This Autumn, Make Your Reading Count!
We hope you enjoy this excerpt from our new release, Our Great God and Saviour.
Dr. Sinclair Ferguson wrote, "It is a very special privilege to introduce Eric Alexander's Our Great God and Saviour. Many who have been enriched by his ministry over the years will greet its publication with enthusiasm and read it with great pleasure." Buy the complete paperback at: http://www.banneroftruth.org or call 800-263-8085 or 717-249-5747.
________________________________________________________________________
Our Great God and Saviour
by Eric Alexander
Eric Alexander's great concern in this series of studies is that Christians should know how rich they are in their gracious God and Saviour, and in his perfect work of salvation. Each study brings out a fresh aspect of this theme, as we contemplate in turn the character of God, the salvation of God, and the church of God. In words which the author quotes from the works of the Puritan Stephen Charnock: 'If rich men delight to sum up their vast revenues, to read over their rentals, to look upon their hoards, how much more should the people of God please themselves in seeing how rich they are in having an immensely full and all-sufficient God as their inheritance.' These warm and pastorally-directed studies will provide satisfying food for the hearts and minds of Christian readers everywhere.
CHAPTER 1 - THE GREATNESS OF GOD
There is no greater theme we could ever consider than 'The nature of the God of the Bible'. God himself has instructed us to prize such study above everything else in life:
'Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight', declares the Lord (Jer. 9:23-24).
That is our concern in this study - not only to ponder together the glories of the character of God, but more than that, to come to know him in a deeper way.
One of the greatest works on the existence and attributes of God was written by the great Puritan Stephen Charnock some three hundred years ago. It was published posthumously by his literary trustees. When they were commending this work to the Christian public these men wrote:
A mere contemplation of the divine excellences may afford much pleasure to any man who loves to exercise his reason. But if that be so, what incomparable sweetness ought believers to find in viewing and considering now these perfections which they will more fully behold hereafter, seeing what manner of God - in whom they have a covenant interest - how wise and powerful, how great, good and holy he is. Indeed, if rich men delight to sum up their vast revenues, to read over their rentals, to look upon their hoards, how much more should the people of God please themselves in seeing how rich they are in having an immensely full and all-sufficient God as their inheritance.
That is what we are to do together: behold the enormous wealth that is ours in the glory of the God who has come to us in Jesus Christ.
MAGNIFYING THE LORD TOGETHER
First we must consider the greatness of God. Or if you prefer to think of it in another way in which Scripture introduces us to it, we are concerned here 'to magnify the Lord together'. The Psalmist invites his fellows: 'O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together' (Psa. 34:3, KJV).
What happens when we magnify something? We do not actually increase its size. When we magnify something we make its true nature clearer and more obvious to ourselves. That is what the psalmist means when he speaks of magnifying the name of God. He is saying that we are to make God more apparent to ourselves and others, and thus to develop a fuller awareness of the greatness and glory of his nature.
Psalm 145 issues a warning to all who would engage in this exercise: 'Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom' (verse 3). We will find, therefore that, even when we have contemplated the nature and character of God, we have only come to the edges of his ways. We are always goign to be like little kindergarten children in the honours class of a university. Indeed, even when we see him face to face in glory, we will still never fully comprehend all the glory and greatness of God's character.
There are two corollaries of this truth that we need constantly to have in mind.
First, we are absolutely dependent for all our knowledge of God on revelation. Unless God reveals himself to us, we can know nothing of him. But God does reveal himself. That is a glorious reality. God has made himself known in creation, in his Son and in Holy Scripture. Scripture tells us what to think about creation and how to understand the life and work of Jesus. So for our understanding of God, we are absolutely dependent upon, and need to be submitted to, Scripture.
Second, we are equally dependent upon the illumination of the Holy Spirit. He must illumine the written revelation in our understanding so that with confidence, not in the wisdom of men but in God himself, we may discover something of his glory.
'THE LORD HAS SPOKEN'
We turn therefore, in this first chapter, to Isaiah 40. The fortieth chapter of Isaiah is a watershed of the prophecy. Isaiah is looking beyond his own time, some 150 to 200 years further on, to the desolate days when Israel was to be scattered, its temple destroyed, and the very cream of the nation taken captive.
