This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
Sweeter And Sweeter
Therefore, to you who believe, [Jesus] is precious. (1 Peter 2:7)
The preciousness of Christ is connected in the Scriptures with a believing people. The Bible never expects that without faith men will glorify Christ. For, dear brothers and sisters, it is by faith that the value of Christ is perceived. You cannot see Christ by mere reason, for the natural man is blind to the things of the Spirit. You may study the evangelists themselves, but you will never get to see the real Christ who is precious to believers except by a personal act of faith in Him. …An ounce of faith is better than a ton of learning! …
By faith the Lord Jesus is more and more tasted and proved and becomes more and more precious. In proportion as we taste our Lord, He will rise in our esteem. … The more afflictions a believer endures, the more he discovers the sustaining power of Christ, and therefore the more precious Christ becomes to him. …
Every time you give way to skepticism and critical questioning, you lose a sip of sweetness.
That’s what the Holy Spirit does for us: He opens up God’s Word like we’ve never seen it before! It wasn’t just for Peter, or the original 12 disciples, or the first-century Church. This is still available to you and me today!
Please note that it’s not just a relationship with Jesus that opens up the Scriptures to us. No one spent more time in the presence of Jesus than His disciples. And yet even after Jesus explicitly shared truth with them, we read, “His disciples didn’t understand at the time that this was a fulfillment of prophecy. But after Jesus entered into His glory, they remembered what had happened and realized that these things had been written about Him” (John 12:16).
Notice those words “after…they remembered…and realized.”
This is still available to you and me today! Jesus told us that He had more to say to us, and that’s why the Holy Spirit would come. The same Holy Spirit that inspired the Word of God is available today to illuminate it to us!
R.T. Kendall made this observation about the teachings of Jesus, “[His teachings] cannot be truly understood until you see that it is our Lord’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It means we must embrace His interpretation of the Law and how it is fulfilled in us.”
This is what God foretold through Ezekiel—I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow My decrees and be careful to keep My laws… (Ezekiel 11:19-20). In other words,God is saying, “When the Holy Spirit is in you, you will know how to apply My laws to your every-day life. You will become skilled in the correct and timely biblical application.”
ALL Scripture is for ALL servants of God. ALL Scripture is applicable to ALL the circumstances we will ever face in life. But we need the illumination of the Holy Spirit in order to make the connection from the written Word to the real-life application.
So don’t stop at salvation—press on to be baptized in the Holy Spirit.
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
Unspeakable Gift
Therefore, to you who believe, [Jesus] is precious. (1 Peter 2:7)
We can never say enough of God’s unspeakable gift! On any other subject there is a danger of exaggeration, but it is impossible here. If you find honey, it is well to eat cautiously of it, for it may pall upon you. But when you find Christ, take in all you can and pray for an enlarged capacity, for He will never grow too sweet. …
Let every one of us do something fresh by which to prove the believer’s love to Christ! Let us not be satisfied with proof already given. Let us invent a new love token! Let us sing to the Lord a new song! Let not this cold world dare to doubt that to believers Christ is precious! Let us force the scoffers to believe that we are in earnest!
From Christ Precious To Believers
When was the last time you were amazed at something new you discovered about Jesus? The apostle Paul prayed that our hearts would continue to expand into the height, depth, breadth, and width of His fullness.
When was the last time you sang a new love song to Jesus? He is singing over you, and He would love to hear your original love song to Him as well.
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“I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.” —G.K. Chesterton
It’s true that no statues have been erected to committees or groups, but groups of people have been allowed to stand up because just one strong leader stood up for them. And history has shown that there never has been a greater servant leader—lifting and rescuing more people than we can count—than Jesus of Nazareth.
Before He ascended back to heaven Jesus said to His followers, “As the Father has sent Me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). He has called us to stand up as His representatives in the world. Jesus didn’t send His followers out under their own power, but He directed them to first be empowered by the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:7-8).
And God literally did something IN her: she became pregnant, and the son that came from her was the spiritual leader Israel needed.
