Nick Roark's Blog, page 112
July 12, 2019
“Till we seek our rest in Him, in vain we seek it elsewhere” by John Newton
“Until we are reconciled to God by the blood of Jesus, everything to which we look for satisfaction will surely disappoint us.
God formed us originally for Himself, and has therefore given the human mind such a vastness of desire, such a thirst for happiness as He alone can answer.
And therefore, till we seek our rest in Him, in vain we seek it elsewhere.
Neither the hurries of business, nor the allurements of pleasure, nor the accomplishment of our wishes, can fill up the mighty void that is felt within.”
–John Newton, Letters of John Newton, Ed. Josiah Bull (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1869/2002), 201-202.
July 11, 2019
“Every Christian family ought to be a little church” by Jonathan Edwards
“Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influenced and governed by His rules.”
–Jonathan Edwards, “A Farewell Sermon Preached at the First Precinct in Northampton, after the People’s Public Rejection of Their Minister … on June 22, 1750,” in Sermons and Discourses, 1743–1758 (ed. Wilson H. Kimnach and Harry S. Stout; vol. 25; The Works of Jonathan Edwards; New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2006), 25: 484.
July 10, 2019
“God loves a cheerful preacher” by Lewis Allen
“God loves a cheerful preacher. Our ever-blessed, ever-joyful God wants to be proclaimed by those who are brimful of the joy of His grace in Christ brings.
He calls us to delight in Him and, out of that joy, to call others to the feast. Preacher and sermon must be filled with gospel joy.
‘With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation’ (Isaiah 12:3). Preachers who taste, teach, and share the joy of the gospel are truly fulfilling their calling as they serve those who listen.”
–Lewis Allen, The Preacher’s Catechism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 31.
July 9, 2019
“Self-pity is as much out of place in Christian ministry as self-promotion is” by Lewis Allen
“Worship the Lord when no one notices you and when the work is unexciting. Remember in those times that God loves you. He sees you and honors all your labors.
Remember that in due season you will receive your reward if you don’t give up (Galatians 6:9).
Self-pity is as much out of place in Christian ministry as self-promotion is. Worship Him because of who He is, the Lord of heaven and earth.
You’re preaching for God. You’re preaching because He has been pleased to call and equip you to preach, and He is pleased as you preach.”
–Lewis Allen, The Preacher’s Catechism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 49.
July 6, 2019
“Bless Him with your praises who hath blessed you in making you His sons and daughters!” by Thomas Watson
“Extol and magnify God’s mercy, who hath adopted you into His family; who, of slaves, hath made you sons; of heirs of hell, heirs of the promise.
Adoption is a free gift. He gave them power, or dignity, to become the sons of God. As a thread of silver runs through the whole piece of work, so free grace runs through this whole privilege of adoption.
Adoption is a greater mercy than Adam had in paradise; he was a son by creation, but here is a further sonship by adoption.
To make us thankful, consider, in civil adoption there is some worth and excellency in the person to be adopted; but there was no worth in us, neither beauty, nor parentage, nor virtue; nothing in us to move God to bestow the prerogative of sonship upon us.
We have enough in us to move God to correct us, but nothing to move Him to adopt us, therefore exalt free grace. Begin the work of angels here.
Bless Him with your praises who hath blessed you in making you His sons and daughters!”
–Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity Contained in Sermons Upon the Westminster Assembly’s Catechism (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1692/1970), 160.
July 5, 2019
“Christ did not die to make men savable, but to save them” by Charles Spurgeon
“I understand by the expression, ‘The blood of the Lamb,’ (Revelation 12:11) that our Lord’s death was effective for the taking away of sin.
When John the Baptist first pointed to Jesus, he said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.’ Our Lord Jesus has actually taken away sin by His death.
Beloved, we are sure that He had offered an acceptable and effectual propitiation when He said, ‘It is finished.’ Either He did put away sin, or He did not. If He did not, how will it ever be put away?
If He did, then are believers clear. Altogether apart from anything that we do or are, our glorious Substitute took away our sin, as in the type the scapegoat carried the sin of Israel into the wilderness.
In the case of all those for whom our Lord offered Himself as a substitutionary sacrifice, the justice of God finds no hindrance to its fullest flow: it is consistent with justice that God should bless the redeemed.
Near nineteen hundred years ago Jesus paid the dreadful debt of all His elect, and made a full atonement for the whole mass of the iniquities of them that shall believe in Him, thereby removing the whole tremendous load, and casting it by one lift of His pierced hand into the depths of the sea.
When Jesus died, an atonement was offered by Him and accepted by the Lord God, so that before the high court of heaven there was a distinct removal of sin from the whole body of which Christ is the head.
In the fulness of time each redeemed one individually accepts for himself the great atonement by an act of personal faith, but the atonement itself was made long before.
I believe this to be one of the edges of the conquering weapon. We are to preach that the Son of God has come in the flesh and died for human sin, and that in dying he did not only make it possible for God to forgive, but he secured forgiveness for all who are in Him.
He did not die to make men savable, but to save them.
