For Lord’s Day, May 17, 2015

Dear Saints,

Motivated by the church’s recent Homemaker’s movie night, we began reading John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress for family worship.  We are making a point to look up a Scripture that summarizes each vivid part.  The beginning of the story drew our souls back once more to Matthew 7:13-14:

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

During our devotional discussion, we were reminded of how children often cry to their parents, “But everyone else is doing it!” and of the wise, parental, rhetorical reply that always follows: “If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?”  The logic is obvious: just because many people are doing something does not make it a right or safe thing for us to join in with.  In fact, more often than not, it turns out disastrously for us.

As Jesus says to follow the narrow way, and as He is the Way, then if we truly are in fellowship with Him we will not walk under the cloak of darkness (1 John 1:6). The multitudes venture out at night with the Devil but we must stay safe under the cover of our covenant homes.

In our men’s study this week we read a sobering warning in Thomas Boston’s Human Nature in its Fourfold State (chapter two regarding our natural sinful state after the Fall):

“Nothing is more plain, than that generally men choose rather to do what the most do, than what the best do.”

Beloved, that you would make it to the Celestial City, choose to follow the best — they alone will lead you along the narrow and only way to get to where the Prince of Peace will open His doors to you.

Semper Reformanda,

Pastor Grant