The Five Solas part 2

As we move into our study of the next sola, "sola gratia" (grace alone), we should first take note that grace is initiated by God, not by ourselves. It is God who changes the believer’s heart and gives him the ability to believe or have faith. We have nothing to do with it and yet we want to. The Reformed faith holds fast to the fact that our salvation, every step of the way, is and can only be attributed to God. As man is dead in his sins, it is God who must work in him to bring him to saving faith. We know this from the book of Ephesians where we read in verse one, "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins" and in verses 8-9, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." So we see that salvation cannot be achieved by anything that we do, it is a gift from God.

It is a common misconception that if a man takes the first step in faith, so to speak, and prays a prayer of some kind that he is saved and a new life has begun. This is sometimes called "percentage theology’ or "percentage salvation" meaning that, even though very small, man has a part in his salvation. But this passage in Ephesians makes it clear that that is just impossible. God initiates it – it is a gift. And, left to himself in his sin, man would never choose God. Verse one above states that man is dead - dead men cannot make decisions. Hence, it is the work of God, regeneration precedes faith.

Moreover, we see how just how special and the great import of this doctrine. God chose his people before the foundations of the earth (Eph. 1:4). We should not take this lightly.

The Sacrifice Has Been Accepted

If the Lord were pleased to kill us, he would not have received a burnt offering and a meat offering at our hands, neither would he have showed us all these thing. (Judges 13:23)

This is a sort of promise deduced by logic. It is an inference fairly drawn from ascertained facts. It was not likely that the Lord had revealed to Manoah and his wife that a son would be born to them and yet had it in His heart to destroy them. The wife reasoned well, and we shall do well if we follow her line of argument.

The Father has accepted the great sacrifice of Calvary and has declared Himself well pleased therewith; how can He now be pleased to kill us! Why a substitute if the sinner must still perish? The accepted sacrifice of Jesus puts an end to fear.

The Lord has shown us our election, our adoption, our union to Christ, our marriage to the Well-beloved: how can He now destroy us? The promises are loaded with blessings, which necessitate our being preserved unto eternal life. It is not possible for the Lord to cast us away and yet fulfill His covenant. The past assures us, and the future reassures us. We shall not die but live, for we have seen Jesus, and in Him we have seen the Father by the illumination of the Holy Ghost. Because of this life-giving sight we must live forever. - From Faith's Checkbook by C.H. Spurgeon

The Five Solas part 1

The Reformed faith can be defined by the well known acronym T.U.L.I.P. However, another way it can be defined is by the five "solas" which are Soli Fide, Soli Gratia, Solus Christus, Soli Scriptura and Soli Deo Gloria. Perhaps these are familiar and then again perhaps they are not. These may also be more commonly known as "by Faith Alone", "by Grace alone", "Christ alone", Scripture alone" and "Glory to God alone." These phrases were born of the Protestant Reformation and were used to define the Reformers basic beliefs. The Latin sola means "only" or "alone". Each bears its name as a testimony to the heart of the true Reformed faith and each is worth at least a brief examination.

First, a look at Sola Fide which is often called "The Heart of the Gospel" because it answers the basic question of all mankind which is, how can sinful man be justified before a perfect and righteous God? This teaching comes to us through the book of Galatians and particularly, chapter 2, verse 16, which states, "... yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law no one will be justified."

Contrary to others, the Protestants (Reformed) add the word alone. There is nothing we can add to attain our salvation for our works are nothing but "filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6). "Only the merit of Christ can set us right with God and we access this merit by trusting in Christ alone" (Tabletalk, August 2009, pg. 46). We should also note that we are justified first, the Lord does not wait for us to be righteous first or we would never be justified.
As each sola is tied to one another, a brief study of each is required. Next time: Sola gratia, by Grace alone.

Want more? Here’s a short video from R.C. Sproul of Ligonier Ministries on "Faith alone."

Spurgeon's Words of Cheer - Are You Troubled?

