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

  Weekend Gospel message to follow for All Hands (11-13NOV22 A.D.) Heads-Up --- Please find enclosed encouragement in SO GREAT SALVATION by the perfect and finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ in saving poor, needy and wretched sinners by His sovereign free grace - Almighty God's unmerited favor - from our sins and from Hell: WHAT DID JESUS DO? “ But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:12-14).   There was a popular “guilt trip” being passed around recently called “What Would Jesus Do.” The campaign, complete with pretty, plastic pastel bracelets, was designed to aid in decision-making when faced with a moral crisis. But the issue is not “What would Jesus do,” but “Wha t did Jesus do.” Our text tells us in no uncertain terms precisely what He did; no pity her...

  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...

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it you." -John 16:23 [KJV] My soul, do not fail to remark, in this blessed promise of thy Lord, how He hath secured the accomplishment of it. Here is a double verily if one will not do. And this is said by the faithful Witness, and the Amen of heaven. Had Jesus said but the words themselves, without a single verily, His bare word was enough to give confirmation to faith; but when He says, "Verily, verily," repeating it twice over, how gracious and condescending, as well as comforting and confirming, ought it to be to our dependence  upon what He hath said. But the promise itself comes in with a blessed shall and will; and that not to any limited request or petition, but extended to a whatsoever; as if Jesus threw the reins of government into His people's hand. In some parts of scripture we find a may be for our encouragement. "It may be," said the prophet, ...

"Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place." - Isaiah 28:17 [KJV] Wherever God the Holy Ghost begins and carries on a work of grace in the heart, He will weigh up, and mete out, from time to time, all a man's religion and try every inch of the way whether it lies straight and level with the word and will of God. Depend upon it the Lord Who "weigheth the spirits" (Proverbs 16:2) , and by Whom "actions are weighed" (I Samuel 2:3) , will put into His righteous and unerring scales both nature and grace, both human and divine teaching, and make us know which is full weight in heaven's court. The religion of the present day is too much to confuse everything of an experimental nature; to cover and obscure the work of grace in the heart.  But there can be no question that God will never suffer our religion, if, indeed, He has me...

"And they feared as they entered into the cloud." -Luke 9:34 [KJV] My soul, here is much instruction for thine evening thoughts to be employed upon. Sit down, and take a leisurely view of the situation of the disciples of Jesus, at this hallowed season, on the mount. The Lord Jesus was about to manifest to them somewhat of His glory. But the prelude to it was infinitely solemn. "They feared as they entered into the cloud;" though, when there, Jesus was going to open to their souls the richest enjoyment of Himself. And is it not so with all the sweetest manifestations which the Lord makes to His people?  Seasons of sickness, bereaving providences, afflictions from the world, disappointments, crosses, and the like; these are like the cloud to the disciples, as we enter them; but what gracious events have we found folded up in them, and when opened to our view, how much of Jesus's love, and grace, and glory, have come out of them, which, but for the dispensation,...