Books

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The Doctrines of Grace (Part 2 of 10)

John MacArthur – Grace to You

The Perseverance of the Saints, Part 2

We are in a bit of a brief study on the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. And we sort of picked up on this doctrine because the study in the marvelous epistle of Jude and this little epistle, as you will remember, we’ve been studying on Sunday nights, ends with this great benediction, “Now to Him who is able to keep you from falling and to make you stand in the presence of His glory, blameless with great joy.” That is a statement of the security of our salvation. Our Lord is able to keep us and to present us. This was so important for us as we were going through it that I wanted to enrich our study of just that passage and so last week, and again this week and perhaps one other session next week, we will look at this very, very important doctrine.

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Why People Find the Bible Difficult

by A. W. Tozer

Chapter 6 from Man: The Dwelling Place of God (Camp Hill, Penn: Christian Publications, 1966).

That many persons find the Bible hard to understand will not be denied by those acquainted with the facts. Testimony to the difficulties encountered in Bible reading is too full and too widespread to be dismissed lightly.

In human experience there is usually a complex of causes rather than but one cause for everything, and so it is with the difficulty we run into with the Bible. To the question, Why is the Bible hard to understand? no snap answer can be given; the pert answer is sure to be the wrong one. The problem is multiple instead of singular, and for this reason the effort to find a single solution to it will be disappointing.

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Happiness Is . . .

John MacArthur – Grace to You – Drawing Near

“Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . those who mourn . . .the gentle . . . those who hunger and thirst for righteousness . . . the merciful . . . the pure in heart . . . the peacemakers . . . [and] those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness” (Matt. 5:3-10).

A quiz in a popular magazine characterized happy people as those who enjoy other people but aren’t self-sacrificing, who refuse to participate in negative feelings or emotions, and who have a sense of accomplishment based on their own self-sufficiency.

But Jesus described happy people quite differently. In fact, He characterized them as spiritual beggars who realize they have no resources in themselves. He said they are meek rather than proud, mournful over their sin, self- sacrificing, and willing to endure persecution to reconcile men to God.

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VISIBLE CHURCH IN AN ACCELERATING APOSTASY

Ken Silva, pastor-teacher –  Apprising Ministries.

Let me tell you something that I have learned; I know the liberals. I know them well; I was one of them. And they are the most dangerous, insidious, and all-pervading cult that’s loose in the United States right at this moment.

They make the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Mormons, and all of the Mind Sciences, and the Occult, look like Sunday School teachers. Do you know why? Because these other people are outside the Church; and these devils are in it! And they’re doing it in Jesus’ Name.

They do not believe the Trinity; they do not believe the Deity of Christ; they do not believe the Virgin Birth; they do not believe the vicarious atonement; they do not believe the Bodily resurrection, and they have grave doubts about whether Jesus will ever come back again, and that the Bible is itself the Word of God. Yet I could give you a list of them that infest—and that’s the proper word—infest our theological seminaries; and our church related schools, and our denominations.

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On Breeding Spotted Mice

From  A W Tozer – Man – The Dwelling Place of God

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LATELY CARRIED an interesting if somewhat depressing story out of London about a certain British peer who had died just a few days short of his eighty-ninth birthday.

Having been a man of means and position, it had presumably not been necessary for him to work for a living like the rest of us, so at the time of his death he had had about seventy adult years in which he was free to do whatever he wanted to do, to pursue any calling he wished or to work at anything he felt worthy of his considerable abilities.

And what had he chosen to do? Well, according to the story, he had “devoted his life to trying to breed the perfect spotted mouse.”

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Feeding Sheep or Amusing Goats?


By C H SPURGEON

An evil resides in the professed camp of the Lord so gross in its imprudence that the most shortsighted can hardly fail to notice it. During the past few years it has developed at an abnormal rate evil for evil. It has worked like leaven until the whole lump ferments. The devil has seldom done a more clever thing than hinting to the Church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them. From speaking out as the Puritans did, the Church has gradually toned down her testimony, then winked at and excused the frivolities of the day. Then she tolerated them in her borders. Now she has adopted them under the plea of reaching the masses.

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The Bible

D.L. Moody :

People say this Bible was good enough for ancient days, but we have men of culture, of science, of literature now, and its value has decreased to the people of our day. Now, give me a better book, and I will throw it away. Has the world ever offered us a better book? These men want us to give up the Bible. What are you going to give us in its place? O, how cruel infidelity is to tell us to give up all the hope we have, to throw away the only book which tells the story of the resurrection. They try to tell us that it is all a fiction, so that

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God: Is He? Who Is He?

John MacArthur – Grace to You

“The world is full of either philosophic or pragmatic atheists–they either don’t believe in God, or if they do, they live as if His existence had no effect on them. In sharing Christ with them, it’s helpful to know which kind of atheist they are. Determine how you might alter your presentation of God’s truth to match the type of person you’re sharing with. For some ideas, compare Stephen’s address to the Jewish religious leaders (Acts 7) and Paul’s address to Gentile philosophers (Acts 17:18-34).”

