Inspired Words

To any reasonable person, the Bible can easily be shown to be inspired by God. It was written over a period of around 1,600 years, by around 40 authors from all walks of life, and yet there is a wonderful continuity of thought running throughout its pages. For example, consider the subject of “righteousness,” a word that is used 301 times in the NKJ translation. Jesus died on the cross because God demanded perfect justice to satisfy His perfect righteousness. Look at the amazing continuity of Scripture. Psalm 9:8 (written around 800 B.C.) warned that God “shall judge the world in righteousness.” Proverbs 11:4 warns again: “Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.” So, how can guilty sinners become righteous in the sight of a holy God? Hosea 10:12 tells us, “For it is time to seek the LORD, till He comes and rains righteousness on you.” It was the on the Day of Pentecost that righteousness rained down from heaven. Now God commands all men everywhere to repent. Why? “Because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness” (Acts 17:30,31). As the apostle Paul was about to die he said, “Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Tim. 4:8). In the meanwhile, you and I wait for a new heavens and new earth “in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet. 2:13). So, what should we be doing as Christians while we wait? Daniel 12:3 tells us: “Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever.”

Psalm 72: 2 He will judge Your people with righteousness, And Your poor with justice

Envy is grieving

“Envy is grieving at the good of another, than which no sin is more injurious both to God, our neighbor, and ourselves. But this was not all, she said to Jacob, give me children or else I die—A child would not content her; but because Leah has more than one, she must have more too…Observe a difference between Rachel’s asking for this mercy, and Hannah’s (1 Sam 1:10, etc). Rachel envied, Hannah wept: Rachel must have children, and she died of the second; Hannah prayed for this child, and she had four more: Rachel is importunate and peremptory, Hannah is submissive and devout, If thou wilt give me a child, I will give him to the Lord. Let Hannah be imitated, and not Rachel; and let our desires be always under the conduct and check of reason and religion.” John Wesley 

Genesis 30:8 Then Rachel said, “With great wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and indeed I have prevailed.” So she called his name Naphtali.

Future Punishment

When preachers in pulpits have no respect for God’s Law, they preach a gospel devoid of reference to and omit the reality of future punishment. Idolatry always follows when the Law is rejected. People imagine a god too kind to punish sin, so they lose the fear of God and therefore neglect to depart from sin. They don’t consider repentance to be a prerequisite to salvation and they are told they have peace with God because they simply “believe.” Consequently, the contemporary Church is filled with false converts (tares among the wheat, foolish virgins among the wise, bad fish among the good, and sheep among the goats), as well as false apostles, false teachers, and false prophets.

Jeremiah 6:13 “Because from the least of them even to the greatest of them,
Everyone is given to covetousness;
And from the prophet even to the priest,
Everyone deals falsely.

14 They have also healed the hurt of My people slightly,
Saying, ‘Peace, peace!’
When there is no peace.

Balance of the Law

We are called to do what Daniel did, to interpret the spiritual nature of God’s Law for a sin-loving world. God has numbered our days and weighed us in the balance of His Law. Salvation is only through repentance and trust in the Savior.

Daniel 5:26 This is the interpretation of each word. Mene: God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it; 27 Tekel: You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting...

Poor Souls

“In what an unhappy condition is that person who cannot derive comfort from the salvation of his own child! Yet there are many men and women in such a state. They care nothing for the souls of their own offspring. It would bring no joy to them if they saw all their children walking in the truth nor does it cause them any concern to see them otherwise. To see them sharp in business, or fair in countenance, is their main ambition; but to have them beloved of the Lord is no matter of desire. Poor souls, their own carnality overflows and saturates their family! To some it would even cause anger and wrath to see their children turning to the Lord; they so despise true religion that, if their sons and daughters were converted, they would rather hate them than love them the more. Such is the alienation which sin works in the human mind, that it will in some instances curdle human affection into enmity, at the sight of the grace of God.” Charles Spurgeon 

1 Kings 14:13 And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he is the only one of Jeroboam who shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something good toward the Lord God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam.

Professing Christian

“Let us awake to a sense of the perilous state of many professing Christians. ‘Without holiness no man shall see the Lord’; without sanctification there is no salvation (Hebrews12:14). Then what an enormous amount of so-called religion there is which is perfectly useless!” J. C. Ryle 

Hebrews 12:14
Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord