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

"There they made Him a supper."   -John 12:2 [KJV]   We are very apt to suppose the blessedness of those hallowed seasons in which the Lord Jesus ate and drank familiarly with His disciples, as peculiarly given to the followers of our Lord in the days of His flesh. And, no doubt, there was a precious savour which Jesus manifested upon those occasions. He that laid aside His garments, and condescended to wash His disciples' feet, may well be supposed to have said and shewn a thousand gracious things in those seasons, which are not recorded. But, my soul, depend upon it, if we make Jesus a supper, or if Jesus invites us to His own, which is the same thing, there will be always a blessed savour of His person, work, and righteousness, when His person is the subject of discourse, and His work and righteousness the rich food of the soul.    Our ordinary meals would be truly sanctified, if the love, and grace, and favour of the bountiful Giver of them, became ...

"Nevertheless My lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer My faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of My lips." - Psalm 89:33, 34 [KJV]   We live in a changeable, ever-changing world. All without us is stamped with mutation, death, and decay; and as regards ourselves everything within us tells us how frail, weak, and mutable we are. Thus, as viewed by the eye of sense and reason, uncertainty and changeability are ever seen to be deeply stamped, not only on every event of time, but on all we are and have in body and soul; and this experience of what we feel in ourselves and see in all around us often wonderfully tries both our faith and hope, for we are apt to measure God by ourselves, and judge of our state before Him, not according to His word, but according to the varying thoughts and exercises of our mind.    But when we can look by faith through all these mists and fogs which, as resti...

"Obedience motivated by love is better than a sense of duty. The one continually loving Jesus Christ will keep His precepts impartially without picking and choosing one command and passing by others. He loves God's law in its entirety."   -preacher Wilbur Elias Best, from ' The Elect Bring Forth Fruit'

"Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him."   - Romans 5:9 [KJV]   All heresies are founded in pride, and spring from ignorance and unbelief of the Lord’s word. Some strike at the glory of the free grace of God. Others at the divinity of the Son of God. Others at His atonement and righteousness, whereby our sins are pardoned, our persons justified, and final perseverance to eternal glory is secured to every believer. St. Paul, under the influence of that Spirit, who foresaw every heresy which would spring up, divide the church, dishonour Christ, and distress His members, here sets himself against that pernicious heresy, That souls once justified and pardoned by the blood of Christ, may afterwards perish, under the wrath of God.    (1st.) What is meant by being justified by the blood of Christ? Just the reverse of being condemned for sin by the law. For His blood takes away sin, which is the cause of conde...

"Perfect in Christ Jesus."    -Colossians 1:28 [KJV]   Sweet thought! And where should perfection be found, but in Christ Jesus! My soul! turn the subject over and over again; look at it in every point of view; consider it as it relates to the life that now is, and that which is to come; and where wilt thou find any perfection for grace here, or glory hereafter, but in Christ Jesus? Oh! what heart-aches would it have saved me, had I but learned this sweet lesson when the Lord first took me into His school. Had I but thought aright when the Lord passed by, and saw me in my blood, and bid me live, that a creature so polluted, and so poor, could never recompense such fiches of grace, it would have tended to hide pride from mine eyes.   But I was delighted with myself, and the supposed improvement I should make; all my views were directed how to requite the Lord's goodness, and how to shine above others in the attainments I should make in the divine life: an...

"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him." -Ephesians 1:17 [KJV]   Revelation means literally an uncovering or unveiling of a concealed or covered-up object. It is used, therefore, sometimes in the sense of manifesting, making known, or bringing to light, what had before been hidden in darkness and obscurity. This revelation is, therefore, either outward in the word, or inward in the soul, and the two strictly correspond to and are counterparts of each other. Immediately that, by the power of divine grace, a poor Gentile sinner turns to the Lord, the Spirit of revelation removes the veil off the Scriptures, and off his heart. Have we not found it so? What a sealed book was the word of God once to us! How we read or heard it without one real ray of light to illuminate the dark page; and what a thick veil was there of ignorance, unbelief, prejudice, self-righteousnes...