Do You Want to Get Well??

"Plead your own feebleness and inability to help yourselves. This was the impotent man's plea at the pool of Bethesda.

John 5:6,7 "When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, 'Do you want to get well?' 

'Sir,' the invalid replied, 'I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.'

So say you, Lord, I have lain many years with this dead plagued heart, beside the open fountain of your blood; I am unable to move to it of myself; I have none to put me in: ordinances cannot do it; ministers cannot do it; you must put to your helping hand, or else the work will remain unperformed."

-Ralph Erskine on What Sinners Should Plead with God, read more here!!!

Regeneration - A Necessity!!!

Dr. Arthur W. Pink on the Necessity of Regeneration:

"How could one possibly enter a world of ineffable holiness who has spent all of his time in sin, i.e., pleasing self? How could he possibly sing the song of the Lamb if his heart has never been tuned unto it? How could he endure to behold the awful majesty of God face to face, who never before so much as saw Him “through a glass darkly” by the eye of faith? As it is excruciating torture for eyes that have been long confined to dismal darkness, to suddenly gaze upon the bright beams of the midday sun, so will it be when the unregenerate behold Him who is Light. Instead of welcoming such a sight “all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him” (Rev. 1:7); yea, so overwhelming will be their anguish, they will call to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb” (Rev. 6:1 7). And, my reader, that will be your experience, unless God regenerate you!"  

Read more here!

The Electing Love of God

"Whom he predestinated, them he also called'. Election is the foundation-cause of our vocation. It is not because some are more worthy to partake of the heavenly calling than others, for we were 'all in our blood' (Ezek.16:6). What worthiness is in us? What worthiness was there in Mary Magdalene, out of whom seven devils were cast? What worthiness in the Corinthians, when God began to call them by the gospel? They were fornicators, effeminate, idolaters. 'Such were some of you, but ye are washed'. Before effectual calling, we were not only without strength, but 'enemies' (Col. 1:21). So that the foundation of vocation is election."

-Thomas Watson (c. 1620-1686), A Body of Divinity.

Moses Wrote of Me

                         "…[Moses] wrote of Me” –John 5:46

How Moses wrote of Christ?

1. By enumerating the promises which had respect to the Messiah.

    " In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." (Genesis 12: 3)

"A star shall  rise out of Jacob .." (Deuteronomy 10:150) 

"The scepter shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh come.." (Numbers 24:17; Genesis 49:10) 

2. He restricted these promises to a certain family from which the Messiah was to be born; and to which the promise was afterwards more frequently referred, and spoken of. 

3. The whole Levitical priesthood, and ceremonial worship, sacrifices, oblations, the altar, the temple, and other things which Moses described, all looked forward to Christ. The kings and kingdom of the Jewish nation were types of Christ, and of his kingdom. 


Hence, Moses wrote many things of Christ.

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Excerpted from the Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, translated from the original Latin,by the Rev. G. W. Williard, A. M. , Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Com.Grand Rapids, Michigan,  1956, Q&A 19, p.102-13.