What God reveals to Isaiah is that when the people are in this moribund condition, and the cause of God appears to be languishing, what is most needed is a fresh revelation of who God is in his true character. A new vision of God is, therefore, what Isaiah concentrates on.
God tells Isaiah to encourage Jerusalem and give her hope. The focus of that hope lies in the revelation of God's character. Thus
a voice is heard calling out in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God' (Isa. 40:3). The apex of the promise that the Lord himself is coming is reached in verse 5: 'The glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.'
That promise was fulfilled in the deliverance of God's people from the captivity of the Babylonian Exile. But the fulfilment was not exhausted then. It was ultimately fulfilled in a greater sense in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose forerunner, John the Baptist, quoted these very words, saying, 'I am the voice crying in the wilderness' ( John 1:23).
Yet there is an even greater fulfilment of these words that still awaits us. For the glory of the Lord, which all mankind will see together, will come at that final revelation of glory when the Lord Jesus Christ returns at the end of the age. Then the ultimate glory of God will be manifested and every eye shall see it - in the face of Jesus.
But here the prophet says: 'Here is your God! See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and his arm rules for him' (Isa. 40:9-10).
The rest of this chapter is composed of prophetic insight into the incomparable greatness of this most sovereign Lord. The people to whom Isaiah is writing are a people who at the time envisaged would be in bondage; they would be in despair. They would have known the distress caused by being oppressed by their enemies. But God brings them this vision of himself as the cure for these burdens. As Professor John N. Oswalt puts it in his commentary on Isaiah: 'The prophet seems to be saying that if humanity could ever glimpse the true picture of God's greatness and glory, their problems would be on their way to being solved.'
I believe that is true of our generation. There is nothing that the church of Jesus Christ needs more in our day than this fresh
revelation - an eye-opener - of the glory, majesty and wonder of God.
Isaiah displays the greatness of God in this passage by relating four elements:
1. God's uniqueness within the creation (verse 12)
2. God's independence from the creation (verses 13-14)
3. God's supremacy above the creation (verses 15-20), and
4. God's sovereignty over the creation (verses 21-24).
UNIQUENESS WITHIN THE CREATION
In verses 12-14 the prophet asks five unanswerable questions to establish the absolute uniqueness of God within, and the independence of God from, the created order. The first two deal with his uniqueness.
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance? (verse 12).
These questions relate to the measuring of creation, and they display God as both infinitely transcendent above his creation and unique within it. They are challenges to man in his littleness - to stop viewing God as though he were a person like ourselves.
That is one of the tendencies that often develops as we think about God in his personal nature. You may remember how the psalmist records God's complaint about this in Psalm 50:21. The people had lost their vision of God's greatness, and God says, 'You thought I was altogether like you.' This is why Isaiah asks, 'Who else holds the oceans in his hand to measure them?' This is what God does! 'Who else measures the heavens as a handbreadth or the soil of the earth in his basket, or holds the mountains in his scales to weigh them?'
Can you picture what Isaiah is saying of God? Can you think of God taking the mountains - Everest and the Eiger, for example - putting them in a balance and holding them to see which is heavier? Or again, can you think of the Lord God putting his hand on the heavens and measuring it with just a span? Isaiah asks, 'Who else has done this?'
Isaiah is trying to teach us about God's immensity. Is this not precisely what we have lost in so much of our thinking? It is one reason we need a new emphasis on the doctrine of God as Creator. This is how the men and women of the Bible enlarged their faith and fed it. They came into the presence of God, and then, like Jeremiah, they prayed: 'Ah, Sovereign Lord, you made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you' ( Jer. 32:17). Similarly, in Acts 4, in equally difficult circumstances the apostles prayed, 'Sovereign Lord, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them' (verse 24).
What is it that persuaded them of the glory and greatness of God? It was the doctrine of creation.
