Soli Deo Gloria

“I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction”   (Isaiah 48:10).

This has long been the motto fixed before our eye upon the wall of our bedroom, and in many ways it has also been written on our heart. It is no mean thing to be chosen of God. God’s choice makes chosen men choice men. Better to be the elect of God than the elect of a whole nation. So eminent is this privilege, that whatever drawback may be joined to it we very joyfully accept it, even as the Jew ate the bitter herbs for the sake of the Paschal Lamb. We choose the furnace, since God chooses us in it. We are chosen as an afflicted people and not as a prosperous people, chosen not in the palace but in the furnace. In the furnace beauty is marred, fashion is destroyed, strength is melted, glory is consumed, and yet here eternal love reveals its secrets and declares its choice. So has it been in our case. In times of severest trial God has made to us our calling and election plain, and we have made it sure: then have we chosen the LORD to be our God, and He has shown that we are assuredly His chosen. Therefore, if today the furnace be heated seven times hotter, we will not dread it, for the glorious Son of God will walk with us amid the glowing coals.

- Charles Spurgeon

“[A Christian] does not make election his opiate and say, I am safe, I may sleep or wake as I please. He says, I am safe but this only makes me doubly vigilant that I may not dishonor Him who has saved me; and even though I may not finally fall away, I know not how much I may lose by one day’s slothfulness or how much I may gain by maintaining that watchful attitude to which, as the expectant of an absent Lord, I am called. ‘Blessed is he that watches,’ and even though I could not see the reason for this, I will act upon it that I may realize the promised blessedness. He who has called me to vigilance can make me partaker of its joy. He can make my watchtower, lonely and dark as it may seem, none other than the house of God and the very gate of Heaven.”

- Horatius Bonar from The Everlasting Righteousness

“‘Not called!’ did you say? ‘Not heard the call,’ I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face — whose mercy you have professed to obey — and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.”

- William Booth, Founder of the Salvation Army

“For the cross saves completely, or not at all. Our faith does not divide the work of salvation between itself and the cross. It is the acknowledgement that the cross alone saves, and it saves alone. Faith adds nothing to the cross nor to its healing virtue. It owns the fullness and the sufficiency and the suitableness of the work done there and bids the toiling spirit cease from its labours and enter into rest. Faith does not come to Calvary to do anything. It comes to see the glorious spectacle of all things done and to accept this completion without misgiving as to its efficacy. It listens to the “It is finished” of the sin-bearer and says “Amen!” Where faith begins, there labour ends–labour, I mean, for life and for pardon. Faith is rest, not toil. It is the giving up of all the former weary efforts.”

- Horatius Bonar from The Everlasting Righteousness

Mike Ratliff over at Possessing the Treasure has written an excellent article that gets to the heart of the true Biblical gospel and why the many false gospels today (such as the Purpose Driven drivel) simply have people flocking to churches as unregenerate nominal Christians.

Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8 ESV)

Relativism is the fatal disease of the unregenerate heart. Of course, it is a self-focused relativism. Everyone is unique, of course, but we have this built-in sense of ‘fairness’ that is antithetical to God’s Sovereignty. I have been a “mostly” silent observer in much of the Ergun Caner debacle. I listened to several of Dr. James White’s Radio shows in which he took on callers who wanted to discuss his stance on Dr. Caner’s obvious misrepresenting of himself as a Muslim Jihadist converted to Christianity when, in fact, he was just a normal teenager in Ohio during that time. Some of the callers though just astounded me with their attacks on Dr. White in his stance that Dr. Caner should come clean about all this. It sorta’ reminded me of an article I read several weeks ago attacking my friend Ken Silva. The article was a satirical portrayal of Ken killing a beast on the beach called an EvanJellyFish even though every now and then the beast said something that might be considered edifying. Ah, now we are back in that comfortable realm of relativism. It goes something like this, “Hey man, why are you attacking this brother in Christ? Look, he may practice Yoga and Contemplative Prayer and lead his congregation to pray to Mother God, but hey, look at all the edifying and nice thing he says in this book he just wrote!” That my brothers and sisters in Christ are the words of someone who thinks that the truth is truth because they think it is, but they do not know the words of God, the truth, because they do not hear them (John 8:46).

Continue reading …

Q. How does Christ’s ascension to heaven benefit us?

A. First, He pleads our cause in heaven in the presence of His Father (1). Second, we have our own flesh in heaven – a guarantee that christ our head will take us, His members, to Himself in heaven (2). Third, He sends His Spirit to us on earth as a further guarantee (3). By the Spirit’s power we make the goal of our lives, not earthly things, but the things above where Christ is, sitting at God’s right hand (4).

(1) Rom. 3:34; 1 John 2:1; Heb. 7:25
(2) John 14:2; 17;24; Eph. 2:4-6
(3) John 14:16; 2 Cor. 1:21-22; 5:5
(4) Col. 3:1-4

Question 49 from the Heidelberg Catechism

With the multitudes of easy believism sermons that are rampant in the church today and the watered down gospel presentations that are deluding people with false hope, Pastor Conway delivers a wonderful, Biblical sermon that rightly proclaims the true gospel of Jesus Christ.