The Catholic religion has become corrupt the same way Judaism became corrupt—by following the traditions of men instead of the Word of God (Mark 7:13). The Pharisees taught much truth, but by mixing it with error, they “made the word of God of no effect.”
– Mike Gendron
Sanctification, again, is a thing which does not prevent a man having a great deal of inward spiritual conflict. By conflict I mean struggle within the heart between the old nature and the new, the flesh and the spirit, which are to be found together in every believer. . . . A true Christian is one who has not only peace of conscience, but war within. He may be known by his warfare as well as by his peace.
– J. C. Ryle
1816 – 1900
If we are indistinguishable from the world we will never effectively proclaim the Gospel to the world.
– Jeff Purswell
It is hard to improve on the pattern set by the very first church at Jerusalem. Acts 2:41-42 gives the details: “So then, those who had received His word were baptized and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” We see from these verses the essential functions of the local assembly: evangelism, instruction in the Word, participation in the ordinances, prayer, and fellowship. Intertwined within these would be worship and edification. These activities defined the New Testament church, and distinguished it from a social club or political rally.
– Gary Gilley
For myself, as I am ashamed of my dull and careless heart, and of my slow and unprofitable course of life, so, the Lord knows, I am ashamed of every sermon I preach; when I think what I have been speaking of, and who sent me, and that men’s salvation or damnation is so much concerned in it, I am ready to tremble lest God should judge me as a slighter of His truths and the souls of men, and lest in the best sermon I should be guilty of their blood.
Me thinks we should not speak a word to men in matters of such consequence without tears, or the greatest earnestness that possibly we can; were not we too much guilty of the sin which we reprove, it would be so.
– Richard Baxter
1615 – 1691
HT: Pulpit Magazine
Indifference to sin is a moral blemish, and he who does not hate it is a moral leper.
– A. W. Pink
1886 – 1952
What does it mean to be a Christian? What I consider to be the greatest weakness of contemporary evangelical Christianity in America . . . did I say weakness? It is more. It is a tragic error. It is the idea – where did it ever come from? – that one can be a Christian without being a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. It reduces the gospel to the mere fact of Christ’s having died for sinners, requires of sinners only that they acknowledge this by the barest intellectual assent, and then assures them of their eternal security when they may very well not be born again. This view bends faith beyond recognition – at least for those who know what the Bible says about faith – and promises a false peace to thousands who have given verbal assent to this reductionist Christianity but are not truly in God’s family.
– James Montgomery Boice
God’s program for apostasy is to separate from it, expose it and contend against it.
– John Ashbrook
It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to Biblical ways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians have had to do it.
– A. W. Tozer
1897 – 1963
We are one body…one body. Not at the expense of truth and not at the expense of iniquity, we do not unite around confusion, we unite around the truth. It is a unity built on truth. It is the unity of the faith…the unity of the faith, as well as the unity of the Spirit. It is that unity which belongs to us because we possess the same life of God…the same living Christ…the same Spirit of Christ, as Paul identifies Him in Romans 8. It is the unity of a common understanding of Scripture and the Word of God.
There is a drive today in evangelicalism…and what a bland term that has become. But there is a drive in evangelicalism for an ecumenism that ignores sound doctrine, that overlooks error and accepts even what we would deem as heresy. There is a kind of evangelical ecumenism that says we’re all one and we need to enjoy one another without regard for any of our doctrinal differences. That is a false and unbiblical and displeasing unity, if indeed it is unity at all in the sense that it dishonors and displeases the Lord.
There is another kind of striving for unity that wants to disregard iniquity and embrace everybody no matter whether they are walking in obedience to the Word of God or not, overlooking their sin and their iniquity.
But quite the contrary. The Scripture says if there is someone in your midst, according to Titus chapter 3, teaching error, if there is a heretic there, admonish him once, admonish him twice and then put him out. He’s forfeited a right to lay any claim to acceptance within that unity. And if there is a brother or sister in iniquity, you go to him or her and you go through a process calling them to repentance. And if they do not repent, you put them out. And the Apostle Paul reminds the Thessalonians of what that’s like. He says this in 2 Thessalonians 3:6, “We command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you stay apart, or keep aloof, from every brother who leads an unruly life, not according to the tradition which you’ve received from us.” That tradition not being some rabbinic tradition, but that tradition established by the revelation from God.
If you have someone in your church who is teaching error, you cannot have unity with that individual. If you have someone who is leading an unruly or sinful life, you cannot have fellowship with that individual. So what we’re talking about here is the pursuit of the true unity of the Spirit that belongs to those who surround the truth and affirm it and who live godly lives.
– John MacArthur
From his sermon entitled “Fundamental Christian Attitudes: Unity”
How can we preach the Gospel to a man with an empty stomach?
A man’s stomach has nothing to do with his heart’s condition of being a rebel against the holy God. A rich American on Fifth Avenue in New York City or a poor beggar on the streets of Bombay are both rebels against God Almighty, according to the Bible. The result of this lie is the fact that, during the past 100 years, the majority of mission money has been invested in social work. I am not saying we should not care for the poor and needy. The issue I am taking to task is losing our primary focus of preaching the Gospel.
