1. The first work of the Spirit is to make a man look upon sin as an enemy and to deal with sin as an enemy, to hate it as an enemy, to loathe it is an enemy and to arm against it as an enemy. (Thomas Brooks)
2. The Spirit never loosens where the Word binds; the Spirit never justifies where the Word condemns; the Spirit never approves where the Word disapproves; the Spirit never blesses where the Word curses. …
If, as we have seen, a leading feature of revival preaching is the setting forth of God’s holy character, and his righteous law, and his judgement against sin, then it follows that the experience of those being revived will be characterise by repentance. If revival is to be defined as the coming back to life of something very nearly like a corpse, then it follows that the first act which must be performed is to mourn and confess the spiritual lifelessness from which we would be delivered.…
When you were a child, you probably played with models of various kinds (and if you are a man, you probably still do!): model cars, model trains, model aeroplanes, model houses, model farmyards. The point of a model is that it provides a simplified and scaled-down version of the real thing. The story of the Passover in Exodus 12 is not only a remarkable record of the deliverance of the Israelites over 3,000 years ago, but it also provides a 3-dimensional model of God’s way of salvation as achieved by Jesus on the cross of Calvary. …
A bishop was making a pastoral visit to an old people’s home in his diocese. He went up to one elderly lady, sitting in her chair, and asked her how long she’d been living there. “Why do you want to know?” she snapped.
He carried on regardless. “Do you have your own room?”
“Go away and leave me alone!” she said.
The bishop wasn’t used to this kind of response. “Do you know who I am?”…
To be honest, one of the most serious problems of Protestantism has been its tendency to split into factions. Douglas Woodruff, for example, tells of ‘an industrious German, the father of a large family, who, with the help of willing child labour compiled a dictionary of Protestant sects. His name is Grundler, and he has often kept his children in on a Sunday to help him arrange the cards, listing 2,639 different Christian denominations, the glorious fruit of the Protestant Reformation.’…
From the perspective of Christian orthodoxy, the major sects and cults can be classified according to their attitude towards the authority of the Bible and towards the Trinity and the incarnation.
Jehovah’s Witnesses – deny that the Bible teaches the full deity of Christ. They adopt the Arian heresy of maintaining that Christ was the first created being, and not the eternal Jehovah.
Christadelphians – believe that the Son came into existence only when the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus. …
Martin Luther said, ‘There is not a word in the Bible which is extra crucem, which can be understood without reference to the cross.’
And J.I. Packer has written, ‘It cannot be over-emphasised that we have not seen the full meaning of the cross till we have seen it…as the centre of the gospel, flanked on the one hand by total inability and unconditional election and on the other by irresistible grace and final preservation.’
In the New Testament, the cross is:-
Luke 9:23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
Jesus has attracted to himself not only a group of 12 disciples, but also a large number of admirers. Events such as the Transfiguration, and Peter’s confession, have marked a change of direction in his ministry. Hitherto, he has been occupied for much of the time in the north, around Galilee.…
A variety of creedal or confessional statements can be found in the Bible, Deut 6:4-5; 26:5-9; Mar 8:29; 1 Cor 8:6; 12:3; 15:3-7; 2 Cor 13:14; 1 Tim 3:16.
Christian creeds are catholic, in the sense that they seek to express the faith of the whole church, rather than just a sectarian minority. They are communal, in the sense that they belong to the whole community, not just an individual theologian.
The best-known creeds are:-
1. …
