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

 God of glory, Lord of heaven, hear Thy children as we pray;  Bless us with Thy Holy Spirit, as we gather on this day.  When this time of worship ceases, and we leave, our homes to go;  May the grace of Christ our Savior, fill each heart to overflow!   -preacher Jim Byrd  *******0******* “Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off.” -Isaiah 33:17 [KJV]  Believer, contemplate your blessed Redeemer, seated on His great white throne, encircled with heavenly glory! Look at the King in His beauty! It is the sight of a glorified Savior that will make the heaven of the believer. Endeavor now, by the eye of faith, to behold the Lord Jesus in all His matchless beauty and excellence. Contemplate His glorious character, His infinite mercy, His unparalleled condescension, and His boundless love!  There is enough in Jesus to employ the soul in rapturous meditation through a vast eternity! His excellence, His g...

     To redeem poor sinners, Jesus came down from heaven, put on the rags of our mortality, agonized, bled, and died. Jesus is made His people's substitute, burden-bearer, sin-remover, guilt-sustainer. Their debt is placed to His account. His riches pay the full amount. Sin is removed from the sinner and placed on the Sinless! Their curse is rolled on Him, and He endures it, until no more remains! God deals with Jesus as the guilty one! He, as spotless Deity, receives imputed sins, and fully expiates them all. In the vicarious  victim, God's justice is satisfied, and wrath expires! Jesus, in His life, in the garden, on the cross suffers their sufferings, dies their death, and so becomes their uttermost salvation! His pains are their pardon! His stripes are their healing! His agony is their recovery! "Christ died for the ungodly!" -Romans 5:6    -preacher Henry Law

“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”   -The LORD JESUS Christ, as per Matthew 5:6 [KJV]   When God the Holy Spirit regenerates a sinner by imparting to him new life and creating within him a new heart, He gives that sinner a real hunger and thirst after righteousness, and He brings that sinner to have that hunger and thirst satisfied and quenched. HOW? It is not by the regenerated sinner seeking and finding righteousness within himself or by his works. The one who has been given spiritual life by the Holy Spirit most certainly longs for righteousness in himself and  for righteousness in his works, but as long as he seeks it in these places, he will always be unfulfilled. God the Holy Spirit always brings the born-again person to seek and to find righteousness and holiness in and by the Lord Jesus Christ and based on His work of redemption for His people . This is how the spiritual man or woman’s hunger and thirst fo...

"The sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him: he is an unwise son: for he should not stay long in the place of breaking forth of children." - Hosea 13:13 [KJV]   Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him (Proverbs 22:15.) Though God’s children are made wise unto salvation, yet folly is bound up in their nature. Their conduct discovers it, and proves the necessity of the rod of correction to drive it from them. Here is a threatening—a charge—the reason for it—and a most precious promise from the Lord.    (1st.) The threatening . God loves His children too well, to spare the rod and spoil them. “For whom the LORD loveth He correcteth: even as a father the son in whom he delighteth” (Proverbs 3:12.) Therefore painful sorrows, like those of a travailing woman, come upon them. Nature’s pains prove nature’s remedies. The painful visitations of love, prove spiritual remedies to the soul: they b...

"The waters of Jordan."   -Joshua 4:23 [KJV]   The sacred streams of Jordan, so often and so highly celebrated in the word of God, open a very blessed subject for meditation. Sit down, my soul, by the side of that ancient river, and call to mind the faith exercised on that memorable spot by the multitude of the faithful gone before, who were heirs with thyself of the promises; and see, whether the Holy Ghost will not graciously, this evening, make thy meditation sweet?    Recollect, as thou viewest the hallowed ground, that here it was, in this river, Jesus received the first public testimony from God the Father; and the first open display of the descent of God the Holy Ghost. Here Jehovah began to magnify the Lord Christ. And here, in ages before, had the Lord begun to magnify that memorable type of Jesus, His servant Joshua. And as, from the baptism of Jesus at this sacred river, the Lamb of God opened His divine commission, so here Joshua, His type, ...

"Which holdeth our soul in life."     -Psalm 66:9 [KJV]   It is indeed an unspeakable mercy for the heirs of promise that the life given them in Christ and communicated by the Holy Spirit to their souls cannot be extinguished. It may sink very low—one can hardly say how low, but so low as to sink out of sight and almost out of feeling; and yet if it has once been breathed into the soul from the mouth of God, it can never die. Still it is most desirable that this divine life should be maintained in strength and vigour, and not sink so low as to be scarcely perceptible either to ourselves or others, for if so, we have little comfort of it in our own breast, and are of little use or service to the people of God.    It is a sad thing to be satisfied with a low, lean, and lifeless state of soul, or be placing our religion in external activity and zealous attention to forms and mere externals, just to preserve a clean outside, when within there is little ...