Come to Christ Just As You Are: A Sinner (via J.C. Ryle Quotes)
Let there be no mistake in your mind as to the special character of the person who has come to Christ, and is a true Christian. They are not angels; they are not half-angelic beings, in whom are no weaknesses, or blemishes, or defects – they are nothing of the kind. They are nothing more than a sinner who has found out their sinfulness, and has learned the blessed secret of living by faith in Christ.
To read in full, please go to Come to Christ Just As You Are: A Sinner.
Zealous For God’s Glory
Jeremiah 9: 23, 24, “Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.”
I wonder if we ever simply stop to think about how beautiful God is? Not just how good, or how kind, or how merciful, but, simply, how very, very beautiful He is? We should. The beauty of our God is unparalleled. Heaven is heaven simply because He is there. He, the most glorious of all and the only One Who matters, is among us and we, wretched self-centered people that we are, miss Him because our eyes are set on baubles and bangles. We trade the infinite for the finite and think ourselves wise.
Do we ever consider the honor–unparalleled by anything this world can offer–of simply serving Him? That He would even allow sinful creatures like us to come to Him and worship Him and have the honor of serving Him is amazing beyond all belief and, we, arrogant worms that we are, somehow see it as our right, or worse, consider that He is there to serve us!
We glory in so many things: our homes, our cars, our clothes…our jewels, our toys, our fun. We glory in our abilities (as though we had anything at all to do with having them) rather than glorying in the One Who lovingly bestowed all things upon us!
Don’t we see that the whole world is full of God’s glory? Isaiah 6: 3, “And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.” How is it that we fail to honor the One Who so deserves it? How dare we glory in anything other than Him?We are taught to glory only in Him: 2 Corinthians 10: 17, “But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” How few of us do!
We fail to obey, we fail to glory in God alone, because we value so many, many things above Him. When we value anything more than we value Him we are worshipping an idol. When we think on anything more than we think on Him it has become our god. When we fail to understand God, when we believe Him to be Who we want Him to be rather than Who He has revealed Himself to be, it is a false god we are worshipping.
We fail to give the only true God the glory due His Name when we fail to search Him out, to read, to pray, to seek to understand His Word, to glory in the Cross. We fail to understand the vastness of the glory of God and the honor due Him when we think that anything this world has to offer has any lasting value. He alone is worthy! Galatians 6: 14, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”
Our Lord is everything…and we miss it: I Timothy 1: 17, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
Everything that exists is for His glory and because of Him. It is HIS, not ours:Colossians 1: 16, 17, “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”
God will only stand our obstinance for so long and then, as He said to the Jews: Malachi 2: 2, “If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.”
Let us fall on our faces and repent! We must repent of our foolishness, our shortsightedness, our love of this world, our love of self, of ease, of comfort. We must repent of not taking His holy Word seriously. We must repent of not being the people of God that we were redeemed to be. We must repent of being the sinful, stiff-necked, fun-loving, rebellious generation that we are. We must repent. We must learn to glory only in God. We must learn that “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”(1 Corinthians 10: 31)
We must give God the honor due His Name. We must obey Him! Malachi 1: 6, “A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, …”
God takes His glory seriously: 1 Chronicles 16: 23-25, “Sing unto the LORD, all the earth; shew forth from day to day his salvation. Declare his glory among the heathen; his marvellous works among all nations. For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised: he also is to be feared above all gods.” It would behoove us to take His glory seriously, also: Malachi 3: 16-18, “Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name. And they shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.”
Let us turn to Him and learn of Him. Let us study the Word and learn His truth; let us repent of believing His Word to say any and everything that we want it to say. We cannot take God or His glory seriously if we do not know Him; we cannot know Him if we do not know His Word: 2 Peter 3: 18, “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen”
We’ve focused for far too long on ourselves. We’ve given much time, much thought to what we want. It is time to repent and turn to God. It is time to focus on His glory rather than on getting glory for ourselves. It is time to obey and give Him the honor that He so deserves. It is time to throw away the false man-centered gospel that has crippled the church and embrace the truth of the God-centered, Christ-redeemed, Holy Spirit-inspired, Cross-focused Gospel that has the power to save. It is time that we join with David and say, “For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me.” (Psalms 69: 9)
It is time for the people of God to become zealous for the glory of God.