Somebody once commented to me, 'Historically evangelicals have been strong on the doctrine of redemption and weak on the doctrine of creation.' I think that is true. But in Isaiah God is using this argument (from the nature of God's work as Creator) to persuade his people to trust him (as their Redeemer). Notice how he says: 'Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded?' (verse 21). Then he expounds to them how he created the heavens and the earth.
A. W. Pink is right when he says, 'The god of this century no more resembles the Sovereign of Holy Writ than does the dim flickering of a candle the glory of the midday sun.' We need to grasp that the God of Scripture is a God who holds the mountains in a balance and spans the universe with his hand. We get things in proper perspective when we see the uniqueness of God in creation.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For the rest of chapter one, and the entire work by Eric Alexander, visit banneroftruth.org.
_________________________________
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by Sinclair B. Ferguson
Introduction
PART ONE: THE CHARACTER OF GOD
1. The Greatness of God (Isa. 40)
2. The Holiness of God (Isa. 6)
3. The Sovereignty of God (Acts 4:23-31)
4. The Faithfulness of God (Psa. 89)
5. The Grace of God (Rom. 8:32)
PART TWO: THE SALVATION OF GOD
6. Regeneration: Beginning with God (John 3)
7. Justification: The Glorious Good News of Grace (Gal. 2:15-21)
8. Substitution (Isa. 52:13-53:12)
9. Sanctification: 'Chanbged from Glory into Glory' (2 Cor. 3:18)
10. The Securitiy of the Believer (John 10:14-30)
11. Glorification: Attaining the Goal (Rom. 8)
PART THREE: THE CHURCH OF GOD
12. The Purpose of the Church (1 Pet. 2:4-10)
13. Ministry in the Church (Eph. 4:7-16)
14. God's Fellow-Workers, or, Four Laws for Christian Service (1 Cor. 3:1-15)
15. A Plea for Revival (Psa. 89)
16. Lessons for the Church on Earth from the Church in Heaven (Rev. 21, 22)
_________________________________
Our Great God and Saviour
by Eric Alexander
ISBN: 978-1-84871-0849
Paperback, 208 pages
List Price: $16.00 (U.S. currency)
We hope you enjoy this excerpt from our new release, Our Great God and Saviour.
Dr. Sinclair Ferguson wrote, "It is a very special privilege to introduce Eric Alexander's Our Great God and Saviour. Many who have been enriched by his ministry over the years will greet its publication with enthusiasm and read it with great pleasure." Buy the complete paperback at: http://www.banneroftruth.org or call 800-263-8085 or 717-249-5747.
________________________________________________________________________
Our Great God and Saviour
by Eric Alexander
Eric Alexander's great concern in this series of studies is that Christians should know how rich they are in their gracious God and Saviour, and in his perfect work of salvation. Each study brings out a fresh aspect of this theme, as we contemplate in turn the character of God, the salvation of God, and the church of God. In words which the author quotes from the works of the Puritan Stephen Charnock: 'If rich men delight to sum up their vast revenues, to read over their rentals, to look upon their hoards, how much more should the people of God please themselves in seeing how rich they are in having an immensely full and all-sufficient God as their inheritance.' These warm and pastorally-directed studies will provide satisfying food for the hearts and minds of Christian readers everywhere.
CHAPTER 1 - THE GREATNESS OF GOD
There is no greater theme we could ever consider than 'The nature of the God of the Bible'. God himself has instructed us to prize such study above everything else in life:
'Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight', declares the Lord (Jer. 9:23-24).
That is our concern in this study - not only to ponder together the glories of the character of God, but more than that, to come to know him in a deeper way.
One of the greatest works on the existence and attributes of God was written by the great Puritan Stephen Charnock some three hundred years ago. It was published posthumously by his literary trustees. When they were commending this work to the Christian public these men wrote:
A mere contemplation of the divine excellences may afford much pleasure to any man who loves to exercise his reason. But if that be so, what incomparable sweetness ought believers to find in viewing and considering now these perfections which they will more fully behold hereafter, seeing what manner of God - in whom they have a covenant interest - how wise and powerful, how great, good and holy he is. Indeed, if rich men delight to sum up their vast revenues, to read over their rentals, to look upon their hoards, how much more should the people of God please themselves in seeing how rich they are in having an immensely full and all-sufficient God as their inheritance.