Just one more portion of Spurgeon's Word's of Cheer. A small portion that can turn large profits for your soul:

Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.—Psalm 50:15

Of all things in the world to be dreaded, despair is the chief. Let a man be abandoned to despair, and he is ready for all sorts of sins. When fear unnerves him, action is dangerous; but when despair has loosed his joints and paralyzed his conscience, the vultures hover around him waiting for their prey. As long as a man has hope for himself, you may have hope for him. But Satan's object is to drive out the last idea of hope from men, that then they may give themselves up to be his slaves forever.
Let me just say to those who are in trouble, which I hope every faithful Christian will repeat again and again: There is hope. There is hope about your financial difficulties, your sickness, your present affliction. God can help you through it. Do not sit down with your elbows on your knees and cry all day. That will not get you through it. Call upon God who sent the trouble. He has a great design in it. It may be that He has sent it as a shepherd sends his black dog to fetch the wandering sheep to him. It may be He has a design in making you lose temporal things so that you may gain eternal things. Many a mother's soul would not been saved if it had not been for that dear infant which was taken from her bosom. Not until it was taken to the skies did God give the attracting influence which drew her heart to pursue the path to heaven. Do not say there is no hope. Others have been in as terrible a set of circumstances as you are. Even if it seems as if it has come to a crisis of bread, yet still there is hope. Go and try again on Monday morning. God's providence has a thousand ways of helping us if we have but the heart to pray.
...“Ah,” says one, “but you do not know my case.” No, my dear friend, and I do not particularly desire to know it, because this sweeping truth can meet it, whatever it is. “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men” (Matthew 12:31). “The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7). Noah's ark was not made to hold just a few mites, but the elephant, the lion, and the largest beasts of prey all entered and found room. So my Master, who is the great ark of salvation, did not come into this world to save a few who are little sinners, but “He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him” (Hebrews 7:25). See Him over there, see Him on the cross in extreme agony, bearing griefs and torments numberless and sweating in agony, all for love of you who were His enemies. Trust him. Trust Him, for there is hope and lifting up. However bowed down you may be, there is hope even for you in the Gospel.
...Still, nothing will avail unless there is much prayer. We need to pray that God may give efficacy to the counsels he has given us, and reward our obedience to them with abundant fruit. Oh, brethren, prayer is the grand thing after all for us who have no might of ourselves. It is wonderful what prayer can do for any of us. A dear friend said the other day, “Look at Jacob. In the early part of his life there was much that was unseemly in his character, and very much that was unhappy in his circumstances. Crafty himself, he was often the victim of craft, reaping the fruit of his own ways. But one night in prayer—what a change it made in him! Why, it raised him from the deep poverty of a cunning supplanter to the noble peerage of a prince in Israel!” Bethel itself is hardly more memorable in Jacob's history than Peniel.
And what might one night spent in prayer do for some of us? Supposing we were to try it instead of the soft bed. We need not go to the brook. It is enough that, like Jacob, we were left alone in some place where sighs and cries would be heard by none but God. One night spent thus in solitary prayer might put the spurs on some of you and make you spiritual knights in God's army, able to do great exploits. Oh, yes! May all other gracious exercises be started in prayer, crowned with prayer, and perfected by much prayer.

Let us praise God for these men who have gone before us and left us a written legacy from their lives and from their preaching and teaching on how we today may attain a greater love for our Lord.

Is Your Heart Aching?

It is to our great benefit that Charles Spurgeon has left a wealth of written material for us. One such work is his Words of Cheer and within its pages we find a Cure for Heartache. Its well worth a read. Here is a portion that is perhaps most instructive and insightful:

