Nick Roark's Blog, page 19

“The same love that looks after a star” by Bobby Jamieson

“In a life devoted to the one true God, fear is inseparable from joy and joy from fear. Joy in God is disturbingly interlaced with fear of God.

God is the object of your deepest desire and adoration. He is your refuge, your happiest hiding place. And yet God stands over you, above you, often seemingly against you.

As Job confessed, “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him; yet I will argue my ways to His face.” (Job 13:15) Taking refuge in God is intertwined with the knowledge that He who made you and sustains you and loves you can also undo you.

Like the ocean, God’s ways are beyond our understanding and control. Surfers continually puzzle over the intricate intersections of forces and features that produce well-shaped waves, wondering about swell size and period and direction, wind and tide, drifting sand daily recontouring the ocean floor.

But, per Finnegan, “When the surf is big, or in some other way humbling, even these questions tend to fall away. The heightened sense of a vast, unknowable design silences the effort to under-stand. You feel honored simply to be out there.” (335)

When you glimpse a humbling sight of God’s hugeness or holiness, questions fall away. Though you cannot know His design, you do know it is vast.

The more acutely you sense Him, the more complete the silence that blankets your soul. You feel not merely honored but stunned to be loved and looked after by the same love that looks after a star twenty-eight billion light-years away.”

–Bobby Jamieson, Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness (New York: WaterBrook, 2025), 195.

“A good friend” by Campegius Vitringa

“Beloved, if you find a friend who is good, sincere, faithful, honest, gentle, humble, godly, similar to you in temperament and spirit, sharing with you in Christ’s grace, seeking the same goals as you, committed to sharing the same responsibilities, and oriented to the same pursuits as you are, then foster this friendship.

Cherish this friend and hold close to him. (Though, of course, sensibly and in accordance with your circumstances).

Attach yourself to that friend with such constancy and propriety that he may never have cause to blame you or doubt your faithfulness.

In sum, treat him as Jonathan did David. This will profit you greatly as you run your race in the Lord.

How great is the fruit of fellowship and familiarity with friends who are striving for the same goal as we are!

This is why the godly man says, ‘I am a partner with all who reverence you and keep your precepts’ (Ps. 119:63; cf. Ps. 122:1).

It is enormously beneficial both from the pleasure you will have from this kind of honest fellowship as well as from its usefulness, which is not paltry.”

–Campegius Vitringa, The Spiritual Life, Trans. and Ed. Charles K. Telfer (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 2018), 135.

“They cannot take away my God, my Christ, my crown” by Thomas Brooks

“Afflictions may kill us, but they cannot hurt us; they may take away my life, but they cannot take away my God, my Christ, my crown.

The afflictions that do attend the saints in the ways of holiness, are but short and momentary. ‘Sorrow may abide for a night, but joy comes in the morning,’ (Psalm 30:5).

This short storm will end in an everlasting calm, this short night will end in a glorious day, that shall never have end.

It is but a very short time between grace and glory, between our title to the crown and our wearing the crown, between our right to the heavenly inheritance and our possession of the heavenly inheritance.

What is our life but a shadow, a bubble, a flower, a post, a span, a dream?

It will be but as a day before God will give his afflicted ones beauty for ashes, the oil of gladness for the spirit of heaviness; before he will turn all your sighing into singing, all your lamentations into consolations, your sackcloth into silks, ashes into ointments, and your fasts into everlasting feasts.

The afflictions that do befall the saints are such as proceed from God’s dearest love. ‘As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten,’ (Rev. 3:19).

Saints, saith God, think not that I hate you, because I thus chide you. He that escapes reprehension may suspect his adoption.

God had one Son without corruption, but no son without correction. A gracious soul may look through the darkest cloud, and see a God smiling on him.

We must look through the anger of his correction to the sweetness of his countenance; and as by the rainbow we see the beautiful image of the sun’s light in the midst of a dark and watery cloud.”

–Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, in The Works of Thomas Brooks, Volume 1, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1866/1980), 1: 51-52.

“How we think of God” by Sinclair Ferguson

“Jesus has already made it clear in Matthew 6 that the single most important influence on the way we live the Christian life is how we think of God.

