Category: QUOTES

Puritans and Reformers

Melted and Poured Out

On By francesrogersIn GOD'S GLORY, GOD'S GRACE, GOD'S WORD, QUOTES, UncategorizedLeave a comment

“I am poured out like water, And all My bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax; It has melted within Me.”
Psalm 22:14 

As I have struggled these past two weeks to discipline myself to do all that I need to do—not what I want to do—the thought came that God, our Father knows what we need, for all that He plans for us to do.

From revelation to repentance He is willing and able to work in us this “great salvation.”  He knows how to preserve His own, to work through us all that is needed to sanctify us and make us willing citizens of His kingdom—members of the “household of faith”—servants of the living God.

If it means that He must bring us to a melting point, so that we are not only pliable in His hands, but unable to do what we want to do.  Then is when He can use us.

I imagined what this would be like for me; totally beyond my doing anything on my own—everything under the power of His mercy and grace, being used to fulfill the “counsel of His will.”  It would seem that I would be useless; but not useless in His hands.

What can you do with a piece of ice? It is too cold to hold in your bare hands.  If you drop it it will shatter into lots of pieces.  All you can is wipe up the mess.  Take the ice cube and put it into a liquid and it will be melted and eventually become a part of that liquid.  In God’s hands of love we are melted.  When God’s Spirit melts a cold heart He can do whatever He wants with it and then pour it out on His altar as a living sacrifice.

In Richard and Joseph Alleine’s book Heaven Opened ~ the Riches of God Covenant this “great salvation” through the covenant of grace is explained.  It is all in God’s hands.  Our hearts are in His hands, to reveal Himself, to bring new life, to turn us to faith and repentance, to reconcile us to Himself in Christ; to conform us to His image.  Through His Word, and His Spirit, He continues to transform us by the renewing of our minds, sanctifying and preserving us through our struggles and our sufferings, and service in His kingdom.

“A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.”
Ezekiel 36:26

A Heart to Know Him
“I will give them a heart to know Me.”  Jeremiah 24:7

One Heart
“I will give them one heart.” Ezekiel 11:19

A Heart of Flesh
“I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26

“Flesh will bleed.  A soft heart will mourn, melt, and grieve while nothing moves a hard heart.  Flesh will yield.  It is apt to receive impressions.  The power of God will awe it.  His justice will alarm it.  His mercy will melt it, and His holiness will humble it and leave the stamp and image of it upon it.  And as the attributes do, so the Word and works of God will make a sign upon it.”*   

A Heart to Love the Lord
“The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God, with all thine heart, and with all thine soul.” Deuteronomy 30:6

A Heart to Fear the Lord
“I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me.” Jeremiah 32:40

Obedience in the Covenant
“I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statues, and ye shall keep My judgments, and do them.” Ezekiel 36:27

Perseverance in the Covenant
“I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good…” Jeremiah 32:40

“There are two things secured to believers  in this passage—things which secure their perseverance.  The first is that God will not depart from them.  The second is that they shall not depart from Him.”*

Thank you Father, that you have poured out your whole heart and soul to us in your Son, Jesus Christ.  We praise you that you are exceeding abundantly able to do more than we can ask or imagine to accomplish all for which you created and redeemed us.  Melt us and pour us out today as a living sacrifice for you and your people.

* Heaven Opened ~ The Riches of God’s Covenant by Richard Alleine, published by Sola Deo Publications

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CHRIST IS PRECIOUS ~ Part 4 Octavius Winslow

On By francesrogersIn GOD'S GLORY, GOD'S GRACE, GOD'S WORD, GRIEF, QUOTESLeave a comment

In circumstances of spiritual relapse, how precious does Christ become as the Restorer of His saints, as the Shepherd that goeth in quest of His stray sheep and bringeth it back to the fold with rejoicing. How unspeakably dear is the Savior to the wandering yet restored heart! Our backslidings are perpetual and aggravated, our affections fickle and truant,* our faith fluctuating, our love waning, our zeal flagging, our walk often feeble and unsteady; but Jesus withdraws not His eye from His own work in the soul, and never for a moment loses sight of His stray-going sheep…

How precious is Christ in the season of fiery temptation! When the arch-foe comes, robed as an angel of light, with gentle tread, and oily tongue, and soft persuasiveness, seeking to ensnare and beguile the unsuspicious and unwary—leveling his darts at the very foundations of our faith—insinuating his doubts of the truth of the Bible, of the being of God, of the sufficiency of the Savior, of the reality of a future world—thus seeking to shake the confidence, obscure the hope, and destroy the comfort of the Lord’s people—oh, how precious then is Christ as the Conqueror and Spoiler of Satan; as He Who enables the trembling believer to quench the fiery dart in His own blood, and to take refuge beneath His outspread, all-sheltering wing!…He Who, alone and unaided, battled with Satan those forty days and nights in the solitary wilderness—is He Who was “in all points tempted like as we are” (Heb. 4:15) and “knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations” (2Pe. 2:9) and will shortly bruise Satan, crushed and conquered, under your feet (Rom. 16:20).