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.—John 14:27

It is the easiest thing in the world in times of difficulty to let the heart be troubled. It is very natural for us to give up and drift with the stream, to feel that it is of no use “taking arms against [such] a sea of trouble,” but that it is better to lie passively and to say, “If one must be ruined, so let it be.” Despairing idleness is easy enough, especially to evil, rebellious spirits who are willing to get into further mischief that they may have the wherewithal to blame God more, against whose providence they have quarreled. Our Lord will not have us be rebellious. He bids us to pluck up heart and be of good courage in the worst conditions.
Here is the wisdom of His advice, namely, that a troubled heart will not help us in our difficulties or out of them. It has never been perceived in time of drought that lamentations have brought showers of rain. Doubtings, fears, and discouragements have never been observed to produce a thaw in seasons of frost. We have never heard of a man with a declining business who managed to multiply the number of his customers by unbelief in God. I do not remember reading of a person whose wife or child was sick, who discovered any miraculous healing power in rebellion against the Most High.
...A troubled heart makes that which is bad worse. It magnifies, aggravates, caricatures, and misrepresents. If but an ordinary foe is in your way, a troubled heart makes him swell into a giant. “We were in their sight but as grasshoppers,” said the ten spies who gave the evil report, “and we were as grasshoppers in our own sight when we saw them” (See Numbers 13:33.) But it was not so. No doubt the men were very tall, but they were not so big after all as to make an ordinary six-foot man look like a grasshopper. Their fears made them grasshoppers by first making them fools. If they had possessed but ordinary courage, they would have been men, but being cowardly, they subsided into grasshoppers. After all, what is an extra three, four, or five feet of flesh to a man? Is not the bravest soul the tallest? If he is of shorter stature, but nimble and courageous, he will have the best of it. Little David made short work of great Goliath. Yet so it is. Unbelief makes our difficulties seem to be gigantic. Then it leads us to suppose that no soul had such difficulties before, and so we egotistically cry, “I am the man that hath seen affliction” (Lamentations 3:1). We claim to be peers in the realm of misery, if not the emperors of the kingdom of grief.
...Yet it is not so. Why? What ails you? The headache is excruciating! It is bad enough, but what would you say if you had seven such aches at once, with cold and nakedness to back them! Twitches of rheumatism are horrible! Well can I endorse that statement! But what then? Why, there have been men who have lived with such tortures all their lives, like Baxter, who could tell all his bones because each one had made itself heard by its own peculiar pang. What is our complaint compared with the diseases of Calvin, the man who preached every daybreak to the students in the cathedral and worked on till long past midnight, all the while a mass of disease with a complicated agony? You are poor? Ah, yes! But you have your own room, scanty as it is, and there are hundreds in the workhouse who find sorry comfort there. It is true you have to work hard! Yes, but think of the Huguenot galley slave in the old times, who for the love of Christ was bound with chains to the oar and scarcely knew rest day nor night. Think of the sufferings of the martyrs of Smithfield, or of the saints who rotted in their prisons.
...Be of good cheer, soldier, the battle must soon end. That blood-stained banner, when it will wave so high; that shout of triumph, when it shall thrill from so many thousand lips; that grand assembly of heroes, all of them made more than conquerors; the sight of the King in His beauty, riding in the chariot of His triumph on streets paved with love for the daughters of Jerusalem; the acclamations of spirits glorified; and the shouts and songs of cherubims and seraphims—all these shall make up for all the fightings of today:
“And they who, with their Master,
Have conquered in the fight,
For ever and for ever
Are clad in robes of light.”

Pink on Anxiety

As we watch the current events around us, the economic crisis, the military excursions of our country, rampant unemployment, rising costs for everything, home foreclosures and more, it is very easy for us to become anxious. And who would blame us? Yet we are God's children and therefore under his constant watchful care. From the Arthur Pink Anthology let's read what he says on anxiety and put ourselves to the test:

“Be anxious for nothing”—Philipians 4:6
Worrying is as definitely forbidden as theft. This needs to be carefully pondered and definitely realized by us, so that we do not excuse it as an innocent “infirmity.” The more we are convicted of the sinfulness of anxiety, the sooner are we likely to perceive that it is most dishonoring to God, and “strive against” it (Heb. 12:4). But how are we to “strive against” it?

First, by begging the Holy Spirit to grant us a deeper conviction of its enormity. Second, by making it a subject of special and earnest prayer, that we may be delivered from this evil. Third, by watching its beginning, and as soon as we are conscious of harassment of mind, as soon as we detect the unbelieving thought, lift up our heart to God and ask Him for deliverance from it.

The best antidote for anxiety is frequent meditation upon God's goodness, power and sufficiency. When the saint can confidently realize “The Lord is My Shepherd,” he must draw the conclusion, “I shall not want!” Immediately following our exhortation is, “but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known unto God.” Nothing is too big and nothing is too little to spread before and cast upon the Lord. The “with thanksgiving” is most important, yet it is the point at which we most fail. It means that before we receive God's answer, we thank Him for the same: it is the confidence of the child expecting his Father to be gracious.

