Devotionals

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Sprinkled afresh

When Christ is with us we are safe, for what wolf can rend a sheep when it is close to the shepherd’s hand? When we are away from Jesus, we are not only in peril, but are already despoiled; to lose fellowship with Jesus is loss enough in itself, even if no further calamity occur. Ships without a pilot, cities without watchmen, babes without a nurse, are we without Jesus. We cannot do without him, the less we attempt it the better. Samson without his locks is the sad type of a believer out of fellowship.
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Confronting Apostasy: Four Possible Outcomes

By Dr Paul M Elliott

Part nine of a series. Read part eight.

In each of the four possible outcomes, do the right thing, and trust God for the results.

In our last article, we saw that key number five to a Biblically loving response to apostasy is to understand the steps that God’s Word tells you to follow when you find apostasy in the church. We saw that the Bible sets forth a clear process, and that the imperative is to deal with false teaching in the church decisively, and without delay.

Four Possible Outcomes

We saw that there are four possible end results when you confront apostasy in the church.

First, there is the case in which the individual is found, on solid Biblical grounds, to be not guilty of false teaching.

Second, there is the case in which the individual is proved to be guilty of false teaching, and he admits his sin, and repents of it.

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Confronting Apostasy: The Biblical Steps

By Dr Paul M Elliott

Part eight of a series. Read part seven.

You need to understand the Biblical steps in confronting apostasy — and how apostates’ allies and enablers may try to block, complicate, or circumvent the process.

We have now come to the fifth and final key to a Biblically loving response to apostasy: You need to understand the steps that God’s Word tells you to follow when you find apostasy in the church. We shall see that the Bible is very clear about this. There is no guesswork involved. God’s Word sets forth a clear process; it tells you exactly and precisely what to do.

Implementing Key 5: Three Vital Principles

Now before we consider the process itself, I believe it is important to emphasize three very important principles once again. We have discussed them before, but I want to stress them because they relate directly to this process.

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Confronting Apostasy: Dealing With Scripture-Twisters

By Dr Paul M Elliott

Part seven of a series. Read part six.

How will you respond when people twist Scripture to try to prevent you from doing what God’s Word commands you to do?

In our last article, we began considering a scenario that is becoming increasingly common in the church today. What would you do if you found yourself in this situation? You discover false teaching or even outright apostasy in your church. But others in the church – perhaps even your own pastor and church leadership – tell you to keep quiet about it, and they quote Scripture to back up their demand.

This is not some far-fetched scenario. It is very real. Many people in Evangelical and Reformed churches are facing this challenge today.

Over the past several years I have had the privilege of ministering to many people, literally from around the world, who are dealing with this kind of a situation. Many of them have asked for my advice because they know that I have faced such a situation myself. Two of my books, Christianity and Neo-Liberalism and A Denomination in Denial, described that particular crisis which unfolded in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I am grateful to say that I was not alone in confronting apostasy in that case, although those of us who did so were a minority. By God’s grace I can say to you that I am thoroughly convinced that we who confronted that particular apostasy did so in a manner that was thoroughly Biblical.

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Dealing With Apostasy: Don’t Be Intimidated

By Dr Paul M Elliott

Part six of a series. Read part five.

Some people in the church will try to prevent you from doing your duty when apostasy appears. Don’t let them.

Thus far in this series, we have discussed three of the five keys to a Biblical response to apostasy. Key number one is that you need to be able to define and identify apostasy. You must do that on the basis of Scripture alone. Key number two is that you need to be absolutely clear about the Biblical basis for the proper response to apostasy. The basis of that response is to exercise the proper motivation – genuine Christian love – and to employ the proper standard – Biblical truth alone. Key number three is that you need to understand why any other response to apostasy is a wrong response. Many people refuse to deal with apostasy because they say it is not the loving thing to do. But we saw that what those people call Christian love is really a counterfeit. It is not agape love at all.

