"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

“The LORD reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof.  Clouds and darkness are round about Him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His throne.” -Psalm 97:1-2 [KJV]   -------O-------     God reigns on high let saints rejoice, O praise Him people of His choice; He reigns forever over all, The Lord reigns over great and small.   God reigns upon this earth below, No matter whether friend or foe; He reigns and works His sovereign will, He reigns with wise, unerring skill.   God reigns His purpose to fulfill, He reigns, who can resist His will? He reigns o’er angels, devils too, Our God reigns over me and you!   God reigns His wondrous grace to give, He reigns to make dead sinners live; He reigns to make the darkness light, He reigns in saving love and might.   God reigns, cheer up ye troubled saint, He reigns, fear not or ever faint; He reigns, so let your soul be still, He reigns to work His perfect wi...

“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgement and justice in the earth.   In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is His name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. " - Jeremiah 23:5-6 [KJV]  The righteousness of God is the absolute and essential perfection of His nature.  Our Lord Jesus, the God-Man, came into this world to “magnify the law and make it honourable” (Isaiah 42:21) and establish righteousness for His people by suffering the penalty of the Law which was His substitutionary and sacrificial death.   We know that the thrice holy God can only accept into His presence those who are righteous.    “It must be perfect to be accepted”   (Leviticus 22:21).   “Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD?  Or, who shall stand in His holy place?  He that hat...

" God be merciful to me a sinner." -Luke 18:13 [KJV] I often reflect on what a perfectionist once said to me, upwards of twenty years ago: “Do not go to hear such preaching; you will get such a notion of sinnership, as though you were to be a poor sinner all your days.” Truly, after being so long in Christ, when I look into the glass of God’s law, I see myself just the same poor sinner I was at first; striving against sin, and looking to Christ for salvation.  I thank my Lord, I do not trust in myself that I am righteous: yet am as righteous in myself, as any poor sinner on earth is; and as righteous in Christ, as any saint in glory is. O the humbling joy of faith! it brings boldness of access to God into the heart, while it destroys self-righteous confidence. Many poor souls are apt to say, I am afraid to approach God, I am such a sinner—I tremble to think what will become of me—I fear God will cast me off for ever; and damn me eternally, for my sins.  No, sa...

"And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth ." -Matthew 28:18 [KJV] Hail, then, Thou Sovereign Lord of all! I have lately been following Thee in sweet and solemn meditation through the seasons of Thy humiliation; now let me behold Thee on Thy throne. And here I'm called upon to contemplate my Lord and my God as possessing universal dominion. Ponder, my soul, the vast extent.  Thy Jesus, as God, as one with the Father, possesseth in common with Him all power from everlasting. This is His, as God, essentially so; not given to Him, for by nature it is His, being "one with the Father, over all, God blessed for ever. Amen , " said Paul; so let it be; so shall it be. And so say I, and so saith all the church; Amen, Amen . But what thy Jesus saith here, in these blessed words, is of a power given to Him; and that is a power as the Head of His church and people. And although had He not been God, one with t...

"For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." -Galatians 5:17 [KJV] The Holy Spirit is especially tender of His own work upon the soul. He originally formed it; it is His own spiritual offspring; and as a mother watches over her babe, so the blessed Spirit watches over the spirit of His own creating. It is the counterpart of Himself, for it is the spirit that He has raised up in the soul by His own almighty power.  He, therefore, acts upon it, breathes into it fresh life and power, and communicates grace out of the inexhaustible fulness of the Son of God, thus enabling the spirit to breathe and act, struggle and fight against the flesh, so that the latter cannot have all its own way, but must submit and yield.  For the spirit can fight as well as the flesh; can act as well as the flesh; and can desire good as well as the flesh can desire e...

" ..and confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." -Hebrews 11:13 [KJV] O, ye worldly-minded professors, can ye read this without being ashamed and reproved? What will bring a man to this confession? Will sickness, and a near approach to death? O no! Men return from the most dangerous illness, to greater love of the world, and more ardent pursuit after the things of it. Look at a dying worldling. See him, like a drowning man, clinching the faster what he has grasped for his hope and help.  Men not only live fools, but die fools too. Their senses beguile them: their reason befools them: they reject the plainest truths before them. Nothing will kill the love of a bewitching world in a deceitful heart, but the view of heaven by faith. No man will confess himself a stranger to the world, and a pilgrim on the earth, until he sees himself “a fellow-citizen with the saints, and of the household of God.” (Eph. 2:19.)  As we say, we will not quit a certain...

"...renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour." -Titus 3:5, 6 [KJV] Precious office of the Spirit! Condescend, great God, to grant it me this morning. Oh, renew my soul with all Thy sweet revivals, after a night of sleep, as Thou renewest the face of the earth. Oh send forth, I beseech Thee, Lord, all Thy graces, as suited to my necessities, and the Redeemer's glory, and let it be most abundantly shed abroad, through all the faculties of my soul, through Jesus Christ my Saviour. Pause, my soul, over the blessed prospect, and having now pleaded in Jesus' name for the mercy, act faith upon thy God in His promises. Is not every morning a renewing of the Holy Ghost? Is it not said concerning the productions of the earth, that God "sendeth forth His Spirit, and they are created, and Thou renewest the face of the earth?"   See what an evidence the earth gives in this lovely season, in the fruits, and pl...

