The Chronicles

Yesterday (Friday) I had the day off from work; it was the first time in over a year that I was able to preach with Pastor McCurley at lunch as we used to do. It was refreshing to to have him with me. I also had lots of energy, which I normally don't have, usually coming from after work. He was going to have to leave right after he finished preaching so I got there 20 minutes before him and began preaching on Psalm 119:81, "My soul faints for your salvation; but I hope in your word."

I preached on how the Christian sometimes finds himself fainting in this life, unable to go on, as he looks to God to save him from his sin and misery; that the Christian's eyes are always looking to his future salvation when God will deliver him from his troubles. For these times, God gives us in the present His word to hope and trust in, which sustains us in this life as we look to the things promised in it and wait upon God. The Christian life is often of this twofold character: of fainting and of hoping. God uses the weakness of faith to strengthen us.

The Lord gave me much liberty in opening up His word and much compassion for the people that heard as they walked by. I continued until Pastor McCurley arrived. He preached on the verse, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." His preaching was striking in contrast to the people walking by who were minding their own things, who had probably never heard such a message before. God's Son, the Redeemer, was magnified before them.

Prayer

"Words are but the body, the argument, the outside of prayer; sighs are nearer the heart work. A dumb beggar gets an alm at Christ's gates, even by making signs, when his tongue cannot plead for him; and the rather, because he is dumb... Tears have a tongue, and grammar, and language, that our Father knows. Babes have no prayer for the breast, but weeping: the mother can read hunger in weeping."


- Samuel Rutherford (1600?-1661)

The Love Letters, #3, part 3

“Now, my dear, I desire willingly and cheerfully to resign my right in you to your Father and my Father, who has the greatest interest in you. And confident I am, though men have separated us for a time yet our God will ere long bring us together again where we shall eternally enjoy one another, never to part more. O let me hear how God bears up your heart, and let me taste of those comforts that support you, that they may be as pillars of marble to bear up my sinking spirit. I can write no more. Farewell, farewell, my dear, till we meet there where we shall never bid farewell more; till which time I leave you in the bosom of a loving, tender-hearted Father, and so I rest till I shall forever rest in Heaven,

Mary Love”


- A letter (1651) from Mary Love to her husband Christopher Love the night before he was executed.

The Love Letters, #3, part 2

"And be not discouraged when you shall see a guard of soldiers triumphing with their trumpets about you, but lift up your head and you shall behold God with a guard of His holy angels, triumphing to receive you to glory. Be not dismayed at the scoffs and reproaches that you may meet with in your short way to heaven, for be assured that God will not only glorify your body and soul in heaven but He will also make the memory of you to be glorious on earth!

O let not one troubled thought for your wife and babies arise within you. Your God will be our God and our portion. He will be a husband to your widow and a father to your children; the grace of your God will be sufficient for us."

- A letter (1651) from Mary Love to her husband Christopher Love the night before he was executed.

The Love Letters, #3

"My Heavenly Dear,

I call you so because God has put heaven into you before He has taken you to heaven. You now behold God, Christ and glory, as in a glass; but tomorrow, heaven's gates will be opened and you shall be in the full enjoyment of all those glories which eye has not seen, nor ear has heard, neither can the heart of man understand. God has now swallowed up your heart in the thoughts of heaven, but ere long you shall be swallowed up in the enjoyment of heaven. And no marvel there should be such quietness and calmness in your spirit while you are sailing in this tempestuous sea, because you perceive by the eye of faith a haven of rest where you shall be richly laden with all the glories of heaven.

O lift up your heart with joy when you lay your dear head on the block in the thought of this: that you are laying your head to rest in your Father's bosom which, when you do awake, shall be crowned not with an earthly fading crown but with a heavenly eternal crown of glory."


- A letter (1651) from Mary Love to her husband Christopher Love, the night before he was to be executed.

The Chronicles

The Friday before last I preached on Psalm 46.

The Chronicles

New Years Eve (a Thursday night) I went downtown to preach. There wasn't as many people as I expected, perhaps from the cold. But my hat and gloves kept me warm enough. It was hard to preach. It was so cold I wasn't able to be very loud, lots of various noises crowded my voice out, people went about with their friends and no one really seemed to care about what I was saying. My spirit was heavy before I went downtown that night, and unlike usual, I found little comfort as I preached.