He came not that sin might be put aside at some future time, but to put it away there and then by the sacrifice of Himself; for by His death He ‘finished transgressions, made an end of sin, and brought in everlasting righteousness.’
Believers may know that when Jesus died they were delivered from the claims of law, and when He rose again their justification was secured. The blood of the Lamb is a real price, which did effectually ransom.
The blood of the Lamb is a real cleansing, which did really purge away sin. This we believe and declare. And by this sign we conquer.
Christ crucified, Christ the sacrifice for sin, Christ the effectual redeemer of men, we will proclaim everywhere, and thus put to rout the powers of darkness.”
–Charles H. Spurgeon, “The Blood of the Lamb, the Conquering Weapon,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Volume 34 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1888), 34: 508–509.
July 4, 2019
“His hand guides the storm'” by John Newton
“I meddle not with the disputes of party, nor concern myself with any political maxims, but such as are laid down in Scripture. There I read that righteousness exalteth a nation, and that sin is the reproach, and, if persisted in, the ruin of any people.
Some people are startled at the enormous sum of our national debt: they who understand spiritual arithmetic may be well startled if they sit down and compute the debt of national sin.
Imprimis, Infidelity: Item, Contempt of the Gospel: Item, The profligacy of manners: Item, Perjury: Item, The cry of blood, the blood of thousands, perhaps millions, from the East Indies.
It would take sheets, yea quires (i.e. 25 sheets of paper), to draw out the particulars under each of these heads, and then much would remain untold. What can we answer, when the Lord saith, ‘Shall not I visit for these things? Shall not My soul be avenged on such a nation as this?’
Since we received the news of the first hostilities in America, we have had an additional prayer-meeting. Could I hear that professors in general, instead of wasting their breath in censuring men and measures, were plying the Throne of Grace, I should still hope for a respite.
Poor New England! Once the glory of the earth, now likely to be visited with fire and sword. They have left their first love, and the Lord is sorely contending with them.
Yet surely their sins as a people are not to be compared with ours. I am just so much affected with these things as to know, that I am not affected enough.
Oh! My spirit is sadly cold and insensible, or I should lay them to heart in a different manner: yet I endeavour to give the alarm as far as I can.
There is one political maxim which comforts me: ‘The Lord reigns.’ His hand guides the storm; and He knows them that are His, how to protect, support, and deliver them.
He will take care of His own cause; yea, He will extend His kingdom, even by these formidable methods.
Men have one thing in view; He has another, and His counsel shall stand.”
–John Newton, The Works of John Newton, Volume 2 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2015), 2: 85-87. This quote is from a letter concerning America written by Newton in August 1775.
July 3, 2019
“Whatever our tongue utters should savor of His excellence” by John Calvin
“Whatever our mind conceives of God, whatever our tongue utters, should savor of His excellence, match the loftiness of His sacred name, and lastly, serve to glorify His greatness.”
–John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; vol. 1; The Library of Christian Classics; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 388. (2.8.22)
July 2, 2019
“We enjoy Christ only as we embrace Christ clad in His own promises” by John Calvin
“We enjoy Christ only as we embrace Christ clad in His own promises.”
–John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; vol. 1; The Library of Christian Classics; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 1: 426. (2.9.3)
June 28, 2019
“The heart of man was created for God and it cannot find rest until it rests in his Father’s heart” by Herman Bavinck
“The heart of man was created for God and that it cannot find rest until it rests in his Father’s heart. Hence all men are really seeking after God, as Augustine also declared, but they do not all seek Him in the right way, nor at the right place.
They seek Him down below, and He is up above.
They seek Him on the earth, and He is in heaven.
They seek Him afar, and He is nearby.
They seek Him in money, in property, in fame, in power, and in passion.
And He is to be found in the high and the holy places, and with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit (Isa. 57:15).
But they do seek Him, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him (Acts 17:27).
They seek Him and at the same time they flee Him.
They have no interest in a knowledge of His ways, and yet they cannot do without Him. They feel themselves attracted to God and at the same time repelled by Him.
In this, as Pascal so profoundly pointed out, consists the greatness and the miserableness of man. He longs for truth and is false by nature.
He yearns for rest and throws himself from one diversion upon another. He pants for a permanent and eternal bliss and seizes on the pleasures of a moment.
He seeks for God and loses himself in the creature. He is a born son of the house and he feeds on the husks of the swine in a strange land.
He forsakes the fountain of living waters and hews out broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:13).
He is as a hungry man who dreams that he is eating, and when he awakes finds that his soul is empty; and he is like a thirsty man who dreams that he is drinking, and when he awakes finds that he is faint and that his soul has appetite (Isa. 29:8).
Science cannot explain this contradiction in man. It reckons only with his greatness and not with his misery, or only with his misery and not with his greatness.
It exalts him too high, or it depresses him too far, for science does not know of his Divine origin, nor of his profound fall.
But the Scriptures know of both, and they shed their light over man and over mankind; and the contradictions are reconciled, the mists are cleared, and the hidden things are revealed.
Man is an enigma whose solution can be found only in God.”
–Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith (trans. Henry Zylstra; Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016), 6–7.
