Nov 23
6
Invincible grace!
How mighty Thou art, O Lord, to convert;
Thou only couldst conquer so stubborn a heart,
For Thy love to lost man alone could constrain
So stiff-necked a rebel to love Thee again.
Thro’ Thee I embrace the ransoming grace,
Of Him who has suffered and died in my place,
Tho’ I strove to withstand the force of Thy hand,
Thy Spirit would conquer, and I was constrained.
In vain I withstood, and fled from my God,
For mercy would save me thro’ Jesus’s blood,
I felt it applied, and I joyfully cried,
Me, me Thou hast loved, and for me Thou hast died.
For sinners like me Thy mercy is free,
Who hunger and thirst for redemption by Thee.
Lord gather in more; make this the glad hour;
Compel them to yield in the day of Thy power.
-Toplady
A late eminent person used frequently to say, that “Every faithful minister is immortal, until his work is done:” and it may as truly be asserted of every elect sinner, that he is immortal, until he is born again. It is impossible that any of God’s people should die in their sins: for whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and Christ’s sheep must be brought home to him in regeneration. (Ro 8:30)
Augustus Toplady
“They shall never perish” – John 10:28. If salvation and eternal life in Christ are the fruits and results of our faith in Christ and obedience to the gospel, then assurance and security are impossible, because man is fickle. Those who preach salvation conditioned upon man cannot honestly preach security to anyone. But if, as the Bible declares, our faith and obedience are the fruits of salvation, the results of eternal life, and the gifts of God, then assurance and security in Christ are well-founded, for the gifts of God are without repentance.
Don Fortner
FAITH BELIEVES WHAT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO MAN
Romans 4: 19: And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb:…
God promised Abraham that Sara would have a child. God waited until it was impossible for Abraham and Sara. Carnal reason would say impossible. But against hope, Abraham believed God. Therefore he did not consider his own body nor the deadness of Sarah’s womb. When God promises a blessing for his people, he does it in a way to make us know that God alone did it. God said Joseph would reign over his brothers. But first Joseph was enslaved, carried to Egypt, and imprisoned. Then God raised him. God declared Moses would deliver Israel. But first the infant Moses is cast into the river to die. Then God used Pharaoh’s daughter to save him, Pharaoh’s riches to raise him and his own mother to nurse him. Then God called and used him to deliver his people. God promised redemption for his people by Christ. But first Christ is despised, rejected of men, crucified on a cursed tree and buried in a tomb. Then Christ arises declaring he has made his people the righteousness of God in him. God promises to give his people faith. Then God uses helpless nothings to preach to helpless sinners. God gives us ability to do what we have no ability to do, believe Christ. By the same Power, faith ceases not believing when things appear impossible. Faith is itself “the substance of things hoped for” and “the evidence of things not seen.” Faith believes God with whom nothing is impossible.
“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Philippians 2:12
I will not debate with the free-will works religionist who claims that the above verse of scripture proves that salvation is accomplished by a “work of righteousness” that the sinner does. Paul resolved that argument in the very next sentence of his letter to the church at Philippi. “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13) No sinner can “work out,” what God has not “worked in.” It is impossible for a spiritually dead man and woman to do anything without first being made alive by God. Aren’t you thankful that “Salvation is of the Lord?” ~David Eddmenson
Henry Mahan
We preach election because there is not a single blessing that comes to us from the hand of our Redeemer that is not stamped with the hand of God’s electing love. The Scriptures say, God hath blessed us according as He hath chosen us. Again, He hath chosen us that we should be holy. Again, The God of our fathers hath chosen thee that thou shouldst know His will. It is not in ourselves that these blessings are contained. We have them because of OUR UNION WITH CHRIST, and we are united with Christ because of the Father’s divine and sovereign choice. Let us never imagine that the atoning sacrifice of Christ was intended to make an angry God willing to be merciful. That is not the truth. Jesus Christ died, not to create mercy and love in the heart of God, but to open a just and righteous way for that mercy and love which is there from all eternity. God’s mercy and love went forth to us before the Saviour came. THAT’S WHY HE CAME! Spiritual blessings are heavenly blessings. They come from heaven and are of a heavenly nature. We enjoy these in Christ because He has purchased them for us and has gone there to possess them for us in His own name. All things are yours and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. It all starts with God’s sovereign choice.
