Blog Archives - Ironworks Pike Community Church

4/19/2017

Living By Inner Impressions.

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"Some, I know, fall into a very vicious habit, which habit they excuse themselves—namely, that of ordering their footsteps according to impressions.

Every now and then I meet with people whom I think to be rather weak in the head, who will journey from place to place and will perform follies by the gross under the belief that they are doing the will of God because some silly whim of their diseased brains is imagined to be an inspiration from above.

There are occasionally impressions of the Holy Spirit which guide men where no other guidance could have answered the end. I do not doubt the old story of the Quaker who was disturbed at night and could not sleep and was led to go to a person's house miles away and knock at the door just at the time when the inhabitant was about to commit suicide—just in time to prevent the act. I have been the subject of such impressions, myself, and have seen very singular results.

But to live by impressions is oftentimes to live the life of a fool and even to fall into downright rebellion against the revealed Word of God. Not your impressions, but that which is in this Bible must always guide you. "To the Law and to the Testimony." If it is not according to this Word, the impression comes not from God—it may proceed from Satan, or from your own distempered brain! Our prayer must be, "Order my steps in Your Word." -- Charles H. Spurgeon, message #878, "A Well-Ordered Life."

4/14/2017

Good Friday 2017: What Was Finished?

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One of Jesus' most famous sayings was the three-word phrase, "It is finished" (John 19:30). But what did He mean? There was so much more yet to come! The answer is that He finished paying for the sins of the Lord's people.

His self-sacrifice happened once (Hebrews 7:27, 9:26-28). His blood/death sanctified His people in the sight of God (Hebrews 10:10). He didn't make purification potentially possible. Christ actually accomplished purification on behalf of the many (Hebrews 1:3).

"It is finished" means the bread and the wine of the Lord's Table do not change into Christ's flesh and blood. Such a magical change of Communion elements is unneeded. Christ, by dying one time, accomplished everything He needed to accomplish, all at one time, in one place, on the cross. This is why Christian churches should never have a cross with Christ still hanging on it.

"It is finished" also means that Christ's death was a payment. According to my bank, we will pay off our mortgage in 2027. But if I had sufficient money, I could pay off my mortgage today. If I did that, then my mortgage debt would be objectively finished.

This is what Jesus accomplished when He died. He paid the sin-debt for the many (Heb. 9:28), past, present, and future. To say that Christ died so that worshipers could be energized by grace, so that they may keep the commandments, so that they may enter Paradise (or maybe a nicer district of purgatory) when they die, is salvation by works, which the Bible rejects.

I ask: How many legalistic Christians are still trying to mail in moral mortgage checks to God, on a debt they no longer owe? How many Christians worry about the possibility of their own future unbelief, when Christ already paid their debt of that sin?

It -- the payment for our sins -- is finished.