I Timothy 1: 17, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
Anna Wood,
You have permission to reproduce and distribute this article in any format provided you do not alter the wording and that you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For printed copies, as well as web posting, please include the following statement:
By Anna Wood,
Copyright © The Cross Is All @ http://annawood.wordpress.com/
Dear Man Of God
Dear Man of God,
You’ve been given a great and fearful job by Almighty God. As I sit before you week after week, I hunger for spiritual meat. I can no longer stand a cotton candy diet. Teach me the deep things of God then teach me how far short I fall. I want the truth about myself: I am a sinner and all of my “good-deeds” are but filthy rags before the Lord. My efforts are nothing and will never be enough to take me to heaven. I need you to explain what you have spent so long studying. Tell me how to please Him, how to obey Him, how to honor Him. I don’t want to hear a single word about how to secure a good life. If I need motivating, I will turn to my husband.
Stop talking to me about God’s love exclusively. I know He loves me. Jesus’ death on the cross proves that. I need to know that He is holy and a consuming fire. I need to know that He demands holiness from His followers. To explain only His love is to make Him sound like Santa Claus. He isn’t. He is amazingly powerful and all-together beautiful God Who sacrificed His only Son for me! Tell me that. Tell me what I must now do to honor that sacrifice. Don’t be afraid to step on toes–Jesus never was afraid to do so. As loving and kind as He was, Jesus was also very confrontational when the need arose. He never once told someone that they needed to think more of themselves or strive to be happier. He told them that they were sinners who were defiling God’s laws. When He saw faith, He commended it and He gave His followers everything that they needed in order to grow spiritually; however, when He saw sin, He wasn’t ever shy about saying so.
Many in the church live in practical disbelief. We say we are followers of Christ, but we act as if we are living for ourselves. For the true follower of Christ, life will not be easy. We must die daily. We must take up our cross daily. We must die to self, to sin and to the world. The world, Jesus said, will hate us. Have you taught me how to live so that I will be hated? Have you taught me to obey God even when it hurts me? Have you taught me that His holiness is God’s first attribute and the one through which all of His other attributes must be seen and understood? Don’t comfort me or pretend that everything is okay. It isn’t okay. People are dying everyday without Jesus. That’s true in the world, of course, but it’s also true in the church. Too many of our churches have become nothing more than social clubs pandering to the lifestyle of comfort and ease that we Americans seem to expect. People are sitting in your pews every Sunday who believe with all of their heart that they have been saved and that they have a “ticket” to heaven. After all, they said a prayer or they accepted Jesus into their hearts. You told them that was what they had to do. Did you also tell them that it had to be accompanied by repentance? Did you tell them that Jesus said that if we love Him, we will obey Him? Did you tell them that followers of the Way will be hated and persecuted and that if life isn’t harder for them in some way they may not be following in Jesus’ footsteps? That if someone doesn’t hate them for who they are and what they represent–it may mean that there isn’t enough of a difference between them and the world to measure so no one feels threatened by them? If we aren’t reminding folks of Jesus, can it be said that we truly belong to Him?
Don’t be afraid to teach that we must separate from the world, that we will have different motivations when we belong to God. Stand for the permanence of marriage. Teach us about manhood and womanhood as God sees it for it matters not what the world says. Teach us that children are valuable; help us to see them as the blessings that they are. Help us to know how to raise our children so that they hunger and thirst for the things of God. Don’t be afraid to tell us ladies that we must return to dressing modestly if we are going to please God. Tell us what we are doing to our brothers in Christ when we show up at church in halter tops and mini-skirts. Tell us what it does to our witness when we go out into the world dressed in a way that draws attention to our bodies rather than our character. Teach us the boldness that it takes to stand alone for and with God. Teach me how to obey God out of a heart of love rather than by following a legalistic formula. Teach me that claiming “Christian liberty” and talking about God’s grace doesn’t mean that I have a right to live anyway I want to. “Shall we sin that grace may abound? God forbid.” That was Paul’s answer. It is still the answer today.
If we are not here to obey God, why are we here? Tell me, please. Remind me that we are here to obey God and grow in Christ-likeness, to edify the believers and to reach the lost. Help me to remember that amid the rush of my daily life. Help me to have my priorities straight so that I might be pleasing to Jesus in all that I do. Teach me to focus on heaven so that my life here on earth might make sense. Help me to know that I am made for another, better World. Help me to love God enough to want to live and die for Him. Tell me the truth about hell: a place prepared for the devil and his followers also awaits those who do not bow before an Almighty and Holy God in repentance and obedience. Help me to live in such a way that I might be prepared for heaven and may never hear those awful words, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.”