In the hour of adversity, of trial, of sorrow, oh, how precious is Christ in the experience of the believer! It would seem, beloved, as though we had never really known Him until then. Certainly, we never knew from experience that there was so much that was human, tender, and compassionate in His heart until sorrow touched our own. We had no conception what a fount of sympathy was there. A new bend in your path, a new epoch in your history, or a new stage in your journey, has frosted with the snowflake and swept with the storm-blast of winter the entire landscape of life: fortune gone—friends removed—health failing—poverty threatening—want pressing, oh, how dreary and lonely seems the path you tread. But pause—it is not all winter! Jesus approaches! He unveils a bosom once pierced, shows a heart once sad, and drawing you within its blest pavilion, hides you from the wind and covers you from the tempest. You never thought Jesus had a heart of such exquisite tenderness until now…The creature has left a blank, but Christ has come and filled it. Reverse has made you poor, but the treasures of divine love have enriched you. In the Lord Jesus, you have more than found the loved one you have lost; and if in the world you have encountered tribulation, in Him you have found peace. O sweet sorrow! O sacred grief that enthrones and enshrines my Savior more preeminently and deeply in my soul!

There is a supremacy in the feeling of Christ’s preciousness to the believer, which is worthy of a remark. Christ has the preeminence in the affection of the regenerate. “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee” (Psa. 73:25). Listen to His own words, asserting His claim to a single and supreme affection: “He that loveth father or mother”—brother or sister, wife, or children—“more than me is not worthy of me” (Mat. 10:37). There are natural ties of affection—the parental, the conjugal, the filial; there are ties, too, of human love and friendship, linking heart to heart; but not one word does He Who inspired those affections, Who formed those ties, breathe, denying their existence or forbidding their exercise. Nay, the religion He came to inculcate distinctly recognizes these human relations, and seeks to strengthen and intensify by purifying, elevating, and immortalizing them. But mark the emphatic word employed by Christ: “more than me”!…In a word, Christ should become more supreme and precious to our hearts by all the sweet, sacred relations and affections of life…

Receive as precious everything that flows from the government of Jesus. A precious Christ can give you nothing but what is precious. Welcome the rebuke—it may be humiliating; welcome the trial—it may be painful; welcome the lesson—it may be difficult; welcome the cup—it may be bitter; welcome everything that comes from Christ in your individual history. Everything is costly, salutary, and precious that Jesus sends…The most severe disciplinary dispensations in the government of Christ are as much the fruit of His eternal, redeeming love as was the tenderest and most touching expression of that love uttered from the cross. All is precious, wise, and salutary in the dealings of Christ. His teachings, His woundings, His withholdings, His withdrawings, His slayings, His changed countenance, His altered tones—when, in a word, His uplifted hand lights heavily upon us, smiting us seven times, even then, oh, how precious should Christ be to the believing soul! Then it is we learn by experience what a balsam exudes from His pierced heart for the very wound His own hand inflicted!…Oh, precious Christ! so divine, so all-sufficient, so indescribably precious, may we not welcome with thankfulness and receive with submission all that Thou dost send…

But there is approaching a period—ah, how it speeds!—which will be the most solemn and severe, yet the sweetest and truest test of the sustaining, soothing power of Christ’s preciousness in the experience of His saints: the last sickness and the closing scene of life. Imagine that moment to have arrived. All of earth’s attraction ceases, all of creature-succor fails. Everything is failing: heart and strength failing—mental power failing—medical skill failing—human affection and sympathy failing; the film of death is on the eye, and the invisible realities of the spirit-world are unveiling to the mental view. Bending over you, the loved one who has accompanied you to the margin of the cold river asks a sign. You are too weak to conceive a thought, too low to breathe a word, too absorbed to bestow a responsive glance. You cannot now [affirm] your faith in an elaborate creed, and you have no profound experience, ecstatic emotions, or heavenly visions to describe. One brief, but all-emphatic, all-expressive sentence embodies the amount of all that you now know, believe, and feel; it is the profession of your faith, the sum of your experience, the ground of your hope: “CHRIST IS PRECIOUS TO MY SOUL.” Enough! The dying Christian can give, and the inquiring friend can wish no more. Dearest Savior, be Thou close to me in that solemn moment! Tread the valley by my side, pillow my languid head upon Thy bosom, speak these words of heart-cheer to my struggling, panting, departing soul: “Fear not: for I am with thee” (Isa. 43:5). Then, it will be happiness for me to die—death will have no venom—the grave no gloom—eternity no dread; and, from the measured experience of Thy preciousness on earth, I shall pass in triumph through the shadowy portal into the full sunshine and perfect realization and eternal enjoyment of all that faith believed, love desired, and hope expected of Thy full-orbed glory and preciousness in heaven.

From “The Preciousness of Christ” in The Precious Things of God,
Soli Deo Gloria, a division of Reformation Heritage Books, www.heritagebooks.org.
“CHRIST IS PRECIOUS ~ Reprint from Free Grace Broadcaster, www.chapellibrary.org/

*fickle and truant – changeable and straying.

_______________________

Octavius Winslow (1808-1878): Nonconformist pastor; born in London, England, raised in New York, buried in Abbey Cemetery, Bath, England.

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CHRIST IS PRECIOUS ~ Part 3 Octavius Winslow

On By francesrogersIn GOD'S GLORY, GOD'S GRACE, GOD'S WORD, QUOTES3 Comments

How precious is the righteousness of Christ—a righteousness that fully justifies our person, completely covering all our deformity, and presenting us to God…And look at the preciousness of His sacrifice, which is as a “sweet- smelling savour” unto God (Eph 5:2), ascending ever from off the golden altar before the throne in one continuous cloud of incense, wreathing the persons, perfuming the prayers, accompanying the offerings, and presenting with acceptance every breath of devotion, every accent of praise, and every token of love that His people here below lay at His feet. “By one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14). That “one offering,” offered once for all, was so divine, so holy, so complete, so satisfactory, it has forever perfected the pardon, perfected the justification, perfected the adoption, and will perfect the sanctification when it perfects the glory of all the elect of Jehovah. Beloved, is not this enough to check every sigh, to quell every fear, to annihilate every doubt, and to fill you with peace and joy in believing? What shouts of praise to Jesus should burst from every lip as each believer contemplates the sacrifice that has secured his eternal salvation…Believer, evince your sense of the preciousness of this great sacrifice by bringing to it daily sins, by drawing from it hourly comfort, and by laying yourself upon it, body, soul, and spirit, a living sacrifice unto God.

