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

  Jesus the Precious One: Part IV     “Unto you, therefore, which believe He is precious” (1 Peter 2:7). The very name of Jesus is precious. His name was announced from heaven before His birth by Isaiah who wrote of Him saying; And His name shall be called wonderful, counselor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace  (Isaiah 9:6). As we have already mentioned, on an earlier occasion, His preciousness was announced by the angel who instructed concerning His name, “Call Him Jesus for He shall save His people”. Notice how His mission was bound up in His name. He was to save His people. That was His task. He was not to try to save His people or, by His work, make His people savable. No! He was called Jesus because He would most assuredly save His people. He is precious! To declare His name as being Jesus is to affirm that He saves. But what does He save from? He saves from both sin and sins! “Brother Miles,” you say, “sin and sins …what’s the differ...

"Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee come out of him, and enter no more into him."   -Mark 9:25 [KJV] Oh! that the Lord Jesus, in a spiritual healing, would frame my powers anew in Himself, that neither dumbness nor deafness might ever more stop my voice of praise for the cure of my soul, as the Lord healed the poor man's son in his body! One should suppose that after the song of salvation had been once chanted in the renewed heart, that heart would never more be out of tune, nor feel a dumbness or deafness in the Lord's praise. But, alas! So much of unbelief lies lurking within, and so much of exercises come from without, that the harp is often hanging on the willow, and we seldom sing to the Lord's praise, or proclaim abroad His glory.   Whereas the promise of Jehovah, in allusion to gospel-days, was, that His Israel should, even from the valley of Achor, find a door of hope; and the Lord added, that He would cause His church to sing there, "as in the ...

"Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."   -I Peter 2:5 [KJV] God's people require many severe afflictions, harassing temptations, and many powerful exercises to hew them into anything like shape, to chisel them into any conformity to Christ's image. For they are not like the passive marble under the hands of the sculptor, which will submit without murmuring, and indeed without feeling, to have this corner chipped off, and that projecting angle rounded by the chisel; but God's people are living stones, and, therefore, feel every stroke. We are so tender-skinned that we cannot bear a thread of trouble to lie upon us, we shrink from even the touch of the probe. To be hewed, then, and squared, and chiselled by the hand of God into such shapes and forms as please Him, O what painful work it is!   But could the pillar know, could it tell what the sculptor was do...