The Heart of Every Real Christian is Most Reverent Towards the Law of the Lord

“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” (Matthew 5:18)

Charles H. Spurgeon, in a sermon preached on May 21,1882 , said:
It has been said that he who understands the two covenants is a theologian, and this is, no doubt, true. I may also say that the man who knows the relative positions of the Law and the Gospel has the keys of the situation in the matter of doctrine. The relationship of the Law to myself, and how it condemns me; the relationship of the Gospel to myself, and how if I be a believer it justifies me--these are two points which every Christian man should clearly understand. He should not “see men as trees walking” in this department, or else he may cause himself great sorrow, and fall into errors which will be grievous to his heart and injurious to his life. To form a mingle-mangle of law and gospel is to teach that which is neither law or gospel, but the opposite of both. May the Spirit of God be our teacher, and the Word of God be our lesson-book, and then we shall not err.

Very great mistakes have been made about the law. Not long ago there were those about us who affirmed that the law is utterly abrogated and abolished, and they openly taught that believers were not bound to make the moral law the rule of their lives. What would have been sin in other men they counted to be no sin in themselves. From such Antinomianism as that may God deliver us. We are not under the law as the method of salvation, but we delight to see the law in the hand of Christ, and desire to obey the Lord in all things. Others have been met with who have taught that Jesus mitigated and softened down the law, and they have in effect said that the perfect law of God was too hard for imperfect beings, and therefore God has given us a milder and easier rule. These tread dangerously upon the verge of terrible error, although we believe that they are little aware of it. Alas, we have met with authors who have gone much further than this, and have railed at the law. Oh, the hard words that I have sometimes read against the holy law of God! How very unlike to those which the apostle used when he said, “The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” How different from the reverent spirit which made him say, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” You know how David loved the law of God, and sang its praises all through the longest of the Psalms. The heart of every real Christian is most reverent towards the law of the Lord. It is perfect, nay, it is perfection itself. We believe that we shall never have reached perfection till we are perfectly conformed to it. A sanctification which stops short of perfect conformity to the law cannot truthfully be called perfect sanctification, for every want of exact conformity to the perfect law is sin. May the Spirit of God help us while, in imitation of our Lord Jesus, we endeavor to magnify the law.

“The Perpetuity of the Law of God”

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A Message Delivered on May 21, 1882 by C. H. Spurgeon
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The Perfect Law of God Must Stand Forever
 The Law of God Must Be Perpetual: No Abrogation, No Amendment.

Misunderstanding Grace : “outside the law” is not the same as having no law
Misunderstanding Grace: Easy to miss the path and go far astray from the truth
Misunderstanding Grace – Antinomianism’s primary error is confusing Justification with Sanctification
Misunderstanding on the teaching of Grace

Prosperity Gospel is the Religion of the Pharisees: "I'm rich because I'm so righteous that God is blessing me."

Since Matthew 6:1-18 showed the hypocrisy of the Pharisees' religion, it follows that wherever you have hypocritical religion you will have greed. So, our Lord deals with their view of wealth and money. Wherever you find a false teacher, invariably you will find that he is in it for the money. That is why the Bible says that we are not to discharge our ministry for the sake of filthy lucre (I Pet. 5:2). The Bible characterizes hypocritical religion in two ways: it is greedy of money, and it is immoral in its lusts. Those two things follow in the course of false religions and false religious leaders.
The Pharisees were ...... -- using their religious position to fill their pockets. Twice Jesus had to take a whip and cleanse the temple (Jn. 2:13-17; 21:12- 13). Their system was one that filled their greed. They were using their religious position to get rich. There is nothing more foul smelling to the nostrils of God than hypocrisy and greed. I daresay there are people in our own country (some even well-known on television) who are doing exactly the same thing. Wherever there is religious hypocrisy, inevitably there is the problem of greed.
To the Pharisees, being rich was a sign of holiness. In other words, "I'm rich because I'm so righteous that God is blessing me." When the Lord said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Mt. 19:24), that was absolutely and utterly shocking. To the Pharisees, riches were the stamp of divine approval on one's life because God gave riches to those who were righteous. To say that a rich man could no more enter the kingdom than a camel could go through the eye of a needle was really a shocking statement because they equated money with the blessing of God. So they greedily gathered money, and the richer they became the more they pretended to the people that they were spiritual. Overcoming Materialism Treasure in Heaven--Part 1 by John MacArthur
"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Mat 6:19-24

