Faithful Preachers

R.C. Sproul:

“The more faithful preachers are to the Word of God in their preaching, the more liable they are to the charge of hypocrisy. Why? Because the more faithful people are to the Word of God the higher the message is that they will preach. The higher the message, the further they will be from obeying themselves.” (The Holiness of God)

Luke as a Historian

Opinion of Sir William Ramsay, one of the outstanding Near Eastern archaeologists:

“Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense; he fixes his mind on the idea and plan that rules in the evolution of history, and proportions the scale of his treatment to the importance of each incident. He seizes the important and critical events and shows their true nature at greater length…In short, this author should be placed among the very greatest of historians.”

 

The Wonder of God’s Love

Contemplate with love that God should go to such great expense in adopting us. When God adopted you, He paid a high price. It was not easy to make the heirs of wrath into the heirs of promise. God chose fallen man and so our adoption was purchased at the price of the blood of His own Son. Such is the wonder of God’s love in adopting us, that He should pay so high a price to accomplish it. L.R. Shelton, Jr. writes:

In Mark 14:36 we see in our Lord’s agony He cried in His native tongue, Hebrew, “Abba, Father.” Is not this a lesson for us?

Adoption comes to us by redemption: We should prize redemption, because it was by the precious blood of Christ that we were redeemed from the curse of the law. “But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal 4:4,5).

By adoption we are no more like to bond servants  “Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father” (Gal 4:1-2). By adoption we are heirs: “Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (Gal 4:7). No man living has ever realized to the full what this means. Believers are at this moment heirs, but what is the estate? It is God Himself! We are heirs of God (Rom 8:17)! Not only of the promises, of the covenant engagements, and of all the blessings which belong to the chosen seed, but heirs of God Himself? The Lord is my portion, saith my soul. This God is my God for ever and ever. Surely “the lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage” (Psa 16:6).

Meditate upon this truth: that God should adopt us when He had a Son of His own. Men adopt because they want children, and desire to have some one to bear their name; but that God should adopt us when He had a Son of His own, the Lord Jesus, is a wonder of love. Now since God had a Son of His own, and such a Son, how wonderful God’s love in adopting us. We needed a Father, but He did not need sons.

Contemplate what we were before God adopted us. We were very deformed, in a state of sin and misery, very unlovely, and surely a man will not adopt one for his heir that is crooked and ill-favored, but rather he that has some beauty. But when we were yet in our blood, God adopted us. “When I saw thee polluted in thy blood, it was the time of love” (Eze 16:6). God did not adopt us when we were adorned with holiness and had the angels’ glory upon us; but when we were as filthy as hell itself, diseased as lepers; that was the time of His love. Praise the Lord! (“Adoption”)