GRACE SUPER-ABOUNDS; Hallelujah!

"Go, tell His disciples and Peter, that He goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see Him." —Mark 16:7 [KJV]

How different is the Gospel from the law; one is the voice of condemnation, terror, and wrath; the other speaks nothing but grace, peace, and love. God's children only murmured for water in the wilderness, and even the meek Moses is in wrath with them, and calls them REBELS. Here, though the poor disciples had acted most base and ungrateful to their loving Saviour; for they added sorrow to His distress, when they all forsook Him and fled, and Peter above all the rest; for as though Jesus was the most abandoned wretch, Peter with oaths and curses denied that he even knew Him. 

What could they expect, but that the first message from their Lord should be full of upbraiding? Was it, Go tell those apostate REBELS I am risen from the dead, they shall receive their just deserts; vengeance is Mine, I will repay them? No: be astonished, O heavens! Hear, wonder, and love, O ye backsliding children: devils are not permitted to terrify, but angels commissioned to comfort them. Tell His disciples, amazing! Disciples still! 

How unworthy of the very name! Yet more, lest this message should prove a dagger to poor Peter's heart, lest he should write bitter things against himself, "I am no disciple; though all the rest forsook and fled from Jesus yet not one of them sinned with so high a hand as me. I not only forsook Him, fled from Him, but denied Him, denied Him with oaths, cursed and swore most bitterly that I did not know Him. Ah! woe is me: the Lord told me Satan had desired to have me, so it must be." No, no, Peter, "whom thy Lord loves, He loves to the end;" He hates putting away; His loving heart cannot bear it. Not all that sin or hell can say can turn His heart, His love away. 

Peter is included in the commission of comfort, by name. Did Peter sin above the rest? Yet grace super-abounds; therefore behold, He is particularized above the rest by name. "He goeth before you to Galilee, there shall ye see Him." O, but for this comfortable message, poor Peter would have dreaded to meet with and see Jesus. O soul, Jesus is gone before to glory, there shalt thou see Him. But for the comfortable message our souls have had from Him, of His love and salvation, we might dread the sight of Jesus. But who shall set bounds to the love of Jesus? 

Will any poor trembling disciple say, the Lord hath forsaken me, my Lord hath forgotten me? True thou mayest deserve it; but thy Lord deals with thee not after that manner; though thou art a sinner, a backsliding sinner, a hell-deserving sinner, the chief of sinners, yet still His name is Jesus the Saviour, His nature is love; and it is the joy of His heart and the work of His life "to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them."—Hebrews 7:25.

-preacher William Mason (1724-1797 A.D.)

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