New Testament Christians can have a new life conceived IN them when they are baptized IN the Holy Spirit. They can then spiritually give birth to a revival, just as surely as Hannah’s son Samuel led a revival in Israel! Being baptized IN the Holy Spirit empowers us to be stand-up Christians.
Consider the disciple Peter. On the night Jesus was arrested, Peter couldn’t stand up for Jesus, even though it was just two little servant girls who confronted him. Then Pentecost Sunday came, Peter was baptized IN the Holy Spirit, and this Spirit-empowered man now became a stand-up Christian (Matthew 26:69-72; Acts 2:1-4, 14).
As Aimee Semple McPherson noted, “The Holy Spirit, when He endues you with power, puts a real ‘stand up for Jesus spirit’ within you, and removes your cowardice.”
Peter not only stood up before a questioning crowd, he stood up to the same religious leaders who had Jesus crucified, and he stood up for the Gentiles who became Christians (Acts 4:5-10; 15:6-11).
stand up for holiness in a wicked culture (1:13-16; 2:11-12)
stand up to be able to submit to and serve those in civic government positions (2:13-17)
stand up to serve your employer (2:18)
stand up like Jesus did to the people who revile and slander you (2:19-25)
stand up for your spouse’s salvation (3:1-7)
stand up for your Church family (3:8-12)
stand up to fear (3:13-14)
stand up to give testimony to your faith in Jesus (3:15-17)
stand up to live counter-culturally (4:1-6)
stand up for the shepherds and the sheep in God’s family (5:1-5)
stand up to anxiety (5:6-7)
stand up against the devil’s growling (5:8-11)
stand up for Jesus until the very end of life or until Jesus returns (5:12-14)
All of this from a man who couldn’t stand up to a little servant girl!
That’s why I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying it—Don’t stop at salvation! There is SO MUCH MORE for those who will receive the baptism IN the Holy Spirit. If you want to stand up for Jesus and stand up for others who are being pushed around by the devil, you must be empowered with the stand-up-for-Jesus spirit that only comes from the Holy Spirit.
Will you let the Holy Spirit put that stand-up spirit in you?
But you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put His Name there for His dwelling (Deuteronomy 12:5).
THE place—not a place.
The Old Testament physical practices always point to the New Testament spiritual practices:
We cannot worship like everyone else does—You must not worship the Lord your God in their [pagan] way (v. 4)
We cannot worship God like it’s always been done before—You are not to do as we do here today, everyone doing as they see fit (v. 8)
We cannot worship God in a way that is cheap and convenient—Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you please (v. 13)
Go to THE place the Lord will choose (v. 26).
The exclusivity focus is on the Person not the place or the practice.
Jesus said, “Not here or in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth” (John 4:20-24). And He made clear that He is THE exclusive way to the Father (John 14:6).
The apostle Paul noted that the day of the week or the type of food doesn’t matter in our worship practices; THE focus on Jesus is what matters (Romans 14).
So worship of God is both prescribed and personal:
Prescribed in that it’s only THE work of Jesus that makes worship possible.
Personal in that I worship God as me—as He created me—not by following a formula.
Paul went on to say in Romans 14 that we shouldn’t judge the sincerity of another person’s worship. If they are glorifying God—great! If not—they will have to stand before THE Judge.
We only have access to God through THE High Priest Jesus Christ. Let us always make sure that He is THE focus.
Hannah only appears in the first two chapters of 1 Samuel, but her legacy thunders through her son, and its rumblings continue to reverberate today. At first glance, it seems somewhat ironic that Hannah’s name means grace (undeserved favor) because we tend to think of a grace-filled person as quiet and unassuming. We don’t typically think of grace as thundering, but indeed it does!
Notice 3 P’s from Hannah’s life—
Hannah is grace personified. She didn’t crumble because of Peninnah’s taunts, nor did she compromise on her heart’s prayer because of Elkanah’s compliments. She never responded verbally to either Peninnah or Elkanah, but she took all her anguish to God in prayer.
Hannah is persistent in prayer. Hannah lives out the definition of importunity—unswerving, unabated, persistent prayer. The Bible tells us, “year after year…in bitterness of soul Hannah wept much and prayed to the Lord … she kept on praying to the Lord.” Notice an important contrast: Peninnah means jewels (from earth), while Hannah means grace (from God). God wants to give us answers that are eternal.