Preacher, you’ve been called by God to preach His Word. Now is the time to start really doing just that. As you do so, my everlasting thankfulness and my prayers will go with you.
God bless you,
Anna Wood
People Of The Word
It feels so good to call ourselves “Christian”; we’re a part of a greater whole and meant to make a difference. Unfortunately the difference we often want to make is a cultural one rather than an innately spiritual one. This we must understand: Christ didn’t come to redeem society but people. Yet changed people will always result in a changed society. A person is changed only through repentance and obedience. Some try to explain away the necessity of repentance but necessary it is. When we see ourselves as we truly are then repentance won’t be hard, it will, in fact, be a swelling necessity to us for we all, each one of us, is vile indeed without Christ.
Obedience to God begins and ends in the love one has for God. If we love Him, we will seek to obey Him. This will be an active seeking, a digging deep into His Word so that we might know His heart. If we don’t have love for our Lord, we will find ourselves explaining away His commands or viewing them through a cultural lens. It is time for a heart-check when we find ourselves saying, “But God didn’t really mean….” or “Those teachings are so old-fashioned. The Bible must be interpreted in light of the times.” Sin in the first century is still sin today. God’s holiness doesn’t change and neither does His standards for His people.
If we are ever to truly make a difference in even one other person’s life (not to mention society itself), the difference must first be made in us. Living for Christ, by His strength and power, covered by His blood, made anew and forgiven, not only changes us, it changes our course, our direction; when we are on the pathway of righteousness, it is then that God can use us to bless and change others. If we aren’t changed by Him, He will use us to bless no one. When we find we still want what we wanted before our conversion we must then ask ourselves if our conversion was real. God is holy and intends to make for Himself a holy people; if we are not one of the holy, we are not one of His. When we truly are His, our holiness, our set-apartness, must define us: we will love what He loves and hate what He hates. One of the things we will hate is worldliness in any form whatsoever.
We cannot belong to Christ and have our affections set on the world. If we still desire riches to spend upon our own pleasures, if we find ourselves despising the authority that is set over us, if we find creative ways to redefine sin, our god is the god of the flesh not God the Father. David often asked God to search him, try him and see if there was any evil in him; we must be willing to daily do the same. Repentance must be a natural ongoing part of our life, each step taking us a step closer to godliness and righteousness. If we would please God, we must grow in His likeness and do as He would do. His canvas is the person He has redeemed, not the culture that person lives in. When we focus so very much on changing society, we forget the things that are to set us apart in the first place are those things that are in antipathy to the society in which we live. A God-centered life will lead one to martyrdom, either in this life or in our death for the cause of Christ; such things are rarely those which the elite of society are interested in.
When we focus on this world, we set ourselves at enmity with Christ; we cannot please both it and Him. Nor should we try for He will not have us under those circumstances and the world will think us both crazy and non-loyal (and why would they want us then?). In the spiritual sense allegiance to the world at all declares our allegiance to it overall; our allegiance declares where our affections lie and if they are to the world then they aren’t to Christ. When we seek to accommodate Christ’s teachings so that they are pleasing to the world, we have declared it to be our “Lord” rather that Him. Our failures in acknowledging Christ as our Lord in no way diminishes Him for He is Lord always and in all ways; however, it destroys us. Our allegiance declares the truth of our supposed conversion: in a word, we weren’t.
So we can call ourselves “Christian” all we want to for by God’s grace some of us really are; meanwhile we must remember that just because we say it, it ain’t necessarily so. We are either for Christ and His Kingdom and are willing to live all out in devotion to Him and to His teaching or we weren’t His in the first place. If we find ourselves focusing more on helping society make good choices rather than on growing spiritually so that we might make good choices ourselves, reaching the lost with the truth of God’s Word or helping our brothers and sisters to grow and to prosper (spiritually first and foremost) then we ought to be alarmed for our ways aren’t the ways of the One we claim to serve. It is then we must be on our knees in repentance and in seeking God’s truth and seeking to know if we truly are His…or not. At that point all that left to us is repentance. Then and only then we will be people of the Word and people whom God can use. And He will change us…one person at a time.
