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

"Many, O LORD my God, are Thy wonderful works which Thou hast done, and Thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto Thee: if I were to declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered." -Psalm 40:5 [KJV]  

"He received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to Him from the excellent glory, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." -II Peter 1:17 [KJV] These words furnish poor sinners with matter for sweet meditation. Spirit of truth, help us to see the honour and glory of the Father and Son in them, and to get comfort from them.  Here is, (1st.) a silencing answer to that objection: you rob the Father of His honour and glory, by ascribing so much to the Son Jesus. Have you never been assaulted with this temptation? It comes from the enemy of God and sinners. Can two walk together, except they be agreed?  But God and we are agreed. Our faith puts all the honour and glory of our salvation upon God’s beloved Son. There God Himself puts it. IN His beloved Son, God is well pleased, and with us also IN Him.  (2d.) Here see the nature of faith. It causes the soul both to imitate and obey God, and to be well pleased with what Go...

"For lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations; like as corn is sifted in a sieve; yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth." -Amos 9:9 [KJV] Blessed promise to my poor soul; sifted, blown about by temptation. Look then to Jesus with it, and plead it under every new sifting time. Corn must be sifted, for it is much covered at times with tares and chaff. And so must the seed—of Jesus, that the precious may be known and separated; "for what is the chaff to the wheat?"  saith the LORD. Oh Lord, if it please Thee, for Thou knowest the necessity of it, sift me, try me, separate me, not only from the ungodly, with whom I am constrained to dwell, but from myself, from my own trifling, vain conversation, from the corruption of indwelling sin in my fallen nature, from the vain thoughts which lodge within me.  Yes, precious Jesus; sift all, and every thing which is unsuitable to Thee, and let the whole fall through the ...

"And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." -Romans 8:10 [KJV] We want two things in lively operation; a spiritual death and a spiritual life. We want death put upon the flesh, upon sin, upon everything which is ungodly, that it may not reign or rule; and we want also the communication and maintenance of a divine life which shall act Godward, exist and co-exist in the same breast, and be in activity at the same moment.  Here is sin striving for the mastery; but here also is a view of the cross of Christ; here is a testimony of bleeding, dying love. This puts a death upon sin. But as death is put upon sin and the lust is mortified, crucified, resisted, or subdued, there springs up a life of faith and prayer, of hope and love, of repentance and godly sorrow for sin, of humility and spirituality, of a desire to live to God's praise and walk in His fear. The cross gives both. From the cross comes de...