Returning to Worship Information

Menu

Join us for worship services Sundays at 9:30am

The Pilgrim Path (11-2-2020)

The Pilgrim Path---Philippians 1: 20, 21

“…as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

JOHN CALVIN---The Reformer…

John Calvin was born in France in 1509. He was the son of a secretary of the Bishop of Noyon. He received what would have been considered a tremendous education at Orleans, Bourges, and Paris, with full awareness that his dad had hopes he would end up with a career in Law. Young John was not all that excited about his dad’s desires for vocation. From all indications, John was attracted by an “evangelical” group in France that was already questioning human works in salvation, and the doctrine of transubstantiation (the writings of Jacques LeFevre d’Etaples). Sometime around age 23—24, Calvin was wondrously converted by the grace of God. This is not something Calvin ever talks about a great deal in his works---he just gives grateful expression to the mercy of God for sinners.

Cavin would flee Paris around 1535. Some two dozen Protestants would have just been burned alive for their anti-Catholic views---and Calvin possessed the same views. He would head to Geneva, Switzerland with Guillaume Farel---and write the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). The authorities of Geneva hoped Calvin would be the man to lead them in spiritual and civil renewal---but after a short time---they drove him away. He and Farel would work for three years among refugees in Strassburg. The leaders of Geneva would come “back” to Calvin---and beg him to return to Geneva---deeming him the only one strong enough to hold off a return to Catholicism--- and deal with unbiblical patterns of life across culture…

Calvin did not have quite the electric personality of Martin Luther---but he was an excellent Bible Expositor and super writer. Many Bible commentaries bear his name---and his Institutes, represent a classic understanding of God’s truth---and how it applies to the world (they are read around the globe).

Calvin’s motto was:

Cor meum tibi offero, Domine, prompte et sincere.

“My heart I offer to you, O LORD, promptly and sincerely.”

So---an array of Quotes from John Calvin:

Since we are all naturally prone to hypocrisy, any empty semblance of righteousness is quite enough to satisfy us instead of righteousness itself.

We cannot rely on God’s promises without obeying His commandments.

If the aspect of the world now dazzles your eyes, the last day will cure you of this folly, but it will be too late.

Satan, who is a wonderful contriver of delusions, is constantly laying snares to entrap ignorant and heedless persons.

We know what a strong propensity men have to falsehood, so that they not only have a natural desire to be deceived, but each individual appears to be ingenious in deceiving himself.

You cannot find a man anywhere, however uncivilized, or wild, who is without some idea of religion. This is because we have all been created to know the majesty of our Creator and, in knowing it, to think more highly of it than anything else. We are to honor it with all awe, love, and reverence.

Never attempt to search after God anywhere but in His sacred Word, and never speak or think of Him farther than we have it for our guide.

So long as we do not look beyond the earth, we are quite pleased with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue; we address ourselves in the most flattering terms, and seem only less than demigods…

…how rulers live influence the commonweal, for good or evil. A commonwealth can possess every imaginable law, but if its rulers are steeped in evil, then its laws are reduced to worthless paper, and its constitution becomes worthless and useless (John Calvin, Sermons on the Book of Micah, P & R Pub. Phillipsburg, NJ, 2003).

…we ought to groan before God and pray that by mediation of his grace it might please him to spare us from such a profound corruption. For, as I have said, the height of iniquity lies in our loving evil and hating good. For these two are inseparably united, for if we love evil, of necessity, we will hate the good and will become incapable of recognizing good. And once the Devil has triumphed in this way, he causes us to crave the very things God condemns, and which provoke God’s wrath against us…

“Avarice is the root of all evil” (I Timothy 6: 10), because it picks people clean and underlies all the other forms of injustice and harm. For once people fall under its sway, they cease to be trustworthy or honorable.

We must, I repeat, put an end to this craving for the world’s goods, or we will forever be tormented by an insatiable covetousness. We must stop crying: “Why can’t I have more than I have?”---the remedy is simple…It lies in trusting in the providence of God, as well as in understanding the intent of the LORD’S Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.” If we understand this, then avarice would no longer enslave us as it does…

…when God assigns us a modest condition, it benefits us, since we are so prone to undo ourselves by misusing the blessings, he might have given us.

The truth of God does not depend upon the will of men.

God is not satisfied by the people’s merely resting from their weekly labors; rather, inward sanctification is the primary purpose of the Sabbath.

The work of the gospel must show in our life, and this comes about when we are righteous, kind-hearted, and faithful.

A Prayer of Calvin’s / December 23, 1550:

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, inasmuch as we constantly provoke your wrath against us and must be chastised by the blows of your hand, in order to humble us and teach us to be subject to you in true and willing obedience, grant us the grace that we not faint under your scourges, but lift our spirits to the hope of deliverance which you give us through our Mediator, whom you once and for all have sent into the world, that through him you might reconcile us to yourself and also provide us help whenever we need it. May we also learn to rely on your only-begotten Son, so that with courageous hearts we may pass through all the world’s miseries, never growing weary, until we finally attain the victory and come to that blessed rest and enjoy the fruit of our triumph, through the same Jesus Christ our LORD. Amen.

Grace and Peace in Jesus, the Only Redeemer of broken and wretched souls, Pastor Jason