Good Soldier

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A Biblical Response to the Catholic-Evangelical Accord

John MacArthur – Grace to You

I want to take this opportunity to let you know about a document that you perhaps have heard of that’s called The Evangelicals and Catholics Together document, the Christian mission in the third millennium. And it’s something that was put together by Charles Colson and Richard John Neuhaus as a way to conciliate Roman Catholics and Evangelicals for basically purposes of evangelical mission in the world and purposes of the betterment of human life in America, by their definition. It’s being spread far and wide, quite remarkably it has shown up in one form or another in the major newspapers here in California and I’m sure all over the United States.

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The True Pattern of Love

~ J.C. Ryle

The love of the Bible will show itself in the general spirit and demeanor of a believer. It will make them kind, unselfish, good-natured, good-tempered, and considerate of others. It will make them gentle, friendly, and courteous in all the daily relations of private life, thoughtful for others comfort, tender for others feelings, and more anxious to give pleasure than to receive. True love never envies others when they prosper, nor rejoices in the calamities of others when they are in trouble. At all times it will believe, hope, and try to put to good use the actions of others. And even at the worst, it will be full of pity, mercy, and compassion. Would we like to know where the true pattern of love like this can be found? We have only to look at the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, as described in the Gospels, and we will see it perfectly exemplified.


Practical Religion, “Charity”, [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1998], 171, 172.

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Worth the Slammer!

Dr. Joshua Mack

24 July 2011

So lost in his glorious world, Paul sits back or a moment as he writes this letter. Something is heavy upon his mind. But what is on his mind is not the fact that he is in prison. What has inflated his heart is the glorious gospel of the blessed God. He wants his readers to come to appreciate it more and more. So as he grasps for words, it comes back to him that his is actually in prison for this gospel. Just as his incarceration is real, so the gospel is real! Not only is it real, it is also consuming, objective, and given to him by God.

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Examine Yourself

John MacArthur
Matthew 5-7; 2 Corinthians 13:5

Are you a Christian? Many people who claim to be point to some event in the past to substantiate their claim. But inviting Jesus to come into your life in the past is not proof that you are genuinely saved. In 2 Corinthians 13:5 Paul says to the Corinthian church, “ Examine yourselves, whether you are in the faith; prove yourselves (emphasis added).” He wouldn’t have said that if some event in the past were obviously the answer. The Bible never verifies anyone’s salvation by the past but by the present. If there is no evidence of salvation in your life now, you need to face the fact that you may not be a Christian. You need to examine yourself to see whether you are in the faith. How does one do that? Jesus shows us in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).

The Distinguishing Mark of a Christian

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What is conviction of sin?

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled

“An Old-Fashioned Conversation,” delivered March 16, 1873.

The Lord shuts us up to hopelessness and helplessness in order that he may come, as a God of grace, and display his abounding mercy. All our hope lies in him, and all other hopes are delusions. The great work in conversion is not to make people better, so that they may come to God on a good footing, it is to strip them completely and lay them low, so that God may come to them when they are on a bad footing, or rather on no footing at all, but down in the dust at his feet. The Son of man is come to seek and to cave that which is lost, but it wants* God himself to convince men that they are lost; and the Spirit’s work of soul-humbling is just this – to get man to feel so diseased that he will accept the physician; to get him to feel so poor that he will accept the charity of heaven; to get him to know that he is so stripped, that he will no longer be proud of his fig leaves, but will be willing to take the robe of righteousness which Christ has wrought out.

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Christians can rejoice even in the deepest distress

 

Daily Devotional – C H Spurgeon

“Our heart shall rejoice in Him.”
– Psa_33:21

 

Blessed is the fact that Christians can rejoice even in the deepest distress; although trouble may surround them, they still sing; and, like many birds, they sing best in their cages. The waves may roll over them, but their souls soon rise to the surface and see the light of God’s countenance; they have a buoyancy about them which keeps their head always above the water, and helps them to sing amid the tempest, “God is with me still.” To whom shall the glory be given? Oh! to Jesus-it is all by Jesus.

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If a man can still pray

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled

“For The Troubled,” delivered January 12, 1873.

 

Now, while a man can pray he is never far from light; he is at the window, though, perhaps, as yet the curtains are not drawn aside. The man who can pray has the clue in his hand by which to escape from the labyrinth of affliction. Like the trees in winter, we may say of the praying man, when his heart is greatly troubled, “his substance is in him, though he has lost his leaves.” Prayer is the soul’s breath, and if it breathes it lives, and, living it will gather strength again. A man must have true and eternal life within him while he can continue still to pray, and while there is such life there is assured hope.

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The Christian should never think or speak lightly of unbelief

Daily Devotional – C H Spurgeon

“And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.”
– Joh_10:28

Morning

The Christian should never think or speak lightly of unbelief. For a child of God to mistrust his love, his truth, his faithfulness, must be greatly displeasing to him. How can we ever grieve him by doubting his upholding grace? Christian! it is contrary to every promise of God’s precious Word that thou shouldst ever be forgotten or left to perish. If it could be so, how could he be true who has said, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I never forget thee.”

