Here’s a second instalment from John Flavel’s The Fountain of Life (subtitled, ‘Presenting Christ in his Essential and Mediatorial Glory’). Chapter 2 is based on Proverbs 8:30: ‘Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence.’ What follows is a summary.
This verse speaks of the eternal delights that Jesus Christ, the wisdom of the Father, had with his Father before his assumption of our nature. …
Work occupies a significant place in many people’s lives. In some parts of the world there is little prospect of paid employment, because of civil war, famine or other forms of poverty. There are varieties of work: the shoeshine boy in Nairobi, the call-centre worker in Bangalore, the oil worker in Siberia, the child labourer in Beijing, the entrepreneur in Kiev, the barrister in London and the teacher in Memphis are all working. Some are oppressed and some are the source of oppression. …
There are at least four ways in which we may think of the day of Pentecost.
First, it was the final act of the saving ministry of Jesus before the parousia. He who was born into our humanity, lived our life, died for our sins, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, now sent his Spirit to his people to constitute them his body and to work out in them what he had won for them. …
According to C.H. Spurgeon, Thomas Watson ‘was one of the most concise, racy, illustrative, and suggestive’ of the Puritans. ‘There is a happy union of sound doctrine, heart-searching experience and practical wisdom throughout all his works, and his Body of Divinity is, beyond all the rest, useful to the student and the minister.’ What follows is a precis of what Watson has to say on glorifying God:-
Everything has an end, or purpose; man’s chief end is to glorify God, 1 Cor 10:31. …
The name of John Calvin is for ever bound up with the name of the theological system that he is thought to have founded – Calvinism. He is supposed to have imposed on Holy Scripture a severe, unfeeling logic, and forced its teachings to conform to his own pre-conceived ideas. This impression can easily be corrected by recalling Calvin’s gifts as a Bible expositor – in many ways, the first modern expositor – not least of which was an insistence on letting the text speak for itself. …
J.I. Packer sets out the different types of application with his customary insight and lucidity:-
The activity of application has an unvarying logic, which we can state thus: if this principle is truth from God, what difference should it make to our thinking, our resolves, our emotional attitudes, our motivation, and our view of our own spiritual state at this moment? More fully: if this principle is truth that God teaches and guarantees, then the following questions arise:
1. …
J.I. Packer asks why preaching is not seen to be the force that it used to be, and suggests the following answers:-
1. The prevalence of non-preaching in Christian pulpits has eroded awareness of what true preaching is. Good models are rare. Sermons are often built on wrong principles: some have failed to open up Scripture; some have expounded the Bible without applying it; some have addressed only the felt needs of the listeners without confronting them with the Word of god; some have been mere statements of the preacher’s own opinion, rather than messages from God carrying divine authority.…
This is one of the questions posed by John Stott in his book Christ the Controversialist.
What should be the attitude of the followers of Jesus towards those who do not follow him? Do we despise them, fear them, shun them, tolerate them, condemn them, or seek to serve them? What is the responsibility of the church to the world? Is our attitude Christian or Pharisaic? See Lk 15:1f.
The Pharisees, let it be said, were keen to proselytise, Mt 23:15. …
John Flavel’s work entitled The Fountain of Life (subtitled, ‘Presenting Christ in his Essential and Mediatorial Glory’) is an absolute treasure. The first chapter is based on 1 Corinthians 2:2 (‘I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified’). What follows is a summary.
I resolved – this is his settled, considered, conviction, reached after due consideration of the pros and cons, arguments and counter-arguments.
To know nothing – he does not mean that he despised all other knowledge, but only so far as it stood in opposition to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. …
A few choice quotes from that wonderful collection, A Puritan Golden Treasury:-
Pride loves to climb up, not as Zacchaeus to see Christ, but to be seen. (William Gurnall)
A proud faith is as much a contradiction as a humble devil. (Stephen Charnock)
I may say of pride, many sins have done wickedly, but thou surmountest them all; for the wrathful man, the prodigal man, the lascivious man, the surfeiting man, the slothful man, is rather an enemy to himself than to God; the envious man, the covetous man, the deceitful man, the ungrateful man, is rather an enemy to men than to God, but the proud man sets himself against God (because he does against His laws), he maketh himself equal with God (because he does all without God and craves no help of Him); he exalteth himself above God (because he will have his own will).…
