Nick Roark's Blog, page 122

“A deluge of self” by Stephen Charnock

“The whole little world of man is so overflowed with a deluge of self.”

–Stephen Charnock, “On Practical Atheism,” in The Existence and Attributes of God, in The Works of Stephen Charnock, Vol. 1 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1681/2010), 1: 225.

“My soul is very sick, but my Physician is infallible” by John Newton

“I see, I know, I cannot deny, that Jesus Christ is all-sufficient. He can, and does pity and help me, unworthy as I am.

And though I seldom enjoy a glimpse of sunshine, yet I am not wholly in the dark. My heart is vile, and even my prayers are sin.

I wish I could mourn more, but the Lord forbid I should sorrow as those that have no hope. He is able to save to the uttermost.

His blood speaks louder than all my evils. My soul is very sick, but my Physician is infallible.

He never turns out any as incurable, of whom He has once taken the charge. That would be equally to the dishonour of His skill and His compassion.

Had He been willing I should perish, He would not have wrought a miracle (for I account it no less) to save me from sinking into the great deep, when He first put it in my heart to cry to Him for mercy.

And, oh, what astonishing goodness has followed me from that day to this! Help me to praise Him.

And may He help you to proclaim the glory of His salvation, and to rejoice in it yourself.

I am affectionately your servant,

John Newton”

–John Newton, The Works of John Newton, Vol. 6 (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1824), 6: 180.

“He is the apex of unchanging beauty” by Herman Bavinck

“The pinnacle of beauty, the beauty toward which all creatures point, is God. He is supreme being, supreme truth, supreme goodness, and also the apex of unchanging beauty.”

–Herman Bavinck, Ed. John Bolt and trans. John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: God and Creation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 2: 254.

“God is His own blessedness” by Herman Bavinck

“The term ‘the blessed God’ (1 Timothy 1:11; 6:15) also implies, in the third place, that God absolutely delights in Himself, absolutely rests in Himself, and is absolutely self-sufficient.

His life is not a process of becoming, not an evolution, not a process of desiring and striving, as in the pantheistic life, but an uninterrupted rest, eternal peace.

God’s delight in His creatures is part and parcel of His delight in Himself. God is His own blessedness.”

–Herman Bavinck, Ed. John Bolt and trans. John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: God and Creation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 2: 251.

“It was right there in the text” by D.A. Carson

“Paul assesses the significance of Israel and the Sinai covenant within the larger biblical narrative. It is this essentially salvation-historical reading of Genesis that enables him to come within a whisker of treating the Sinai covenant as a parenthesis: the law’s most important function is to bring Israel, across time, to Christ—and to bring others, too, insofar as the ‘law’ is found among those ‘without the law.’

Here, then, too, we obtain a glimpse of how something could be simultaneously long hidden / eventually revealed and long prophesied / eventually fulfilled. It was right there in the text (provided one reads the Scriptures with careful respect for the significance of the historical sequence), even though, transparently, this was not how it was read by Paul the Pharisee.

Doubtless it took the Damascus road Christophany to make Saul of Tarsus recognize that his estimate of Jesus was wrong: Jesus could not be written off as a (literally) God-damned malefactor if in fact His glorious resurrection proved He was vindicated, and so the controlling paradigm of his reading of the Old Testament had to change.

But when it changed, Paul wanted his hearers and readers to understand that the Old Testament, rightly read in its salvation-historical structure, led to Christ.

In other words, as far as Paul was concerned the gospel he preached was announced in advance in the Scriptures, and was fulfilled in the events surrounding the coming, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus—even if this gospel had long been hidden, and was now revealed in those events and thus in the gospel Paul preached—the gospel revealed, indeed, through the prophetic writings.”

–D.A. Carson, “Mystery and Fulfillment: Toward a More Comprehensive Paradigm of Paul’s Understanding of the Old and the New,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Paradoxes of Paul (ed. Peter T. O’Brien and Mark A. Seifrid; vol. 2, 181st ed.; Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament; Grand Rapids, MI; Tübingen: Baker Academic; Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 2: 427–428.

“The best University for a Christian” by Charles Spurgeon

“The wilderness was the Oxford and Cambridge for God’s students. There is no University for a Christian like that of sorrow and trial.”

–Charles H. Spurgeon, “Marah Better than Elim,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. 39 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1893), 39: 151.

Lord’s Day Hymn – “Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me”

“Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me”

By Jonny Robinson, Rich Thompson & Michael Farren (CityAlight)

What gift of grace is Jesus my redeemer

There is no more for heaven now to give

He is my joy, my righteousness, and freedom

My steadfast love, my deep and boundless peace

To this I hold, my hope is only Jesus

For my life is wholly bound to His

Oh how strange and divine, I can sing: all is mine!

Yet not I, but through Christ in me

The night is dark but I am not forsaken

For by my side, the Saviour He will stay

I labour on in weakness and rejoicing

For in my need, His power is displayed

To this I hold, my Shepherd will defend me

Through the deepest valley He will lead

Oh the night has been won, and I shall overcome!

