Leaving Beyond – Grounded In Scripture

“The Word is the field in which Christ, the pearl of price, is hidden. Oh, then, search this field! Study the Scriptures. There is no danger of digging too deep here.” ~ Thomas Watson

Do yourself a favor. Pull up one of your pastors sermons. This may prove especially challenging if your pastor is neither an expository preacher nor a topical preacher. Far too often, many today, cannot truly be identified with either.

Open Your Bible! When he says where you will be in the passage, pause him! Go to that passage. Read it in its entirety. Do not listen to his sermon. Study the passage yourself. If that means putting days between you and your Bible and the remainder of his sermon, do it!

Ask questions of the passage. Who wrote it? Who did they write it to? What was going on at the time it was written? Where does it fit within redemptive history? What kind of book is it—Epistle, History? This truly matters! If you have time, read the entire book to get the flow, especially if this is an epistle. Take your time and don’t be in a rush.

Pray and ask God to help you understand what the text says and what it truly means. You’re not looking for something mystical to jump off the page at you. You’re not looking to see what it means to you. You’re not looking for new revelation. You’re going into the text to see what it meant when it was written so you can understand what it means now and how it correctly applies to your life. You’re asking if this text is simply describing something or if it is a command and prescribing something that you are to obey as well.

Read multiple commentaries. Go back and read the passage again. Then, when you believe you have a good grasp on what the original author meant when they wrote it, hit play.

Is your pastor claiming new revelation? Is he honoring the original authors intended meaning and bringing the correct meaning of that passage to bear on the mind of his audience or is he claiming something foreign to the original authors intended meaning? Is he opening that text up as you just did and going into it to bring out of it it’s correct meaning, or is he coming to the text with his own ideas and using that text to say what he wants it to say?

Is he working more diligently than you just did to be faithful to the meaning and exposition of that text or is he treating God’s Word with irreverence and making his approach sound mystical and super-spiritual but what he is really doing is using Scripture to preach his own message and leading you and others astray?

How are you learning to treat God’s Word from the example set before you in the pulpit? Are you learning a high view of Scripture and as a result you have a high view of God or are you hearing messages that are good for a sound-byte to make the pastor more popular but are insufficient for helping you grow and mature in your faith?

Test his teaching against the text. What is he preaching—himself, his imaginations, claims of extra-biblical revelation, or the Word?

Grace and Peace, y’all
Soli Deo Gloria

April J. Buchanan

“The main trouble in the church today is that people are not interested in the truth. They are only interested in experiences.” ~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones

You can’t deny that she has a way with words. She grabbed you and drew you in less than a full sentence. As you read her post, you almost forgot where you were. It read so well you began to see yourself sitting with her, and no longer were you reading, but you were in her home, sitting at the table over coffee and fresh baked bread, an aroma so strong you could almost smell it. She was now talking to you. She was speaking right to your broken places. She was ministering to the depths of your soul, and her words felt like she understood you in a way that you hadn’t felt seen or understood in a long time.

Compare this dear sister with the woman who has felt unseen by her husband, and another man comes along and he knows exactly what to say. She never imagined she could be someone who would commit adultery. She despised the very thought of it. But she never saw it coming. He may not have even come to her with such evil intentions, but in a short time she lifted her head ashamed and realized that she had been swayed by his charm—his words that seemed to minister to the broken and lonely places in her soul.

We may more readily guard ourselves against the second illustration, recognizing our sinful hearts and God’s warnings against such temptations. But we are so quick to drop our guard against the first. We are swayed by words that speak to our hearts. We read her words and sit at her table. We satisfy our soul drinking deeply from what promises to quench our thirst.

We test her words by how they make us feel. We meditate on her words, certain that there’s just no way she could have known exactly what we needed. We foolishly convince ourselves that our circumstances, problems, and personal feelings that we struggle with are so incredibly unique that if someone speaks to those places, then it must be from God, and it must be for us, and they must be truly from God.

As much as this may sound unloving, it’s said with genuine love: your situation, hardship, loss, struggle, personal struggles are not unique. If you fail to see that, then you are easy prey for those with bad theology and those with bad intentions. The truth is, we all struggle, and we can comfort one another, but it must be in the truth. Just because she shares Scripture and “gets you” doesn’t mean her words are true. Before you sit at her table, test the food.

