Bible

 Read Psalms 6 thru 12 prayfully!

Climbing a Mountain

 

JUNE 25 Climbing a Mountain

Get you up to a high mountain. Isaiah 40:9

Our knowledge of Christ is somewhat like climbing one of the mountains in Wales. When you are at the base you see only a little: the mountain itself appears to be only half as high as it really is. Confined in a little valley, you discover scarcely anything but the rippling brooks as they descend into the stream at the foot of the mountain. Climb the first rising knoll, and the valley lengthens and widens beneath your feet. Go higher, and you see the country for four or five miles around, and you are delighted with the widening prospect. Higher still, and the scene enlarges; until at last, when you are on the summit and look east, west, north, and south, you see almost all of England lying before you. There is a forest in some distant county, perhaps two hundred miles away, and here the sea, and there a shining river and the smoking chimneys of a manufacturing town, or the masts of the ships in a busy port. All these things please and delight you, and you say, “I could not have imagined that so much could be seen at this elevation.” Now, the Christian life is of the same order. When we first believe in Christ, we see only a little of Him. The higher we climb, the more we discover of His beauty. But who has ever gained the summit? Who has known all the heights and depths of the love of Christ that passes knowledge? When Paul had grown old and was sitting gray-haired and shivering in a dungeon in Rome, he was able to say with greater emphasis than we can, “I know whom I have believed,”1 for each experience had been like the climbing of a hill, each trial had been like ascending another summit, and his death seemed like gaining the top of the mountain, from which he could see the whole panorama of the faithfulness and love of Him to whom he had committed his soul. Get up, dear friend, into a high mountain.

2 Timothy 1:12

Bargaining like Pharaoh

 

JUNE 27 Bargaining like Pharaoh

Only you must not go very far away. Exodus 8:28

This is a crafty word from the lip of the arch-tyrant Pharaoh. If the poor enslaved Israelites must leave Egypt, then he bargains with them that it shall not be very far away—not too far for them to escape the terror of his arms and the observation of his spies. After the same fashion, the world hates the nonconformity of nonconformity or the dissidence of dissent; it would rather we were more charitable and not deal with things too severely. Death to the world and burial with Christ are experiences that worldly minds treat with ridicule, and as a result baptism, which pictures them, is almost universally neglected and even condemned. Worldly wisdom recommends the path of compromise and talks of “moderation.” According to this carnal policy, purity is admitted to be very desirable, but we are warned against being too precise; truth is of course to be followed, but error is not to be severely denounced. “Yes,” says the world, “be spiritually minded by all means, but do not deny yourself a little friendship with the world, the odd journey to Vanity Fair. What’s the good of denouncing this empty lifestyle when it is so fashionable and everybody does it?” Multitudes of professors succumb to this cunning advice, to their own eternal ruin. If we are going to really follow the Lord, we must be prepared to walk the narrow path and join Moses who refused to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. We must leave behind the world’s maxims—its pleasure, and its religion too—and go far away to the place where the Lord calls His sanctified ones. When the town is on fire, our house cannot be too far from the flames. When disease is rampant, it is hard to escape it. The further from a poisonous snake the better, and the further from worldly conformity the better. To all true believers let the trumpet-call be sounded: “Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them.”1

2 Corinthians 6:17

Gateway Bible

 Today you have an assignment. I would like you to download Gateway Bible or any Bible of your choosing and read the first 6 Chapters of Psalms prayerfully. We live in a divided and discouraged nation. We need these prayers now. This nation needs Jesus more now since WWII.

 

If You Benefit from Truth For Life, You Have a Truthpartner to Thank!

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June 19, 2023

The faithful giving from your fellow listeners who give monthly as Truthpartners makes Truth For Life possible. Their consistent, sustaining support is what brings Bible teaching from Alistair Begg to you each day. This month, we’re praying that God will add large numbers to this team. We invite you to join the ministry in this important way.

Learn More about Becoming a Truthpartner

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Christ The Builder

 

JUNE 22 Christ the Builder

It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord and shall bear royal honor. Zechariah 6:13