Being depressed and finding little strength in my own heart, I decided to end by preaching on the end of John 17, where Christ says "I have overcome the world".

I think this evening when I go out again in a bit, I will preach on the same thing, and try to find and open up more than I found last time...

Keeping the Heart

"The heart of man is his worst part before it be regenerate, and the best afterwards; it is the seat of principles, and fountain of actions. The eye of God is, and the eye of a Christian ought to be, principally fixed upon it.

The greatest difficulty in conversion is to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion, is to keep the heart with God. Here lies the very pinch and stress of religion; here is that that makes the way to life a narrow way, and the gate to heaven a strait gate."


- John Flavel (1628-1691), an English presbyterian that was ejected from his pulpit in 1662 by Charles II. He remained to be one of the most popular of the puritans, his warm and practical writings spiritually feeding many during his times, and many still today.

The Loveliness of Christ

"O pity for evermore that there should be such a one as Christ Jesus, so boundless, so bottomless, and so incomparable in infinite excellency, and sweetness, and so few souls to take Him! O, you poor dry and dead souls, why will you not come here with your empty vessels and your empty souls to this huge, and fair, and deep, and sweet well of life, and fill all your empty vessels? O, how Christ is so large in sweetness and worth, and we so narrow, pinched, so ebb, and so void of all happiness, and yet men will not take him! They lose their love miserably, who will not bestow it upon this Lovely One.


- Samuel Rutherford (1600?-1661), a Scottish divine and delegate to the Westminster Assembly. He wrote in his letters, "I am most gladly content that Christ breaketh all my idols in pieces: it hath put a new edge upon my blunted love to Christ. I see He is jealous of my love, and will have all to Himself."

The Love Letters, #2

“More Dear to Me than Ever,

It adds to my rejoicing that I have so good and gracious a wife to part with for the Lord Jesus. In your grief, I have been grieved; but in your joy I have been comforted. Surely, nature could never help you to bear so heavy a stroke with so much silence and submission to the hand of God! Oh, dearest, every line which you write gladdens my heart. I dare not think that there is such a creature as Mary Love in the world. For Kit and Mall [the two living children], I can think of them without trouble, leaving them to so good a God and so good a mother.

Be comforted concerning your husband, who may more honor God in his death than in his life. The will of the Lord be done; he is fully satisfied with the hand of God. Though there is but little between him and death, he knows that there is but little between him and heaven, and that ravishes his heart.”


- Christopher Love, in a letter (1651) to his wife Mary Love while in prison in a tower awaiting execution. The letter ends, “The very things I thought to have written you, you have written to me. I have had more comfort from your gracious letters than from all the counsel I have had from anyone else in the world. Well be assured that we shall meet in heaven.”

Christ Offered

“Seeing Christ comes near you in this gospel, and this is one of the market days, I entreat you, while He is near, receive Him, call upon Him while He is near… open to Him, take Him in, give Him welcome… There is not a conscience in any man that hears this gospel, but that He will have this testimony from him in it, that He came near them, was in their sight and within their reach and grip, as it were, if they would have put out their hand to receive him… O receive this gospel, give him room; while He is content to sup with you, take Him in, make sure of your union with Him. This is the end [design] why this report is made, and Christ is laid before you, even that you may lay yourselves over on Him.”


- James Durham (1622-1658), a commissioner of the Church of Scotland to the Westminster Assembly, in his second sermon on Isaiah 53. In the same sermon Durham interprets Christ knocking at the door in Rev. 3:17 as “an earnest invitation to make way for Christ Jesus, wanting nothing but an entry into the heart.” Durham understands this appeal of Christ in the gospel to be gracious, according to 2 Cor. 6:1, “We beseech you not to receive this grace in vain, which is not meant of saving grace, but of the gracious offer of grace and reconciliation through Him.”

