“The whole head is hurt, and the whole heart is sick. You are sick from head to foot–covered with bruises, welts, and infected wounds!” Isaiah 1:5-6 Often in Scripture, sin is spoken of as a disease, a sickness, a hurt. Christ, as the great Physician, has the only sovereign balm. Sin is a dreadful disease! Yes, it […]

You will as surely be lost if you trust to your good works, as if you had trusted to your sins. There is a ‘clean’ path to hell as well as a ‘dirty’ one. There is as sure a road to perdition along the ‘highway of morality’, as sure as down the slough of vice. […]

Sin has thoroughly diseased us, and poisoned our very blood. Sin has diseased our understanding, so as to disable it from receiving the truth. Sin has diseased our conscience, so as to make it dull and heavy, and undiscerning of right and wrong. Sin has diseased our imagination, polluting it with every idle, foolish, and […]

Here is a sevenfold definition of faith I picked up from a sermon by Ebenezer Erskine a long, long time ago. 1. Faith is the gift of God. It is not the product of a free will. It is the operation of the Spirit of God by the Word of God and is the parent […]

The Word and the Spirit are so intimately conjoined, that we are scarcely warranted in thinking of the one, without the other. The Word does not operate without the Spirit’s agency—and the Spirit does not work apart from the Word. *It was by the Spirit’s inspiration, that the Word was first given, for “holy men […]

It is the first book and the best book and the oldest book in all the world. It contains the choicest matter, gives the best instruction, and affords the greatest pleasure and satisfaction that was ever revealed. It contains the best laws and profoundest mysteries that were ever penned. It brings the best of tidings, […]

“I wound and I heal.”–Deut. 32:39 It is no little comfort to the afflicted child of God to be thus divinely assured that both the wounding and the healing flow from one Hand–that Hand a Father’s. The sword that wounds–”bathed in heaven”–bears upon its point the balm that heals. Meditate awhile, my soul, upon this […]

Recognizing Leprosy “And there came a leper to Him…(Mark 1:40).” As I looked at this passage of scripture I thought to myself, ‘not many people in this country think too much or even know very much about this disease of leprosy’. I wondered and noted that this is exactly what people think about sin in […]

The vital spark! The following is from Spurgeon’s sermon, “Light, Natural and Spiritual” No. 660. “You must be born again.” Do not think Christians are made by education; they are made by creation. You may wash a corpse as long as you please, and that corpse could be clean, but you cannot wash life into […]

I am not what I once was! In his old age, when he could no longer see to read, John Newton heard someone recite this text, “By the grace of God—I am what I am.” He remained silent a short time and then, as if speaking to himself, he said: “I am not what I […]