Charles Spurgeon – Satisfying Food Gone Uneaten

11 Feb

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Ah! you know more about your ledgers than your Bible; you know more about your day-books than what God has written; many of you will read a novel from beginning to end, and what have you got? A mouthful of froth when you have done. But you cannot read the Bible; that solid, lasting, substantial, and satisfying food goes uneaten, locked up in the cupboard of neglect; while anything that man writes, a catch of the day, is greedily devoured. “I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing.” Ye have never read it. I bring the broad charge against you… Some of you have never read it through. I know I speak what your heart must say is honest truth. You are not Bible readers. You say you have the Bible in your houses; do I think you are such heathens as not to have a Bible? But when did you read it last? How do you know that your spectacles, which you have lost, have not been there for the last three years? Many people have not turned over its pages for a long time, and God might say unto them, “I have written unto you the great things of my law, but they have been accounted unto you a strange thing.”

~Charles Spurgeon~




Spurgeon’s Sermons (Spokane, Washington; Olive Tree Bible Software; 2010) eBook. Vol. 1, Sermon No. 15; Titled: The Bible; Delivered on Sabbath Morning, March 18th, 1855.

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Herman Bavinck – The Task of the Thinking Theological Mind

8 Feb

It is the task of the thinking theological mind to gather up and recapitulate all truth in one system. System is the supreme desideratum in all science. Also theology does not rest until it has discovered the unity underlying revelation. It may not impose that system from without, nor press the truth into a philosophical system that is foreign to its nature. But it keeps searching until the system that is present in the object itself has been reproduced in the human mind.

~Herman Bavinck~




Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 618.

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Charles Spurgeon – With God Eternally Shut In

7 Feb

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I recollect standing on a seashore once, upon a narrow neck of land, thoughtless that the tide might come up. The tide kept continually washing up on either side, and, wrapped in thoughts, I stood there, until at last there was the greatest difficulty in getting on shore. You and I stand each day on a narrow neck, and there is one wave coming up there; see, how near it is to your foot; and lo! another follows at every tick of the clock; “Our hearts, like muffled drums, are beating funeral marches to the tomb.” We are always tending downwards to the grave each moment that we live. This book [The Bible] tells me that if I am converted, when I die, there is a heaven of joy and love to receive me; it tells me that angels ‘pinions shall be stretched, and I, borne by strong cherubic wings, shall out- soar the lightning, and mount beyond the stars, up to the throne of God, to dwell forever.

“Far from a world of grief and sin,
With God eternally shut in.”

Oh! it makes the hot tear start from my eye, it makes my heart too big for this my body, and my brain whirls at the thought of

“Jerusalem, my happy home,
Name ever dear to me.”

~Charles Spurgeon~




Spurgeon’s Sermons (Spokane, Washington; Olive Tree Bible Software; 2010) eBook. Vol. 1, Sermon No. 15; Titled: The Bible; Delivered on Sabbath Morning, March 18th, 1855.

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Matthew Henry – Reason for Great Joy

5 Feb

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44 While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. 45 And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. – Acts 10:44-46

The preaching of the gospel to Cornelius was a thing which we poor sinners of the Gentiles have reason to reflect upon with a great deal of joy and thankfulness; for it was the bringing of light to us who sat in darkness.

~Matthew Henry~


Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible (Spokane, WA; Olive Tree Bible Software) Commentary on Acts 11

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John Calvin – Repentance Unto Life

4 Feb

18 When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life. – Acts 11:18

Whosoever will rightly profit in the gospel, let him put off the old man, and think upon newness of life, (Ephesians 4:22;) that done, let him know for a certainty that he is not called in vain unto repentance, but that there is salvation prepared for him in Christ. So shall it come to pass, that the hope and assurance of salvation shall rest upon the free mercy of God alone, and that the forgiveness of sins shall, notwithstanding, be no cause of sluggish security.

~John Calvin~







Calvin’s Commentaries – Acts (Spokane, WA; Olive Tree Bible Software; http://www.olivetree.com) Commentary on Acts 8:2

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George Whitefield – A Living Experience in Our Own Souls

31 Jan

To make us meet to be blissful partakers of such heavenly company, this ‘marred clay’, I mean, these depraved natures of ours, must necessarily undergo an universal moral change. Our understandings must be enlightened; our wills, reason and consciences, must be renewed; our affections must be drawn toward and fixed upon things above. And because flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, this corruptible must put on incorruption, this mortal must put on immortality. And thus old things must literally pass away and behold all things, even the body as well as the faculties of the soul, must become new.