Be careful in our weakness. Be daily in God’s Word, learning the truth so when we are weak, we remember the truth and when those who come to minister to us in our weakness with false words, we may not fall prey to them but stand firm in the truth.

There’s a lot of well-written false theology in your newsfeed—many who write about how great you are, how unique your testimony is, and how you are special. They pull you up out of your pit, but they do so by appealing to your sinful heart that wants to hear how great you are, how special you are, and how you are going to do big things, and how the world needs your testimony.

Dear friend, their message is not Good News! It is contrary to it. It makes you the hero. You don’t need to be your own hero. We make terrible gods. We need to hear the Gospel. We need to hear Scripture opened and exposited from faithful expositors of God’s Word. We need to pray and ask God to help us in our weakness. We need the truth. And we need to hear that Christ is enough, Scripture is enough, the Gospel is enough. We don’t need another “you are enough” false gospel.

Grace and Peace, y’all
Soli Deo Gloria

April J. Buchanan

“Our hope is not in our ability to persuade, but in the power of God to regenerate.” ~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones

If I look to my family for the hope of their salvation, I will grieve and torment my own soul day and night.

If I look to myself—my intellect, my wisdom, my cunning—in order to find some way to win them to Christ, I show myself to be opposed to the Lord I claim to belong, love, and trust.

But if I look to Christ, my heart may not be unburdened of desire, yet I have hope—hope held in tension with sorrow—for what remains in them and what is ahead of them lest they repent.

Yet looking unto Christ, I have hope: hope for my own soul and hope that He alone is able to save them.

When my words seem wasted upon them and they cast them aside, my Lord hears me and is never troubled by my desperate cry. I seek not to manipulate the will of perfection, but I pray to the God of salvation, that He may take out their hearts of stone, change their will, and grant them faith and repentance.

Late Evening Meditations.

Grace and Peace, y’all
Soli Deo Gloria

April J. Buchanan

“God spoke into nothing and there was something. We cannot, by our speaking, bring anything into existence. We are creatures, not the Creator.” ~ R. C. Sproul

Why is it almost daily in my newsfeed the subtle, deceptive teaching of the power of your words and speaking life or death?

When will you be free from the evil lie that your words are so powerful that you have to be careful what you say because your words have the power of life and death—translated, your words are so powerful that when you speak them you literally have the power to create “life” (e.g. whatever it is that you believe is good and you are trying to speak into existence) or your words have the power to bring forth “death” (e.g. whatever you consider negative or against what you desire)?

The emphasis on being careful is not as noble as it seems, it is actually selfishly motivated. You believe your words are powerful to create life or death to what you desire, therefore you speak as accords with your desires.

Do you not see the bondage you are in? You are bound to only speak what you desire. If the truth contradicts your desire, you sacrifice truth.

Please bear with me when I say this for your sake though it may feel like an attack, but these teachings you have adopted are delusional. They promise what you desire but bind you to lies. You become a liar. Bear with me. You speak what you desire trying to manifest it. You rebuke any word against it even if it’s true. You have convinced yourself it’s not lies and it’s not delusional, that it’s faith. That’s the opposite of faith! Your faith is in your words, not God!

Your words are not that powerful! That should be such freeing words for you to hear.

Sadly, because of these false teachings, you cannot speak the truth if it is considered “death” or “negative”. You can’t make “negative declarations” which means you can only speak what confirms your desires and delusion.

This does not honor God. You do not have the same creative power as God. You are not God. You have bought into the little gods and Word-Faith false doctrines and maybe you don’t realize it. I would venture to say you are probably unfamiliar with church history and the history of your own movement/denomination.

I’m not saying you believe you are a little god. I am saying that perhaps you don’t know the history of what you are adopting beliefs and practices from. You are NOT getting this from a correct exegesis of Scripture. You are getting this from heretics.

If you haven’t subscribed to these beliefs but you hear someone teaching you to “be careful what you say because your words have the power of life and death” and they are saying this as a warning against speaking something that is true and you are made to suppress the truth so that you can speak what you desire, you are listening to someone who is misleading you, whether intentionally or not.

