Bursting Forth Into a Song

How heart-cheering to the believer, is the delight that God has in His saints!  We cannot see any reason in ourselves why the Lord should take pleasure in us. We cannot take delight in ourselves, for we often have to groan being burdened, conscious of our sinfulness and deploring our unfaithfulness. We also fear that God's people cannot take much delight in us, for they must perceive so much of our imperfections and our follies that they may rather lament our infirmities, than admire our graces.

But we love to dwell upon this transcendent truth, this glorious mystery: that as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride so does our God rejoice over us! In what strong language He expresses His delight in His people! Who could have conceived of the Eternal One as bursting forth into a song? Yet it is written, "He will take great delight in you, He will rejoice over you with singing!" Zephaniah 3:17

As He looked upon His newly created world, He said, "It is very good" but He did not sing.  As He views His works of providence, I do not read that He sings.   But But when He gazes on His redeemed people, the purchase of Jesus' blood, His own chosen ones it seemed as if the great heart of the Infinite could restrain itself no longer but, wonder of wonders and miracle of miracles,  God, the Eternal One, sings out of the joy of His soul!

[ Charles H. Spurgeon]

Isaiah 62:5 … For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.❤

Not One Grain Too Much

Affliction comes to us all:  not to make us sad but sober;  not to make us sorry but to make us wise; not to impoverish us but to enrich us!  We are always in the forge or on the anvil.  By trials, God is shaping us for nobler things.

No physician ever weighed out medicine to his patients with half so much care and exactness, as God weighs out every trial to us.  Not one grain too much, does He ever permit to be put in the scale!

The troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and to Heaven.  Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things!

[Henry Ward Beecher]

Hebrews 12:7-11 …  If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?  But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.  Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?  For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.  Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. ❤

Painted Pageantry

Many people think that, when we preach salvation, we mean salvation from going to Hell. We do mean that, but we mean a great deal more.  We preach salvation from sin. We say that Christ is able to save a man; and we mean by that, that He is able to save him from sin and to make him holy to make him into a new man.

No person has any right to say, "I am saved," while he continues in sin as he did before. How can you be saved from sin, while you are living in it?  You will always know whether you are delivered from the guilt and condemnation of sin, by answering this question: "Am I delivered from the love of sin?"

It is faith that saves us, not works. But that faith which saves us, always produces works.  Does the world satisfy you? Then you have your reward and portion in this life. Make much of it, for you shall know no other joy!

If your religion does not make you holy, it will damn you! It is simply painted pageantry to go to Hell in!  If you have lived like the wicked then you will die like the wicked, and be damned like the wicked!

[Charles H. Spurgeon]

Matthew 1:21 …  And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.

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What is Death, Father?

The voyage of life is a perilous ocean!  People talk about the terrors of death but living has greater terrors than dying!  In Miss Procter's poem, a child asks, "What is life, father?" and gets the answer that life is a battle, where many fall and fail.  Then the child asks, "What is death, father?" We are not surprised that when she learns that death is the rest which comes at the end of the strife of life, she says: "Let me die, father, for I fear to live."  The wise answer is, "You must live first and persevere through the battlefields of life."

Life is full of perils but there is One who can guard us from stumbling, and present us faultless before the presence of God at last. We need only to have Christ for our Friend and He will bring us safely through all peril. But without Christ, we never can get home to Heaven.

[J. R. Miller]

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Psalm 119:117 … Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe: and I will have respect unto thy statutes continually.

Philippians 1:23 … For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:

Revelation 14:13 … And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.❤

Unfailing Graounds

Christians have unfailing grounds of satisfaction and contentment, for they know that all their affairs are managed by a wise and gracious Providence.

The calamities which the believer suffers are unstinged to him through the Redeemer's cross, which, like the tree that Moses cast into the waters of Marah, makes bitter things sweet.

He is not visited with any unnecessary evil, and those evils which visit him are made good on the whole, by the tendency which they have to do him good, and make him good.

Reproaches and tribulations, sicknesses and deaths, are the common lot of men. And they are very evil things to those who are strangers to God but they are good to those who love God, for they are appointed and useful means to make them partakers of God's holiness, and prepare them for that blessed world where sins and sorrows are no more!

[George Lawson]

Romans 8:28 … And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18 … For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;  While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.❤

The Ax is At The Root

Bearing fruit for God is more than attending Church and being a fan of Jesus. Eternity and where we will spend it, literally hangs in the balance. The seriousness of this truth can not be overstated. The ax is at the root of each of our lives.

More important than any job, car, House, boat, college, career, spouse, children and all those cat videos and sports highlights. What is it to bear fruit for God’s glory? Because everything can be one or lost on this one deciding factor in each of our lives.

[Troi Nelson Cockayne]

Matthew 3:10... And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

2 Corinthians 13:5 … Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?❤

Home is With God

The Christian knows no change with regard to God.  He himself may be rich today and poor tomorrow, he may be sickly today and well tomorrow, he may be in happiness today, tomorrow he may be distressed;  but there is never any change with regard to his relationship to God.

If He loved me yesterday then He loves me today. My unmoving mansion of rest, is my blessed Lord.

