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

  Jesus: Our Right Standing Before God. Repentance is a vital truth: God does not open heaven without it! But let’s get this straight; our repentance is not the basis of our welcome into God’s presence. Repentance, properly speaking, is a profound change of mind about God and about sin, but again we must be clear that it is not the ground or basis of our right standing before God. Likewise, regeneration is a work of the Spirit that gives us a new heart towards God, but this is not the foundation of our acceptance either. Many professing Christians have false trusts. Some trust in their reformation and although the Holy Spirit will help us to grow in grace as we are bathed in the gospel, reformation of lifestyle does not give us our welcome before God. And what about our relationship with God? Many things change because of the gospel. For example, we are adopted and receive a change of family and we now have a new relationship with God. Yet, powerful as these chang...

"Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance." - Psalm 90:8 [KJV] Thus Moses the man of God testified, and so Job found it: "For Thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth" (Job 13:26). But though the Lord sets His people's sins in the light of His countenance, and brings them to bear with weight and power upon their conscience, and thus for a time at least lets them sink and fall into distress and grief, He will support them under the heavy load, that they may not altogether be crushed by it.   I do think, that if there is one single grace more overlooked than another in the Church of God at the present day, it is the grace of repentance. Though it lies at the very threshold of vital godliness, though it was one main element in the gospel that Paul preached, for he "testified both to the Jews and also to the Greeks repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lor...

"But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore; but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat?" -John 21:4, 5 [KJV] Every incident in relation to Jesus, and His love to His people, becomes interesting; and here is a very sweet one. Jesus was now risen from the dead. But His disciples had only faint and indistinct notions of the immense importance of this glorious event. They therefore were returned to their employment of fishing, as unconscious of what the resurrection from the dead should mean. All night they had been employed in a fruitless pursuit, and when the morning began to dawn, Jesus stood on the shore; but their eyes were holden, that they did not know Him.   My soul! learn from hence, that Jesus is often with thee, often looking on thee, and often providing and preparing for thee, while thou art ignorant of His presence and His love. He speaks to them, before they speak to him. Yes; "if we l...

"Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied."   -I Peter 1:2 [KJV] Peter declares that we are "elect unto obedience." Election unto eternal life, unto salvation, unto the blood of sprinkling many gladly hear of, receive, and profess. This, they say, is sweet and precious doctrine. And so indeed it is. But do they find or feel any similar sweetness and preciousness in being chosen and ordained to know and do the will of God? Do they see and feel the blessedness of the precept being secured by divine decree, as well as the promise; and that there is a constraining power in the love of Christ under which they experience a holy and sacred pleasure in no longer living unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again, similar in kind, if not in degree, to the pleasure which they experience in knowing they we...

"Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked; I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see." -Revelation 3:17,18 [KJV] My soul! take a leisurely view of what the Redeemer hath here stated of the church of Laodicea, and gather from it thine evening improvement. What a melancholy representation hath Jesus given! It would have been bad enough to have been in this state, even had the church been seeking deliverance from it; but to fancy herself well when very ill, to have the spots of death upon her when she supposed herself recovered, what can be more awful? See to it, my soul, that this be not thy case; ponder over the several characters here drawn, and mark well, w...

"By the fear of the L ORD men depart from evil." - Proverbs 16:6 [KJV] There is a very close and intimate connection between godly fear and being "holy in all manner of conversation." When do we drop into levity of conversation? When do light and frothy words fall from our lips? When do any of those hasty bursts of temper, or those fretful expressions, or that mere carnal, worldly talk to which we are naturally prone, hover upon our lips and break forth, more or less unguardedly, from our tongue? Is it not when this godly fear is not playing its streams as a fountain of life to well water the soul and soften it into humility and love, and is not springing up in wholesome checks and godly admonitions to keep the tongue as with a bridle and to rule that little member which, though so little, if untamed, defileth the whole body?  But if this fear be in exercise, it will restrain that levity of speech which not only grieves and wounds our own conscience, but is often...

"A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things." -Ecclesiastes 10:19 [KJV] What feast is this, which the wise man meant, and the wine which, for true mirth, he would here recommend? He could not mean the laughter of the fool for that, he tells us elsewhere (chapter 7:6) "is as the crackling of thorns under a pot." The drunkard's song is but the mirth of the moment, which, like the burning thorn, may blaze and flash amidst the midnight crew, but suddenly goeth out, and leaves a total darkness.     But if Solomon had an eye to the feast which Jesus hath made in the mountain of the Lord's house "a feast of fat things," where His body broken, and His blood shed, are the food of the table; this indeed is a feast made for real joy of heart, and "wine which cheereth God and man;" Judges 9:13. When the justice of God drank of this blood of the Lamb, it was satisfied; and when the poor sinner hath tasted of...