How precious is Christ in all the offices and relations that He sustains to His people. Precious as the Head, the covenant-surety Head, of His people, the source of life, the seat of power, the fountain of all blessing. Reader, hold fast the Headship of Christ! Acknowledge no legislative head, no administrative head, no authoritative head, no reigning head of the Church, but the LORD JESUS CHRIST. There are undercurrents of priestly domination in the Church of God in the present day, subversive of this cardinal truth, against which it behoves us to be on our guard. Acknowledge no spiritual Head and King in Zion but the Lord Jesus! Evince (show) your recognition of, reverence for, and love to His government by vindicating His Headship, bowing to His authority, and obeying His laws. Oh, how blessed to be under the holy, benign, and gentle government of Christ, Whose scepter is a scepter of righteousness, so mild and loving in its sway that “a bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench” (Mat 12:20)…

BUT TO WHOM IS CHRIST PRECIOUS? This is a most important question. He is not so to all. It is a privileged class, a peculiar people, a little flock, few and scattered, hidden and unknown, who feel the Savior’s preciousness. Only to the believer is Christ precious; the declaration of the Holy Ghost is, “Unto you therefore which BELIEVE He is precious.” This is philosophically as well as scripturally true. There cannot possibly be a felt conviction of the worth of an object of which we have no intelligent and clear perception. There must be something to create interest, to awaken admiration, to inspire love; the object must be seen, known, and tried.

Now, the only spiritual faculty that discerns Christ, and in discerning Christ realizes His preciousness, is— faith. Faith is…the spiritual eye of the soul. Faith sees Christ; and as Christ is seen, His excellence is descried.*  As His excellence unfolds, so He becomes an object of endearment to the heart. Oh, how lovely and how glorious is Jesus to the clear, far-seeing eye of faith! Faith beholds Him the matchless, peerless One—His beauty eclipsing, His glory outshining all other beings. Faith sees majesty in His meanness,** dignity in His condescension, honor in His humiliation, beauty in His tears, transcendent, surpassing glory in His cross…Beloved, in proportion as the personal dignity, beauty, and excellence of the Lord Jesus unfolds to the believing eye, He becomes more sensibly and deeply enshrined in the heart’s warmest love. We must know the Lord Jesus to admire Him, must admire Him to love Him, and must love Him to serve Him.

The believer, too, beholds a suitability in Christ, sees Him to be just the Savior adapted to the necessities of his soul; and this renders Him peculiarly precious. “I see Him,” exclaims the believer, “to be exactly the Christ I need: His fullness meets my emptiness, His blood cleanses my guilt, His grace subdues my sin, His patience bears with my infirmities, His gentleness succors my weakness, His love quickens my obedience, His sympathy soothes my sorrows, His beauty charms my eye. He is just the Savior, just the Christ I need, and no words can describe His preciousness to my soul”…The believer can say, “Christ is mine, and I have all things in one, even in Christ, Who is my all and in all.” This simple, trembling faith, sublime in its simplicity, mighty in its tremblings, sweeps all the treasures of the everlasting covenant of grace and all the fullness of the Surety of the covenant into its lap, and exclaims, “All is mine because Christ is mine, and I am Christ’s”…If you have fled to Jesus as a poor, empty, believing sinner, there is not a throb of love in His loving heart, nor a drop of blood in His flowing veins, nor a particle of grace in His mediatorial fullness, nor a thought of peace in His divine mind that is not yours, all yours, inalienably yours, as much yours as if you were its sole possessor. And in proportion as you thus deal with Christ, individually travelling to Him, living upon Him, living out of Him, dealing as personally with Him as He deals personally with you, He will insinuate (introduce gradually) Himself in your regard, and will become growingly precious to your soul..

There are peculiar circumstances in the believer’s experience when Christ becomes especially precious to the soul. For example: in the deeper ploughings of the heart’s hidden sinfulness—when the Holy Ghost reveals more of the innate corruption of our nature, and gives a more spiritual perception of sin’s exceeding sinfulness, oh, how precious does the finished work of Christ then become!—how precious the blood that cleanseth from all sin! If God is leading you through this stage of Christian experience, beloved, be not alarmed. It is but to build up His dear Son upon the wreck and ruin of your own merit, strength, and sufficiency. He will have us love His Son with a love like His own— a love of divine, supreme, ineffable affection—and this can only be felt in the region of our own nothingness.