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I Have Enough
Our Greatest Reward
Be Faithful to The Gospel of Jesus Christ: No Prosperity “gospel”, No False “christ”
Distinguish Between the Gospel and False Gospels

Misunderstanding Grace : “outside the law” is not the same as having no law

‘In [Romans] chapter 6, St. Paul takes up the special work of faith, the struggle which the spirit wages against the flesh to kill off those sins and desires that remain after a person has been made just. He teaches us that faith doesn’t so free us from sin that we can be idle, lazy and self-assured, as though there were no more sin in us. Sin is there, but, because of faith that struggles against it, God does not reckon sin as deserving damnation. Therefore we have in our own selves a lifetime of work cut out for us; we have to tame our body, kill its lusts, force its members to obey the spirit and not the lusts. We must do this so that we may conform to the death and resurrection of Christ and complete our Baptism, which signifies a death to sin and a new life of grace. Our aim is to be completely clean from sin and then to rise bodily with Christ and live forever.
St. Paul says that we can accomplish all this because we are in grace and not in the law. He explains that to be “outside the law” is not the same as having no law and being able to do what you please. No, being “under the law” means living without grace, surrounded by the works of the law. Then surely sin reigns by means of the law, since no one is naturally well-disposed toward the law. That very condition, however, is the greatest sin. But grace makes the law lovable to us, so there is then no sin any more, and the law is no longer against us but one with us.
This is true freedom from sin and from the law; St. Paul writes about this for the rest of the chapter. He says it is a freedom only to do good with eagerness and to live a good life without the coercion of the law. This freedom is, therefore, a spiritual freedom which does not suspend the law but which supplies what the law demands, namely eagerness and love. These silence the law so that it has no further cause to drive people on and make demands of them. It’s as though you owed something to a moneylender and couldn’t pay him. You could be rid of him in one of two ways: either he would take nothing from you and would tear up his account book, or a pious man would pay for you and give you what you needed to satisfy your debt. That’s exactly how Christ freed us from the law. Therefore our freedom is not a wild, fleshy freedom that has no obligation to do anything. On the contrary, it is a freedom that does a great deal, indeed everything, yet is free of the law’s demands and debts.’ Preface to the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans by Martin Luther, 1483-1546 Translated by Bro. Andrew Thornton, OSB


Related Posts:
Misunderstanding Grace: Easy to miss the path and go far astray from the truth
Misunderstanding Grace – Antinomianism’s primary error is confusing Justification with Sanctification
Misunderstanding on the teaching of Grace
The Heart of Every Real Christian is Most Reverent Towards the Law of the Lord

God Centered Worship: A Matter of Infinite Importance

"You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, .... But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." John 4:22-24


Worship matters and it must be anchored  entirely on God's truth. The entire truth about God, which He has revealed about himself  within His word, is the key for any worshiper in truly  knowing God and worshiping  God acceptably in spirit and in truth. It is a matter of infinite importance. Without getting or accepting the complete truth about God as revealed by the scriptures only mean a professed worshiper  is not truly worshiping the God of the bible  but a "god" of his or her own imagination. It is a matter of eternal consequence when people get worship wrong, as a result they do not worship God acceptably however well meaning they may be. Worship matters,  it really does.

‘Worship is not an addendum to life, it is at life’s core. You see, the people who worship God acceptably enter into eternal life, but the people who do not worship God acceptably enter into eternal death. Worship, then, becomes the core. Time and eternity are determined by the nature of a person’s worship.' True Worship by John MacArthur, Jr.


