Nick Roark's Blog, page 89

“Typical of Gospel things” by Jonathan Edwards

“Almost everything that was said or done that we have recorded in Scripture from Adam to Christ was typical of Gospel things.”

–Jonathan Edwards, Typological Writings (ed. Harry S. Stout; vol. 11; The Works of Jonathan Edwards; New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1993), 11: 51, fn. #6.

“He paid the debt in His suffering, and pleads the payment in His glory” by Stephen Charnock

“The right apprehensions of the promises concerning the Messiah in the Old Testament, what He was to be, what He was to do, cannot let you be ignorant of Him in the New.

How forgiveness of sin is to be attained? The only remedy is proposed in Christ, and Christ as a sacrifice.

It is not Christ risen, or ascended, or exalted; not Christ only as the Son of God, or the head of angels; not Christ as the creator of the world, or by whom all things consist; but Christ as answering the terms of the first covenant, as disarming justice: and this He did as a sacrifice.

By this He bore the curse, by this He broke down the partition wall, by this He joined apostate man and an offended God.

This is that true faith pitcheth on, daily revolves, and daily applies to. This is the first object of the soul, Christ made sin, Christ bearing the punishment, Christ substituted in the room of the offender.

His resurrection and ascension come in afterward to ascertain the comfort. But as His being a sacrifice is the foundation of His being an advocate, a prince, a Saviour, to give repentance and remission of sins, so it is the foundation of peace in ourselves.

This is that which pacifies God, and only what pacifies God can pacify conscience. This death as a sacrifice purchased our comfort, because it purchased the comforter.

Suffering was to precede His glory. Besides, our comfort lies in His being an advocate.

But how is He an advocate? With His blood in His hands.

It is by His blood He speaks in heaven, and by His blood faith speaks to God. He paid the debt in His suffering, and pleads the payment in His glory.”

–Stephen Charnock, “A Discourse Of Christ Our Passover,” The Works of Stephen Charnock, Volume 4 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1865/2010), 4: 535, 536.

“The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ is unutterable love” by Charles Spurgeon

“Dear friend, here is our great comfort: we have a Mediator. Hide behind the Mediator. Let Jesus be thy shield, even as He is the Lord’s Anointed.

Beseech the Lord God not to look on thee as thou art in thyself, but to see thee in Christ Jesus. Take care that thou lookest through Jesus’ wounds on God. And if thou dost, thou wilt see in Him infinite love and boundless kindness.

The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ is unutterable love. Like a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.

And when they fear Him most, His pity goes out to them in streams of tenderness.”

–Charles H. Spurgeon, “The Mediator—The Interpreter,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. 35 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1889), 35: 419.

“Without the Trinity, the gospel disappears” by Joel Beeke

“The link between the gospel and the Trinity is Christ’s incarnate mediatorial work.

The Father’s work revolves around the mission of the Son whom He sent into the world.

The Son’s work is never abstracted from His taking human nature, walking by faith, living in human obedience to God’s law, suffering and dying under the penalty of that law, and rising again to receive God’s blessing– all on behalf of His people.

The Spirit empowered the incarnate Son and comes to His people through His mediation. Thus, the Trinitarian gospel is Christ-centered.

The gospel is essentially Trinitarian. Every member of the Trinity performs an indispensable function in our salvation.

Without God the Father, there would be no one to send the Son and Spirit into the world, to accept the Son’s sacrifice, or to hear the Spirit-wrought prayers of the redeemed.

Without the obedience and sufferings of God the Son, no one could escape God’s curse or enjoy God’s blessing in the Spirit.

Without the renewing work and indwelling presence of God the Spirit, no one would benefit from Christ’s redemptive work or have any assurance of being reconciled to God as his child. Apart from the divine Spirit, God could not dwell within the hearts of the redeemed to relate them to the Father and the Son.

Without the Trinity, the gospel disappears.