– K.P. Yohannan
We have heard dying men singing themselves into the bottomless pit with this lullaby, “Yes, sir, I am a sinner, but God is merciful; God is good.” Ah! dear friends, let such remember that God is just as well as good, and that he will by no means spare the guilty, except through the great atonement of his Son Jesus Christ. The doctrine of election, in a most blessedly honest manner does come in, and breaks the neck, once for all, of all this false and groundless confidence in the uncovenanted mercy of God. Sinner, you have no right to trust to the goodness of God out of Christ. There is no word in the whole Book of Inspiration, which gives the shadow of a hope to the man who will not believe in Jesus Christ. It says of him, “He that believeth not shall be damned.” It declares of you, who are resting upon such a poor confidence as the unpromised favor of heaven, “Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
From a sermon entitled “Election No Discouragement To Seeking Souls,” delivered February 7, 1864.
– Charles Spurgeon
1834 – 1892
“The offence of prayer is that it does not essentially tie in to mental efficiency. Prayer is conditioned by one thing–spirituality. You do not need to be spiritual to preach or deliver sermons of homiletical perfection of exegetical exactitude. Preaching affects men, but prayer affects God. Preaching often affects time, but prayer affects eternity. The pulpit can be a shop window to display our talent, but the prayer closet speaks death to fleshly display.
The tragedy of this hour is that we have too many dead men giving out dead sermons to dead people. Why? Because the strange thing today which exists in the pulpit is a horrible thing: it is preaching without unction. What is unction? It’s hard to define. Preaching without unction kills instead of giving life. The unctionless preacher is a savor of death unto death. The Word does not live unless divine unction is upon the preacher. Preachers, with all thy getting–get unction from above!
Preaching is a spiritual business. A sermon born in the head reaches the head, but a sermon born in the heart reaches the heart. Unction cannot be learned, but only experienced through prayer. Unction is like dynamite–it will pierce, it will sweeten, it will soften. When the hammer of logic and the fire of human zeal fail to open the stony heart, unction will succeed.
Away with this powerless preaching which is unmoving because it was born in a tomb instead of a womb, and nourished in a fireless, prayerless soul. If God has called us preachers to the ministry, then we should get unctionized. With all thy getting–get unction, lest barrenness will be the badge of our unctionless intellectualism.“
– Leonard Ravenhill
1907 – 1994
The supreme authority of the Bible is established both by its divine origin and inspiration (2 Pet. 1:21). It is the infallible Word of God, and it will accomplish God’s purpose (Isaiah 55:11). It is the very foundation upon which all Christian truths rest. For followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Bible is the final court of appeal in all matters pertaining to faith and godliness.
– Mike Gendron
And what about apostate Christendom, where every possible form of sin is now tolerated and practiced under cover of the holy name of Christ? Why does not the righteous wrath of Heaven make an end of such abominations? Only one answer is possible: because God bears with “much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.”
– A. W. Pink
1886 – 1952
If there is any point on which God’s holiest saints agree it is this: that they see more, and know more, and feel more, and do more, and repent more, and believe more, as they get on in spiritual life, and in proportion to the closeness of their walk with God.
– J. C. Ryle
1816 – 1900
Do you know why it says at the end of the age that the Lamb will take wrath on the world? I think it’s because there will be a crystal clear reminder—he didn’t always show up this way, He showed up once in the middle of history as a real Lamb; let Himself be ripped to shreds, mocked, spit upon, dishonored, hung on a stick, treated like dirt in order to rescue us from the wrath of His Father and it was God’s idea. And when He comes the second time it will be so plain: This is the crucified Lamb with the sword coming out of His mouth hewing people in pieces who would not have Him. Know your Christ, Christian, and tremble, with joy.
– John Piper
Whenever religion rejects God’s authority, it creates “another Jesus” which always leads to “another gospel.” Why? Because whenever the sufficiency of Christ is denied, another gospel must be concocted to instruct people what they must do to be saved.
– Mike Gendron
Nothing riles the natural man more and brings to the surface his innate, inveterate enmity against God than to press upon him the eternality, the freeness, and the absolute sovereignty of divine grace. That God should have formed His purpose from everlasting, without in anywise consulting the creature, is too abasing for the unbroken heart. That grace cannot be earned or won by any efforts of man is too self-emptying for self-righteousness. That grace singles out whom it pleases to be its favored objects arouses hot protests from haughty rebels. The clay rises up against the Potter and asks, “Why hast Thou made me thus?” A lawless insurrectionist dares to call into question the justice of divine sovereignty.
– A. W. Pink
1886 – 1952
How can God ever “justify the ungodly” without becoming an abomination to Himself? “He who says to the wicked, ‘You are righteous,’ peoples will curse him, nations will abhor him [Proverbs 24:24]. How can God say to sinners like us, “You are righteous,” without violating His own character? How can God ever save us from Himself and His own righteousness and justice? . . . Repentant sinners know that they deserve to be punished, and that it would not be right for them not to be. They know that God cannot just “sweep their sins under the rug” and forget about them. Hence, the cry of their hearts is, “How can a just God ever smile upon me? How can this burden of guilt be removed? How can God pronounce a blessing upon me? How can a man like me be in the right before God!” There is only one answer to this dilemma. Someone has to pay for the sinner’s sins. Justice must be satisfied. Either it will be satisfied by the sinner’s own suffering forever in Hell, or it must be satisfied by someone else on the sinner’s behalf.
– Charles Leiter
Christ Alone Wyoming 