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

  "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom." -Luke 12:32 [KJV]   While some are disquieted and cavil at a God who does all His pleasure, for those who are the LORD’S, it is their delight and peace. It is with this very truth that the LORD Jesus calms the fears of His disciples, reminding them that they are His sheep, according to the Father’s good pleasure, and that irrespective of the trials and tribulations of this life, that the Father also brings them through, that these are but temporary troubles compared to the eternal kingdom that He has purposed to give them, because of Christ and His finished work at Calvary. Although but a ‘little flock’ [a double diminutive in the original, designed to point out their weakness and insignificance as sinners] , yet Christ being their Redeemer and Justifier, they have no reason to fear, knowing that they are Christ’s by the Father’s eternal love and covenant of grace, and the

    "Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: and if it bear fruit, well; and if not, then after that T hou shalt cut it down." -Luke 13:8, 9 [KJV] Do I not behold the Lord Jesus here represented in His glorious office of our High Priest and Intercessor? And is it thus that He so mercifully pleads for the awakened and unprofitable among His people? Pause, my soul! Was it not from the effects of His intercession, that the world itself was spared from instant destruction, when Adam first brake through the fence of God's law? Is it not now by the same rich grace that thousands are spared from year to year in Christ Jesus, before that they are called to the knowledge of Christ Jesus? Nay my soul! pause once more, over the view of this wonderful subject, and ask thyself was it not from the same almighty interposition that thou was kept from going down to the pit during the long, long period of thy unregeneracy, while thou wert wholly unconsc