For Jesus, theology (how we think about God) determines practice (how we live our lives).

In particular, Jesus stressed how important it is for us to think of God as Father, and to know the intimacy of a Father-son relationship with Him.”

–Sinclair Ferguson, The Sermon on the Mount: Kingdom Life in a Fallen World (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1987/2025), 103.

“The Fatherhood of the Holy Creator” by J.I. Packer

‘Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God… when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’ (1 John 3:1-2)

“You sum up the whole of New Testament teaching in a single phrase, if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the holy Creator.

In the same way, you sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father.

If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father.

If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.”

–J.I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1973), 181-182.

“It is the perfection of perfection” by Horatius Bonar

“The imputation of the first Adam’s sin to us, and of the last Adam’s righteousness, are placed side by side. (Romans 5:12-21)

The transference of our guilt to the Divine Substitute, and the transference of that Substitute’s righteousness or perfection to us, must stand or fall together.

This righteousness of God was no common righteousness.

It was the righteousness of Him who was both God and man; and therefore it was not only the righteousness of God, but in addition to this it was the righteousness of man.

It embodied and exhibited all uncreated and all created perfection. Never had the like been seen or heard of in heaven or on earth before.

It was the twofold perfection of Creatorhood and Creatorship in one resplendent centre, one glorious Person; and the dignity of that Person gave a perfection, a vastness, a length and breadth, a height and depth, to that righteousness which never had been equalled, and which never shall be equalled for ever.

It is the perfection of perfection; the excellency of excellency; the holiness of holiness.

It is that in which God pre-eminently delighteth. Never had His law been so kept and honoured before.

Son of God and Son of man in one person, He in this twofold character keeps the Father’s law, and in keeping it provides a righteousness so large and full, that it can be shared with others, transferred to others, imputed to others, and God be glorified (as well as the sinner saved) by the transference and imputation.

Never had God been so loved as now; with all divine love and with all human love.

Never had God been so served and obeyed, as now He has been by Him who is ‘God manifest in flesh.’

Never had God found one before, who for love to the holy law was willing to become its victim that it might be honoured; who for love to God was willing not only to be made under the law, but by thus coming under it, to subject Himself to death, even the death of the cross; who for love to the fallen creature was willing to take the sinner’s place, to bear the sinner’s burden, to undergo the sinner’s penalty, to assume the sinner’s curse, to die the sinner’s death of shame and anguish, and to go down in darkness to the sinner’s grave.”

–Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness; or, How Shall a Man be Just with God? (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1873/2020), 70-71.

“Love produces love” by Horatius Bonar

“The life of the justified should be a loving one. It is love that has made him what he is, and shall he not love in return?

Shall he not love Him that begat, and him also that is begotten of Him? The deep true spring of love is thus revealed to us by the Lord Himself:

‘A certain creditor had two debtors; the one owed five hundred pence, the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, HE FRANKLY FORGAVE THEM BOTH. Tell me therefore, which of them will LOVE him most?’ (Luke 7:41-42)

Thus love produces love. The life of one on whom the fulness of the free love of God is ever shining must be a life of love.

Suspense, doubt, terror, darkness, must straiten and freeze; but the certainty of free and immediate love dissolves the ice, and kindles the coldest spirit into the warmth of love.

‘We love Him because He first loved us.’

Love to God, love to the brethren, love to the world, spring up within us as the heavenly love flows in. Malevolence, anger, envy, jealousy, receive their death-blow.

The nails of the cross have gone through all these, and their deadly wound cannot be healed.

They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh, with its affections and lusts. Sternness, coldness, distance, depart; and are succeeded by gentleness, mildness, guilelessness, meekness, ardour, long-suffering.

The tempers of the old man quit us, we know not how; and in their place comes the:

‘charity which suffereth long, and is kind, which envieth not, which vaunteth not itself, which is not puffed up, which doth not behave itself unseemly, which seeketh not her own, which is not easily provoked, which thinketh no evil, which rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth, which beareth all things, which believeth all things, which never faileth.’ (1 Cor. 13:4–8)

Gentle and loving and simple should be the life of the justified: meek and lowly should they be, who have been loved with such a love.”

–Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness; or, How Shall a Man be Just with God? (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1873/2020), 150-151.

“He is with us, and He leads our praises” by Sinclair Ferguson

“Have you ever had this experience? You’re in church singing “How Great Thou Art,” “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” or perhaps something more modern, and the question pops into your mind: “Does God actually like this? Does this please God?”

We may not be very good singers. And God is eternal, the One without beginning or end or cause. So why should we think that our singing praise to Him would give Him any pleasure?

Scripture gives us some interesting reasons for believing that God loves it when His people praise Him. One reason is that Scripture itself urges us to praise Him.

When words breathed out by God and written down by men tell us to praise Him, then we can safely assume that He wants us to do it and that it gives Him pleasure-the kind of pleasure that a father has when his three-year-old daughter starts singing to him and tells him, “I love you, Daddy.”

Another reason is that the Bible contains an entire book, the Psalms, that is composed of songs of praises, requests, and laments.

That would hardly be the case unless God desired to listen to us. In fact, He has such a desire that He has provided us with the very words we need for every season and stage of life from beginning to end, from gladness to sadness. Yes, God wants us to sing.

There is a third reason. We know that the Lord Jesus, who always did the will of His Father and lived to please Him, sang praises to Him.

There is one place in the Gospels that tells us very specifically that He did so. At the end of the Passover meal, as He was about to go to the garden of Gethsemane, He and His disciples sang a hymn.

We know what they probably sang because the same praise was sung year after year at Passover. It was called the Hallel (like the word hallel-u-jah), and it begins:

Praise the Lord!
Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord!
Blessed be the name of the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore!
From the rising of the sun to its setting,
the name of the Lord is to be praised! (Ps. 113:1-3)

If the Son of God sang praises to God, then we can be sure that God loves to hear and enjoys the praises of His people, just as a father loves the love of his children.

The upper room was not the last time our Lord Jesus led the praises of His children. Psalm 22 begins with an anticipation of Jesus’ cry of dereliction on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (v. 1).

But the psalm concludes by looking forward to the resurrection and to another cry– this time a cry of delight. Our Lord Jesus says, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you” (v. 22).

This is a lovely description of what happens when we meet together in worship. Jesus preaches His Word, and He stands in the midst of the congregation and leads our praises.

The author of Hebrews quotes this psalm in Hebrews 2:12. These words are not only a picture of what Jesus was doing with the Apostles in the upper room, but also a statement about what He is doing now as He is present with us in worship.

He is with us, and He leads our praises.

Think of it this way: when we lift our voices together in praise, assisted by the Holy Spirit to praise our Lord Jesus Christ, we’re brought into the presence of God. We’re actually sharing in the worship of heaven, and Jesus is with us. Or better said, we are with Jesus.

We surround Him, and He is leading our praises.

If anything should make you want to sing in worship, it’s knowing that He is the real praise leader.”

–Sinclair B. Ferguson, Things Unseen: One Year of Reflections on the Christian Life (Sanford, FL: Ligonier, 2024), 110-112.

“Christ hath no vicar, but the Spirit” by John Owen

“The glory of God entered into the tabernacle and temple of old in clouds and darkness; but the glory of God enters into the gospel church, under the New Testament, in light.

Christ hath promised to be with His church to the end and consummation of all things.

Christ is thus present with His church, principally and fundamentally, by His Spirit. There are three ways of the presence of Christ:

1. He is everywhere essentially present; present with all things by the immensity of His divine nature. Christ did not promise this, for it is not a subject for a promise. The promises are of what may be, and not of what cannot but be.

This presence is necessary, and cannot be otherwise; neither doth it make any alteration. It doth not make a church; it doth not make one place heaven, another hell. I speak of the immense presence of the divine nature.

2. Christ is, or may be, present in His human nature: this was that which brought a great entanglement on the spirits of His disciples. He told them He would never leave them; and where but two or three of them were assembled in His name, He would be among them, Matt. 18:20.