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Men Of God: True Or False?

by Rev. John Edward Smith, Jr. on Friday, 16 September 2011 at 14:29

Hebrews 5:12 For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. 13 For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe.  14 But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

The Body of Christ in America is sorely lacking in male leadership. And it shows. It’s also lacking in poor to nonexistent proper biblical theology, period. These two things surely fuel the reality of the other.

I’m concerned with what goes on in this country in the name of Christ, and the spiritual void left by so-called Christian men who don’t know sound theology or biblical love (which acts and speaks in truth for the betterment of the other person, bringing glory to God; not this childish, sappy sweet, politically correct, worldly love which so many Christians adhere to) from a hole in the wall. This isn’t an off-the-cuff opinion; take a look at the state of the American Church, you who have eyes to see, and you can’t but come to the same conclusion. I ask, if a man doesn’t know the Word of God and if he doesn’t exhibit the love of God, does he actually know God?

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Petty Wars Over Abstruse Points And Unimportant Questions (audio reading)


Read by John Smith a dear friend and brother in Christ.

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Why All Other Reponses to Apostasy Are Wrong

By Dr Paul M Elliott

Part five of a series. Read part four.

Christ commended the church at Ephesus for its stand against apostasy, but warned them about the danger of doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

We have come now to the third of the five keys to a Biblically loving response to apostasy: You need to understand why other responses to apostasy in the church are wrong responses. Once again, this has to do with the Biblical definition of Christian love. What many people call Christian love is really a counterfeit. It is not agape love at all.

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Exposing Apostasy: The Right Motivation, The Right Standard

By Dr Paul M Elliott

Part four of a series. Read part three.

The only Biblical motivation for confronting apostasy is love for Christ and His church, and the only standard for judging apostasy is the truth of God’s Word.

In this series our theme is an examination of five keys to a Biblically loving response to apostasy. In this article we shall focus on key number two: You need to be absolutely clear about the Biblical motivation for the proper response to apostasy. The proper response, the Biblical response, is based upon genuine Christian love – agape love.

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Understanding What Apostasy Is – And Is Not

By Dr Paul M Elliott

Part three of a series. Read part two.

To properly confront it, you must understand what apostasy is, and is not, according to Scripture.

In our first article, I explained the reason for this series: Today, every Bible-believing Christian faces a disturbing reality. Survey after survey shows that there is a high statistical probability that you will, at some point, need to take a stand against apostasy within your own church.

We saw, in Colossians chapter two and 1 John chapter three, that the proper motivation for such an act of courage and faith is agape love. The Bible defines this as a self-sacrificial love that appreciates the preciousness of your fellow believers in the body of Christ, a love that demonstrates itself through active concern for their spiritual safety. Demonstrating such love may require you to make the self-sacrifice of putting your personal reputation on the line by sounding the alarm against apostasy.

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Five Keys to a Biblically Loving Response to Apostasy

By Dr Paul M Elliott

Part two of a series. Read part one.

According to the Word of God, what is the loving response to apostasy? To answer that question, five things must be absolutely clear in your mind as a believer.

A Disturbing Reality

As we noted in our first article in this series, every Christian needs to face a disturbing reality: In today’s postmodern church environment, there is a high statistical probability that at some point you will need to stand up and expose apostasy within your church. The time may well come when you will need to sound an alarm because the word of man is being substituted for the Word of God in the life and ministry of the church. The time may well come when you will need to wave a red flag because there is false teaching, because the one true Gospel is being watered down, or a false gospel has taken its place.

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Free Will—A Slave


Delivered on Sabbath Morning, December 2, 1855, by the
REV. C. H. Spurgeon
At New Park Street Chapel, Southwark.

“And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.”—John 5:40.