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What makes my soul dance…

C H Spurgeon

There was nothing in the character of Jupiter, or any of the pretended gods of the heathen, to make glad a pure and holy spirit, but there is everything in the character of Jehovah both to purify the heart and to make it thrill with delight. How sweet is it to think over all the Lord has done; how he has revealed himself of old, and especially how he has displayed his glory in the covenant of grace, and in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. How charming is the thought that he has revealed himself to me personally, and made me to see in him my Father, my friend, my helper, my God.

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A Woman to Be Remembered

J.C. Ryle

A Woman to Be Remembered

“Remember Lot’s wife.” (Luke 17:32).

There are few warnings in Scripture more solemn than that which heads this page. The Lord Jesus Christ says to us, “Remember Lot’s wife.”

Lot’s wife was a professor of religion; her husband was a “righteous man” (2 Pet. 2:8). She left Sodom with him on the day when Sodom was destroyed; she looked back toward the city from behind her husband, against God’s express command; she was struck dead at once and turned into a pillar of salt. And the Lord Jesus Christ holds her up as a beacon to His church; He says, “Remember Lot’s wife.”

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How can we determine what doctrines are essential and what are they?

John MacArthur – Grace to You

To begin with, the strongest words of condemnation in all the New Testament are aimed at false teachers who corrupt the Gospel. Therefore the Gospel message itself must be acknowledged as a primary point of fundamental doctrine.

But what message will determine the content of our gospel testimony? The biblical message of instantaneous justification through faith alone-or a system of rituals and sacraments that are supposed to convey grace to the participants with no guarantee of ultimate salvation? What authority will we point people to? The Scriptures alone-or a papal hierarchy and church tradition? Those two gospels are flatly contradictory and mutually exclusive.

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WHY DID GOD HATE ESAU?

By Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”
Romans 9:13.

Introduction.
Do not imagine for an instant that I pretend to be able thoroughly to elucidate the great mysteries of predestination. There are some men who claim to know all about the matter. They twist it round their fingers as easily as if it were an everyday thing; but depend upon it, he who thinks he knows all about this mystery, knows but very little. It is but the shallowness of his mind that permits him to see the bottom of his knowledge; he who dives deep, finds that there is in the lowest depth to which he can attain a deeper depth still. The fact is, that the great questions about man’s responsibility, free-will, and predestination, have been fought over, and over, and over again, and have been answered in ten thousand different ways; and the result has been, that we know just as much about the matter as when we first began. The combatants have thrown dust into each other’s eyes, and have hindered each other from seeing; and then they have concluded, that because they put other people’s eyes out, they could therefore see.

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Christian Love

D.L. Moody

IT speaks in Galatians about love, the fruit of the Spirit being love, joy, peace, gentleness, long suffering, meekness and temperance. The way this writer has put it — and I think it is very beautiful — is that joy is love exultant, peace is love in repose, and long suffering is love enduring. It is all love, you see, a gentleness is love in society, and goodness is love in action, and faith is love on the battle-field, and meekness is love at school, and temperance is love in training.

Now there are a great many that have got love and they hold the truth. I should have said they have got truth, but they don’t hold it in love, and they are very unsuccessful in working for God. They are very harsh, and God cannot use them. Now let us hold the truth, but let us hold it in love. People will stand almost any kind of plain talk if you only do it in love. If you do it in harshness it bounds back and they won’t receive it. So what we want is to have the truth and at the same time hold it in love.

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The Importance of Sound Doctrine

A W Tozer

IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE to overemphasize the importance of sound doctrine in the life of a Christian. Right thinking about all spiritual matters is imperative if we would have right living. As men do not gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles, sound character does not grow out of unsound teaching.

The word doctrine means simply religious beliefs held and taught. It is the sacred task of all Christians, first as believers and then as teachers of religious beliefs, to be certain that these beliefs correspond exactly to truth. A precise agreement between belief and fact constitutes soundness in doctrine. We cannot afford to have less.

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God’s Sovereignty in the Salvation of Men

Jonathan Edwards

ROMANS 9:18.
Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and
whom he will he hardeneth.

THE apostle, in the beginning of this chapter, expresses his great concern and sorrow of heart for the nation of the Jews, who were rejected of God. This leads him to observe the difference which God made by election between some of the Jews and others, and between the bulk of that people and the christian Gentiles. In speaking of this he enters into a more minute discussion of the sovereignty of God in electing some to eternal life, and rejecting others, than is found in any other part of the Bible; in the course of which he quotes several passages from the Old Testament, confirming and illustrating this doctrine. In the ninth verse he refers us to what God said to Abraham, showing his election of Isaac before Ishmael – “For this is the word of promise; At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son:” then to what God had said to Rebecca, showing his election of Jacob before Esau; “The elder shall serve the younger:” in the thirteenth verse, to a passage from Malachi,

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