know.
A lot of hymn writers who should have been cutting the grass at the time have written songs instead. One of them says this: “I wonder why, I wonder why He loved me so. I will love and pray that I might know why He loved me so.” You will never know that. There is only one answer to why God loved you: because God is love. And there is only one answer to why God has mercy on you: because God is mercy, and mercy is an attribute of the Deity. Don’t ask God why, but thank Him for the vast wondrous how and fact of it.

As little children, we should receive all that God tells us, whether we can explain it or not. Not being able to understand how something that God says can be so is no reason to doubt, question, or reject what He says. Failure to obey God because we cannot explain why He wants us to do something will keep us from the fullness of His blessings in our lives.

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The Oldest and Most Persistent Doctrinal Denial

March 19, 2011

Derek Kidner’s comments on the first doctrinal denial bring out truth that all generations of believers must make continual efforts to keep before God’s people:

After the query, the flat contradiction: Ye shall not surely die (AV, RV). It is the serpent’s word against God’s, and the first doctrine to be denied is judgment. If modern denials of it are very differently motivated, they are equally at odds with revelation: Jesus fully affirmed the doctrine (e.g. Matt. 7:13-27). (Genesis in TOTC, 72-73)

Ever since physical death first occurred, denial of death altogether has no longer been possible. Denial of eternal death, however, abounds and will do so until the Lord finally destroys the evil supernatural source of all such denials of the doctrine of judgment.

The doctrine of eternal judgment is a foundational truth of the doctrine of Christ (Heb. 6:1-2). Countering the attacks on this foundational truth has been one of the reasons that Jesus has commanded the preaching and testifying to all that He is the One appointed by God as the Judge of the living and the dead (Acts 10:42; cf. Mk. 16:16). Proclaiming that message faithfully perpetuates the message that God Himself announced in His first declaration of judgment after the Fall of man:

And the Lord God said unto the serpent, ‘Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel (Gen 3:14-15).

By obeying Acts 10:42, we imitate God in announcing to all what He has ordained will surely happen one day through the woman’s Seed. Doing so, we do our part in countering the oldest and most persistent doctrinal denial.

In Discipleship, Quotes

Right Values in Tough Times

March 14, 2011

In spite of our time of great economic difficulty, God still calls us to show that we believe in the supreme value of His Word by devoting time to think deeply on what we read. Dr. Michael P.V. Barrett explains the importance of meditating on what we read from Scripture:

The amount of blessing we receive from the Bible and the degree to which we understand the Bible will be in proportion to how much time we meditate on what we have read. Very simply, meditating is thinking . . . Thinking takes time; thinking is work . . . Many Christians get nothing from the Bible not because they are ignorant but because they are thoughtless. . . Although our tendency when we read Scripture is to skip over the parts we don’t understand immediately, it is important just to pause and think and ask the Teacher, the Holy Spirit, to explain. Don’t give up too quickly. . . Take the time to pray and think over the open Bible. Time is like money in that we don’t have much of either to spend. But one way or another we seem to have money to spend on the things that we really want, and we seem to have time to spend on the things that are most important to us. If we truly agree with the Psalmist that God’s Word is more precious than gold, we will want to devote as much thinking time to it as we possibly can (Beginning at Moses: A Guide to Finding Christ in the Old Testament, 11).

To profit fully from our time in Scripture, we have to meditate on what we read. Doing so, we will show to God that our value system is what He wants it to be.

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Spurgeon on Psalm 119:119

March 13, 2011

Psalm 119 is one of the richest chapters of the Bible. In that Psalm, the Psalmist makes a statement that is worthy of our contemplation because it concerns a basis for his love for God: “Thou puttest away all the wicked of the earth like dross: therefore I love thy testimonies” (119:119). Charles Spurgeon in Volume 3 of his Treasury of David comments on this verse:

Even the severities of the Lord excite the love of His people. If He allowed men to sin with impunity, He would not be so fully the object of our loving admiration; He is glorious in holiness because he thus rids his kingdom of rebels, and his temple of them that defile it. In these evil days, when God’s punishment of sinners has become the butt of proud sceptical contentions, we may regard as a mark of the true man of God that he loves the Lord none the less, but a great deal more, because of his condign [fitting] judgment of the ungodly (357-58).

Does your mindset about God include love for Him because of what this inspired statement (Ps. 119:119) says He does? If not, is your mindset what Scripture says it should be?

Do you believe that “a mark of the true man of God” is what Spurgeon in this statement says it is?

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