Wednesday, October 30, 2013

GREAT HYMN

"1 Not all the blood of beasts
On Jewish altars slain
Could give the guilty conscience peace
Or wash away the stain.

2 But Christ, the heav'nly Lamb,
Takes all our sins away;
A sacrifice of nobler name
And richer blood than they.

3 My faith would lay her hand
On that dear head of Thine,
While like a penitent I stand,
And there confess my sin.

4 My soul looks back to see
The burden Thou didst bear
When hanging on the cursed tree;
I know my guilt was there.

5 Believing, we rejoice
To see the curse remove;
We bless the Lamb with cheerful voice
And sing His bleeding love."

AN HEIR TO HEAVEN

: "If He loved you when you were a mass of corruption, will He not answer your prayers now that He has made you an heir to heaven?" ~ Spurgeon

WE SHALL ENTER VICTORIOUSLY

"We are all as an unclean thing."—Isaiah 64:6.

The believer is a new creature, he belongs to a holy generation and a peculiar people—the Spirit of God is in him, and in all respects he is far removed from the natural man; but for all that the Christian is a sinner still. He is so from the imperfection of his nature, and will continue so to the end of his earthly life. The black fingers of sin leave smuts upon our fairest robes. Sin mars our repentance, ere the great Potter has finished it, upon the wheel. Selfishness defiles our tears, and unbelief tampers with our faith. The best thing we ever did apart from the merit of Jesus only swelled the number of our sins; for when we have been most pure in our own sight, yet, like the heavens, we are not pure in God's sight; and as He charged His angels with folly, much more must He charge us with it, even in our most angelic frames of mind. The song which thrills to heaven, and seeks to emulate seraphic strains, hath human discords in it. The prayer which moves the arm of God is still a bruised and battered prayer, and only moves that arm because the sinless One, the great Mediator, has stepped in to take away the sin of our supplication.

The most golden faith or the purest degree of sanctification to which a Christian ever attained on earth, has still so much alloy in it as to be only worthy of the flames, in itself considered. Every night we look in the glass we see a sinner, and had need confess, "We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags." Oh, how precious the blood of Christ to such hearts as ours! How priceless a gift is His perfect righteousness! And how bright the hope of perfect holiness hereafter! Even now, though sin dwells in us, its power is broken. It has no dominion; it is a broken-backed snake; we are in bitter conflict with it, but it is with a vanquished foe that we have to deal. Yet a little while and we shall enter victoriously into the city where nothing defileth.
Charles Spurgeon

Friday, October 4, 2013

holy reverence

“Of all preaching in the world, I hate that preaching which tends to make the hearers laugh, or to move their minds with tickling levity, and affect them as stage-plays used to do, instead of affecting them with a holy reverence of the name of God.” Richard Baxter

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

IN HIS HANDS

“When one knows that his times are in God’s hands, he would not change places with a king! No, nor even with an angel!”