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

" God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ." -I Thessalonians 5:9 [KJV] Here is a precious negative, a glorious positive, and happy souls. Lord help us to meditate upon them, to our profit. (1st.) The negative. “God hath not appointed us to wrath.” St. Paul has in his eye, what our proud nature cannot bear to hear of, the sovereignty of God. It is as though he had said, we are all by nature children of wrath. We have all by practice deserved wrath. Here is myself, the other day I did not know the Son of God, but persecuted Him and His servants. If God had dealt with us according to our just deserts, we should have suffered His eternal wrath in hell.  Is your conscience convinced of this? Do your eyes see it? Does your tongue confess this? Does your heart fear this? Rejoice with wonder. That just God, Who had a sovereign right, yet will not appoint you to wrath for your sins. If you have trembled under a sense of wrat...

" Men shall be blessed in Him: all nations shall call Him blessed." -Psalm 72:17 [KJV] “Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things, which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Galatians 3:10.) This curse, God hath never revoked. Every man upon the earth is naturally under it. But the greatest curse is, men neither believe it, feel it, nor care for it. Hence they slight and disregard that dear Man, Who was made “a curse for us,” that we might be blessed in Him. Says our Lord, “search the scriptures, they testify of Me,” (John 5:39.) Here is a sweet testimony for our mind, and precious food for our faith.  Jesus, Master, bless me while I meditate on it. (1st.) See all blessedness in Christ. Well might Luther say, “I will have nothing to do with an absolute God.” That is, God without a Mediator . O sinner, O saint, there is nothing but curse and wrath for us, out of Christ. There is a hell of sin in our nature. The pride of the devil, and ...