This moral change is what some call, repentance, some, conversion, some, regeneration. Choose what name you please, I only pray God, that we all may have the thing. The scriptures call it holiness, sanctification, the new creature and our Lord calls it a ‘New birth, or being born again, or born from above.’ These are not barely figurative expressions, or the flights of eastern language, nor do they barely denote a relative change of state conferred on all those who are admitted into Christ’s church by baptism. But they denote a real, moral change of heart and life, a real participation of the divine life in the soul of man. Some indeed content themselves with a figurative interpretation but unless they are made to experience the power and efficacy thereof, by a solid living experience in their own souls, all their learning, all their laboured criticism, will not exempt them from a real damnation. Christ hath said it and Christ will stand, ‘Unless a man,’ learned or unlearned, high or low, though he be a master of Israel as Nicodemus was, unless he ‘be born again, he cannot see, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.’

~George Whitefield~




The Sermons of George Whitefield edited by Lee Gatiss (Wheaton, IL; Crossway Books; 2012) Sermon 13: The Potter and the Clay

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Herman Bavinck – We Can Know, But Not Fully Comprehend

30 Jan

The farther a science penetrates its object, the more it approaches mystery. Even if on its journey it encountered no other object it would still always be faced with the mystery of being. Where comprehension ceases, however, there remains room for knowledge and wonder. And so things stand in theology. Disclosed to us in revelation is “the mystery of our religion”: the mystery of God’s grace [1 Time. 3:16]. We see it; it comes out to meet us as a reality in history and in our own life. But we do not fathom it. In that sense Christian theology always has to do with mysteries that it knows and marvels at but does not comprehend and fathom.

~Herman Bavinck~




Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 619.

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Charles Spurgeon – Gentlemen, Pull the Velvet Out of Your Mouths

28 Jan

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This [Bible] is the book untainted by any error; but is pure, unalloyed, perfect truth. Why? Because God wrote it. Ah! charge God with error if ye please; tell him that his book is not what it ought to be. I have heard men, with prudish and mock-modesty, who would like to alter the Bible; and (I almost blush to say it) I have heard ministers alter God’s Bible, because they were afraid of it. Have you never heard a man say, “He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth not”– what does the Bible say?– “Shall be damned.” But that does not happen to be polite enough, so they say, “Shall be condemned.” Gentlemen, pull the velvet out of your mouths; speak God’s word; we want none of your alterations. I have heard men in prayer instead of saying, “Make your calling and election sure,” say “Make your calling and salvation sure.” Pity they were not born when God lived far–far back that they might have taught God how to write. Oh, impudence beyond all bounds! Oh full-blown self-conceit! To attempt to dictate to the All-wise–to teach the Omniscient and instruct the Eternal. Strange that there should be men so vile as to use the penknife of Jehoiakim to cut passages out of the word, because they are unpalatable. O ye who dislike certain portions of Holy Writ, rest assured that your taste is corrupt, and that God will not stay for you little opinion. Your dislike is the very reason why God wrote it, because you ought not to be suited; you have no right to be pleased. God wrote what you do not like; he wrote the truth. Oh! let us bend in reverence before it, for God inspired it. It is pure truth. Here from this fountain gushes aqua vitae– the water of life– without a single particle of earth; here from this sun cometh forth rays of radiance, without the mixture of darkness. Blessed Bible! thou art all truth.

~Charles Spurgeon~




Spurgeon’s Sermons (Spokane, Washington; Olive Tree Bible Software; 2010) eBook. Vol. 1, Sermon No. 15; Titled: The Bible; Delivered on Sabbath Morning, March 18th, 1855.

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John Calvin – Knowledge Should Lead to Praise

25 Jan

What help is it, in short, to know a God with whom we have nothing to do? Rather, our knowledge should serve first to teach us fear and reverence; secondly, with it as our guide and teacher, we should learn to seek every good from him, and, having received it, to credit it to his account. For how can the thought of God penetrate your mind without your realizing immediately that, since you are his handiwork, you have been made over and bound to his command by right of creation, that you owe your life to him?–that whatever you undertake, whatever you do, ought to be ascribed to him?

~John Calvin~






The Institutes of the Christian Religion (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press; 1974) Vol. 1.2.2. p. 441-42

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William Gurnall – God is at the Top and Bottom of the Ladder

24 Jan

[13] for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. – Philippians 2:13

He makes the heart new, and having made it fit for heavenly motion, setting every wheel, as it were, in its right place, then he winds it up by his actuating grace, and sets it on going, the thoughts to stir, the will to move and make towards the holy object presented; yet here the chariot is set, and cannot ascend the hill of action till God puts his shoulder to the wheel: ‘To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not,’ – Rom. 7:18. God is at the bottom of the ladder, and at the top also, the Author and Finisher, yea, helping and lifting the soul at every round, in his ascent to any hold action.

~William Gurnall~


The Christian in Complete Armour Vol. 1 (Edinburgh, Scotland; Banner of Truth; 1989) p. 19.

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