Bulletin Edition #314 August 2016

IMMORTAL HONORS

Immortal honours rest on Jesus’ head;

My God, my portion, and my Living Bread;

In Him I live, upon Him cast my care;

He saves from death, destruction, and despair.

He is my Refuge in each deep distress;

The Lord my strength and glorious righteousness;

Through floods and flames He leads me safely on,

And daily makes His sovereign goodness known.

My every need He richly will supply;

Nor will His mercy ever let me die;

In Him there dwells a treasure all divine,

And matchless grace has made that treasure mine.

O that my soul could love and praise Him more,

His beauties trace, His majesty adore;

Live near His heart, upon His bosom lean;

Obey His voice, and all His will esteem.

William Gadsby

The wedding feast!

(Octavius Winslow, “Evening Thoughts”)

“Let us be glad and rejoice and honor Him. For the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb, and His bride has prepared herself.” Revelation 19:7

Jesus sustains no relation to His Church more expressive than this. From all eternity He betrothed her to Himself. He asked her at the hands of her Father, and the Father gave her to Him. He entered into a covenant that she should be His. The conditions of that covenant were great, but not too great for His love to undertake. They were that He should . . .

assume her nature,

discharge her legal obligations,

endure her punishment,

repair her ruin, and

bring her to glory!

He undertook all, and He accomplished all—because He loved her!

The love of Jesus to His Church, is the love of the most tender husband. It is . . .

single,

constant,

affectionate,

matchless,

wonderful.

Jesus . . .

sympathizes with her,

nourishes her,

provides for her,

clothes her,

watches over her, and

indulges her with the most intimate  and endearing communion.

The Lord Jesus will come in the clouds of heaven, and this will be the occasion of His public wedding of His Church. Her present union to Him is secret and unknown—invisible to the world. But He will appear, openly and visibly to take her to Himself; and before His Father and the holy angels He will solemnize her eternal union.

Oh what a time of splendor and of rejoicing will that be! Arrayed in His nuptial robes, Jesus will descend to make her His own; and she, “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband,” will go forth to meet Him. Then will be heard the song of angels, “Let us be glad and rejoice and honor Him. For the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb, and His bride has prepared herself.” Yes! “Blessed are they who are called unto the wedding feast of the Lamb.”

“I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.” –Revelation 2:17

J.C.Philpot

In ancient times they used to decide cases by white and black stones. The judges (for they were rather judges than jury) did not give their verdict upon the prisoner by oral testimony, “guilty,” or “not guilty,” as in our country, but by dropping into an urn a white stone to express their opinion that the prisoner was innocent, or a black stone to declare their judgment that the prisoner was guilty. The Lord has made use of this figure. He says, “To him who overcomes I will give a white stone;” that is, I will give into his conscience a sentence of acquittal. As the white stone was dropped into the urn, so peace and pardon are dropped into the sinner’s bosom; and just as the judge, when he deposited the white stone in the urn, declared thereby the prisoner’s innocence; so when the Lord is pleased to speak peace to the soul, he drops into the heart a white stone, to proclaim him discharged from the law’s accusations, and interested in his love and blood.

“And on the stone a new name written.” What is this new name? Is it not a new heart, a new nature–Christ in the soul the hope of glory? This is the “new name which no man knows except he that receives it.” New thoughts of Jesus, new openings up of Scripture, new meltings of heart, new softenings of spirit, everything made new by him who renews us “in the renewing of our mind”–no man knows these things but he who receives them. It is all between the Lord and the soul, it is all between a pardoning God and a pardoned sinner; it is all mercy, all grace, all love, from first to last. Grace began, grace carries on, and grace finishes it; grace must have all the glory, and grace must crown the work with eternal victory.

REJOICING IN OURSELVES ALONE

Galatians 6: 1-4

When the carnal yoke is lifted off of the natural man, when he visits the congregation where brethren are led of the Spirit of grace, the gospel he hears declares he has no power to constrain himself much less work obedience in another. Now no one is looking at him or telling him to look upon others.  Therefore, the issue becomes personal between him and God.  The natural man finds that in himself he can not make himself submit or rejoice in the preaching of the mighty ability of God in Christ. When the focus is all Christ, he finds out what he is and he has no rejoicing in himself (his heart)–everything that made ‘church’, ‘church’, is gone (Gal 6: 13).

On the other hand, in that sinner where God is alive and working, where the Spirit of Christ dwells, the believer is given a single eye for Christ.  He is given a heart to rejoice in the gospel of Christ.  As much as it goes against every power of hell in his own dead flesh, as he hears how Christ bore his burden in his own body on the tree, by the Spirit of God, the believer takes the burden of his erring brother onto his own back.  He does so by putting the sin of his brother behind him and speaking to his brother of the power of God in Christ and by waiting on God to make the word of grace effectual in his brother’s heart.  He has the law of Christ–the law of love and grace and mercy written on his heart. This power constrains him like no carnal restraint can.  The believer proves his own work, that is, his heart is set on his relationship between him and his Lord and his Lord’s ability and not on another.  By the Spirit he knows that the work which the believer has been given is truly all God’s work. His heart is settled by the persuasion of grace that Christ alone has redeemed all God’s elect, is able to call them through the gospel and is able to make fallen brethren stand through the same gospel–this is the “rejoicing in himself alone.”  The natural man has not this Spirit and finds no rejoicing where the child of God finds all rejoicing (Rom 8: 8-16).  Oh, may God give us grace to trust God to do what only he can!  Clay Curtis

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