*descried – made known; revealed
** meanness – humbleness of birth; lowliness
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CHRIST IS PRECIOUS ~ Part 2 ~ Octavius Winslow

On By francesrogersIn GOD'S GLORY, GOD'S GRACE, GOD'S WORD, QUOTESLeave a comment

But this personal representation of the Lord Jesus involves also the preciousness of His manhood. His personal alliance with our nature, His condescending stoop to our humanity, is not the least endearing feature to the heart of His believing saints. We have claimed for the Son of God absolute deity; we now claim for Him perfect humanity. Flesh, real and substantial, yet, “harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Heb 7:26) was He “made.” A humanity identical with His people in all but its original and actual sinfulness. “Who knew no sin” (2 Cor, 5:21). Yet, what a sin-bearer was He! All the transgressions of His elect met upon Him! But He could only bear sin as He Himself was essentially free from its taint. Had there been the remotest breath of pollution adhering to Him— had one drop of the moral virus circulated through His veins, it had rendered Him utterly and forever incapable of presenting to the justice of God an atonement for sin. He then had needed, like the high priest of old, to have offered first “for his own sins, and then for the people’s” (Heb. 7:27). How precious, then, beloved, is our Lord Jesus as “bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.” Think of His perfect humanity—a humanity free from sin, and therefore capable of dying for the ungodly—a humanity laden with sorrow, and therefore capable of sympathizing with the afflicted. Precious to our hearts as God—precious as Man—precious as both united in one—inconceivably and eternally precious is He, Whose name is “Wonderful” (Isa 9:6) to His believing saints. Tell, oh tell how precious is that humanity of the Son of God that partook by actual participation and still bears by the most perfect sympathy all the sinless weaknesses, infirmities, temptations, and sorrows of His people. Precious humanity! to which, when other human friendships are changed, other human love is chilled, and other human sympathy is exhausted, you may repair and find it an evergreen, a perennial stream, a gushing fountain of unchanged affection, tenderness, and sympathy, meeting and satisfying to their utmost capacity your hearts’ deep pantings. Precious humanity! that dries each tear, that bears each burden, that is touched with each infirmity, that soothes each sorrow, and that succors each temptation of His people. “In all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted” (Heb 2:17-18).

Oh, love the Lord, then, all ye His saints; laud Him, all ye His people! In all your deep grief, your lonely sorrows, your sore trials, your fiery temptations, your pressing wants, your daily infirmities, repair to the succourings, and the sympathies, and the intercessions of His humanity, and learn how precious Jesus can be to the hearts of His suffering and sorrowing ones. Upon this rock of Christ’s complex person, God has built His Church; and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.

Precious is the Lord Jesus in His work…Look at the groundwork of our salvation. “Thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation”(Isa. 28:16). Upon such a foundation, we look for a superstructure in all respects worthy of its costliness and capability. We find it in the work of Jesus. Oh, what a superstructure is it—nothing less than the salvation of His Church! Such a work was worthy of God, and of all the glory, wisdom, and power embarked in its accomplishment. Nowhere have we such a perfect view of the divine glory as through the medium of the cross. That magnificent sky that spreads above us, studded and glowing with countless myriads of worlds, pales before the subdued glory, the softened splendor of the cross of Christ.

Nowhere does Jehovah-Jesus appear to the spiritual, believing mind so exalted as when He stoops, so glorious as when in eclipse, so holy as when bearing sin, so loving as when enduring its punishment, so triumphant as when vanquished upon the cross! Oh, study not God in the jeweled heavens, in the sublimity of the mountain, in the beauty of the vale, in the grandeur of the ocean, in the murmurs of the stream, in the music of the winds. God made all this, but all this is not God. Study Him in the cross of Jesus! Look at Him through this wondrous telescope, and although, as through a glass darkly, you behold His glory—the Godhead in awful eclipse, the Sun of His deity setting in blood—yet that rude and crimsoned cross more fully reveals the mind of God, more harmoniously discloses the perfections of God, more perfectly unveils the heart of God, and more fully exhibits the glory of God, than the combined power of ten thousand worlds like this, even though sin had never marred, and the curse had never blighted it. Study God in Christ, and Christ on the cross. Oh, the marvels that meet in it—the glory that gathers round it—the streams of blessing that flow from it—the deep, refreshing shadow it casts in the happy experience of all who look to Jesus and live—who look to Jesus and love—who look to Jesus and obey—who look to Jesus and embrace that blessed “hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began” (Ti. 1:2).

A worthy structure this of a foundation so divine! What could be more worthy of God, Whose essence is “love,” than the salvation of His people? In nothing could He appear more like Himself. Upon no platform could He so honorably and completely withdraw the veil from His perfections, and stand forth in His full-orbed majesty, “mighty to save” (Isa. 63:1) as this. Humble believer in Christ, you are saved! Happy saint of God, you shall be in heaven! Christ has paid your debt, opened your prison, broken your chains, and set you free from the Law’s curse, from sin’s condemnation, and from death’s penalty, and you will be forever with the Lord! Is not this enough to make your whole life, clouded and checkered* though it is, a sweet psalm of praise—thus learning the first notes of the song that will employ your tongue through eternity?

P *checkered – uneven or inconsistent and characterized by periods of trouble.
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Whose Holy Day?

On By francesrogersIn GOD'S GLORY, GOD'S WORD, QUOTES, THE LORD'S DAY (SABBATH)Leave a comment

“For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.”
Matthew 12:8

“Let every one that loves Christ keep holy the Lord’s day–,the queen of days, the resurrection day, the highest of all days.”  Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, A.D. 101

“On the Lord’s day, every one of us Christians keeps the Sabbath.” Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, who also lived in the second century, and who was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a companion of apostle John, speaks of the Lord’s Day as the Christian Sabbath.

“A Christian, according to the command of the gospel, observes the Lord’s day, thereby glorifying the resurrection of the Lord.”  Clement of Alexandria

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An Everlasting Covenant

On By francesrogersIn GOD'S GLORY, GOD'S GRACE, GOD'S WORD, QUOTES5 Comments

Twelve years ago, through the following devotional, the Lord opened my heart to the truth of the following verses.  This “everlasting covenant ordered in all things, and sure” is to this day “all my salvation, and all my desire.”