The Chronicles

Last Saturday was a day of prayer and fasting for our nation. Our nation has done much to provoke God’s anger and judgements, being full of unbelief, false religions, atheism, and people doing whatever is right in their own eyes instead of doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord. Sin is boasted of and paraded in our society, no longer being a shame to us. Our government does not fear God, nor use His moral law as a standard of righteousness. God’s Word, instead of being reverenced, is mocked, ignored and gladly replaced with the wisdom of man. Christ’s church in this land is little better: split with many schisms, deluded with false doctrine, laden under unbiblical worship, and content with a dead faith unable to change lives to the glory of Christ.

Under such circumstances we did what the Bible directs us to do: hold a public day of prayer and fasting, confessing our nation and our church’s sins in order that in bringing them to the surface the Lord would pardon them and bring righteousness to our land by His Holy Spirit. We prayed that the Lord would bring great reformation to our land, that the civil government would profess and fear Christ as the King of kings, that godly civil magistrates would fear God more than man and would remove false religion and worship from our nation, would enforce God’s 10 commandments in our society and that they church would grow strong and unify herself under the influence of Christ’s grace from heaven, purify herself in doctrine and worship, and be filled with a faith that sanctifies sinners to the glory of Christ.

In accord with the purpose of the day, after our meeting where we learned from scripture and prayed, I went out to downtown Greenville to preach. It turns out that I got there after a Christmas parade had gone through and people were leaving. The roads were blocked off and there was a festival with rides for kids at the square I normally preach at. So went and stood on the opposite corners and began to preach loudly towards the families and people congregated and walking by, and said,

“Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the LORD. For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." (Jer. 2:12,13)

I also preached on Jer 2:19 and 3:12

“Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.”

“Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the LORD; and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the LORD, and I will not keep anger for ever.”

The Lord gave me much liberty and confidence in God’s Word that night as I preached for an hour and a half or so; many people took notice, and heard, I believe, sufficiently enough to save them. A guy came up to me and asked me how I picked out the corner I was on to preach on. I said that this corner was as good as any. He said that some people preach in front of bars or this or that. I said that it didn’t matter to me. People’s problem is not whether they are drunkards or not, but that they need their sins to be forgiven by God.

The Chronicles - San Francisco

Tuesday afternoon I took the ferry across the Bay of San Francisco. The only thing more beautiful than the weather was the view: rolling hills lining the expansive water, sail boats casually navigating the breeze, big tankers slowly floating along, bridges lining the distance, islands passing by and military strongholds upon the highest embankments protecting the borders. The sight of this great port city, rich with the merchandise and trading of the world made me think of Tyre of old,

"Howl, ye ships of Tarshish; for it is laid waste... Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days?... Who hath taken counsel against Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffikers are the honorable of the earth? The Lord of Armies has purposed it, to stain the pride of all glory." (Isa. 23:1,7-9)

As soon as one is off the ferry shopping venues and malls immediately present themselves. I walked down the sidewalk along the piers, being taken in with all of the unfamiliar sights and sounds. There was such a diversity of people, activities, buildings, and districts. There was already a line 45 minutes long for the trolley I was going to take for a scenic ride up to Union Square, so I had to change plans. After wondering about a few blocks I found a bus going that way and after asking a few people for directions I made it to Union Square: a sqare block park in the middle of giant buildings surrounding it on every side.

I felt more than a little out of place. Everyone seemed like they were in a rush going somewhere; all types of people were passing by, many of whom probably didn't even know English. I had no idea where I was other than that in a half hour someone was supposed to pick me up to go eat. I felt alone, like a foreigner in a strange land, not knowing what I was doing.

Then I considered that all these people I saw were yet made in the image of God and that in the midst of the hustle and bustle and impressive buildings, the Creator remains the same and that He is as the bright sun that was shining in the sky overhead, and that He would be with me as I sought to preach to His creatures who are all in a hurry doing something else.

I preached on the parable of the prodigal son from Luke 15: how God the Father rejoices and comes running to hug us and weep upon our neck when we repent and come back to Him, rejoincing that though "my son was dead, he is alive again; he was lost, but now is found." The big buildings reflected my voice well so that lots of people could hear. The Lord gave me much help and many people listened to what I said as they stood at the intersection and walked by. After a half hour or so I had to stop and catch my ride to dinner.