DISCIPLE

When don't we have to obey God?   Ask the Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 2:7-8   "took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.". John 8:29   "I do always those things which please him."     C. H. Mackintosh wrote: “Obedience is due from us to God’s Word, simply because it is His Word. To raise a question, when He has spoken, is blasphemy. We are in the place of a creature. He is the Creator; He may, therefore, justly claim obedience from us. The infidel may call this “blind obedience,” but the Christian calls this intelligent obedience, inasmuch as it is based upon the knowledge that it is God’s Word to which he is obedient. If a man had not God’s Word, he might well be said to be in blindness and darkness... All that we want to know is that God has spoken, and then obedience becomes the...

by Vance Havner Some time ago a friend of mine took me to a restaurant where they must love darkness rather than light. I stumbled into the dimly-lit cavern, fumbled for a chair, and mumbled that I needed a flashlight to read the menu. When the food came I ate it by faith and not by sight. Gradually, however, I began to make out objects a little more clearly. My host said, "Funny, isn't it, how we get used to the dark?"      We are living in the dark. The closing chapter of this age is dominated by the prince and powers of darkness. Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. The night is far spent; the blackness is more extensive and more excessive as it deepens just before the dawn.      However, early Christians set the world aglow because absolute Light was pitched against absolute darkness. The early Christians believed that the gospel was the only hope of the world, that without it all men were lost and all...

commenting on Romans 1:22-23, Barnhouse writes:      When man departed from God, there was an immediate way opened back into the presence of God, a way that was guarded by cherubim sent from Heaven with a flaming sword to keep that way open for man. It was the way of the altar, the way of the blood: a picture of the cross of Jesus Christ.  It was not long before Cain took the path of opposition. He did not want to submit himself to God and recognize his own sinfulness.  He killed his brother Abel, who was obeying God by faith in bringing the sin-offering of the lamb.  That murder was a great picture of human brotherhood.  It showed what the brotherhood of man really is: one man killing another who was from the same father and out of the same womb.  Do not prate about the brotherhood of man.  God has condemned all possibility of attaining any solution of the human problem apart from Himself.      Can we proje...

Last eve I paused beside the blacksmith's door, And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime; Then looking in, I saw upon the floor, Old hammers worn with beating years of time. "How many anvils have you had," said I, "To wear and batter all these hammers so?" "Just one," said he, and then with twinkling eye, "The anvil wears the hammers out, you know." "And so," I thought, "The Anvil of God's Word For ages skeptic blows have beat upon, Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard, The Anvil is unharmed, the hammers gone." —John Clifford, D.D.