This is one of the great guns of the Arminians, mounted upon the top of their walls, and often discharged with terrible noise against the poor Christians called Calvinists. I intend to spike the gun this morning, or, rather, to turn it on the enemy, for it was never theirs; it was never cast at their foundry at all, but was intended to teach the very opposite doctrine to that which they assert. Usually, when the text is taken, the divisions are: First, that man has a will. Secondly, that he is entirely free. Thirdly, that men must make themselves willing to come to Christ, otherwise they will not be saved. Now, we shall have no such divisions; but we will endeavour to take a more calm look at the text; and not, because there happen to be the words “will,” or “will not” in it, run away with the conclusion that it teaches the doctrine of free-will. It has already been proved beyond all controversy that free-will is nonsense. Freedom cannot belong to will any more than ponderability can belong to electricity. They are altogether different things. Free agency we may believe in, but free-will is simply ridiculous. The will is well known by all to be directed by the understanding, to be moved by motives, to be guided by other parts of the soul, and to be a secondary thing. Philosophy and religion both discard at once the very thought of free-will; and I will go as far as Martin Luther, in that strong assertion of his, where he says, “If any man doth ascribe aught of salvation, even the very least, to the free-will of man, he knoweth nothing of grace, and he hath not learnt Jesus Christ aright.” It may seem a harsh sentiment; but he who in his soul believes that man does of his own free-will turn to God, cannot have been taught of God, for that is one of the first principles taught us when God begins with us, that we have neither will nor power, but that he gives both; that he is “Alpha and Omega” in the salvation of men.

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Our Bible: The Most Critical Issue

By J Sidlow Baxter from the website of Dr Paul M Elliot

As J. Sidlow Baxter wrote, in a time when the most basic structures of civilized society are crumbling, “the crying need just now is for prophets, not just preachers; for ministers, not just managers; for men with a passion to put our dear old Bible back where it ought to be in the Christian faith, in the Protestant pulpit.”

Editor’s note: The late British pastor and evangelist J. Sidlow Baxter wrote the following article over twenty years ago, when he was in his late eighties. Some of the allusions are historically dated, but the message rings loud and clear. It is even more relevant under present world conditions than when it was first written. – Dr. Paul Elliott

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The Beauty of Holiness

by Arthur W. Pink

“Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness” (Psa. 29:2). Holiness is the antithesis of sin, and the beauty of holiness is in direct contrast from the ugliness of sin. Sin is a deformity, a monstrosity. Sin is repulsive, repellent to the infinitely pure God: that is why He selected leprosy, the most loathsome and horrible of all diseases, to be its emblem. When the Prophet was Divinely inspired to depict the condition of degenerate Israel it was in these words, “From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores” (Isa. 1:6). O that sin were sickening and hateful to us: not merely its grosser forms, but sin itself. At the opposite extreme from the hideousness of sin is “the beauty of holiness.” Holiness is lovely in the sight of God: necessarily so. It is the reflection of His own nature, for He is “glorious in holiness” (Exo. 15:11). O that it may be increasingly attractive to and earnestly sought after by us. Perhaps the simplest way of bringing out the beauty of holiness will be to contrast it from the beauties of time and sense.

First, the beauty of holiness is imperceptible to the natural man, and therein it differs radically from the beauties of mere nature. He

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Enjoying God’s Creation — Charles Spurgeon

 

“Where the birds make their nests; The stork has her home in the fir trees. The high hills are for the wild goats; The cliffs are a refuge for the rock badgers.” — Psalm 104:17-18.

Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)


Psalm 104 is all through a song of nature, the adoration of God in the great outward temple of the universe. Some in these modern times have thought it to be a mark of high spirituality never to observe nature; and I remember sorrowfully reading the expressions of a godly person, who, in sailing down one of the most famous rivers in the world closed his eyes, lest the picturesque beauties of the scene should divert his mind from scriptural topics. This may be regarded by some as profound spirituality; to me it seems to savor of absurdity. There may be persons who think they have grown in grace when they have attained to this; it seems to me that they are growing out of their senses. To despise the creating work of God—what is it but, in a measure, to despise God Himself? “Whoso mocketh the poor despiseth his Maker.”

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