Category Archives: Iain Murray

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Reformed, and Proud!

There is nothing wrong with having zeal for Reformed theology, but it is altogether an issue of wicked pride when that zeal engenders in us the arrogance which would promote us to a zealot. We think we are so very clever. We have all the answers, don’t we? But should not this knowledge that opens for us a more visual understanding of the very nature of God bring about in us more compassion for others? Do we, as Reformed believers, “hold the truth in unrighteousness?” Truth that is used devoid of love is that which destroys, but truth that is mixed with love is that which builds. Do we care only for the winning of the argument? Or do we care for the winning of the soul or perhaps even our brother? If we seek to love first, we will know how to use the truth when it is being petitioned for.

I leave you with this as Charles Troutman once complained:

They are ready to die for the “Reformed Faith”, but are quite pleased to curse everyone else.

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Self-Confidence & Preaching

…..from one of the greatest preachers of the nineteenth century, James Henley Thornwell:

“It is a great matter to understand what it is to be a preacher, and how preaching should be done. Effective sermons are the offspring of study, of discipline, of prayer, and especially of the unction of the Holy Ghost… My own performances in this way fill me with disgust. I have never made, much less preached, a sermon in my life, and I begin to despair of ever being able to do so.”

Distrust in oneself must mark the preacher. The most-used preachers in the church have always been those who say, ‘No-one knows how to preach.’ A self-confident preacher ought to be a contradiction in terms.  

- Iain Murray, Lloyd-Jones, Messenger of Grace, page40-41

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The Great Actor

My Pastor has been gracious enough to lend me this book. I know what you’re thinking, “Yeah right! What good Reformed Pastor is going to lend out a Banner of Truth book, by Iain Murray at that?” Honestly, I don’t know if I would do it. To be even more honest, I’m not even sure he’s going to get it back! But regardless of whose book it is, so far, it is very good.

The Bible is the record of the activity of God. God is the actor. God is the centre. Everything is of God and comes from God, and turns to God. It is God who speaks. It is God who acts. It is God who intervenes. It is God who originates, who plans everything everywhere.

-D.M. Lloyd-Jones, Westminster Record, September 1943
-from the book Lloyd-Jones, Messenger of Grace by Iain Murray