“He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things,
and sure; for this is all my salvation, and all my desire.”  2 Sam. 23:5.

“I have made a covenant with my chosen.”  Psalm 89:3.

“This was David’s plea and confidence, when, with eternity full before him, he was just going to make his appearance before an infinitely pure God.  This must be our plea also, if ever we would obtain the approbation of our Judge.  After a life of the most eminent holiness, the best of men will have reason to cry out, “Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord.”  It is true, indeed, the believer will discover some evidences of grace, just to show the child of God, and no more; but all so imperfect, that he dares not ground his expectations on them.  Here the covenant of grace steps in to his relief, wherein he sees ample provision made for the security of his eternal interest: for the covenant is made with Christ and his seed.  It is an everlasting covenant, not only made before time, but extending its beneficial effects through the ages of eternity.  It is ordered in all things, therefore nothing can be wanting in it, either to promote the glory of God, or the salvation of believers.  It is sure also:  depending on no conditions, requiring nothing but what it gives, conferring its blessings freely, and making them sure to all the seed, being established upon better promises.  Happy souls, who are interested in this well-ordered covenant.  May it be all my salvation, and all my desire.”

Thy word, O God, begetteth faith;
From thence our hope doth spring,
Founded alone on what God saith:
My soul, adore and sing.

Thy word is truth, thy promise sure;
Hence faith and hope abide:
True faith in Jesus will endure;
Naught can from Christ divide.
________
(Bogatzky’s Golden Treasury ~ February 8)

I Love the Lord’s Day by Robert M. McCheyne

On By francesrogersIn GOD'S GLORY, GOD'S GRACE, GOD'S WORD, QUOTES, THE LORD'S DAY (SABBATH)1 Comment

“The Sabbath was made for man”

DEAR FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN,-As a servant of God in this dark and cloudy day, I feel constrained to lift up my voice in behalf of the entire sanctification of the Lord’s day. The daring attack that is now made by some of the directors of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway on the law of God and the peace of our Scottish Sabbath – the blasphemous motion which they mean to propose to the shareholders in February next – and the wicked pamphlets which are now being circulated in thousands, full of all manner of lies and impieties- call loudly for the calm, deliberate testimony of all faithful ministers and private Christians in behalf of God’s holy day. In the name of all God’s people in this town, and in this land, I commend to your dispassionate consideration the following

REASONS WHY WE LOVE THE LORD’S DAY.

I. Because it is the Lord’s day. -“This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice, and be glad in it” (Ps. cxviii. 24). “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” (Rev. i. 10). It is His, by example. It is the day on which He rested from His amazing work of redemption. Just as God rested on the seventh day from all His works, wherefore God blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it; so the Lord Jesus rested this day from all His agony, and pain, and humiliation. “There remaineth therefore the keeping of a Sabbath to the people of God” (Heb. iv. 9). The Lord’s day is His property, just as the Lord’s Supper is the supper belonging to Christ. It is His table. He is the bread. He is the wine. He invites the guests. He fills them with joy and with the Holy Ghost. So it is with the Lord’s day. All days of the year are Christ’s, but He hath marked out one in seven as peculiarly His own. “He hath made it,” or marked it out. Just as He planted a garden in Eden, so He hath fenced about this day and made it His own. This is the reason why we love it, and would keep it entire. We love everything that is Christ’s. We love His word. It is better to us than thousands of gold and silver. “O how we love His law! it is our study all the day.” We love His house. It is our trysting-place with Christ, where He meets with us and communes with us from off the mercy-seat. We love His table. It is His banqueting-house, where His banner over us is love-where He looses our bonds, and anoints our eyes, and makes our hearts burn with holy joy. We love His people, because they are His, members of His body, washed in His blood, filled with His Spirit, our brothers and sisters for eternity. And we love the Lord’s day, because it is His. Every hour of it is dear to us-sweeter than honey, more precious than gold. It is the day He rose for our justification. It reminds us of His love, and His finished work, and His rest. And we may boldly say that that man does not love the Lord Jesus Christ who does not love the entire Lord’s day. Oh, Sabbath-breaker, whoever you be, you are a sacrilegious robber! When you steal the hours of the Lord’s day for business or for pleasure, you are robbing Christ of the precious hours which He claims as his own. Would you not be shocked if a plan were deliberately proposed for breaking through the fence of the Lord’s table, and turning it into a common meal, or a feast for the profligate and the drunkard? Would not your best feelings be harrowed to see the silver cup of communion made a cup of revelry in the hand of the drunkard? And yet what better is the proposal of our railway directors? “The Lord’s day” is as much His day as “the Lord’s table” is His table. Surely we may well say, in the words of Dr. Love, that eminent servant of Christ, now gone to the Sabbath above: “Cursed is that gain, cursed is that recreation, cursed is that health, which is gained by criminal encroachments on this sacred day.”