Christ Himself is the builder of His spiritual temple, and He has built it on the mountains of His unchangeable affection, His omnipotent grace, and His infallible truthfulness. But as it was in Solomon’s temple, so in this: The materials need to be prepared. There are the cedars of Lebanon, but they are not framed for the building; they are not cut down and shaped and made into those planks of cedar whose fragrant beauty will make glad the courts of the Lord’s house in paradise. There are also the rough stones still in the quarry, which must be hewn out and squared. All this is Christ’s own work. Each individual believer is being prepared and polished and made ready for his place in the temple; but Christ’s own hand performs the preparation-work. Afflictions cannot sanctify, except when they are used by Him to fulfill His purpose. Our prayers and efforts cannot make us ready for heaven, apart from the hand of Jesus, who fashions our hearts correctly. As in the building of Solomon’s temple, where “neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard”1 because it all arrived perfectly ready for the exact spot it was to occupy, so is it with the temple that Jesus builds; the preparation is all done on earth. When we reach heaven, there will be no sanctifying us there, no squaring us with affliction, no maturing us with suffering. No, we must be made ready here—and all that Christ will do He will do now; and when He has done it, we will be ferried by a loving hand across the stream of death and brought to the heavenly Jerusalem, to live as eternal pillars in the temple of our Lord. Beneath His eye and care, The edifice shall rise, Majestic, strong, and fair, And shine above the skies.

1 Kings 6:7

Sifted by the Lord

 

JUNE 20 Sifted by the Lord

For behold, I will command, and shake the house of Israel among all the nations as one shakes with a sieve, but no pebble shall fall to the earth. Amos 9:9

Every sifting comes by divine command and permission. Satan must ask permission before he can lay a finger upon Job. In actual fact, in some sense our siftings are directly the work of heaven, for in the text God says that He will “shake the house of Israel.” Satan, like a slave, may hold the sieve, hoping for the worst; but the overruling hand of the Master is accomplishing His purpose by the very process that the enemy hopes will be destructive. Precious children of God, even though you are shaken, be comforted by the blessed fact that the Lord directs the whole process for His own glory and for your eternal profit. The Lord Jesus will graciously and yet firmly divide that which is precious from that which is of little account. All are not Israel that are of Israel; the grain on the barn floor is not clean and pure, and so the shaking process must be performed. In the sieve, husks and chaff fly before the wind, and only solid substance will remain. Observe the complete safety of the Lord’s wheat; even a pebble has a promise of preservation. God Himself sifts, and therefore it is stern and terrible work; He sifts them in all places, “among all the nations”; He sifts them in the most effective manner, “as one shakes with a sieve”; and yet in all this, not the smallest, lightest, or most shriveled grain is permitted to fall to the ground. Every individual believer is precious in the sight of the Lord. A shepherd would not lose one sheep, nor a jeweler one diamond, nor a mother one child, nor a man one limb of his body; nor will the Lord lose one of His redeemed people. However little we may be, if we are the Lord’s, we may rejoice that we are preserved in Christ Jesus.

A Picture of Beauty

 

JUNE 21 A Picture of Beauty

You are the most handsome of the sons of men. Psalm 45:2

The entire person of Christ is like one diamond, and His life in every dimension leaves one lasting impression. He is altogether complete, not only in His various parts, but as a gracious all-glorious whole. His character is not a mass of bright colors mixed confusedly, nor a heap of precious stones laid carelessly on top of each other; He is a picture of beauty and a breastplate of glory. In Him, all the things of good repute are in their proper places and assist in adorning each other. Not one feature in His glorious person attracts attention at the expense of others; but He is perfectly and altogether lovely. Oh, Jesus, Your power, Your grace, Your justice, Your tenderness, Your truth, Your majesty, and Your immutability combine to make a man, or rather a God-man, whom neither heaven nor earth has ever seen elsewhere. Your infancy, Your eternity, Your sufferings, Your triumphs, Your death, and Your immortality are all woven into one gorgeous tapestry, without seams or tears. You are music without discord; You are all things, and yet not diverse. As all the colors blend into one resplendent rainbow, so all the glories of heaven and earth meet in You and unite so perfectly that there is no one like You in all things; indeed, if all the virtues of the most excellent were bound in one bundle, they could not rival You, mirror of all perfection. You have been anointed with the holy oil, which Your God has reserved for You alone; and as for Your fragrance, it is the holy perfume that cannot be matched even with the chemist’s skill; each spice is fragrant, but the compound is divine. Oh, sacred symmetry! oh, rare connection Of many perfects, to make one perfection! Oh, heavenly music, where all parts do meet In one sweet strain, to make one perfect sweet!