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Be On Guard Against False Doctrine

J.C. Ryle

Let us be on our guard against false doctrine. Unsound faith will never be the mother of really sound practice, and in these latter days, departures from the faith abound. See then that your loins be girded about with truth, and be very jealous of receiving anything which cannot be proved by the Bible. Do not think for a moment that false doctrine will meet you face to face, saying, “I am false doctrine, and I want to come into your heart.” Satan does not go to work in that way. He dresses up false doctrine like Jezebel — he paints her face and attires her hair, and tries to make her like truth. Do not think that those who preach error will never preach anything that is true. Error would do little harm if that was the case. No! Error will come before you mingled with much that is sound and scriptural.

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Coming in the Clouds

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We love Him because He first loved us

 

Daily Devotional – C H Spurgeon

“We love him because he first loved us.”
– 1Jo_4:19

 

There is no light in the planet but that which proceedeth from the sun; and there is no true love to Jesus in the heart but that which cometh from the Lord Jesus himself. From this overflowing fountain of the infinite love of God, all our love to God must spring. This must ever be a great and certain truth, that we love him for no other reason than because he first loved us. Our love to him is the fair offspring of his love to us. Cold admiration, when studying the works of God, anyone may have, but the warmth of love can only be kindled in the heart by God’s Spirit. How great the wonder that such as we should ever have been brought to love Jesus at all!

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Thou hast good reason to “hate evil”

Devotionals by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“Ye that love the Lord hate evil.”
– Psa_97:10

Psa 97:10  O you who love the LORD, hate evil! He preserves the lives of his saints; he delivers them from the hand of the wicked.

Thou hast good reason to “hate evil,” for only consider what harm it has already wrought thee. Oh, what a world of mischief sin has brought into thy heart! Sin blinded thee so that thou couldst not see the beauty of the Saviour; it made thee deaf so that thou couldst not hear the Redeemer’s tender invitations. Sin turned thy feet into the way of death, and poured poison into the very fountain of thy being; it tainted thy heart, and made it “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Oh, what a creature thou wast when evil had done

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Mohamedanism, or to the fierce doctrines of Budha……

  C. H. Spurgeon

Delivered on Sabbath Morning, September 16, 1855,
At New Park Street Chapel, Southwark.

Storming the Battlements

“Go ye up upon her walls, and destroy; but make not a full end: take away her battlements; for they are not the Lord’s.”—Jeremiah 5:10.

E HAVE BEEN talking very freely during this last week of “glorious victories,” of “brilliant successes,” of “sieges,” and of “stormings.” We little know what the dread reality is of which we boast. Could our eyes once behold the storming of a city, the sacking of a town, the pillage of the soldiery, the barbarous deeds of fury, when the blood is up and long delay has maddened their souls; could we see the fields saturated with blood, and soaked with gore; could we spend one hour amongst the corpses and the dying; or if we could only let the din of battle, and the noise of the guns reach our ears, we should not so much rejoice, if we had anything of fellow feeling for others as well as for ourselves. The death of an enemy is to me a cause of regret as well as the death of a friend. Are not all my brethren? and doth not Jesus tell me so? Are we not all made of one flesh? and hath not God “made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the face of the earth?” Let us, then, when we hear of slaughtered enemies, and of thousands that have fallen, cease to rejoice in their death.

It would betray a spirit utterly inconsistent with the Christian religion, more akin to Mohamedanism, or to the fierce doctrines of Budha, but not in the least to be brought into compatibility with the truths of the gospel of the glorious God. And yet with all that, far be it from me to check any gladness which this nation may experience, now that it hopes that the incubus of war may at last be removed.

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Was it so even in the beginning ?

Devotionals by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“The evening and the morning were the first day.”
– Gen_1:5

Was it so even in the beginning? Did light and darkness divide the realm of time in the first day? Then little wonder is it if I have also changes in my circumstances from the sunshine of prosperity to the midnight of adversity. It will not always be the blaze of noon even in my soul concerns, I must expect at seasons to mourn the absence of my former joys, and seek my Beloved in the night. Nor am I alone in this, for all the Lord’s beloved ones have had to sing the mingled song of judgment and of mercy, of trial and deliverance, of mourning and of delight. It is one of the arrangements of Divine providence that day and night shall not cease either in the spiritual or natural creation till we reach the land of which it is written, “there is no night there.” What our heavenly Father ordains is wise and good.

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The Solitariness of God

The Solitariness of God

A. W. Pink

PERHAPS THE TITLE of the chapter is not sufficiently explicit to indicate its theme. This is partly because so few are accustomed to meditate upon the personal perfections of God. Comparatively few who occasionally read the Bible are aware of the awe-inspiring and worship-provoking grandeur of the divine character. That God is great in wisdom, wondrous in power, yet full of mercy is assumed by many as common knowledge. But to entertain anything approaching an adequate conception of His being, nature, and attributes, as revealed in the Scripture, is something which very few people in these degenerate times have done. God is solitary in His excellency.

“Who is like unto Thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?” (Ex 15:11).

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