II. Because it is a relic of Paradise and type of Heaven.-The first Sabbath dawned on the bowers of a sinless paradise. When Adam was created in the image of his Maker, he was put into the garden to dress it and to keep it. No doubt this called forth all his energies. To train the luxuriant vine, to gather the fruit of the fig-tree and palm, to conduct the water to the fruit-trees and flowers, required all his time and all his skill. Man was never made to be idle. Still when the Sabbath-day came round, his rural implements were all laid aside; the garden no longer was his care. His calm, pure mind looked beyond things seen into the world of eternal realities. He walked with God in the garden, seeking deeper knowledge of Jehovah and His ways, his heart burning more and more with holy love, and his lips overflowing with seraphic praise. Even in Paradise man needed a Sabbath. Without it Eden itself would have been incomplete. How little they know the joys of Eden, the delight of a close and holy walk with God, who would wrest from Scotland this relic of a sinless world! It is also the type of heaven. When a believer lays aside his pen or loom, brushes aside his worldly cares, leaving them behind him with his week-day clothes, and comes up to the house of God, it is like the morning of the resurrection, the day when we shall come out of great tribulation into the presence of God and the Lamb. When he sits under the preached word, and hears the voice of the shepherd leading and feeding his soul, it reminds him of the day when the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall feed him and lead him to living fountains of waters. When he joins in the psalm of praise, it reminds him of the day when his hands shall strike the harp of God- Where congregations ne’er break up, And Sabbaths have no end.
When he retires, and meets with God in secret in his closet, or, like Isaac, in some favourite spot near his dwelling, it reminds him of the day when “he shall be a pillar in the house of our God, and go no more out.” This is the reason why we love the Lord’s day. This is the reason why we “call the Sabbath a delight” A well-spent Sabbath we feel to be a day of heaven upon earth. For this reason we wish our Sabbaths to he wholly given to God. We love to spend the whole time in the public and private exercises of God’s worship, except so much as is taken up in the works of necessity and mercy. We love to rise early on that morning, and to sit up late, that we may have a long day with God. How many may know from this that they will never be in heaven! A straw on the surface can tell which way the stream is flowing. Do you abhor a holy Sabbath? Is it a kind of hell to you to be with those who are strict in keeping the Lord’s day? The writer of these lines once felt as you do. You are restless and uneasy. You say, “Behold what a weariness is it” “When will the Sabbath be gone, that we may sell corn?” Ah! soon, very soon, and you will be in hell. Hell is the only place for you. Heaven is one long, never-ending, holy Sabbath-day. There are no Sabbaths in hell.

III. Because it is a day of blessings. -When God instituted the Sabbath in paradise, it is said, “God blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it” (Gen. ii. 3). He not only set it apart as a sacred day, but made it a day of blessing. Again, when the Lord Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week before dawn, He revealed Himself the same day to two disciples going to Emmaus, and made their hearts burn within them (Luke xxiv. 13). The same evening He came and stood in the midst of the disciples, and said, “Peace be unto you;” and He breathed on them and said, “receive ye the Holy Ghost” (John xx. 19). Again, after eight days, – that is, the next Lord’s day,-Jesus came and stood in the midst, and revealed Himself with unspeakable grace to unbelieving Thomas (John xx. 26). It was on the Lord’s day also that the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost (Acts ii. 1 ; compare Lev. xxiii. 15, 16). That beginning of all spiritual blessings, that first revival of the Christian Church, was on the Lord’s day. It was on the same day that the beloved John, an exile on the sea-girt isle of Patmos, far away from the assembly of the saints, was filled with the Holy Spirit, and received his heavenly revelation. So that in all ages, from the beginning of the world, and in every place where there is a believer, the Sabbath has been a day of double blessing. It is so still, and will be, though all God’s enemies should gnash their teeth at it. True, God is a God of free grace, and confines His working to no time or place; but it is equally true, and all the scoffs of the infidel cannot alter it, that it pleases Him to bless His word most on the Lord’s day. All God’s faithful ministers in every land can bear witness that sinners are converted most frequently on the Lord’s day-that Jesus comes in and shows Himself through the lattice of ordinances oftenest on His own day. Saints, like John, are filled with the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and enjoy their calmest, deepest views into the eternal world. Unhappy men, who are striving to rob our beloved Scotland of this day of double blessing, “ye know not what you do.” You would wrest from our dear countrymen the day when God opens the windows of heaven and pours down a blessing. You want to make the heavens over Scotland like brass, and the hearts of our people like iron. Is it the sound of the golden bells of our ever-living High Priest on the mountains of our land, and the breathing of His Holy Spirit over so many of our parishes, that has roused up your satanic exertions to drown the sweet sound of mercy by the deafening roar of railway carriages? Is it the returning vigour of the revived and chastened Church of Scotland that has opened the torrents of blasphemy which you pour forth against the Lord of the Sabbath? Have your own withered souls no need of a drop from heaven? May it not be the case that some of you are blaspheming the very day on which your own soul might have been saved? Is it not possible that some of you may remember, with tears of anguish in hell, the exertions which you are now making, against light and against warning, to bring down a withering blight on your own souls and on the religion of Scotland? To those who are God’s children in this land, I would now, in the name of our common Saviour, who is the Lord of the Sabbath day, address

A WORD OF EXHORTATION.

1. PRIZE THE LORD’S DAY.-The more that others despise and trample on it, love you it all the more. The louder the storm of blasphemy howls around you, sit the closer at the feet of Jesus. “He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet” Diligently improve all holy time. It should be the busiest day of the seven; but only in the business of eternity. Avoid sin on that holy day. God’s children should avoid sin every day, but most of all on the Lord’s day. It is a day of double cursing as well as of double blessing. The world will have to answer dreadfully for sins committed in holy time. Spend the Lord’s day in the Lord’s presence. Spend it as a day in heaven. Spend much of it in praise and in works of mercy, as Jesus did.

