Jun 13
22
LORD JESUS CHRIST
LORD– God in all His fullness.
JESUS-“YOU SHALL CALL HIS NAME JESUS FOR HE SHALL SAVE HIS PEOPLE FROM THEIR SINS”
CHRIST– The anointed King who reigns over His people, Satan and the world and reigns most victoriously on the cursed tree as He dies under the judgement of God satisfying God’s justice for His chosen ones. All OT prophesies are yes and amen. He is our righteousness, He is our sanctification, and He is our redemption. We must look to Him for everything.
* The Gospel is an everlasting (eternal) gospel. Rev 14:7
* The Gospel had its origins before the foundation of the world. Eph 1:4
* It is the Gospel of God –it comes directly from Him. Mark 1:1,1:15
* It is the power of God. Rom 1:16
* It is a Gospel of Grace. Acts 20:24
* It is the Gospel proclaimed by all the apostles and they spoke as one man –it is not a mystery. Rom 16:25
* It is the Gospel chosen sinners receive. 1 Cor 15:1
* It is the Gospel that you are saved by. 1 Cor 15:2
* It is the Gospel chosen sinners believe. 1 Cor 15:2
* It is the Gospel chosen sinners stand in. 1 Cor 15:1
* It is the Gospel by which believers are established Rom 16:25
* It is the Gospel by which men are judged. Rm 2:16
* It is the Gospel which exposes all false gospels and professors of false religion. John 3:19-21
* The Gospel is not an offer.
* The Gospel is not an invitation.
* The Gospel does not ever convey a possibility.
* The Gospel does not create a potential.
A King who tries to save but can’t because He loves but His love has no power and a Jesus who dies “in some way” for all people is not the God of the Bible. Any “Gospel” which at any point diminishes the deity of our LORD JESUS CHRIST and at any point conveys even a hint that He has not fulfilled all the OT promises both in the saving of His bride and the just condemning of those who reject Him is not the truth of the scriptures and is offensive to His Glory and entraps people in a delusion.
There is nowhere that the Gospel requires anything of human involvement-all we touch is sin, all we do is sin. We are saved and live by Grace. 1 Cor 4:7 What do you say about my Saviour? What do you say about my Husband? What do you say about my Redeemer? Needless controversy is an abomination which we should all hate but the Lord God our Father has his heart affection set upon His darling Son and He challenges all humanity everywhere “What about My Son?” That is why the Gospel is an issue worth suffering for, worth contending for, worth dying for. May God heal our lukewarmness. One issue matters to God- the Glory of our LORD JESUS CHRIST. What do the scriptures say of His Gospel? May God the Holy Spirit teach us all here the truth of the Gospel.
The LORD JESUS CHRIST is the Gospel. We proclaim Him.
Salvation is looking and coming, if you don’t know Him then look and come, and we who believe live on His life looking and coming repenting and believing, His faithfulness and His life and His death and His resurrection and His exaltation are ours now and forever.
Amen
Angus Fisher, Shoalhaven Gospel Church.
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Find rest, O my soul, in God alone!
(James Smith, “The Pastor’s Morning Visit”)
“I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
There is no rest for the Christian in this world. There will be always something to disturb, perplex or distress him; it is an enemy’s land.
But Jesus says, “I will give you rest.” He does so by enabling us to . . .
rely on His Word,
recognize His hand,
submit to His will, and
trust in His perfect work.
He assures us . . .
that our sins are forgiven;
that we are safe in His keeping;
that His presence shall always be with us; and
that all things shall work together for our eternal good.
We can rest on His faithfulness—for He has been tried, and found faithful.
We can rest on His love—for He loves us to the uttermost.
We can rest on His power—for it is ever engaged on our behalf.
We can rest on His covenant—for it is ordered in all things and sure.
We can rest on His blood—for it speaks peace, pardon, and acceptance with God.
We can rest at His feet—for there we are safe, and can never be injured.
We cannot rest . . .
on our graces,
on our comforts,
on our friends, or
on our possessions.
We may rest on Jesus alone.
“Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will not be shaken!” Psalm 62:5-6
The crown of universal monarchy!
from Spurgeon’s, “JESUS, THE SHEPHERD”
Jesus Christ is King in the world today!
The Lord reigns! Let the earth rejoice!
Jesus Christ wears the crown
of universal monarchy!
Nothing happens but that which Jesus
permits, ordains, and overrules!
Let empires go to wreck, it is Christ who
breaks them with a rod of iron, and shivers
them like potters’ vessels.
Let conflagrations burn down cities, and let
diseases devastate nations; let war succeed
to war, and pestilence to famine, yet still
Jesus rules all things well, and we know that
all things work together for good to those who
love God, who are called according to his purpose!