Let prospects be ruined, let hopes be blasted, let joy be withered, let mildews destroy everything.  I have lost nothing of what I have in God. He is "my strong habitation where unto I can continually resort." I am a pilgrim in the world, but at home in my God. In the earth I wander, but in God I dwell in a quiet habitation.

[Charles H. Spurgeon]

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Habakkuk 3:17-19 …  Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls:  Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.  The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.

Psalm 90:1-2 … Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.  Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.❤

Proverbs 15:23

When his advice is asked, and he gives good and wholesome counsel, and that being taken succeeds; it is a pleasure to a man that he is capable of assisting his friend, and doing him service, or a common good, whether it be in things natural, civil, or religious; when his speech is with salt, seasoned with grace, and he knows how he ought to answer every man; when that which is good proceeds from him, and is to the use of edifying, and ministers grace to the hearers, and is acceptable to them; when with readiness he gives an answer to every man that asks him a reason of the hope that is in him, with meekness and fear.

Whether by way of advice and counsel to such who stand in need of it, or of exhortation and instruction to those that want it, or of comfort to those that are distressed; such is a word of promise spoken and applied by the Spirit of God to the hearts of his people in a time of need; and such is the Gospel of peace, pardon, righteousness, and salvation, as spoken by Christ and his ministers to weary and wounded souls; it cannot be well and fully expressed how sweet, how good, how suitable, as well as seasonable.

[Gill's Exposition of The Entire Bible]

Watson Quotes 2

A weak faith can lay hold on a strong Christ.

God takes away the world that the heart may cleave more to Him in sincerity.

Christ is never sweet until sin is felt to be bitter.

Whoever brings an affliction, it is God who sends it.

Our murmuring is the devil's music.

First we practice sin, then defend it, then boast of it.

What if we have more of the rough file, if we have less rust!  Afflictions carry away nothing but the dross of sin.

Christ's gleanings are better than the world's vintage.

God sweetens outward pain with inward peace.

Christ went more willingly to the cross than we do to the throne of grace.

When God calls a man, He does not repent of it. God does not, as many friends do: love one day and hate another; or as princes, who make their subjects favorites, and afterwards throw them into prison. This is the blessedness of a saint, his condition admits of no alteration. God's call is founded upon His decree and His decree is immutable. Acts of grace cannot be reversed. God blots out His people's sins but not their names.

It was wonderful love that Christ should rather die for us than for the angels that fell. They were creatures of a more noble extract, and in all probability might have brought greater revenues of glory to God, yet that Christ should pass by those golden vessels, and make us clods of earth into stars of glory Oh, the hyperbole of Christ's love!

[Thomas Watson]

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People Are Like Grass

"All people," even the strongest and most healthy people, are like the grass that dies away. Their beauty fades as quickly as the beauty of flowers in a field.

The grass is flourishing in the morning; but, being cut down by the mowers, in the evening it is withered. Likewise, man sometimes is walking up and down at ease in the morning and in the evening is lying as a corpse, being struck down by a sudden blow, with one or another of death's weapons.

The flower, at best, is but a weak and tender thing, of short continuance wherever it grows. But observe, man is not compared to the flower of the 'garden'; but to the "flower in the field" which the foot of every beast may tread down at any time.

Thus is our life liable to a thousand accidents every day, any of which may cut us off. But though we should escape all these yet at length the LORD sweeps them away, and they are gone!

[Thomas Boston]

Psalm 90:5-6 … Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.  In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

Psalm 103:15-16 … As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.   For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

Isaiah 40:6-7 … The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:   The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.  ❤

Cling To The Word!

Do not many of you read the Bible in a very hurried way just a little bit, and off you go!  Do you not soon forget what you have read, and lose what little effect it seemed to have?  How few of you are resolved to get at its soul, its juice, its life, its essence and to drink in its meaning. Well, if you do not do that then your reading is miserable reading, dead reading, unprofitable reading; it is not reading at all, the name would be misapplied. May the blessed Spirit give you repentance concerning this thing.  Meditation and careful thought, exercise us and strengthen the soul for the reception of the yet more lofty truths.

We must meditate, brethren. These grapes will yield no wine until we tread upon them.   These olives must be put under the wheel, and pressed again and again that the oil may flow therefrom.   In a dish of nuts, you may know which nut has been eaten by a worm because there is a little hole which the worm has punctured through the shell. It is just a little hole, and then inside there is the living worm eating up the kernel.   In the same way, it is a grand thing to bore through the shell of the letter of Scripture and then to live inside feeding upon the kernel.

I would wish to be such a little worm as that, living within and upon the Word of God, having bored my way through the shell, and having reached the innermost mystery of the blessed gospel. The Word of God is always most precious to the man who most lives upon it.

Beloved, never be satisfied with a sound creed but desire to have it engraved on the tablets of your heart.  The doctrines of grace are good, but the grace of the doctrines is better still. See that you have it, and be not content with the idea that you are well-instructed until you so understand the doctrine that you have felt its spiritual power.

O living Christ, make this a living Word to me. Your Word is life, but not without the Holy Spirit. I may know this book of Yours from beginning to end, and repeat it all from Genesis to Revelation and yet it may be a dead book, and I may be a dead soul.

Oh, cling to Scripture. Scripture is not Christ, but it is the silken clue which will lead you to Him. Follow its leadings faithfully.

[Charles H. Spurgeon]

Psalm 1:2 … But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

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