II. DEFEND THE LORD’S DAY.-Lift up a calm, undaunted testimony against all the profanations of the Lord’s day. Use all your influence, whether as a statesman, a magistrate, a master, a father, or a friend, both publicly and privately, to defend the entire Lord’s day. This duty is laid upon you in the Fourth Commandment. Never see the Sabbath broken without reproving the breaker of it. Even worldly men, with all their pride and contempt for us, cannot endure to be convicted of Sabbath-breaking. Always remember God and the Bible are on your side, and that you will soon see these men cursing their own sin and folly when too late. Let all God’s children in Scotland lift up a united testimony especially against these three public profanations of the Lord’s day

(1) The keeping open of Reading-Rooms-In this town, and in all the large towns of Scotland, I am told, you may find in the public reading-rooms many of our men of business turning over the newspapers and magazines at all hours of the Lord’s day; and especially on Sabbath evenings, many of these places are filled like a little church. Ah, guilty men! how plainly you show that you are on the broad road that leadeth to destruction. If you were a murderer or an adulterer, perhaps you would not dare to deny this. Do you not know-and all the sophistry of hell cannot disprove it- that the same God who said,” Thou shalt not kill,” said also, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy?” The murderer who is dragged to the gibbet, and the polished Sabbath-breaker are one in the sight of God.
(2) The keeping open Public-Houses-Public-houses are the curse of Scotland. I never see a sign, “Licensed to sell spirits,” without thinking that it is a licence to ruin souls. They are the yawning avenues to poverty and rags in this life, and, as another has said, “the short cut to hell.” Is it to be tamely borne in this land of light and reformation, that these pest-houses and dens of iniquity-these man-traps for precious souls-shall be open on the Sabbath, nay, that they shall be enriched and kept afloat by this unholy traffic, many of them declaring that they could not keep up their shop if it were not for the Sabbath market-day? Surely we may well say, “Cursed is the gain made on that day.” Poor wretched men! Do you not know that every penny that rings upon your counter on that day will yet eat your flesh as if it were fire-that every drop of liquid poison swallowed in your gaslit palaces will only serve to kindle up the flame of “the fire that is not quenched”?
(3) Sunday Trains upon the Railway.-A majority of the directors of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway have shown their determination, in a manner that has shocked all good men, to open the railway on the Lord’s day. The sluices of infidelity have been opened at the same time, and floods of blasphemous tracts are pouring over the land, decrying the holy day of the blessed God, as if there was no eye in heaven, no King on Zion Hill, no day of reckoning. Christian countrymen, awake! and, filled by the same spirit that delivered our country from the dark superstitions of Rome, let us beat back the incoming tide of infidelity and enmity to the Sabbath. Guilty men! who, under Satan, are leading on the deep, dark phalanx of Sabbath- breakers, yours is a solemn position. You are robbers. You rob God of His holy day. You are murderers. You murder the souls of your servants. God said, “Thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy servant;” but you compel your servants to break God’s law, and to sell their souls for gain. You are sinners against light. Your Bible and your catechism, the words of godly parents, perhaps now in the Sabbath above, and the loud remonstrances of God-fearing men, are ringing in your ears, while you perpetrate this deed of shame, and glory in it. You are traitors to your country. The law of your country declares that you should “observe a holy rest all that day from your own words, works, and thoughts;” and yet you scout it as an antiquated superstition. Was it not Sabbath-breaking that made God east away Israel? And yet you would bring the same curse on Scotland now. You are moral suicides, stabbing your own souls, proclaiming to the world that you are not the Lord’s people, and hurrying on your souls to meet the Sabbath-breaker’s doom. In conclusion, I propose, for the calm consideration of all sober-minded men, the following

SERIOUS QUESTIONS.

(1) Can you name one godly minister, of any denomination in all Scotland, who does not hold the duty of the entire sanctification of the Lord’s day?
(2) Did you ever meet with a lively believer in any country under heaven – one who loved Christ, and lived a holy life – who did not delight in keeping holy to God the entire Lord’s day?
(3) Is it wise to take the interpretation of God’s will concerning the Lord’s day from “men of the world,” from infidels, scoffers, men of unholy lives, men who are sand-blind in all divine things, men who are the enemies of all righteousness, who quote Scripture freely, as Satan did, to deceive and betray?
(4) If, in opposition to the uniform testimony of God’s wisest and holiest servants-against the plain warnings of God’s word, against the very words of your catechism, learned beside your mother’s knee, and against the voice of your outraged conscience-you join the ranks of the Sabbath-breakers, will not this be a sin against light, will it not lie heavy on your soul upon your death-bed, will it not meet you in the judgment-day?

Praying that these words of truth and soberness may be owned of God, and carried home to your hearts with divine power-I remain, dear fellow-countrymen, your soul’s well-wisher, etc.

December 18, 1841.

SCRIPTURES TO BE MEDITATED ON.

1. Sabbath commanded.-Ex. xvi. 22-30; xx. 8-11; xxxv. 1-3. Lev. xix. 3-30. Dent. v. 12-15. Neh. ix. 14.
2. A sign of God’s people.-Ex. xxxi. 12-17. 2 Kings iv. 23. Ezek. xx. 12. Lam. i. 7. Heb. iv. 9.
3. Sabbath-breaking punished.-Num. xv. 32-36. Lev. xxvi. 33-35. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21. Jer. xvii. 19-end. Lam. ii. 6. Ezek. xx. 12-26. Amos. viii. 4-14.
4. Day of blessing.-Gen. ii. 2, 3. Ex. xvi. 24. Lev. xxiv. 8. Num. xxviii. 9, 10. Isa. lvi. 1-8; lviii 13, 14. John xx. 1, 19, 26. Acts ii. 1, with Lev. xxiii 15. Rev. i. 10.
5. Rulers should guard the Sabbath.-Ex. xx. 10. Neh. xiii. 15-22.
6. Sabbath in gospel times-Psalm cxviii. 24. Isa. lxvi. 23. Ezek. xlvi. 1. Mark ii. 27, 28. Acts ii. 1; xx.6, 7. l Cor. xvi. 2. Rev i. 10.