Yet not I, but through Christ in me

No fate I dread, I know I am forgiven

The future sure, the price it has been paid

For Jesus bled and suffered for my pardon

And He was raised to overthrow the grave

To this I hold, my sin has been defeated

Jesus now and ever is my plea

Oh the chains are released, I can sing: I am free!

Yet not I, but through Christ in me

With every breath I long to follow Jesus

For He has said that He will bring me home

And day by day I know He will renew me

Until I stand with joy before the throne

To this I hold, my hope is only Jesus

All the glory evermore to Him

When the race is complete, still my lips shall repeat:

Yet not I, but through Christ in me!

When the race is complete, still my lips shall repeat:

Yet not I, but through Christ in me!

Yet not I, but through Christ in me!

Yet not I, but through Christ in me!

Youtube: https://youtu.be/hwc2d1Xt8gM

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2T15n2J

Apple Music: https://apple.co/2PRW8mL

[HT: JT English]

“Singing the triumphant song of Moses and the Lamb forever” by John Newton

“However the Lord may be pleased to indulge us with comforts and mercies here, still this is not, and cannot be, our rest.

In-dwelling sin, the temptations of Satan, changing dispensations, and the vanity which is inseparably entwined with every earthly connexion, will more or less disturb our peace.

But there is a brighter world, where sin and sorrow can never enter. Every moment brings us nearer to it.

Then every imperfection shall cease, and our best desires shall be satisfied beyond our present conceptions.

Then we shall see Him whom having not seen we love: we shall see Him in all His glory, not as now, through the medium of ordinances, but face to face, without a veil.

We shall see Him, so as to be completely transformed into His perfect image.

Then likewise we shall see all His redeemed, and join with an innumerable multitude of all nations, people, and languages, in singing the triumphant song of Moses and the Lamb forever!

Then we shall look back with wonder on all the way the Lord led us through this wilderness, and shall say, ‘He hath done all things well.’

May this blessed hope comfort our hearts, strengthen, our hands, and make us account nothing dear or hard, so that we may finish our course with joy.

Pray for us and believe me to be your affectionate friend and servant,

John Newton”

–John Newton, The Works of John Newton, Vol. 6 (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1824), 6: 47–48.

“Let us adore Him for His love” by John Newton

“Blessed be God! Amidst all my changes I find the foundation stands sure. And I am seldom or never left to doubt either of the Lord’s love to me, or the reality of the desires He has given me towards Himself.

Though when I measure my love by the degree of its exercise, or the fruits it produceth, I have reason to sit down ashamed as the chief of sinners and the least of all saints. But in Him I have righteousness and peace, and in Him I must and will rejoice.

I would willingly fill up my sheet, but feel a straitness in my spirit, and know not what further to say.

O for a ray of Divine light to set me at liberty, that I might write a few lines worth reading, something that might warm my heart and comfort yours!

Then the subject must be Jesus. But of Him what can I say that you do not know? Well, though you know Him, you are glad to hear of Him again and again.

Come then, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.

Let us adore Him for His love, that love which has a height, and depth, and length, and breadth, beyond the grasp of our poor conceptions;

a love that moved Him to empty Himself, to take on Him the form of a servant, and to be obedient unto death, even the death of the cross;

a love that pitied us in our lost estate, that found us when we sought Him not, that spoke peace to our souls in the day of our distress;

a love that bears with all our present weakness, mistakes, backslidings, and shortcomings;

a love that is always watchful, always ready to guide, to comfort, and to heal;

a love that will not be wearied, cannot be conquered, and is incapable of changes;

a love that will, in the end, prevail over all opposition, will perfect that which concerns us, and will not leave us till it has brought us perfect in holiness and happiness, to rejoice in His presence in glory.

The love of Christ: it is the wonder, the joy, the song of angels. And the sense of it shed abroad in our hearts makes life pleasant and death welcome.

Alas! What a heart have I that I love Him no better! But I hope He has given me a desire to make Him my all in all, and to account everything loss and dross that dares to stand in competition with Him.”

–John Newton, The Works of John Newton, Vol. 2, Ed. Richard Cecil (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1824), 2: 179-181.

“The only foundational pillar of the new world” by G.K. Beale

“Now that Christ has come and has launched a new cosmos, the old cosmos has begun to be destroyed. The only element or fundamental building block of the new creation is Christ.

And since there is only one Christ, of whom the new creation consists and upon whom it is built, there can be only one newly created people subsisting in that renovated creation. In what sense can it be said that the old world has already begun to be destroyed?

The elements of divisiveness that sustained the sinful structure of the old world have been decisively decimated by Christ, and He Himself has replaced them as the only foundational pillar of the new world.

This is what Paul has in mind in Gal. 6:14–16, where he says that through the cross of Christ ‘the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And those who will walk by the elements (stoichēsousin) of this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, even upon the Israel of God.’

That is, those who conduct their lives on the foundational ‘elements’ of Christ, who is the inaugurated new creation, are partakers of the new creation, and they will experience the peace and unity promised to occur in the new heaven and earth.

We could picture Christ as a hermeneutical filter through which the law must pass in order to get to the new creation.”

–G.K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 874–875.