by HARVEYOPP | Aug 15, 2014 | Scott Henry
“Who is the man who desires life, and loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit” (Psalm 34:12-13).
As Christians, our continual prayer should be that God would instruct our tongue at all times with five virtues taught in Scripture: truth, love, necessity, wisdom and edification.
TRUTH: If truthwas guarding our tongue then we would hear our conscience say: “Don’t speak unless your words are true! As a Christian, you represent Christ who is the Truth therefore your words must be true.” Proverbs 8:7: “For my mouth will speak truth; wickedness is an abomination to my lips.”
LOVE: If love stands before our words then we would hear our conscience say: “Are you speaking the truth in love? Are you really concerned for the one of whom or to whom you speak? If you’re not speaking the truth in love, then don’t speak! Keep your mouth shut.” Ephesians 4:15: “…speak the truth in love.”
NECESSITY: If necessity was guarding our tongue then we would hear our conscience say: “Is what you’re going to say necessary, or is it coming out because you simply like to talk? Are the words you’re going to speak about another person necessary? So often we say things about others just to make conversation, and so often what we say is absolutely unnecessary. “Oh did you hear about so and so, and how he did such and such?” It’s almost as if we glory in the fact that we know something about someone else that others don’t know! Proverbs 6:16: “Six things the LORD hates, yes, seven are an abomination to Him: a proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord among brethren.”
WISDOM: If wisdom was guarding our tongue then we would hear our conscience say: “Is it wise for you to speak these words at this time? Would it be better to give it further thought? Proverbs 10:21: “The lips of the righteous feed many, but fools die for lack of wisdom.” Proverbs 10:31: “The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, but the perverse tongue will be cut out.”
EDIFICATION: If edification was guarding our tongue then we would hear our conscience say: “Do your words build up or do they tear down? Do they preserve or do they spoil? Ephesians 4:29: “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” Colossians 4:6: “Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.” 1 Corinthians 14:26: “Let all things be done for edification.”
The five godly virtues that must guard our mouth are truth, love, necessity, wisdom and edification. We know we need a guard when it comes to bad breath, yet our words are much more important than our breath because the effect of our words can last to eternity. How much more careful should we be with the words that come out of our mouth than our bad breath? “Who is the man who desires life, and loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit.” AMEN!
by HARVEYOPP | Aug 12, 2014 | Scott Henry
“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen” (2 Peter 3:18).
When Peter exhorts believers to grow in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ he is stressing the importance of our understanding and believing the truth of Scripture so that we are not led astray or seduced by the error of the wicked. Instead of being led astray and seduced by error, Peter says we must grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. In other words, the only way to avoid falling in the Christian life is to advance; the only way to avoid slipping backward is to go forward; the only way to avoid error and false teaching is by knowing and believing the truth. The word falling doesn’t mean losing one’s salvation. Rather, it means weakness or easily giving in to sin and temptation.
You see, Scripture is very plain … every true believer is preserved in Jesus Christ (Jude vs. 1). The Bible does not teach that you can be saved one day and lost the next. Philippians 1:6: “…being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” John 10:27-28: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.” A hundred other verses could also be cited.
But the Scriptures also teach that the Christian life is active. Yes, God preserves the believer, but He does so by working in us perseverance, and calling us to be diligent in the Christian life. Never forget that God makes use of means. Yes, He provides all our needs, but He does so through our labor. Yes, God gives us wisdom, but He does so as we study His Word and come to Him in prayer. And so we are called to grow in grace and be diligent with our Christian faith. And if you’re not growing then you’re falling backwards and are being exposed to the error of the wicked and setting yourself up for a fall, which will bring dishonor to God and shame before men. And Peter knew something of this after he had denied Christ three times (Matt. 26:75), and so he says, “Grow in grace and in the knowledge that’s in Christ Jesus.”
Are you growing spiritually? Do you desire more and more to be fed spiritually with the Word of God? Do you seek Christ more and more in His Word and through prayer? Do you delight in partaking of the sacraments? Do you long for fellowship with other believers? If you’re truly a branch (a believer) united to the vine (Jesus Christ) then your desire must be like the Psalmist who wrote in Psalm 122: “I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go into the house of the LORD.” And this desire should be ever increasing in the life of those washed in the blood of the Lamb!
by HARVEYOPP | Aug 8, 2014 | Scott Henry
“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen” (2 Peter 3:18).
Parents … what would you do if your baby wasn’t growing? Would you be concerned or would you ignore the obvious? It probably wouldn’t take you very long before you would be on the phone making an appointment with your pediatrician because you know where there’s life there must be growth. The same is true of every farmer; if your corn didn’t sprout in the spring you would immediately be on the phone with a specialist to analyze the problem and find a solution because you also know there must be growth if there’s life. Well, according to our text, the same principle is true spiritually. If you’ve been born of the Spirit of God then you must be growing in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus. And so the Apostle Peter commands in 2 Peter 3:18: “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Once a person has true faith he is declared justified by God. This means he is forgiven, cleansed and pardoned of all his sins because of the work of Jesus Christ. And when God declares a person justified, which is a one time event, there can never again be an accusation brought against the person because Christ’s perfect life and sin atoning death has been imputed to them. That’s why we read in Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” But at this point the work of God’s grace within the believer begins. Sanctification is the Holy Spirit’s work of conforming the believer more and more into the image of Jesus Christ, and this is not completed until death. Therefore, every true believer will and must continue to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus throughout his Christian life, and if there’s no spiritual growth it’s simply because there’s no spiritual life.