Hannah is piously reverent. Three times Hannah called herself a servant. She is respectful to the high priest Eli even when he falsely accuses her of being drunk. After Eli assures Hannah that God is going to grant her prayer request, notice her reverent actions—she broke her fast, her face was no longer downcast, she worshipped before the Lord, and she and Elkanah tried again to get pregnant.
Hannah’s anguish drove her to God. Year after year her bitterness of soul kept her in God’s presence. And after God answered her prayer, her rejoicing continued to keep her in God’s presence. She was importunate in prayer.
But also notice that God was silent while Hannah prayed year after year. Oswald Chambers says,“God’s silences are His answers. … Some prayers are followed by silence because they are wrong [this wasn’t Hannah’s case], others because they are bigger than we can understand.”
God was going to give Hannah a son, but the time wasn’t right yet. God needed a strong man in a dark time, and it wasn’t dark enough yet.
Israel had to sink into even deeper darkness. While Samuel was still a young man, the Israelite army was defeated, Eli and his two sons all died, and the ark of the covenant of the Lord was captured. This prompted Eli’s daughter-in-law to name her son Ichabod—God’s glory has departed.
This darkness allows Samuel to lead the people into a revival and then on to victory (1 Samuel 7:3-10). But notice how God responded to Samuel’s revival prayer—the Lord thundered with a loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.
God’s response was a fulfillment of Hannah’s prayer. After God answered her and gave her a son, Hannah’s song of rejoicing foretold God’s response that was coming years later in Samuel’s revival—“It is not by strength that one prevails; those who oppose the Lord will be broken. The Most High WILL thunder from heaven….”
Hannah’s song of rejoicing after years and years of bitter, importunate, persistent prayer was prophetic—and God’s thunderous answer to Hannah’s prayer is still rumbling today!
Moms, don’t stop praying! God wants to answer your prayer. The Holy Spirit will help you pray (Romans 8:26). God’s timing IS coming. He will thunder His thunder in answer to your persistent prayer!
11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)—12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14 For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,15 by setting aside in His flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in Himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace,16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the Cross, by which He put to death their hostility.17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.18 For through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of His household,20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone.21 In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.
Typically, I post book reviews. So what’s a review of an audio app doing here? Quite simply, the Bible Gateway Bible Audio App is a wonderful companion piece to the Book of books—the Bible.
I am a voracious reader, but my all-time, hands-down, nothing-else-is-even-close book is my Bible. I enjoy finding new ways to interact with God’s Word, so I am always on the lookout for study aids or companion pieces. This audio Bible meets this desire very nicely!
I enjoy how streamlined this app is. Not a lot of options or distractions on the screen. Just pick your passage, select which version you would like to listen to, and tap the big play button. It’s that simple! If you would like to look at the screen while you listen, the verses appear one-by-one at the top of the screen as they are being read. Other options include playback speed, repeat options, and a sleep timer.
I recently recommended this app to a friend of mine and he wrote, “I have two learning disabilities: dyslexia and ADD. I found the audio easy to listen to and appreciate the large print text. This app is now the first thing and last thing I do every day!”
The free version of this app is more than adequate, but for a small fee, you can upgrade to add even more versions to your library, which you may then listen to even when you’re not on a WiFi.
Bible Gateway is owned by Zondervan. Some of the other Zondervan Bible study tools I have reviewed in the past (and I am still using today) include:
When it comes to the Holy Spirit’s involvement in a Christian’s life: In > On.
Sometimes, instead of referring to the two major divisions of the Bible as Old Testament and New Testament, I prefer to use First Testament and Second Testament. This helps me remember that “Old” doesn’t mean outdated, and “New” doesn’t mean forgetting what came before it.
B.B. Warfield had a great analogy. He imagined the First Testament to be a perfectly-constructed mansion. Only the finest materials had been used, and the mansion had been constructed by the best craftsmen being overseen by the world’s premier Architect. The only problem was this mansion had no lights. With the appearing of Jesus in the Second Testament, finally the lights are turned on. Jesus reveals the beauty that was already there!