Ryan McGraw says, ‘The greatest proof of the doctrine of the Trinity is that the authors of the New Testament could hardly explain the Gospel without it.’

How fervently we should love the doctrine of the Trinity! Too often it is consigned to the dusty shelves of confessed but neglected doctrines– regarded as abstract dogma without practical implications.

In reality, however, the triune God is the only Savior. We should cherish this doctrine, study it in the Holy Scriptures, meditate upon it until it inflames our hearts, and teach and defend it with all the resources of the church.”

–Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 1: Revelation and God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 1: 879.

“Jesus Christ is both the content of Scripture and the interpreter of Scripture” by Craig Carter

“Only the slain Lamb who is now alive is able to open the scroll.

Jesus Christ is both the content of Scripture and the interpreter of Scripture.”

–Craig A. Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2018), 215.

“You shall not seek Him in vain” by John Newton

“March 3, 1772

And now, what shall I say? May the Lord direct me to send you a profitable word. It rejoices my heart to think, that at a time of life when you might have been plunging into the vanities of the world, you are seeking Jesus.

The Lord, who appointed the hour of your birth, and the bounds of your habitation, was pleased in His good providence to withdraw you early from the giddy circle of dissipation in which you might have lived, and to favour you with the advantages of example, instruction, and ordinances.

You live at a distance from those ensnaring temptations by which the minds of young persons are blinded and stupefied. Yet this alone would not have secured you. His providence has been subservient to His grace.

Otherwise, by this time, you would have been weary and impatient of restraint; you would have accounted the means of grace burdensome, and your home a prison.

The evil of the heart is too deeply rooted to be overcome by any thing less than the power of God. Whatever your Papa and Mamma, or the ministers of the Gospel, could have told you concerning your state as a sinner, and your need of a Saviour, you would not have believed them, if the Lord Himself had not borne witness in your heart to His own truths.

You are now seeking Him that you may find Him, yet, if He had not found you at first, you would never have sought Him at all. This I mention for your encouragement, as a good reason why you may be assured that you shall not seek Him in vain.

Go on, my dear Miss; and may the Lord be with you. Give yourself to Him every day, and many times a day; remember how many claims He has to you; especially remember this one, that He bought you with His own blood. He died that you might live.

May the name of Jesus be written upon the tablet of your heart, and be as a seal upon your arm; that all your desires and all your actions may be regulated by His word, directed to His glory, and animated by a living principle of grace, derived from Him who is the fountain of grace.

Two things alone are worth a serious thought,—His presence and His image: the one to make you comfortable in yourself, the other that you may shine to His praise as a light in the world.

These blessings, and the increase of them, are gifts which He bestows without money and without price. Yet it is our part to wait upon Him for them, by prayer, by reading His good word, and frequenting His ordinances.

Thus you shall know if you follow on to know the Lord.

I am your affectionate friend.

John Newton”

–John Newton, The Works of John Newton, Volume 6 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1820/1988), 6: 250–251, 253.

“Even dragons have their ending” by J.R.R. Tolkien

“It was spring, and a fair one with mild weathers and a bright sun, before Bilbo and Gandalf took their leave at last of Beorn, and though he longed for home, Bilbo left with regret, for the flowers of the gardens of Beorn were in springtime no less marvellous than in high summer.

At last they came up the long road, and reached the very pass where the goblins had captured them before. But they came to that high point at morning, and looking backward they saw a white sun shining over the outstretched lands.

There behind lay Mirkwood, blue in the distance, and darkly green at the nearer edge even in the spring. There far away was the Lonely Mountain on the edge of eyesight. On its highest peak snow yet unmelted was gleaming pale.

“So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!” said Bilbo, and he turned his back on his adventure.

The Tookish part was getting very tired, and the Baggins was daily getting stronger.

‘I wish now only to be in my own armchair!’ he said.”

–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit; Or There and Back Again (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966), 247-248.

“Do it again” by G.K. Chesterton

“All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork.