The Spirit’s Blessings

 

JUNE 19 The Spirit’s Blessings

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Acts 2:4

The blessings of today would be rich if all of us were filled with the Holy Spirit. It would be impossible to overestimate the consequences of this sacred filling of the soul. Life, comfort, light, purity, power, peace, and many other precious blessings are inseparable from the Spirit’s gracious presence. As sacred oil, He anoints the head of the believer, setting him apart to the priesthood of saints and giving him grace to execute his office properly. As the only truly purifying water He cleanses us from the power of sin and sets us apart to holiness, enabling us to desire and then to do what pleases the Lord. As the light, He revealed Himself to us in our darkness, and now He reveals the Lord Jesus to us and in us and guides us in the way of righteousness. Enlightened by His pure celestial ray, we are no longer in darkness but light in the Lord. As fire, He purges us from dross and sets our consecrated nature ablaze. He is the sacrificial flame by which we are enabled to offer our whole souls as a living sacrifice unto God. As heavenly dew, He removes our barrenness and fertilizes our lives. How we long for Him to come upon us from above at this early hour! Such morning dew would be a sweet beginning to the day. As the dove, with wings of peaceful love He broods over His Church and over the souls of believers, and as a Comforter He dispels the cares and doubts that spoil the peace of His beloved. He descends upon the chosen as He did upon Christ at His baptism and bears witness to their sonship by working in them a filial spirit by which they cry, “Abba, Father.” As the wind, He brings the breath of life to men; blowing where He wills, He performs the quickening operations by which the spiritual creation is animated and sustained. Would to God that we might feel His presence this day and every day.

Justiification, what is it?

 

Justification: “The Principal Article of All Christian Doctrine”

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June 16, 2023

There are few doctrines as important for Christians to understand as justification. So significant is it that Martin Luther referred to it as “the principal article of all Christian doctrine.”1 He even went so far as to say, “If the article of justification be once lost, then is all true Christian doctrine lost.”2 In other words, justification is a main thing, and it is a plain thing. It is not peripheral; it is absolutely central. It’s hard to fathom questions that are more fundamental than “How in the world can a sinful man or a woman be reconciled to a holy God?”

One of the most important biblical passages for understanding this doctrine is Romans 3:21–25, in which the apostle Paul explains God’s work of justification:

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

As we consider this passage, it’s important that we understand, first, what justification is; second, on what grounds the Scriptures say God has accomplished this wonderful work; and third, by what instrument we may take hold of it.

The Meaning of Justification

The righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…

Many of us live with the notion that justification is a process in which we are engaged—that if we can do enough good and quit doing bad, we may eventually reach the point where we can say, “God has accepted me.” Our notion may be that a good God will reward good people for doing their best, so that whatever’s really going on, as long as we have a good God in heaven who likes good people, and we’re good people, then we’re going to be okay.

But justification is not a gradual process in which we participate. It is an instantaneous event whereby God declares someone to be righteous. The biblical word justification and all of its derivatives come from the context of law courts, in which a judge rules that a person is right or wrong in the eyes of the law and decides their sentence in a moment. Justification is the language of acquittal, the opposite of condemnation.

A righteous judge condemns the guilty and justifies the innocent. But when we read the Gospels, we find that Jesus apparently did the very reverse of that: that the religious people who kept the law strenuously and who had so much to say about themselves and their own goodness were on the receiving end of some of Jesus’ most stinging rebukes. Meanwhile, the tax collectors and the “sinners” were on the receiving end of many amazing statements showing His compassion and His grace. The outlook of His ministry demonstrated clearly that stringent law keeping does not justify people or win God’s favor.

The reality is, God is the God “who justifies the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5). He doesn’t wait for them to gradually grow into good people; rather, He completed the work that declared them righteous while they were still sinners (Rom. 5:8). This is the meaning of grace: God’s justification is a gift, and it is undeserved and unprocurable.

The message of the Bible is that all of humankind has rebelled against God—in other words, that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Since God is the righteous Judge, the verdict He ought to deliver is “guilty” or “condemned.” Our predicament is not that we haven’t managed to be quite good enough yet but that we have defied the authority of the God who made us and fallen short of His glory. We are morally guilty, spiritually dead, and utterly unable to change that on our own.

Yet the Scriptures also tell us that those who believe are justified and not condemned (John 3:18). That’s why the apostle Paul wrote, “There is … no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Why? Because when God justifies a sinner, He forgives all of their sins—past, present, and future. The question of the doctrine of justification is thus not “How can I make myself right with God?” Instead, it is this: How can a holy God forgive sinners? How can a righteous judge acquit the guilty?

The Ground of Justification

… and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

The answer to that question is in the cross of Jesus Christ. Justification comes to humankind “by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” It is in the cross that God executes His righteous judgment by punishing sin. Yet as He does the right thing by punishing sin, He also displays His love by bearing the punishment that our sins deserve in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ.