“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought (anxious concern) for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?” “But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:25, 33)

Evening Devotion

Evening devotion from Spurgeon:

Are they Israelites? so am I.” - 2 Corinthians 11:22

We have here A PERSONAL CLAIM, and one that needs proof. The apostle knew that his claim was indisputable, but there are many persons who have no right to the title who yet claim to belong to the Israel of God. If we are with confidence declaring, “So am I also an Israelite,” let us only say it after having searched our heart as in the presence of God. But if we can give proof that we are following Jesus, if we can from the heart say, “I trust him wholly, trust him only, trust him simply, trust him now, and trust him ever,” then the position which the saints of God hold belongs to us-all their enjoyments are our possessions; we may be the very least in Israel, “less than the least of all saints,” yet since the mercies of God belong to the saints AS SAINTS, and not as advanced saints, or well-taught saints, we may put in our plea, and say, “Are they Israelites? so am I; therefore the promises are mine, grace is mine, glory will be mine.” The claim, rightfully made, is one which will yield untold comfort. When God’s people are rejoicing that they are his, what a happiness if they can say, “SO AM I!” When they speak of being pardoned, and justified, and accepted in the Beloved, how joyful to respond, “Through the grace of God, SO AM I.” But this claim not only has its enjoyments and privileges, but also its conditions and duties. We must share with God’s people in cloud as well as in sunshine. When we hear them spoken of with contempt and ridicule for being Christians, we must come boldly forward and say, “So am I.” When we see them working for Christ, giving their time, their talent, their whole heart to Jesus, we must be able to say, “So do I.” O let us prove our gratitude by our devotion, and live as those who, having claimed a privilege, are willing to take the responsibility connected with it.

Spurgeon on Prayer

In God’s word we are over and over again commanded to pray. God’s institutions are not folly. Can I believe that the infinitely wise God has ordained for me an exercise which is ineffectual, and is no more than child’s play? - Charles Spurgeon

And we shouldn't believe it either. We are go to the Lord repeatededly, spend our day in prayer. We fall short of this command all our lives but that does not erase the command. Spend time in prayer today.

Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18.

Soldiers of Christ, In Truth Arrayed

The following hymn has been sung at the commencement excercises at Southern Baptist Seminary since its inception and when we read the lyrics we see that it has been for good reason. Let's meditate on these lyrics and ask ourselves what we are doing for the cause of Christ.

Soldiers In Christ, In Truth Arrayed

Soldiers of Christ, in truth arrayed,
A world in ruins needs your aid:
A world by sin destroyed and dead;
A world for which the Savior bled.

His Gospel to the lost proclaim,
Good news for all in Jesus’ Name;
Let light upon the darkness break
That sinners from their death may wake.

Morning and evening sow the seed,
God’s grace the effort shall succeed.
Seedtimes of tears have oft been found
With sheaves of joy and plenty crowned.

We meet to part, but part to meet
When earthly labors are complete,
To join in yet more blest employ,
In an eternal world of joy.

-Lyrics by Basil Manly Jr.

Calvin on Prayer V

Let's journey one more time into Calvin's thoughts on prayer:

One of the requisites of legitimate prayer is repentance. Hence the common declaration of Scripture, that God does not listen to the wicked; that their prayers, as well as their sacrifices, are an abomination to him. For it is right that those who seal up their hearts should find the ears of God closed against them, that those who, by their hardheartedness, provoke his severity should find him inflexible. In Isaiah he thus threatens: "When ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood" (Isaiah 1:15). In like manner, in Jeremiah, "Though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them" (Jer. 11:7, 8, 11Jer. 11:7, 8, 11); because he regards it as the highest insult for the wicked to boast of his covenant while profaning his sacred name by their whole lives. Hence he complains in Isaiah: "This people draw near to me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me; but have removed their heart far from men" (Isaiah 29:13). Indeed, he does not confine this to prayers alone, but declares that he abominates pretense in every part of his service. Hence the words of James, "Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts" (James 4:3). It is true, indeed (as we shall again see in a little), that the pious, in the prayers which they utter, trust not to their own worth; still the admonition of John is not superfluous: "Whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments" (1 John 3:22); an evil conscience shuts the door against us. Hence it follows, that none but the sincere worshippers of God pray aright, or are listened to. Let every one, therefore, who prepares to pray feel dissatisfied with what is wrong in his condition, and assume, which he cannot do without repentance, the character and feelings of a poor suppliant. (From Of Prayer--A Perpetual Exercise of Faith. The Daily Benefits Derived from It by John Calvin.)