Yes, Scripture says a lot about what we should and should not speak. It is not because our words have creative power but because what we speak comes out of our hearts and reveals either that our hearts are being sanctified in the truth or controlled by our sinful desires.

What proponents of these false teachings fail to realize is that their desires—good or bad—are controlling what they say, even silencing the truth because it may be seen as “negative” or “death” to what they really desire. This is why you will not hear them expose false doctrine or false teachers. And it’s why you will only ever hear them speak what is “positive”. It appears good but it’s actually rooted in sinful desires and heretical doctrines that promise them what they desire.

Friend, Scripture commands us to speak the truth in love as it glorifies God. You can’t possibly share the Gospel or share the truth of who God is and who man really is before a holy God if your tongue is bound only to speak what sounds “positive”. That is why so many who have adopted these beliefs will only share a “Jesus loves you and has great plans for your life” version of the Gospel.

The Gospel is powerful, speak it! God’s Word is powerful, speak it. It is not powerful because you said it, it is powerful because God said it!

Grace and Peace, y’all
Soli Deo Gloria

April J. Buchanan

“You have not been called to succeed, you have been called to obey.” ~ J. I. Packer

I once shared the Gospel—or more often than not a seeker-sensitive version of it, and on the rare occasion a faithful proclamation of it—with great hope that the hearer would be convinced and be saved. When that didn’t happen, I often felt that in some way I had failed. I’d replay the words in my mind, and rather than engaging in a healthy self-examination, I’d often feel like it was partly my fault.

Our understanding of the sovereignty of God in salvation either encourages us in our responsibility in proclaiming the Gospel with confidence in God for the results, or discourage us if we think God is merely trying to save man but He must somehow work around his free will. Likewise, our understanding of man’s depravity will either drive us to trust in the Gospel alone and the Holy Spirit’s work, or it will lead us to look for something in man to appeal to and devise a message he will receive.

Many are robbed of assurance of salvation, joy in sanctification, and confidence in the proclamation of the Gospel. Why? We have a wrong view of God and of man in salvation.

If God is merely “trying His best” to save man and to keep him, then we really do look to man’s will as greater than God’s. We lose confidence in who Christ is and what He has accomplished, treating His atoning sacrifice as merely potentially effective. Scripture knows nothing of the power of the Gospel resting upon the free will of man but it is declared to be powerful and effective. We are commanded to proclaim the Gospel with the promise that it is powerful and effective. We do not have a God that is “trying His best”. We have a God who is Lord and King and commands every man everywhere to repent! We serve a God that has sent us not with a powerless message to declare a king and kingdom that is trying to appeal to man to ask Him into their heart but of a King who commands man to repent. We proclaim a message of a Savior who died not merely to offer Himself as a sacrifice so we may potentially be saved but who accomplished redemption for all of whom the Father chose. We do not proclaim a Gospel that depends on our clever ability to appeal to some perceived goodness in man but is powerful to save, that is sufficient and whereby the Holy Spirit applies salvation for all of whom the Father elects and the Son accomplished redemption.

A healthy self-examination after sharing the Gospel is always whether we correctly proclaimed the Gospel, not whether we got the results we wanted. If we focus on results, then we will adjust the message to get the results we desire, rather than trusting God’s sovereignty in salvation and its effects.

Though we may fail in obedience to proclaim the Gospel, God will never fail to bring to salvation all for whom He has chosen, all the Son has secured redemption, and all to whom the Holy Spirit applies that redemption.

No man enters heaven because we are so persuasive in our delivery, and no man enters hell because we failed to find the most effective way to deliver the message such as he would have received it. The message needs no adjustment. It is perfect. Gods plan cannot fail.

This ought to give us confidence. We are not called or burdened with the task of seeking a better method but simply to obey His command to proclaim the Gospel. We can fully trust that He will save all who come to Him in repentance and faith, such faith being evidence of the Spirit’s work.

If men reject the Gospel and we have been faithful to proclaim it, we did not fail—we have obeyed. And we must continue to obey this command, trusting that God is saving.