In the First Testament, we frequently read that the Holy Spirit comes ON people, usually for leadership functions. We see this phrase with Moses and his co-leaders, several of the judges, Israel’s first two kings, and many of the prophets (see Numbers 11:25; Judges 3:10, 6:34, 11:29, 15:14; 1 Samuel 11:6, 16:13; 2 Kings 2:15).
However, there is one leader in the First Testament about which we notice the Spirit came IN him. Twice Ezekiel says this (2:2, 3:24). This was hinting at a to-be-fulfilled promise in the Second Testament (36:25-27).
The Holy Spirit being IN God’s people—which makes them God’s leaders—is described by Jesus in Acts 1:5. Many translations render this verse, “You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” But the NIV footnote and The Message both say “in the Holy Spirit.” Indeed, the Greek word means “by, with, or in.” But in context to being baptized (which means immersed, submerged, cleansed, overwhelmed), I think the best word is: baptized IN the Holy Spirit.
Let me say it again: When it comes to the Holy Spirit’s involvement in a Christian’s life: In > On.
“You hardly need to pray to have the Spirit poured out, for that has been done. What you need is a baptism of the Holy Spirit; to go down personally into that glorious flood that has been poured forth. Oh, to be immersed in the Holy Spirit and into fire—covered with His holy influence—plunged into the Godhead’s deepest sea and lost in His immensity! Here is our life and power.” —Charles Spurgeon
Jesus wants all of His followers to be baptized IN the Holy Spirit. So He told us to keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking, keep on waiting for God’s promised infilling (Luke 11:9-13; Acts 1:4-8).
Don’t stop at salvation—with just the Holy Spirit deposited in you—press on to be submerged deep into the Holy Spirit.
Coronavirus And Christ is a quintessential example of how the Bible’s message is applicable to any situation we face. This book could have been written as “The Bubonic Plague And Christ” or “The Great War And Christ” or even “The Spanish Flu And Christ” and the message would have been the same.
John Piper himself states, “What John Piper has to say on this topic isn’t nearly as important as what God has to say on this topic.” God’s Word is timeless, always applicable, and always authoritative. Coronavirus And Christ is steeped in biblical principles.
The first half of this book reminds us of God’s sovereignty even in times that we may see as unexpected or chaotic. Pastor John writes, “The secret of ‘sorrowful, yet always rejoicing’ [2 Corinthians 6:10] is this: knowing that the same sovereignty that could stop the coronavirus, yet doesn’t, is the very sovereignty that sustains the soul in it. Indeed, more than sustains—sweetens. Sweetens with hope that God’s purposes are kind, even in death—for those who trust Him.”
In the second half of this book, Pastor John elaborates on six possible answers to the question, “What is God doing through the coronavirus?” I am confident that you will be encouraged to see how God is in control of events that seem out of our hands.
Coronavirus And Christ is a short book, but one that will arm you with faith-building insights that will help you throughout not just this time, but any others that will inevitably come along. Desiring God has made the ebook version of this book available for free (click here to access the link).
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
Craig T. Owens 
Prescribed & Personal Worship
May 12, 2020 — Craig T. OwensBut you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put His Name there for His dwelling (Deuteronomy 12:5).
The Old Testament physical practices always point to the New Testament spiritual practices:
Go to THE place the Lord will choose (v. 26).
The exclusivity focus is on the Person not the place or the practice.
Jesus said, “Not here or in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth” (John 4:20-24). And He made clear that He is THE exclusive way to the Father (John 14:6).
The apostle Paul noted that the day of the week or the type of food doesn’t matter in our worship practices; THE focus on Jesus is what matters (Romans 14).
So worship of God is both prescribed and personal:
Paul went on to say in Romans 14 that we shouldn’t judge the sincerity of another person’s worship. If they are glorifying God—great! If not—they will have to stand before THE Judge.
We only have access to God through THE High Priest Jesus Christ. Let us always make sure that He is THE focus.
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