Wings of Grace

On By francesrogersIn GOD'S GLORY, GOD'S GRACE, GOD'S WORD, QUOTES2 Comments

 Wings of Grace

 How the photographer got this close to the scene I do not understand.  I only know what I see in the picture.  And it reminds me of the words of the Psalmist who experienced the wings of God’s grace.

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.”
Psalm 91:1,3 ESV

It also reminds me of the need for stronger and larger wings as we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  In Waiting on God, Andrew Murray aptly describes the work of God’s grace in us.

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles;
they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
 Isaiah 40:31

“You know what eagles’ wings mean.  The eagle is the king of birds; it soars the highest into the heavens.  Believers are to live a heavenly life, in the very presence and love and joy of God.  They are to live where God lives; they need God’s strength to rise there.  It will be given to them that wait on Him.

You know how the eagles’ wings are obtained.  Only in one way — by the eagle birth.  You are born of God.  You have the eagles’ wings.  You may not have known it; you may not have used them; but God can and will teach you how to use them.

You know how the eagles are taught the use of their wings.  See yonder cliff rising a thousand feet out of the sea.  See high up a ledge on the rock, where there is an eagle’s nest with its treasure of two young eaglets.  See the mother bird come and stir up her nest, and with her beak push the timid birds over the precipice.  See how they flutter and fall and sink toward the depth.  See now how she “fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: (Deuteronomy 32:11), and so, as they ride upon her wings, brings them to a place of safety.  And so, she does once and again, each time casting them out over the precipice, and then again taking and carrying them.  “So the Lord alone did lead him.”  Yes, the instinct of that eagle mother was God’s gift, a single ray of that love in which the Almighty trains His people to mount as on eagles’ wings.

He stirs up your nest.  He disappoints your hopes. He brings down your confidence.  He makes you fear and tremble, as all your strength fails, and you feel utterly weary and helpless.  And, all the while He is spreading His strong wings for you to rest your weakness on, and offering His everlasting Creator-strength to work in you.  And all He asks is that you sink down in your weariness and wait on Him.  Allow Him in His Jehovah-strength to carry you as you ride upon the wings of HIs omnipotence.

Dear child of God, I pray you, lift up your eyes, and behold your God!  Listen to Him who says that He “fainteth not, neither is weary,” who promises that you too shall not faint or be weary, who asks nothing but this one thing, that you should wait on Him.  And, let your answer be, With such a God, so mighty, so faithful, so tender—My soul, wait thou only upon God!”   God’s grace for God’s glory and our joy!” (Waiting on God  ~ Andrew Murray)

Graceful Suffering

On By francesrogersIn GOD'S GLORY, GOD'S GRACE, QUOTESLeave a comment

“Blows that wound cleanse away evil;

strokes make clean the innermost parts.”

Proverbs 20:30 ESV

“Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggles against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.  And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?”

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.

For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.

“It is for discipline that you have to endure.  God is treating you as sons.  For what son is there whom his father does not discipline. If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.  He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.  For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

“Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”  Hebrews 12: 5-14

These striking words from the writers of Proverbs and Hebrews are truths that are not easy to accept.  So I post these for my own remembrance, (how often I forget), and to share them with those who may not have undergone such trials, or understand the reasoning, the process and end result of suffering. Looking to Christ,”high and lifted up,” keeps me focused as I travel  this “path of righteousness” through the trials and tribulations of this wilderness.  It is the path that He had to take in order to return to the Father.  It was for our sake that He went this way, and now He leads us by His Spirit and His Word to follow Him—all for His glory and our joy.

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith, produces steadfastness.  And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and comlete, lacking in nothing.”  James 1:3-4

“May you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy.”  Colossians 1:11

City of God’s Glory

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“City of God”  ~  Augustine

“When shall I see that city whose streets are paved with pure gold, in which shall be sung the song of gladness, and through all the streets of which the hallelujah shall be uttered by all.  O holy city!  O beautiful city! from afar I salute thee, I cry for thee, I entreat for thee, I long to see thee, and to rest in thee; but kept still in the flesh, I am not permitted.  O city to be longed for! thy walls one gem, thy keeper God himself, thy citizens always rejoicing, for they exult in the vision of God.  In thee there is no corruptibility, nor defect, nor old age, nor anger, but perennial peace and festal glory, joy everlasting, festival unbroken.  In thee there is no yesterday nor tomorrow, but an unchanging to-day.  Tomorrow is as yesterday, and the long ago is eternally the same.  To thee belong salvation, life, and endless peace.  To thee God is all.  In thee there is no fear, no sadness; each desire passes at once into joy; all that is wished for is at hand, and all that is longed for abounds.

“Sigh for the eternal Jerusalem! whither your hope has gone before, let your life follow.  There we shall be with Christ.

“If you would be armed against temptation in the world, let the longing for the eternal Jerusalem grow and be strengthened in your hearts.  Our captivity shall pass away, our felicity shall come, the last enemy shall be destroyed, and beyond death we shall triumph with our King.”