Abundantly

That which God abundantly makes the subject of His promises, God’s people should abundantly make the subject of their prayers.

Jonathan Edwards

“The Doctor” On Preaching

It is always a bad sign when men read a text and then shut the Bible and put it on one side, and proceed to preach their prepared sermon.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Commending Love, Satisfying Justice

This is the foundation of all the grace any have. The conveyance of all the gracious love of God is through this channel. In redemption by His blood, the riches of the grace of God abounded, and that with the marks of the highest wisdom {Ephesians 1:7-8}. All had lain buried from the view of man, and the fruition of men, without this sacrifice. This did commend His love as well as satisfy His justice. His wrath had not been {would not have been} appeased, nor His grace drawn out to us without it. Nor could the Redeemer lay any claim to any grace and mercy for those whom He came, unless He had suffered for them as well as taken flesh for them…The essence of the sacrifice consisted, firstly in the slaying or destroying it, and secondly, in the offering it to God. Both were done in Christ.

Stephen Charnock, Christ Crucified: A Puritan’s View of the Atonement

Of Things…

The Word of God and God in His Word, the Scripture and God in Scripture is the only infallible, supreme, authoritative rule and judge of matters of doctrines and worship, of things to be believed and things to be done.

Samuel Bolton

Your Blood Is Bibline

It is blessed to eat into the very soul of the Bible until, at last, you come to talk in Scriptural language, and your spirit is flavoured with the words of the Lord, so that your blood is Bibline and the very essence of the Bible flows from you.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Infinitely Better…

To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here.

Jonathan Edwards

People Are Strange

Oh, strange! We believe in Satan’s willingness to tempt and to injure; but not in God’s willingness to deliver and to save! Nay more, we yield to our great enemy when he seduces into sin, and leads away from Christ and heaven; but we will not yield to our truest friend, when he draws us with the cords of a man, and with bands of love! We will not give God the credit for speaking truly when he speaks in tender mercy, and utters over the sinner the yearnings of his unfathomable pity. We listen, as if his words were hollow; as if he did not mean what he says; as if his messages of grace, instead of being the most thoroughly sincere that ever fell on human ears, were mere words of course.

Horatias Bonar, God’s Way of Peace: A Book for the Anxious

These Treachorous Hearts

Take heed to yourselves, for you have a depraved nature, and sinful inclinations, as well as others. If innocent Adam had need of heed, and lost himself and us for want of it, how much more need have such as we! Sin dwelleth in us, when we have preached ever so much against it; and one degree prepareth the heart for another, and one sin inclineth the mind to more. If one thief be in the house, he will let in the rest; because they have the same disposition and design. A spark is the beginning of a flame; and a small disease may cause a greater. A man who knows himself to be purblind, should take heed to his feet. Alas! in our hearts, as well as in our hearers, there is an averseness to God, a strangeness to him, unreasonable and almost unruly passions! In us there are, at the best, the remnants of pride, unbelief, self-seeking, hypocrisy, and all the most hateful, deadly sins. And doth it not then concern us to take heed to ourselves? Is so much of the fire of hell yet unextinguished, that was at first kindled in us? Are there so many traitors in our very hearts, and is it not necessary for us to take heed? You will scarcely let your little children go themselves while they are weak, without calling upon them to take heed of falling. And, alas! how weak are those of us that seem strongest! How apt to stumble at a very straw! How small a matter will cast us down, by enticing us to folly; or kindling our passions and inordinate desires, by perverting our judgments, weakening our resolutions, cooling our zeal, and abating our diligence! Ministers are not only sons of Adam, but sinners against the grace of Christ, as well as others; and so have increased their radical sin. These treacherous hearts of yours will, one time or other, deceive you, if you take not heed. Those sins that seem now to lie dead will revive: your pride, and worldliness, and many a noisome vice, will spring up, that you thought had been weeded out by the roots. It is most necessary, therefore, that men of so much infirmity should take heed to themselves, and be careful in the oversight of their own souls.

Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

I Must Tell So and So…

Whenever you come across anything in any realm of life which pleases you and gives you great satisfaction, you feel you are bound to tell people about it, and you do. If you read a book that gives you something unusual, you say, ‘I must tell so and so. I must tell everybody’. The thing itself is so wonderful. If you see a wonderful bit of scenery you feel, ‘I must tell others about this. They must go and look at it’. Whatever it is, we always feel we cannot keep it to ourselves; we always want to share our blessings. Our Lord has put it once and for ever in the story of the woman and the lost coin. When she found it after considerable effort, she went to tell her neighbours, Come and rejoice with me, I have found it. The shepherd who has lost the sheep does the same thing, and the father who has lost the son, and who finds him, does the same. Here, then is this glorious gospel. You notice how Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5: ‘For the love of Christ constraineth us’ [v.14]. He is like a man in a vice, and the vice is being screwed up and tightened up, until life is almost pressed out of him. What is pressing the Apostle? The love of Christ! This amazing thing! This gospel of reconciliation! This love of God! This love of God that sends His only Son, and even makes Him to be sin for us! Paul has seen it, and he wants everybody else to see it and to rejoice in it, and to glory in it, and to participate in it. The wonderful, glorious character of the gospel itself had made him a ‘debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, both to the wise, and to the unwise.

Martin Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 1. ‘The Gospel of God’

Hellish Bullets

Edom’s princes saw the whole country left desolate, and counted upon its easy conquest; but there was one great difficulty in their way—quite unknown to them—”The Lord was there”; and in His presence lay the special security of the chosen land. Whatever may be the machinations and devices of the enemies of God’s people, there is still the same effectual barrier to thwart their design. The saints are God’s heritage, and He is in the midst of them, and will protect His own. What comfort this assurance yields us in our troubles and spiritual conflicts! We are constantly opposed, and yet perpetually preserved! How often Satan shoots his arrows against our faith, but our faith defies the power of hell’s fiery darts; they are not only turned aside, but they are quenched upon its shield, for “the Lord is there.” Our good works are the subjects of Satan’s attacks. A saint never yet had a virtue or a grace which was not the target for hellish bullets: whether it was hope bright and sparkling, or love warm and fervent, or patience all-enduring, or zeal flaming like coals of fire, the old enemy of everything that is good has tried to destroy it. The only reason why anything virtuous or lovely survives in us is this, “the Lord is there.”
If the Lord be with us through life, we need not fear for our dying confidence; for when we come to die, we shall find that “the Lord is there”; where the billows are most tempestuous, and the water is most chill, we shall feel the bottom, and know that it is good: our feet shall stand upon the Rock of Ages when time is passing away. Beloved, from the first of a Christian’s life to the last, the only reason why he does not perish is because “the Lord is there.” When the God of everlasting love shall change and leave His elect to perish, then may the Church of God be destroyed; but not till then, because it is written, JEHOVAH SHAMMAH, “The Lord is there.”

C.H. Spurgeon