That is what we are to do together: behold the enormous wealth that is ours in the glory of the God who has come to us in Jesus Christ.
MAGNIFYING THE LORD TOGETHER
First we must consider the greatness of God. Or if you prefer to think of it in another way in which Scripture introduces us to it, we are concerned here 'to magnify the Lord together'. The Psalmist invites his fellows: 'O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together' (Psa. 34:3, KJV).
What happens when we magnify something? We do not actually increase its size. When we magnify something we make its true nature clearer and more obvious to ourselves. That is what the psalmist means when he speaks of magnifying the name of God. He is saying that we are to make God more apparent to ourselves and others, and thus to develop a fuller awareness of the greatness and glory of his nature.
Psalm 145 issues a warning to all who would engage in this exercise: 'Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom' (verse 3). We will find, therefore that, even when we have contemplated the nature and character of God, we have only come to the edges of his ways. We are always goign to be like little kindergarten children in the honours class of a university. Indeed, even when we see him face to face in glory, we will still never fully comprehend all the glory and greatness of God's character.
There are two corollaries of this truth that we need constantly to have in mind.
First, we are absolutely dependent for all our knowledge of God on revelation. Unless God reveals himself to us, we can know nothing of him. But God does reveal himself. That is a glorious reality. God has made himself known in creation, in his Son and in Holy Scripture. Scripture tells us what to think about creation and how to understand the life and work of Jesus. So for our understanding of God, we are absolutely dependent upon, and need to be submitted to, Scripture.
Second, we are equally dependent upon the illumination of the Holy Spirit. He must illumine the written revelation in our understanding so that with confidence, not in the wisdom of men but in God himself, we may discover something of his glory.
'THE LORD HAS SPOKEN'
We turn therefore, in this first chapter, to Isaiah 40. The fortieth chapter of Isaiah is a watershed of the prophecy. Isaiah is looking beyond his own time, some 150 to 200 years further on, to the desolate days when Israel was to be scattered, its temple destroyed, and the very cream of the nation taken captive.
What God reveals to Isaiah is that when the people are in this moribund condition, and the cause of God appears to be languishing, what is most needed is a fresh revelation of who God is in his true character. A new vision of God is, therefore, what Isaiah concentrates on.
God tells Isaiah to encourage Jerusalem and give her hope. The focus of that hope lies in the revelation of God's character. Thus
a voice is heard calling out in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God' (Isa. 40:3). The apex of the promise that the Lord himself is coming is reached in verse 5: 'The glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.'
That promise was fulfilled in the deliverance of God's people from the captivity of the Babylonian Exile. But the fulfilment was not exhausted then. It was ultimately fulfilled in a greater sense in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose forerunner, John the Baptist, quoted these very words, saying, 'I am the voice crying in the wilderness' ( John 1:23).
Yet there is an even greater fulfilment of these words that still awaits us. For the glory of the Lord, which all mankind will see together, will come at that final revelation of glory when the Lord Jesus Christ returns at the end of the age. Then the ultimate glory of God will be manifested and every eye shall see it - in the face of Jesus.
But here the prophet says: 'Here is your God! See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and his arm rules for him' (Isa. 40:9-10).
The rest of this chapter is composed of prophetic insight into the incomparable greatness of this most sovereign Lord. The people to whom Isaiah is writing are a people who at the time envisaged would be in bondage; they would be in despair. They would have known the distress caused by being oppressed by their enemies. But God brings them this vision of himself as the cure for these burdens. As Professor John N. Oswalt puts it in his commentary on Isaiah: 'The prophet seems to be saying that if humanity could ever glimpse the true picture of God's greatness and glory, their problems would be on their way to being solved.'
I believe that is true of our generation. There is nothing that the church of Jesus Christ needs more in our day than this fresh
revelation - an eye-opener - of the glory, majesty and wonder of God.