What about you? Are you growing spiritually? Does your life demonstrate that you’re growing in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ? Are you growing in the godly use of your tongue or are you living in bitterness, anger and envy with a grudge against someone? James 1:26: “If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless.” Are you growing in resisting temptation? James 1:12: “Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” Are you growing in the fruit of the Spirit? Galatians 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” Is your love for God, His Word, His Church, and fellow believers increasing? 1 John 5:2: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments.” John 13:35: “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” If you confess to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, one of Christ’s blood-bought sheep, then you must be continually growing in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus, and this will be evident by your Christian maturity. Because to grow in grace means there’s a growing divine influence upon the soul and this will be manifest in your manner of living! As Jesus said in Matthew 7:17: “Even so, every good tree bears good fruit …” What kind of tree are you?
by HARVEYOPP | Aug 5, 2014 | RC Sproul
We have often heard statements such as “War is hell” or “I went through hell.” These expressions are, of course, not taken literally. Rather, they reflect our tendency to use the word hell as a descriptive term for the most ghastly human experience possible. Yet no human experience in this world is actually comparable to hell. If we try to imagine the worst of all possible suffering in the here and now we have not yet stretched our imaginations to reach the dreadful reality of hell.
Hell is trivialized when it is used as a common curse word. To use the word lightly may be a halfhearted human attempt to take the concept lightly or to treat it in an amusing way. We tend to joke about things most frightening to us in a futile effort to declaw and defang them, reducing their threatening power.
There is no biblical concept more grim or terror-invoking than the idea of hell. It is so unpopular with us that few would give credence to it at all except that it comes to us from the teaching of Christ Himself.
THERE IS NO BIBLICAL CONCEPT MORE GRIM OR TERROR-INVOKING THAN THE IDEA OF HELL
Almost all the biblical teaching about hell comes from the lips of Jesus. It is this doctrine, perhaps more than any other, that strains even the Christian’s loyalty to the teaching of Christ. Modern Christians have pushed the limits of minimizing hell in an effort to sidestep or soften Jesus’ own teaching. The Bible describes hell as a place of outer darkness, a lake of fire, a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, a place of eternal separation from the blessings of God, a prison, a place of torment where the worm doesn’t turn or die. These graphic images of eternal punishment provoke the question, should we take these descriptions literally or are they merely symbols?
I suspect they are symbols, but I find no relief in that. We must not think of them as being merely symbols. It is probably that the sinner in hell would prefer a literal lake of fire as his eternal abode to the reality of hell represented in the lake of fire image. If these images are indeed symbols, then we must conclude that the reality is worse than the symbol suggests. The function of symbols is to point beyond themselves to a higher or more intense state of actuality than the symbol itself can contain. That Jesus used the most awful symbols imaginable to describe hell is no comfort to those who see them simply as symbols.
HELL IS AN ETERNITY BEFORE THE RIGHTEOUS, EVER-BURNING WRATH OF GOD
A breath of relief is usually heard when someone declares, “Hell is a symbol for separation from God.” To be separated from God for eternity is no great threat to the impenitent person. The ungodly want nothing more than to be separated from God. Their problem in hell will not be separation from God, it will be the presence of God that will torment them. In hell, God will be present in the fullness of His divine wrath. He will be there to exercise His just punishment of the damned. They will know Him as an all-consuming fire.
No matter how we analyze the concept of hell it often sounds to us as a place of cruel and unusual punishment. If, however, we can take any comfort in the concept of hell, we can take it in the full assurance that there will be no cruelty there. It is impossible for God to be cruel. Cruelty involves inflicting a punishment that is more severe or harsh than the crime. Cruelty in this sense is unjust. God is incapable of inflicting an unjust punishment. The Judge of all the earth will surely do what is right. No innocent person will ever suffer at His hand.
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of hell is its eternality. People can endure the greatest agony if they know it will ultimately stop. In hell there is no such hope. The Bible clearly teaches that the punishment is eternal. The same word is used for both eternal life and eternal death. Punishment implies pain. Mere annihilation, which some have lobbied for, involves no pain. Jonathan Edwards, in preaching on Revelation 6:15-16 said, “Wicked men will hereafter earnestly wish to be turned to nothing and forever cease to be that they may escape the wrath of God.”
Hell, then, is an eternity before the righteous, ever-burning wrath of God, a suffering torment from which there is no escape and no relief. Understanding this is crucial to our drive to appreciate the work of Christ and to preach His gospel.
by HARVEYOPP | Aug 5, 2014 | CH Spurgeon
“Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.” — Acts 3:19.
Repent signifies, in its literal meaning, to change one’s mind. It has been translated, “after-wit,” or “after-wisdom;” it is the man’s finding out that he was wrong, and rectifying his judgment. But although that be the meaning of the root, the word has come in scriptural use to mean a great deal more. Perhaps there is no better definition of repentance than that which is given in our little children’s hymnbook—
“Repentance is to leave
The sins we loved before,
And show that we in earnest grieve,
By doing so no more.”
Repentance is a discovery of the evil of sin, a mourning that we have committed it, a resolution to forsake it. It is, in fact, a change of mind of a very deep and practical character, which makes the man love what once he hated, and hate what once he loved. Conversion, if translated, means a turning round, a turning from, and a turning to—a turning from sin, a turning to holiness—a turning from carelessness to thought, from the world to heaven, from self to Jesus—a complete turning. . . Regeneration is the implanting of a new nature, and one of the earliest signs of that is, a faith in Christ, and a repentance of sin, and a consequent conversion from that which is evil to that which is good.
The apostle Peter, addressing the crowd, said to them, “Change your minds; be sorry for what you have done; forsake your old ways; be turned; become new men.” That was his message as I have now put it into other words.
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