Friend, hang not your head in shame when men reject the Gospel, and lift not your head in pride when they believe. We are mere messengers. More often, we will see hearts hardened than hearts renewed—but this should remind us that God is sovereign. We cannot thwart His plan but we can find ourselves in opposition to His message.

Be careful not to lose faith in the God of salvation, or in His Gospel, which is sufficient for salvation. Look to Him in faith, trusting that He is saving today. We are still here. He is still saving.

Grace and Peace, y’all
Soli Deo Gloria

April J. Buchanan

“Without meditation, the truth of God will not stay with us; the heart is hard, and the memory slippery, and without meditation all is lost. Meditation imprints and fastens a truth in the mind.” ~ Thomas Watson

Without meditation upon the truth, it is no better than seeking an exciting experience. One may search for a text to stir up a moment of excitement and find it, while another may search the text to see what it says and means, find it, feeling accomplished in the discovery and then close the book. We may search for the truth, find it and still miss its application in our lives. It may be looked upon, such rich treasures revealed but never delighted in. We move on. We seek more treasure. But we are not changed by it.

How is this different from the man who treats God’s Word with contempt, seeking only the fleeting thrill of temporal excitement? One boasts in his experience and another feels accomplished having dug, found and left the treasure behind? One never sought the truth and obtained the fleeting experience he desired. The other sought the truth, found it, and left it behind.

Pity the man who studies faithfully yet neglects prayer and meditation. For it is the work of God to bring out such rich treasure and to work in his heart and it is the responsibility of the man to seek the truth, pray, meditate and obey.

It is not enough merely to seek the truth and discover it; we must linger over it in daily meditation and pray for God’s mercies that we may be changed by it.

“Without meditation, the truth of God will not stay with us; the heart is hard, and the memory slippery, and without meditation all is lost. Meditation imprints and fastens a truth in the mind.” ~ Thomas Watson

Grace and Peace, y’all
Soli Deo Gloria

April J. Buchanan

“True wisdom is not merely speculative, but practical. The end of it is to guide us in the way of holiness.” ~ Jonathan Edwards

Prayer is not a means of avoiding responsibility and coasting to the end. Sometimes our prayers sound more like we want everything to happen with such ease that we never experience discomfort, we have no responsibility in our choices, and we want everything to be smooth sailing.

When we pray, do we trust that God is sovereign and He really is working all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose?

Consider the prayer of open and close doors. Do we pray for wisdom and that we may be sanctified in the truth? Do we desire that we be changed and that our desires be conformed to what pleases God? Or do we ask for opened and closed doors so we have no responsibility in making wise or unwise decisions? Even then, do we see a “closed door” and beat it down, or an “open door” and walk through, assuming it is proof that it is God’s will, and if it all falls apart, it’s not our fault? Do we take any responsibility for our choices?

Friend, do our prayers look to God and seek Him in all we do, desiring to obey Him and, having our minds informed by truth, we pray for wisdom to make decisions that glorify God? Or do we read the tea leaves, seek a sign, look for an opened or closed door, or listen to see if we feel like God is trying to tell us what to do?

We have far more freedom in our choices than we often realize. We don’t need a sign or to read the tea leaves in order to know what job to take, where to live, who to marry, what church to attend, if we should confront a brother in sin, or if we should expose false teaching. Scripture is clear. It does not tell us who to marry, but it does tell us what to look for in a spouse, what is expected of us in marriage, and what person not to marry. It doesn’t tell us what job to get or not take, but it does give us wisdom in what kind of employee we ought to be and using wisdom in every other area of our life in how those jobs will affect our ability to be faithful to attend a doctrinally sound church and how it will affect our family.

What is often missing in many of our prayers is wisdom and asking God to change our minds and our hearts to desire what pleases Him. We often don’t want the responsibility of making a decision, or we’ve already made up our mind and want God to agree with us, even if it’s not His will, so we seek a sign or look for an open door.

We may find an open door, or we may have peace about a decision and be completely wrong. We did not ask for what we were told to ask for: wisdom. We did not pray according to God’s will, asking Him to change our minds and help us to make wise decisions that glorify Him. We did not seek wise, godly counsel. We sought a sign, a feeling, a sense of peace—some subjective thing of which God never told us to seek or trust.

