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The loving heart of an actual living Christ! - JC Ryle

8/4/2015

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I am afraid that many Christians in our day have lost sight of Christ. They talk . . .
  more about salvation--than about their only Savior, and
  more about redemption--than the one true Redeemer, and
  more about Christ's work--than Christ Himself!

This is a great fault--one that accounts for the dry and shriveled spirit that infuses the religious lives of many who profess faith. As ever you would grow in grace, and have joy and peace in believing--beware of falling into this error!

Cease to regard the Gospel as a mere collection of dry doctrines. Look at it rather as the revelation of a mighty living Being in whose sight you are daily to live. 

Cease to regard the Gospel as a mere set of abstract propositions and abstruse principles and rules. Look at it as the introduction to a glorious personal Friend.

This is the kind of Gospel that the apostles preached. They did not go about the world telling men of love and mercy and pardon in the abstract. The leading subject of all their sermons, was the loving heart of an actual living Christ!

This is the kind of Gospel which is most calculated to promote sanctification and fitness for glory. Nothing, surely, is so likely to prepare us for that Heaven where Christ's personal presence will be all, and that glory where we shall meet Christ face to face--as to realize communion with Christ as an actual living Person. There is all the difference in the world, between an idea and aperson!
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There has been too much trifling with Jehovah! - Archibald Brown (1894)

8/4/2015

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"Then I answered and said: Amen, O Lord!" Jeremiah 11:5 [Or, So be it, O Lord.] 

Perhaps there is a secret contention going on between you and God. God has spoken to you--but thus far there has not been Jeremiah's response of 'Amen, O Lord.'

Here you have the one response which a man of God must ever make to the words of God. When God says anything to him, there is nothing left for him but to bow the head and say,'Amen, O Lord--so be it!' 

This response is the only one that suits a creature's lip. 
When God speaks--there is nothing left for man but to hear. 
When God decrees--there is nothing for man to do but acquiesce. 
When Jehovah gives a command--what is there left for His creature to do but obey? 
Any other word than 'Amen' springs from rebellion. Any other response to the word of Jehovah, simply tells of a heart that wars with God. 

It is not for men to judge God's words, far less to amend them. If it pleases Jehovah to say anything, no matter how stern, how dreadful, or how searching--there is only one position for man: that is to bow his head and say, 'Amen, O Lord.'

'Oh,' says one, in the proud spirit of our times, 'you are making a bold bid for your God this morning.' 

I am. The sovereignty of God needs to be brought to the front. There has been too muchtrifling with Jehovah! Man needs to have the peacock's feathers plucked out of his cap, and be taught that he is a poor little nothing, and that for God to speak to him at all is infinite condescension, and that for him to say anything else than 'Amen' is boundless impudence!

If God condescends to utter a command, am I to go and judge whether the Lord has a right to say it? Shall I take the word of Jehovah my Maker and weigh it in my scales--and bring up his thoughts to the paltry bar of my fallen reason--and enter my protest unless I can see a good reason for God speaking as He does? 

When God promulgates a decree, He does not send it to man to be revised.

His claim is this, "I am Jehovah. I, the Lord, speak that which is right, and let man say: Amen, O Lord." 

We are living in the days of the deification of humanity. We hear so much about 'the glory of humanity', and 'the triumphs of humanity'--that God has become little better than a very inferior deity who runs after man and tips His cap to him. 

This is not the picture which God's Book gives. God's claim is this, "I am the Lord, and you are but the creatures of My hand. The brightest of My angels are but sparks struck off from the anvil of My creative omnipotence. When I speak, let men and angels be silent; or, if they must speak, let them say: Amen, O Lord!" This is the only the response that suits a creature's lip.

If you can conceive of a being who is . . .
  infinitely wise,
  all-powerful,
  infinitely righteous,
  absolutely holy,
  inflexibly just, 
and all gathered up into boundless love--that is God. 

If such a One speaks--then what is there left for me but to say, 'Amen'? I am stark, raving mad, if I dare question the utterance of Infinite Wisdom. I am unutterably vile, if I can dare tocriticize the utterance of Absolute Love. Idiocy must have taken hold of my brain and, alas! of my heart, if I would amend anything which His infinite holiness has declared. The very nature and character of God declare that the only response for man when God speaks, is 'Amen, O Lord.'

Oh, for that grand attitude of resignation and submission to God, that bows before every word of God--whether it be a silver note of mercy from Heaven, or a thunder-clap of denunciation!

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A spiritual playpen where the crying babies must be appeased! - Joseph Bianchi

8/4/2015

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In the twenty-first century, we are obsessed with self-satisfaction and getting our desires met. Hence, any teaching that invades our lifestyle and tells us we must alter or discard out old habits, is usually consigned to the junk pile. In so thinking and doing, the church has been transformed into a spiritual playpen where the crying babies must be appeased with what makes them feel good.

The Evangelical world is abuzz with terms like "purpose driven church" or "seeker friendly church". What these terms really amount to is one thing: compromise. 

The goal of churches should not be to see how much like the world they can be, so as to make worldly people feel comfortable. Rather, the churches should be so unlike the world, so alien to the world, that the disillusioned unbeliever will be drawn to them.

"Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.
 For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?
 Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?
 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? 
 What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
 
What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? 
For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people."  "Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you."  "I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." 2 Corinthians 6:14-1
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