Why so offensive in men eyes does God’s election seem?
Is it because they think they are so wise that they have chosen Him?
Why is Christ’s righteousness a point so little known?
Is it because men think they possess a righteousness of their own?
Effectual atonement, why so angry are some to hear or speak?
Do they think it takes works they do, to make His work complete?
Not so, the needy helpless soul cries out to God in prayer,
and looks only to Christ Who works the whole and finds salvation there.
Election, grace, Christ are words divine, the Lord I plainly see
Had not Your choice proceeded mine, I would never have chosen Thee.
Joseph Hart
Gracious To Others
When we see the great grace that God has shown to us, we will be gracious to others. If we know something of what He has forgiven us, we will find no difficulty in forgiving others. And if we learn that God has loved us without any merit or cause on our part (loved the unlovable, one who hated Him), we shall be able to love others even as He has loved us for Christ’s sake. The one who cannot do these things has never really seen himself.
~Henry Mahan (1926-2019)
He loved them unto the end.”
John 13:1
The love of Christ for his elect is immutable and incessant. It is love surpassing thought. There is nothing like it in this world below. The narrow, self-centered thoughts, and words, and deeds of humanity cannot comprehend it. Our Savior knew that his disciples would all soon forsake him. Yet, he loved them to the end. His love for us is from everlasting (Jeremiah 31:3). His love for us is unto everlasting (Romans 8:39). Our Lord Jesus Christ delights to receive sinners and save them by his grace (Luke 15:2). And once he has received a sinner, he will never reject him or cast him away for any reason (John 6:37).
Don Fortner
Because he first loved us
by Spurgeon
“We love him because he first loved us.” -1 John 4:19
There is no light in the planet but that which proceeds from
the sun; and there is no true love to Jesus in the heart but
that which comes from the Lord Jesus himself.
From this overflowing fountain of the infinite love of God,
all our love to God must spring. This must ever be a great
and certain truth, that we love him for no other reason than
because he first loved us. Our love to him is “the fair
offspring” of his love to us.
Cold admiration, when studying the works of God,
anyone may have.
But the warmth of love can only be kindled in
the heart by God’s Spirit.
How great the wonder that such as we should ever have
been brought to love Jesus at all! How marvellous that
when we had rebelled against him, he should, by a display
of such amazing love, seek to draw us back. No! never
should we have had a grain of love towards God unless it
had been sown in us by the sweet seed of his love to us.
Our love, then, has for its parent the love of God shed
abroad in the heart: but after it is thus divinely born, it must
“be divinely nourished”.
Love is an exotic– it is not a plant which will flourish
naturally in human soil, it must be watered from above.
Love to Jesus is a flower of a delicate nature, and if it
received no nourishment but that which could be drawn
from the rock of our hearts it would soon wither.
As love comes from heaven, so it must feed on heavenly
bread. It cannot exist in the wilderness unless it be fed by
manna from on high.
Love must feed on love.
The very soul and life of our love to God is his love to us.
“I love you, Lord, but with no love of mine,
For I have none to give;
I love you, Lord; but all the love is yours,
For by your love I live.
I am as nothing, and rejoice to be
Emptied, and lost, and swallowed up in you.”
If Christ has our love…
If Christ has our love he has our all; and Christ never has what
he deserves from us, until he has our love. True love withholds
nothing from Christ, when it is sincerely set upon him. If we
actually love him, he will have our time, and he will have our
service. He will have the use of all our resources, and gifts, and
graces. Indeed, then he shall have our possessions, and our
very lives, whenever he calls for them.
In the same way, when God loves any of us, he will withhold
nothing from us that is truly good for us. He does not hold
back his own only begotten Son, Rom.8:32.
When Christ loves us, he gives us everything we need– his
merits to justify us, his Spirit to sanctify us, his grace to adorn
us and his glory to crown us. Therefore, when any of us love
Christ sincerely, we lay everything down at his feet, and give
up all to be at his command and service. “…they did not love
their lives so much as to shrink from death.” Rev. 12:11.