Friend, it’s not that complicated. Pray and ask God for wisdom. Make a decision based on wise counsel and put your desire and choices up against God’s objective Word. Test it there. If you have more than one decision that is wise, choose either. You don’t have to make it so mystical and super-spiritual.

And, friend, stop blaming God for bad decisions. You prayed for an open door. You saw an open door. You went through it. It was an unwise decision. That’s not God’s fault. That’s on you. Repent. Learn from it. Stop trusting your emotions and seeking a sign to support your folly. Seek the truth. Seek wisdom. Obey God. Honor Him in whatever you do.

Grace and Peace, y’all
Soli Deo Gloria

April J. Buchanan

“Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected.” ~ Jonathan Edwards

Unless I understand what a wretch I am, then I will never lay hold of grace and plead for freedom from this vile man, and in earnest look forward in hope to that future glorification. No, I’ll seek rather for a grace that brings comfort to my sorrow and affliction, but I’ll never deal honestly with the sin that produces sorrow or the sin that offends a holy God. I’ll long for what calms anxiety, but I’ll never know such fear that is a terror to my soul at the reality of such holiness that I’d cry out against my greatest foe. My greatest wrestling may be against what causes me to have sorrow or loss or suffering, against what I desire. This only leads to eternal punishment. My foolish heart so darkened as not to know such depths of depravity that lie within, and such justice as awaits me.

It is grace, and only grace, that opens my eyes to see what manner of man I really am, and it is too much for me. I cannot bear the reality of such holiness. I see such vileness within myself that I cry out against my own heart. I hide. Oh God, You are too holy. It is grace that opens my eyes, and it is grace that clothes me in His own righteousness. It is grace that calls me justified by the merit of another. It is grace that gives me power over remaining sin in me. It is grace that promises me hope and a future glorification. It is grace that promises me what I do not deserve.

Let me never cease wrestling against what remains and giving glory only to God for my salvation, my hope, the power to overcome remaining sin. Should I ever become passive or lazy, oh God, what danger awaits my foolish heart. Let me remember that until I’m home, I have no opportunity to be lazy in my sanctification. The cry of my heart is not ease or comfort, but grace sufficient that I may be conformed more to the image of Christ. Let me not reason against grace, or lazily fall prey to teaching that says, “Just relax your wrestlings.” Perish the thought.

Rainy Day Meditations

Grace and Peace, y’all
Soli Deo Gloria

April J. Buchanan

“The holiness of God is the otherness of God. It is His transcendence. It is what makes Him God and not man.” ~ R. C. Sproul

“The holiness of God is the crown of all His attributes. It is that which renders Him glorious in Himself and venerable to His creatures.” ~ A. W. Pink

There is such an otherness about God that, until we understand this, we never truly understand what it means to cry out against our own heart. The fool measures himself by the most base standard and thinks himself good. He measures himself against other finite, sinful, wicked men. The sheer absurdity of such measurements is only understood when we capture a glimpse of the glory of God revealed in Scripture. Many men preach about God, but such glory is never set forth such as even dead men tremble, though not all repent, as there’s no work of regeneration, only greater judgment that awaits them, having heard and cast off such words.

Saints find no encouragement where there is shallow theology. The Psalms are an excellent example of observing the wickedness of man, lamenting seeing the wicked seemingly prosper and the righteous suffer, where it seems God does not hear or has turned a deaf ear, though the Psalms are also rich in the Psalmists holding firmly to theological truth of who God is, even amid such wickedness of man.

The Scriptures reveal the glory of God, and in stark contrast, they go to great lengths to reveal the depths of the depravity of man. The contrast is very clear. God is not like us! His standard is perfection. He is other. And yet sinful man, regenerate and unregenerate alike, make the grave mistake of bringing God low. There’s no real comfort in that. The truth of who God is brings real peace, real comfort, real assurance, and encourages faith.

We struggle to understand or find comfort in the holiness of God, as He is perfect. The more we learn of who He is, we wrestle with how imperfect we are. We recognize that we can never achieve such perfection. We feel far apart and like we will never be holy as He is holy. How can He command something of us that we can never achieve?