In 2 Corinthians 5:19, Paul writes, “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses”—that is, their sin and guilt—“against them.” The point Paul makes here is not simply that God is “not counting their trespasses.” It is not, as some people say, that God just looks the other way. No, Paul writes that God is “not counting their trespasses against them.” He goes on to say in verse 21 that He was counting our sins against Him—that is, against Christ: God “made him to be sin who had no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Justification is not a gradual process in which we participate. It is an instantaneous event whereby God declares someone to be righteous.

Jesus Christ is the incarnate Word of God—God made flesh, who dwelled on earth, lived a sinless life, died on a cross, rose again after three days, and soon after ascended to heaven. When Jesus died on that cross, He bore all of God’s punishment for sin in His body and satisfied God’s righteous wrath. This is the meaning of the word “propitiation”: Christ’s blood was a sufficient payment for the sins of humankind. So God counts our sinfulness against Jesus, and He counts Jesus’ righteousness for us who believe. Thus He became the God who, without ceasing to be a righteous Judge, “justifies the ungodly.” This is what theologians call “the great exchange”: Christ took the place of the sinner so that the sinner who repents and believes will enjoy acceptance with God.

Martin Luther wrote the following to a friend who was experiencing deep spiritual distress:

Learn Christ and him crucified. Learn to pray to him and, despairing of yourself, say: “Thou, Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, but I am thy sin. Thou hast taken upon thyself what is mine and hast given to me what is thine. Thou has taken upon thyself what thou wast not and hast given to me what I was not.”3

 

A Christian may say, “There is therefore now no condemnation”—but not on the strength of their good works outweighing their bad ones, nor on the strength of gradually increasing goodness in their life. Our only hope of being accounted righteous before God is if God counts our sin against Christ and Christ’s goodness to us. On our own, we stand condemned.

 

Until we see the gravity of our predicament before God’s holiness, the message of salvation, of justification, will wash over us. There are crowds of evangelical Christians today whose understanding of the Gospel is only a kind of self-help therapy. They may be making all kinds of changes to their lives in an effort to be obedient to God, but they have never grappled with the fact that all of their obedience is as filthy rags (Isa. 64:6) unless and until they are in Christ, God accounting His righteousness as their own.

 

Justification is not a process of religious reestablishment but the radical and instantaneous intervention of Almighty God. And it happens when God says, “You are guilty, and you can do nothing about it. But today I declare you innocent on the merits of my Son”—and you believe it.

The Instrument of Justification

The righteousness of God [is] through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

How do we take hold of this free gift of God? Paul tells us that this righteousness comes “through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” God, he says, is “the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).

Justification, in other words, doesn’t come to all people regardless of their disposition to Christ. In the book of Acts, when the Philippian jailer cried out, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul didn’t say, “Oh, you don’t have to do anything. You’re automatically forgiven because of what Christ did.” No, he answered, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:30–31).

It’s crucial to understand that faith is not just a different quality of works. Faith is not a merit that God rewards, as if we could believe and say the right things and so be accepted into heaven because of what we did. No, the faith that saves is a “sitting down” faith. People sit down in chairs, and they do so because they trust that the chairs will hold them up. But no amount of faith will keep someone from falling on the floor if they try to sit down on nothing. Faith is an instrument, but it is only as good as what we place our faith in.

Until we see the gravity of our predicament before God’s holiness, the message of salvation, of justification, will wash over us.

Jesus has died upon the cross to justify sinners. In each of our lives, there has to come a moment when we say, “Lord, I believe this, and I am placing myself in your hands.” In the same way that a bride and groom say to one another, “I take you,” with all that that entails, by faith we throw ourselves onto the mercy of Christ and bring our lives under His lordship. He’s not going to ask you how you feel about anything. He’s just going to ask if you are prepared to make a definite, decisive, personal, permanent commitment.

Our acceptance with God does not rely or rest on our ability to explain the details whereby we came to faith in Jesus Christ any more than we need to know the details of our birth to say with certainty that we’re alive. It is not the experience of conversion but the fact of faith in a gracious God that makes the difference. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t take it for granted. Are you justified? If you can’t yet answer that question with certainty, don’t put it off. Give yourself to the Lord. As Paul also wrote, “Now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). Will you seize it?

This article was adapted from the sermon “After Darkness, Light” by Alistair Begg. Subscribe to get weekly blog updates.

 

 

1. Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, ed. Philip S. Watson (London: James Clarke, 1953), 101.↩︎

2. Luther, 26.↩︎

3. Martin Luther to George Spenlein, April 8, 1516, in Letters of Spiritual Counsel, ed. and trans. Theodore G. Tappert, Library of Christian Classics 18 (London: SCM, 1955), 110.↩︎