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THE COMPASSION OF JESUS
“This is the resting place, let the weary rest; and this is the place of repose”—
“When the Lord saw her, His heart went out to her and He said, ‘Don’t cry.'” Luke 7:13
The fronds of the desert palm-tree are never so beautiful, as when seen thickly gemmed with the dews of the Eastern night—nature’s teardrops.
With reverence may we say the same of the Heavenly Palm. Jesus is never so gracious or attractive as when we are called, as here, to note His look of compassion—His tears of sympathy—denoting the tenderness of divine human affection. Observe, it was the sight of woe (the contemplation of human misery) which at Nain stirred to its depths that Heart of hearts.
“Forth from the city gate,
As evening shadows lengthen o’er the plain,
And the hushed crowd in reverent silence wait,
Passed out a funeral train.
“Chief of the mourners there,
Slow following, with feeble steps, the dead,
In the sad travail of the soul’s despair,
Bowed down her stricken head.
“For him she wept forlorn,
Of care the solace, and of age the stay,
Whose silver cord was broken, ere the morn
Had brightened into day.”
It would seem as if the Lord of Love could not look upon grief, without that grief becoming His own. In the similar case of Lazarus, it was not the bitter thought of a lost and dead friend which opened the fountain of His own tears. This it could not be; because four days previously He had spoken in calm composure of his departure; and when He stood in the graveyard, He knew that in a few moments the victim of death would have his eyes rekindled with living luster. At Bethany (as here at Nain), it was simply the spectacle of human suffering that made its irresistible appeal to His emotional nature. The rod of human compassion touched the Rock of Ages, and the streams of tenderness gushed forth. “When Jesus saw Mary weeping, and the Jews weeping which came with her…Jesus wept.” “When the Lord saw” this poor widow, “He had compassion on her.” He hears her bitter, heart-rending weeping in the midst of the mourners, and it is worthy of observation—utters the soothing, sympathetic word, before He utters the Godlike mandate.
Nor should we overlook the fact that it was but a word He uttered. This reveals an exquisite and touching feature in the Savior’s humanity. It attests how intensely delicate and sensitive, as well as true, that humanity was. When we meet a mourner after a severe trial, we shrink from the meeting; glad, perhaps, when a sad and dreaded call of courtesy is over. There is a studied reserve in making reference to the loss; or, if that reference is made, it is short, in a passing word. The press of the hand often expresses what the lips shrink from uttering.
In that vivid picture we have of patriarchal grief, Job’s friends and mourners sat for seven days at his side, and not a syllable was spoken. It was so here with Jesus. He (even He) does not intrude with a long utterance of sympathy. With a tear in His eye, and a suppressed sob, all He says is, “Weep not.” It was the same afterwards with Mary at Bethany. There was not even the one word; nothing but the significant tears.
Behold, then, the beautiful and heartfelt condolence of a Fellow-mourner—”the Brother born for adversity.” “When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her!” That weeping, forlorn woman had no lack of other sorrowing friends. Her case seemed to be matter of notoriety. Many went out to mingle their tears with hers; but the sympathy of all these could only go a certain way. They could not be expected to enter into the peculiarities of her woe. Human sympathy is, at best, imperfect; sometimes selfish, always finite and temporary.
Not so the sympathy of Him who joined the funeral procession. He could say, as none else can, “I know your sorrows.” The condolence of the kindest friend on earth knows a limit—that of Jesus knows none. Who knows but in that gentle utterance of tender feeling, and in the deep compassion which dictated it, the Son of Man, the virgin-born, may have had in view another “Mother,” whose hour of similar bereavement was now at hand; when His own death was to be “the sword” which was to “pierce her soul.” The calming word, doubtless, further pointed onwards to a happier time, when in a sorrowless world, “God shall wipe away all tears from off all faces.”
Remember the Savior and sympathizer of Nain is now the same! He had compassion—He has compassion still. He who stopped the funeral casket on that summer’s night in the plains of Jezreel ever lives, and loves, and supports, and pities; and will continue to pity, until pity be no longer needed, in a world of light and purity and peace.
“And thus He always stands,
Friend of the mourner, wiping tears away;
Wherever sorrow lifts her suppliant hands,
And faith remains to pray.
“Wherever the woe-worn flee
From the rude conflict of this world distrest,
Consoling words He whispers, ‘Come to Me,
And I will give you rest!'”
“It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.” John MacDuff
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THE INFINITE COMPASSION OF GOD!
-Spurgeon, “The Blood of the Everlasting Covenant”
Oh! how wondrous is the sovereignty of God!
The devil cannot dye a soul so scarlet in sin, but that the blood of Christ can make it white as snow.
Satan cannot drive a chosen sheep of Christ so far on the mountains of vanity, or into the deserts of sin, but that the great Shepherd of the sheep can find that
sheep, and bring it back again.
There is hope for the most sunken. There is hope for those that grovel,
and that sink in the mire. The infinite compassion of God can reach them,
and the eternal power of God can lift them up.