Anna Wood
You have permission to reproduce and distribute this article in any format provided you do not alter the wording and that you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For printed copies, as well as web posting, please include the following statement:
By Anna Wood,
Copyright © The Cross Is All @ http://annawood.wordpress.com/
Be Not Deceived; God Is Not Mocked
Galatians 6: 7, 8, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”
Our flesh demands many things, the Spirit of God demands more. We must listen to one. Either we listen to, and satisfy, the flesh or we listen to, and obey, the Spirit. Compromise will not work. Oil will never mix with water no matter how often one tries to make them do so. The Spirit and the flesh will never mix, either. In being Christian we have taken on a new Master; in being carnal our master is ourself (or, more correctly, Satan who is behind all that the flesh demands).
The fruits of the flesh are sweet, at least for a season. Fun, excitement, popularity, sensuality, success, an abundance of material things are all rewards that can be reaped when we concentrate solely on sowing to the flesh. These things are all temporary and, as such, will one day fail or turn to dust. No man is popular forever, no item outlasts eternity. All flesh-sown, flesh-reaped rewards shall perish. What then is left when all the fun, all the excitement, all the me-centeredness ends? Corruption. Death. Decay. Ever-lasting punishment.
Hell is not a popular subject even for some in the church. “Oh, don’t mention hell; you’ll hurt someone’s feelings or push them away from God.” Such comments are frequently heard among Christians who fail to realize that most of what we know about hell came from Jesus Himself. If He wasn’t afraid to mention it, not worried about hurting someone’s feelings, then neither can we be and still be faithful to Him. He taught that this world will end and with it will go all that is in it: all of man’s follies will one day perish right along with him. Folks need to be warned. We must not be afraid to speak the truth that Christ Himself was not afraid to speak.
The church has tried to marry the world and still remain faithful to Christ. It can’t be done. God is holy and His people are to be holy, also. It is impossible for one to be holy and fit in with the world and its ways; it is impossible for the church to remain holy and still satisfy the world. Satan will accept compromise; he knows that if he can convince us that one can be of the world and of Christ that he will have won. God Himself will never accept compromise and there will be many who have believed themselves to be true believers who will one day hear “Depart from Me ye workers of iniquity.”
Immodesty, carnality, abortion, divorce, anger, impure thoughts and ways, covetousness, selfishness, lustful ways and ways that lead to lust are all sin (along with anything that is an affront to a holy God). Justifying ourselves to men never justifies us before God. There is one way of justification of sinful man with Almighty God and that is through the death of His Son on the bloody cross. That cross must then be the death of us, too. We must die to self, to sin, to this world and live only for, unto and by Christ; anything less is an attempt at compromise and will ultimately fail. One can feel saved while standing at the open mouth of the pit of hell.
The choice then must be made. As Joshua called out to the children of Israel so must the church today call out to our members, “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.” To say we have chosen to serve God doesn’t mean that we actually are serving God. God will not be mocked. He knows men’s hearts. Where sin reigns, He will not dwell. As long as indecency, lewdness, frivolity and the spirit of self dwells in the church, the Spirit of God isn’t there. That isn’t to say the church is dead; the true church remains safe in Christ even when assault comes straight from the gates of hell. The worldly church is not the true church and as such is subject to being thrown into the pit of hell by a holy God Who has watched as His truth has been compromised, as people who claimed to be His entertained themselves, dressed their bodies and acted in ways in line with the world which He hates. Be not deceived God has never been mocked and never will be mocked and neither will His Word be. Choose you this day then to serve the holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty and repent of your sins.
Preaching — Awesome Responsibility by Charles Spurgeon
Oh that all preachers felt the same:
“Often, when I come in at the door and my eyes fall on this vast congregation, I feel a tremor go through me to think that I should have to speak to you all and be, in some measure, accountable for your future state. Unless I preach the Gospel faithfully and with all my heart, your blood will be required at my hands. Do not wonder, therefore, that when I am weak and sick, I feel my head swim when I stand up to speak to you, and my heart is often faint within me. But I do have this joy at the back of it all—God does set many sinners free in this place! Some people reported that I was mourning that there were no conversions. Brothers and Sisters, if you were all to be converted tonight, I should mourn for the myriads outside! That is true, but I praise the Lord forthe many who are converted here. When I came last Tuesday to see converts, I had 21 whom I was able to propose to the Church—and it will be the same next Tuesday, I do not doubt. God is saving souls! I am not preaching in vain. I am not despondent about that matter—liberty is given to the captives and there will be liberty for some of them, tonight! I wonder who it will be? Some of you young women over yonder, I trust. Some who have dropped in here, tonight, for the first time. Oh, may this first opportunity of your hearing the Word in this place be the time of beginning a new life which shall never end—a life of holiness, a life of peace with God!”
