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

  Guilty as Charged , Part II D G Miles McKee   There is an awfully confused caricature of God which often crops up in the thinking of those who are not Gospel-centred. God is viewed, by them, as being the God of the clenched fist and angry frown who peers over the side of Heaven with a magnifying glass in one hand and a club in the other just waiting for us to step out of line. But nothing could be farther from the truth. For example, in Matthew 12:20 we discover some excellent truth about God.  Jesus, as you know, is the best self-portrait God ever painted and in Matthew 12 we discover that He will neither break the bruised reed nor extinguish the smoking flax. If anything was ever a picture of weakness it is the bruised reed. It's been walked all over and crushed. That's the way so many of us feel. We messed up! We failed! We couldn't keep the marriage together! We can't keep away from porn. We are guilty as charged. But the grace of God towards us is s...

"Wherefore, thou art no more a servant, but a son."   -Galatians 4:7 [KJV] Why does St. Paul tell believers this, seeing he had in the former verse said, that the Spirit assured their hearts of it? We hence plainly see the necessity of the outward word of reconciliation, as well as the inward testimony of the Spirit: and if the witness of the Spirit within does not accord to the testimony of the word without, we do well to suspect it. Besides, from the working of a legal spirit, the prevailings of unbelief, the raging of corrupt lusts, an undue attention to the things of this life, and the accusations of Satan, children of God are prone to live below their glorious state and inestimable privilege. Hence, our loving heavenly Father has not the joy of our hearts, nor the glory of our lives. We do not always, as commanded, rejoice in Christ, our dear elder Brother. Therefore, St. Paul reminds, “thou art no more a servant.”    Consider, (1st.) what means he by a servant?...

"To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne." -Revelation 3:21 [KJV] My soul! let this evening's meditation be sacred, in contemplating Jesus, even thy Jesus, sitting down on the throne of His Father, having overcome all opposition, and triumphed by His cross, over death, sin, and hell! And in this contemplation, be sure that thou behold Jesus in thy nature; for it is in that nature the victory was obtained. The Son of God, as God, had no throne to obtain by overcoming; neither could a throne be given to Him; for all things were His in common with the Father and the Holy Ghost, in the one glorious essence of the Godhead, from all eternity. So that it is in the human nature of Christ, these triumphs are set forth; and as the glory-man Mediator, thou art called upon to behold Him, for His victories, and the merits of His redemption-work, as sat down in the throne.    Sweet thought...

"He shall send from heaven, and save me from the reproach of him that would swallow me up. Selah. God shall send forth His mercy and His truth." -Psalm 57:3 [KJV]   And where is God's mercy revealed? Outwardly in the word of God; inwardly in the heart. And it is by sending His mercy into the conscience, shedding abroad His love in the soul, manifesting His pardoning favour within, that God "saves from the reproach of him that would swallow us up." Man may say, 'I do not doubt your religion; surely you have marks and testimonies of being a child of God!' Ministers may come and endeavour to soothe you, and often by their soothing make more mischief than they mend: 'O, no doubt, if you are exercised with these things you are a child of God;' as though a man could be satisfied with exercises, and because he is hungering and thirsting after the Lord, could be contented with his famine and his drought. No; these things do not touch the secret malad...