That is what is missing from so many sermons. That is what we need to feel. That is what we need to understand. Until we do, we bring God low, we minimize sin, we water down the Gospel, we never truly understand justification or sanctification, and we may even begin to act as though we may experience glorification in some way now.

Oh dear saint, we must hear who God is. We must understand the otherness of God. Then we see His glory, and then we have NO room for boasting in salvation. Then we may understand justification, sanctification, and glorification.

Such holiness is impossible for us. We are not like God. We must understand that before we may ever glory in the imputed righteousness of Christ and of the imputation of our sins upon Christ. We may then understand our declared righteousness before God because of Christ alone. We may then understand what He commands of us and enables us to become. We are declared holy, and we are becoming holy. It is all grace. It is all Him!

Dear saint, we do not find encouragement by looking within and calling forth some inherent worth within ourselves or some inherent goodness within ourselves. Neither do we look to such holiness and think because we have accepted Jesus we have made it. Oh no, we recognize that God is other, and that we are declared righteous by the merit of another, Christ alone. We recognize that God, in His grace, has accepted us in the Beloved, and He has declared us holy by the merit of Christ, and at the same time we are becoming holy by His means of grace in our sanctification.

Friend, when you find in yourself that working in you that is now alien to such holiness—the dreaded wretched man that we are—we, like Paul, do not boast of ourselves, but we long to put off this body of death, that we may be with our Lord, in perfect holiness. We long for that otherness that is alien to our sinful nature. We long for future glorification. The lost man wants to add Jesus to his life to give him what he desires, or he wants to put Him out of his mind. He wants nothing of such holiness.

Be encouraged, saint, that sin which remains in us shall be put off, and though daily we crucify this wretched man, we shall at once be wholly set apart from him, such as he has no corrupting influence. We are holy by the merit of another, we are becoming holy by the sanctifying work of Christ, and we shall be holy whereby sin has no place ever again.

Wrestle now, dear saint, for in time we shall wrestle against sin no more.

Grace and Peace, y’all
Soli Deo Gloria

April J. Buchanan

 “God is never helpless, never perplexed, never baffled; Satan has no power but that which God allows.” ~ Charles Spurgeon

 “God governs all things, even the wicked actions of men, for the accomplishment of His eternal purposes.” ~ John Owen

Satan is not sovereign or omnipotent. When evil things happen, some are quick to speak much of the devil—the devil being messy, the devil is busy, Satan is working overtime.

Friend, the devil is real, but he is not equal with God, and he is not sovereign.

Sadly, some are stripped of any hope or comfort in tragedy, as too much emphasis is placed on the devil and God is made to appear weak and powerless against such a mighty foe. God always seems to be “trying His best” while the devil is out here winning.

I remember a Q&A where R.C. Sproul took a question—something, I think, to do with the loss of a child—and he recalled some TV evangelist having taken a question from a caller who was devastated at the loss of a loved one. This TV evangelist then tried to comfort the caller, but in an effort not to blame God, he then spoke of how God had no control over it and it was all the devil’s doing. This so upset Sproul that he began talking to him through the TV.

You see, if, when evil things happen, we remove God so as to protect Him from any responsibility for what happens, then we remove hope. We remove God’s unfolding providential plan, whereby He uses wicked men (who are entirely responsible for their wicked actions) to achieve His purposes.

This is very offensive to many Christians. They cannot see that what they feel like is making God the author of evil is not. What they are doing in removing God from His sovereign position over all things is also removing His providence and, thereby, removing any hope we may have that God is actually working all things out for good. He is sovereign and He even uses sinful man to fulfill His purposes. While men mean it for evil, God means it for good.

Friend, if Satan were one step ahead of God and God were always trying His best, then we have NO hope, no assurance, no confidence in anything God has said or promised. We cannot take Him at His Word. God is not trying; He is not weak, powerless, and He has no equal.

Satan can ONLY act within the limits God allows. Remember Job?

Friend, take courage, every Word of God is true and God is still sovereign. This is our comfort. If we look for comfort in an easy life filled with worldly pleasures and the fulfillment of our dreams and desires, we may be sorely disappointed. But if we find our comfort in who God is then even amid tragedy we may be at peace knowing God is still God!

Grace and Peace, y’all
Soli Deo Gloria

April J. Buchanan