Quotes from Bob Kauflin’s book “Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God“:
Worship matters. It matters to God because he is the one ultimately worthy of all worship. It matters to us because worshiping God is the reason for which we were created. And it matters to every worship leader, because we have no greater privilege than leading others to encounter the greatness of God. That’s why it’s so important to think carefully about what we do and why we do it. (Pg 19)

Because I want to make it clear from the start that worship isn’t primarily about music, techniques, liturgies, songs, or methodologies. It’s about our hearts. It’s about what and who we love more than anything. Here’s my sobering discovery. I learned that I could lead others in worshiping God and be worshiping something else in my own heart. But by the grace of God, I was beginning to understand what worship is all about. (Pg 25)
That’s why as worship leaders our primary concern can’t be song preparation, creative arrangements, or the latest cool gear. Our primary concern has to be the state of our hearts. The great hymn-writer Isaac Watts once wrote: The Great God values not the service of men, if the heart be not in it: The Lord sees and judges the heart; he has no regard to outward forms of worship, if there be no inward adoration, if no devout affection be employed therein. It is therefore a matter of infinite importance, to have the whole heart engaged steadfastly for God. (Pg 26)
Related Posts:
God Centered Worship: The Importance of Singing Truth
Genuine worship is a response to divine truth as God has revealed Himself in His Word
What Kind of Worship God Desires From His People ?
Finding Joy in Worship – Psalm 100 by Dr. Arturo G. Azurdia

God Centered Worship: The Importance of Singing Truth

Soli Deo Gloria: The Erosion Of God-Centered Worship

Wherever in the church biblical authority has been lost, Christ has been displaced, the gospel has been distorted, or faith has been perverted, it has always been for one reason: our interests have displaced God’s and we are doing his work in our way. The loss of God’s centrality in the life of today’s church is common and lamentable. It is this loss that allows us to transform worship into entertainment, gospel preaching into marketing, believing into technique, being good into feeling good about ourselves, and faithfulness into being successful. As a result, God, Christ and the Bible have come to mean too little to us and rest too inconsequentially upon us.
God does not exist to satisfy human ambitions, cravings, the appetite for consumption, or our own private spiritual interests. We must focus on God in our worship, rather than the satisfaction of our personal needs. God is sovereign in worship; we are not. Our concern must be for God’s kingdom, not our own empires, popularity or success.

We reaffirm that because salvation is of God and has been accomplished by God, it is for God’s glory and that we must glorify him always. We must live our entire lives before the face of God, under the authority of God and for his glory alone. We deny that we can properly glorify God if our worship is confused with entertainment, if we neglect either Law or Gospel in our preaching, or if self-improvement, self-esteem or self- fulfillment are allowed to become alternatives to the gospel.
THE CAMBRIDGE DECLARATION of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals April 20, 1996



Quotes from Bob Kauflin's book "Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God":
"singing and preaching aren’t incompatible or opposed to each other in any way.  Both are meant to exalt the glory of Christ in our hearts, minds, and wills.  Then whole meeting is worship; the whole meeting should be filled with God’s Word.  And the whole meeting should be characterized by the Spirit’s presence." (Pg  89)

"Songs are de facto theology.  They teach us who God is, what he’s like, and how to relate to him.  ”We are what we sing,” one man said.  That’s why we want to sing God’s Word.' (Pg 92)

"Singing God’s Word can include more than reciting specific verses in song.  If the Word of Christ is going to “dwell in [us] richly” (Colossians 3:16), we need songs that explain, clarify, and expound on what God’s word says.  We need songs that have substantive, theologically rich, biblically faithful lyrics.  A consistent diet of shallow, subjective worship songs tends to produce shallow, subjective Christians. (Pg 92)
.......Too often we can be tempted to choose songs because of the music rather than the theological content.  We need to realize that when words are combined with music we can be deceived.  Music can make shallow lyrics sound deep.  A great rhythm section can make drivel sound profound and make you want to sing it again." (Pg 93)
Related Posts:
Genuine worship is a response to divine truth as God has revealed Himself in His Word
What Kind of Worship God Desires From His People ?
Finding Joy in Worship – Psalm 100 by Dr. Arturo G. Azurdia