"But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus." -Philippians 4:19 [KJV] Oh! if there were no Christ Jesus, there could be no "supply." Howling in hell would our miserable souls be, unless there were a Mediator at the right hand of the Father; a blessed Jesus, full of love, pity, and power, co-equal and co-eternal in His divine nature with the Father and the Holy Ghost, and yet the God-Man, in Whom "it hath pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell."   If there were not such a blessed Mediator at the right hand of God, not one drop of spiritual comfort, not one particle of hope, not one drop of fruit of the Spirit to distinguish us from the damned in hell, would ever be our lot or portion.  Oh! we should never forget the channel through which these mercies come; we should never, for one moment, think that they could come through any other Person or in any other way, than through God's only ...

“The apostles of Satan are not saloon-keepers and slave-traffickers, but are for the most part ordained ministers. Thousands of those who occupy our modern pulpits are no longer engaged in presenting the fundamentals of the Christian faith, but have turned aside from the Truth and have given heed unto fables.   When the father of lies enters the pulpit it is not his custom to flatly deny the fundamental truths of Christianity, rather does he tacitly acknowledge them and then proceed to give an erroneous interpretation and a false application.” -preacher Arthur W. Pink (1886-1952 A.D.)

The LORD JESUS Christ declares, "Come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price." -Isaiah 55:1 [KJV] A free Gospel is the glory of God’s grace, the joy of humble souls, the envy of malicious devils, and the contempt of proud, self-righteous pharisees.  Milk is the pure, sweet, soul-nourishing doctrine of Christ. Wine is the generous, heart-reviving comforts of pardon of sins, and peace with God through the blood of Christ.  The Lord knows we cannot grow strong, nor be comfortable in our souls, without this precious milk and animating wine. Here is the Lord’s open house, public market, free invitation, and fixed price. Come: draw nigh to Me: keep not at a distance from Me , saith the Lord.  Make no excuse, nor any delay: Come now, this moment . Here is a free invitation, and a hearty welcome. O the love of our Lord’s heart! Buy. Art thou rich? such the Lord sends empty away. Hast thou brought a stock of thine own faithfulness, terms thou hast fulfi...

"As by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so, by the righteousness of One, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life ." -Romans 5:18 [KJV] Concerning the ruin in which thou art involved in Adam, surely, my soul, thou knowest and feelest it from day to day. No one can persuade thee out of this. Thou art as much concerned in the sin, and consequently implicated in the punishment, of the first man's transgression, as if thou hadst been, and which indeed as thy root and head thou really wert, in the garden with him when he did it. And thou feelest the same disposition to sin the same rebellion in thy very nature. So that most fully and freely dost thou subscribe to the rights of God's judgment, that condemnation cometh upon all men, because all have sinned. Now then see, my soul, whether, through the same Almighty Teacher Who convinced thee of sin, thou art convinced also of the righteousness of Jesus, an...

"Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck." -I Timothy 1:19 [KJV] We find that, in the apostle's time, there were characters who held faith, or rather what they called faith, and put away "good conscience." He mentions by name, "Hymeneus and Alexander, whom he had delivered unto Satan," that is, excommunicated them out of the Church, as heretics and blasphemers. But if to have put good conscience away, stamps a man as unfit for the visible Church of God, it behoves us to search whether we have this weapon at our side, and in our hand. What does the apostle, then, mean by "a good conscience?" I believe he means a conscience alive in God's fear, a spiritual conscience, a tender conscience, what he calls, in another part, "a pure conscience;" "holding faith in a pure conscience," that is, purified from ignorance, from guilt, from the power of sin...

There was never an ill motive in the heart of the Saviour, and the caption under the picture of His sacrificial life, reads: He glorified God on the earth (see John 17:4) . His every thought, word, and deed was motivated by His unflinching determination to glorify His heavenly Father, and Paul says: “... He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (II Corinthians 10:17). - preacher Oscar Mink , excerpt from 'Contending for the Faith with a Right Motive'  

Jesus, the Unabridged Version of God by D G Miles McKee   One of the reasons God became a man was to destroy Satan and open the way to eternal life.  No one but God was qualified for this task because no one but the Almighty was strong or wise enough to accomplish such a feat.   The Mighty God, our Redeemer, came to undo and destroy the shocking distress that Satan had exacted upon us … and did so by becoming human.   Why human?  Why did He not become a super angel?    He became human because it was the human race that Satan had destroyed in the Fall.  It was then, as a true human, the eternal Word was born.  In His doing and dying, He received the full onslaught of Satan and put him away by His great sacrifice at the cross (Colossians 2:15) .   To paraphrase Anselm (AD 1033-1109),   “And so also was it proper that the devil, who was man’s tempter, and had conquered him when he ate of the tree, should be conquered by an...

" From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, the LORD’s name is to be praised." -Psalm 113:3 [KJV] Praise is the incessant employ of glorified saints in heaven. There they fully see and eternally sing of the electing, redeeming, sanctifying, glorifying love of the blessed Trinity ( -Father, Son & Spirit ) . May our souls catch some of the heavenly flame of love, and imitate them in our praise to-night. This is the work of an humble heart.  Pride is the parent of murmuring and discontent. A sense of the blessings of the Lord, and a sight of our unworthiness of them, excite praises in the heart. This is the language of a praising soul, Why me, Lord ? Why am I singled out from the ruins of a fallen race, to partake of thy special grace, peculiar love, and precious salvation? Am I better than others? Have I done more to deserve thy mercies than others? Have I a greater right to challenge thy favour than others? O, Lord! why me ?  Thus, while the so...