Isaiah displays the greatness of God in this passage by relating four elements:
1. God's uniqueness within the creation (verse 12)
2. God's independence from the creation (verses 13-14)
3. God's supremacy above the creation (verses 15-20), and
4. God's sovereignty over the creation (verses 21-24).
UNIQUENESS WITHIN THE CREATION
In verses 12-14 the prophet asks five unanswerable questions to establish the absolute uniqueness of God within, and the independence of God from, the created order. The first two deal with his uniqueness.
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance? (verse 12).
These questions relate to the measuring of creation, and they display God as both infinitely transcendent above his creation and unique within it. They are challenges to man in his littleness - to stop viewing God as though he were a person like ourselves.
That is one of the tendencies that often develops as we think about God in his personal nature. You may remember how the psalmist records God's complaint about this in Psalm 50:21. The people had lost their vision of God's greatness, and God says, 'You thought I was altogether like you.' This is why Isaiah asks, 'Who else holds the oceans in his hand to measure them?' This is what God does! 'Who else measures the heavens as a handbreadth or the soil of the earth in his basket, or holds the mountains in his scales to weigh them?'
Can you picture what Isaiah is saying of God? Can you think of God taking the mountains - Everest and the Eiger, for example - putting them in a balance and holding them to see which is heavier? Or again, can you think of the Lord God putting his hand on the heavens and measuring it with just a span? Isaiah asks, 'Who else has done this?'
Isaiah is trying to teach us about God's immensity. Is this not precisely what we have lost in so much of our thinking? It is one reason we need a new emphasis on the doctrine of God as Creator. This is how the men and women of the Bible enlarged their faith and fed it. They came into the presence of God, and then, like Jeremiah, they prayed: 'Ah, Sovereign Lord, you made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you' ( Jer. 32:17). Similarly, in Acts 4, in equally difficult circumstances the apostles prayed, 'Sovereign Lord, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them' (verse 24).
What is it that persuaded them of the glory and greatness of God? It was the doctrine of creation.
Somebody once commented to me, 'Historically evangelicals have been strong on the doctrine of redemption and weak on the doctrine of creation.' I think that is true. But in Isaiah God is using this argument (from the nature of God's work as Creator) to persuade his people to trust him (as their Redeemer). Notice how he says: 'Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded?' (verse 21). Then he expounds to them how he created the heavens and the earth.
A. W. Pink is right when he says, 'The god of this century no more resembles the Sovereign of Holy Writ than does the dim flickering of a candle the glory of the midday sun.' We need to grasp that the God of Scripture is a God who holds the mountains in a balance and spans the universe with his hand. We get things in proper perspective when we see the uniqueness of God in creation.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For the rest of chapter one, and the entire work by Eric Alexander, visit banneroftruth.org.
_________________________________
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by Sinclair B. Ferguson
Introduction
PART ONE: THE CHARACTER OF GOD
1. The Greatness of God (Isa. 40)
2. The Holiness of God (Isa. 6)
3. The Sovereignty of God (Acts 4:23-31)
4. The Faithfulness of God (Psa. 89)
5. The Grace of God (Rom. 8:32)
PART TWO: THE SALVATION OF GOD
6. Regeneration: Beginning with God (John 3)
7. Justification: The Glorious Good News of Grace (Gal. 2:15-21)
8. Substitution (Isa. 52:13-53:12)
9. Sanctification: 'Chanbged from Glory into Glory' (2 Cor. 3:18)
10. The Securitiy of the Believer (John 10:14-30)
11. Glorification: Attaining the Goal (Rom. 8)
PART THREE: THE CHURCH OF GOD
12. The Purpose of the Church (1 Pet. 2:4-10)
13. Ministry in the Church (Eph. 4:7-16)
14. God's Fellow-Workers, or, Four Laws for Christian Service (1 Cor. 3:1-15)
15. A Plea for Revival (Psa. 89)
16. Lessons for the Church on Earth from the Church in Heaven (Rev. 21, 22)
_________________________________
Our Great God and Saviour
by Eric Alexander
ISBN: 978-1-84871-0849
Paperback, 208 pages
List Price: $16.00 (U.S. currency)
