GOD DELIVERS HIS PEOPLE IN CHRIST!
"Give
strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those
that be of heavy hearts."
-PROVERBS
31:6 [KJV]
The
wise mother of king Lemuel gave her son gracious directions when she
spake these words. It is when we begin to feel the misery into which
we have been cast by sin, and thus become ready to perish, and of
heavy hearts, that the pure wine of gospel grace is suitable to
our lost condition. As the holiness and justice of God are
discovered to the conscience, and we are made to see and feel the
depths of the Adam fall, we look out of ourselves for a salvation
which we could not find in our fallen nature or in our deeply corrupt
and unbelieving heart.
When,
then, we obtain by living faith a view of the Son of God as a
Mediator between God and men, when we see by the eye of faith the
blood of the cross, and the full and complete atonement which He, as
the Lamb of God, made for sin, then we heartily embrace Him as "of
God made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and
redemption" [I
CORINTHIANS 1:30].
We see and feel that there is salvation in Him and in no other [ACTS
4:12]; and as
this salvation is seen to be
worthy of God and suitable to us, as it answers all the demands of
God's holy law, and glorifies it by rendering it an obedience as far
excelling ours as heaven excels earth, and God surpasses man, we
embrace it as our justifying righteousness and covering robe, from
the eyes of Him
who, out of Christ, is a consuming fire [HEBREWS
12:29].
-Gospel
report by preacher J.C. Philpot (1802-1869 A.D.)
JANUARY 5TH, EARS FROM HARVESTED SHEAVES
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