Be a Church with Biblical Standards!
A church in which the Bible is not the standard of faith and practice – a Church in which repentance, faith, and holiness, are not prominently put forward as essential to salvation, – a Church in which forms, and ceremonies, and ordinance not commanded in the Bible, are the chief things urged upon the attention of the members, – such a Church is in a very diseased and unsatisfactory condition.
Knots Untied, “The Church” [Cambridge, England: James Clarke & Co., 1977], 177.
Read MoreNever Be Ashamed of Christ!
Live a courageous life. Confess Christ before men. Whatever station you occupy, in that station confess Christ. Why should you be ashamed of Him? He was not ashamed of you on the cross. He is ready to confess you now before His Father in heaven. Why should you be ashamed of Him?
Be bold. Be very bold. The good soldier is not ashamed of his uniform. The true believer ought never be ashamed of Christ.
Warnings to the Churches, “The True Church”, 27, 28.
Read MoreLook away from self and turn to Christ!
Look not to yourselves! You are by nature wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked; you cannot make atonement for your past transgressions, you cannot wipe out a single page in that long black list. And when the King shall ask you for your wedding garment you will be speechless. Look simply unto Jesus, and then the weight shall fall from off your shoulders, the course shall be clear and plain, and you shall run the race which is set before you.
The Christian Race & Other Sermons, “The Christian Race”, [Moscow, ID: Charles Nolan Publishing, 2002], 134.
Read MoreTotal Dependance on God’s Words
There must be a real heartfelt belief that God’s promises are sure and to be depended on – a real belief that what God says in the Bible is all true and that every doctrine contrary to this is false, whatever anyone may say. There must be a real belief that all God’s words are to be received, however hard and disagreeable to flesh and blood, and that His way is right and all others wrong. This there must be, or you will never come out from the world, take up the cross, follow Christ and be saved.
Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots
Saturday Quotes 01/02/2010
“It is because God is infinitely great and good that his glory is the end of all things; and his good pleasure the highest reason for whatever comes to pass. What is man that he should contend with God, or presume that his interests rather than God’s glory should be made the final end?” – Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology
“We cannot attain to the understanding of Scripture either by study or by the intellect. Your first duty is to begin by prayer. Entreat the Lord to grant you, of his great mercy, the true understanding of his Word. There is no other interpreter of the Word of God than the Author of this Word.” – Martin Luther
“And let us not take it into our heads either to seek out God anywhere else than in his Sacred Word, or to think anything about him that is not prompted by his Word, or to speak anything that is not taken from that Word.” – John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
“But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” – Mattthew 16:15-17
“For nothing bringeth the wrath of God so soon and so sore on a man, as the idolatry of his own imagination.” – William Tyndale
“When the Lord Jesus Christ gives a man remission of sins, He also gives him repentance.” – J.C. Ryle
“We cannot attain to the understanding of Scripture either by study or by the intellect. Your first duty is to begin by prayer. Entreat the Lord to grant you, of his great mercy, the true understanding of his Word. There is no other interpreter of the Word of God than the Author of this Word.” – Martin Luther
“Redeem your precious time: pick up the fragments of it, that not one moment of it may be lost. Be much in secret prayer. Converse less with man, and more with God.” — George Whitefield
“The things of the Spirit are the things to which the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, always draws attention… They are completely hidden from the world. The man who is after the flesh knows nothing about them… These things are hidden mysteries … inaccessible to the natural mind, but which God in … His grace has revealed to the Christian by the Spirit.” Martin Lloyd-Jones, Romans
“I will venture to assert that not one grain of Arminianism ever attended a saint [with him] into heaven… They may be compared to Paul, when he went from Jerusalem to Damascus, and the grace of God struck him down: he fell a free-willer; but he rose a free-gracer.” – Augustus Montague Toplady
“Christ gives himself for none but those which God hath first given him. Christ had his commission, and he came to do his Father’s will, not his own… Those that the Father gives in election, Christ redeems, and by redemption saves; for redemption, in regard of efficacy, is no larger than G…od’s election.” – Richard Sibbes, Works of Richard Sibbes
“God bids us do what we cannot, that we may know what we ought to seek from him.” – Augustine
“Adversity hath slain her thousand, but prosperity her ten thousand.” – Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices
“It is supposed that the Holy Spirit quickens only those who believe. But this is to put the cart before the horse. Faith is not the cause of the new birth, but the consequence of it.” – A.W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God
“I found faith was the sovereign gift of God; that I could not get it as if of myself, and could not oblige God to bestow it upon me by any of my performances.” David Brainerd (1718 – 1747)
As to why some are touched by the law and others not, so that some receive and others scorn the offer of grace…[this is the] hidden will of God, Who, according to His own counsel, ordains such persons as He wills to receive and partake of the mercy preached and offered.” – Martin Luther
“…one man may give another an affecting view of divine things with but common assistance; but God alone can give a spiritual discovery of them.” – Jonathan Edwards, Growing in God’s Spirit
“By the law is the knowledge of sin’[Rom 3:20], so the word of grace comes only to those who are distressed by a sense of sin and tempted to despair.” – Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will
Read MoreSaturday Quotes 12/26/2009
“A true faith in Jesus Christ will not suffer us to be idle. No, it is an active, lively, restless principle; it fills the heart, so that it cannot be easy till it is doing something for Jesus Christ.” – George Whitefield
“Philippians 1:29 Two gifts of God most don’t want. Faith: Because we want to cause it ourselves. Suffering: Because it hurts.” – John Piper
“Fear, lest, by forgetting what you are by nature, you also forget the need that you have of continual pardon, support, and supplies from the Spirit of grace, and so grow proud of your own abilities, or of what you have received from God.” – John Bunyan
“No matter where we are in our individual Christian lives, none of us has arrived. There is much spiritual maturity yet to be realized. There is much more that God can do in and through us . . . May you resolve to live your life not for self but for God.” – Steven J. Lawson
“Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason, I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other — my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.” – Martin Luther
“Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.” – Martin Luther
“True religion is heart-work. We may wash the outside of the cup and the platter as long as we please, but if the inward parts be filthy, we are filthy altogether in the sight of God, for our hearts are more truly ourselves than our hands are; the very life of our being lies in the inner nature, and hence the imperative need of purity within.” – C.H. Spurgeon
“A man’s conversion is nothing, his believing is nothing, his profession is nothing unless he is made to be a new creature in Christ Jesus… If our faith has not brought with it the Holy Spirit, if, indeed, it is not the fruit of the Spirit, and we are not changed in nature and in life, then our faith is presumption, and our profession is a lie.” – C.H. Spurgeon
“If the concept of the modern self was that of a master of all it surveyed, the postmodern self is best described as a tourist. There is no destination; just personal journeys from nowhere to nowhere in particular.” – Michael Horton
“Pelagians and atheists are unwitting partners in a common belief: the inherent goodness of man. Both groups… are lost.” – Tony Miano
“Faith is the acknowledgment of the entire absence of all goodness in us, and the recognition of the cross as the substitute for all the want on our part. Faith saves, because it owns the complete salvation of another, and not because it contributes anything to that salvation …The whole work is His, not ours, from the first to last.” – Horatious Bonar
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