At length He comes and tells them, “It is expedient for you that I go away,” John 16:7.

This filled their hearts with trouble; they knew not how to reconcile these things. Afterward, they were told that He was so gone from them as that they must not look for Him till the day of judgment, Acts 3:21.

3. There must be, therefore, some other presence of Christ besides the essential presence of his divine nature, and besides the presence of His human nature; how else shall the promise be accomplished? Saith Christ:

“I will tell you what that presence is; I will send you the Holy Ghost, to supply the presence of my human nature.”

It is the substance of the 14th, 15th, and 16th chapters of John, to declare this.

“I will send you the Comforter to abide with you, to enable you to all church work. Therefore, though I am with you, and have instructed you, yet you can perform no church work at all, until the Holy Ghost comes. Abide at Jerusalem, till you have the promise of the Spirit.”

After the ascension of Christ, the apostles went about no church work till they had received the Holy Ghost.

And Christ hath no vicar, but the Spirit.

The truth is, the world grew weary of Him, and took the work out of His hands for which He was promised; and He would have nothing to do in that which they call “the church.”

I need not prove this; it hath been the faith of the catholic church, from the first foundation of it, that the promised presence of Christ with His church was by His Spirit.”

–John Owen, “Sermons to the Church ,” The Works of John Owen, Volume 9 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1684/2000), 9: 443-444.

“The Holy Spirit is the vicar of Christ” by John Owen

“It is the Holy Spirit who supplies the bodily absence of Christ, and by Him doth He accomplish all His promises to the church.

Hence, some of the ancients call Him “Vicarium Christi,” “The vicar of Christ,” or Him who represents His person, and dischargeth His promised work: Operam navat Christo vicariam. (“He works vicariously for Christ”)

When our Lord Jesus was leaving the world, He gave His disciples command to “preach the gospel,” Mark 16:15, and to “disciple all nations” into the faith and profession thereof, Matt. 28:19.

For their encouragement herein, He promiseth His own presence with them in their whole work, wherever any of them should be called unto it, and that whilst He would have the gospel preached on the earth.

So saith He, “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,” or the consummation of all things, verse 20.

Immediately after He had thus spoken unto them, “while they beheld, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight,” and they “looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up,” Acts 1:9, 10.

Where now is the accomplishment of His promise that He would be with them unto the end of all things, which was the sole encouragement He gave them unto their great undertaking?

It may be that after this His triumphant ascension into heaven, to take possession of His kingdom and glory, He came again unto them, and made His abode with them.

“No,” saith Peter; “the heaven must receive Him until the times of restitution of all things,” Acts 3:21.

How, then, is this promise of His made good, which had such a peculiar respect unto the ministry and ministers of the gospel, that without it none can ever honestly or conscientiously engage in the dispensation of it, or expect the least success upon their so doing?

Besides, He had promised unto the church itself, that “wherever two or three were gathered together in His name, that He would be in the midst of them,” Matt. 18:19, 20.

Hereon do all their comforts and all their acceptance with God depend. I say, all these promises are perfectly fulfilled by His sending of the Holy Spirit.

In and by Him He is present with His disciples in their ministry and their assemblies.

And whenever Christ leaves the world, the church must do so too; for it is His presence alone which puts men into that condition, or invests them with that privilege: for so He saith, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people,” 2 Cor. 6:16; Lev. 26:12.

Their being the “people of God,” so as therewithal to be “the temple of the living God,”—that is, to be brought into a sacred church-state for His worship,—depends on His “dwelling in them and walking in them.”

And this He doth by His Spirit alone; for, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” 1 Cor. 3:16.

He, therefore, so far represents the person, and supplies the bodily absence of Christ, that on His presence the being of the church, the success of the ministry, and the edification of the whole, do absolutely depend.

And this, if anything in the whole gospel, deserves our serious consideration.

The Lord Jesus hath told us that His presence with us by His Spirit is better and more expedient for us than the continuance of His bodily presence.”

–John Owen, “The Holy Spirit ,” The Works of John Owen, Volume 2 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1684/2000), 3: 193-194.