People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact.

For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire.

A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still.

But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness.

The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.

Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.

The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon.

It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.

It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE.”

–G.K. Chesterton, “The Ethics of Elfland,” Orthodoxy (The Christian Heritage Series; Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1908/2020), 61.

“His mercy will live longer than thy sin” by John Bunyan

“Child of God, thou that fearest God, here is mercy nigh thee, mercy enough, everlasting mercy upon thee.

This is long-lived mercy. It will live longer than thy sin, it will live longer than temptation, it will live longer than thy sorrows, it will live longer than thy persecutors.

It is mercy from everlasting to contrive thy salvation, and mercy to everlasting to weather it out with all thy adversaries.

Now what can hell and death do to him that hath this mercy of God upon him? And this hath the man that feareth the Lord.

Take that other blessed word, and O thou man that fearest the Lord, hang it like a chain of gold about thy neck—’As the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him’ (Psalm 103:11).

If mercy as big, as high, and as good as heaven itself will be a privilege, the man that feareth God shall have a privilege.

Dost thou fear God?—’Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him’ (Psalm 103:13).”

–John Bunyan, “A Treatise on the Fear of God,” in The Works of John Bunyan, ed. George Offer, 3 vols. (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1991), 1: 470.

“The Scripture is the library of the Holy Ghost” by Thomas Watson

“Highly prize the Scriptures. ‘The law of Thy mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver.’ (Psalm 119:72)

Prize this Book of God above all other books. Gregory calls the Bible the heart and soul of God. ‘The law of the Lord is perfect.’ (Psalm 19:7)

The Scripture is the library of the Holy Ghost; it is a code of divine knowledge, an exact model, and platform of religion.

The Scripture contains in it the Credenda, the things which we are to believe, and the Agenda, the things which we are to practice; it is able to make us wise unto salvation. (2 Tim. 3:15)

The Scripture is the standard of truth, the judge of controversy; it is the pole star to direct us to heaven. The Scripture is the compass by which the rudder of our will is to be steered.

It is the field in which Christ, the pearl of price, is hidden. It is a rock of diamond;. It is a spiritual optic glass in which the glory of God is resplendent.

It is the panacea or universal medicine for the soul. The leaves of Scripture are like ‘the leaves of the tree of life for the healing of the nations.’ (Rev. 22:2)

The Scripture is the breeder and feeder of grace. How is the convert born, but by ‘the word of truth?’ (James 1:18)

How does a believer grow but by ‘the sincere milk of the Word?’ (1 Peter 2:2)

The Word written is the book out of which our evidences for heaven are fetched; it is the sea-mark which shows us the rocks of sin; it is the antidote against error and apostasy; it is the two-edged sword which wounds the old serpent.

It is our bulwark to withstand the force of lust. The Scripture is the tower of David, whereon the shields of our faith hang. Take away the Word, and you deprive us of the sun, said Luther.

The word written is above an angelical embassy, or a voice from heaven. ‘This voice which came from heaven we heard; we have also a more sure word.’ (2 Peter 1:18)

How should we estimate the sacred oracles of God? ‘I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.’ (Job 23:12)

King Edward VI., on the day of his coronation, had presented before him three swords, signifying that he was the monarch of three kingdoms. The King said there was one sword wanting; being asked what that was, he answered, ‘the Holy Bible, which is the sword of the Spirit, and is to be preferred before all these ensigns of royalty.’

Robert, King of Sicily, did so prize God’s word, that, speaking to his friend Petrarch, he said, ‘I protest the Scriptures are dearer to me than my kingdom, and if I must be deprived of one of them, I had rather lose my diadem than the Scriptures.'”

—Thomas Watson, “How We May Read the Scriptures with Most Spiritual Profit,” in Heaven Taken by Storm, Showing the Holy Violence a Christian is to Put Forth in Pursuit After Glory (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 1810/1992), 120-121.