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“A word in its season, how good is it!” (Prov.
15: 23). “[As] apples of gold in pictures of silver, is a word
spoken in season” (Prov. 25: 11).
You are only doing it for the Lord if He
instructed you to do it. Service is based on obedience not zeal.
The Lord has not asked us to remember His birth,
but He has asked to be remembered by means of what speaks of His
death (see Luke 22: 19, 20).
All men “come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:
23) but believers can “boast in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:
2)!
“He that hath my word, let him speak my word
faithfully” (Jer. 23: 28).
Not only was Mary blessed among
(not above) women (see Luke 1: 28) but the Lord attaches more
blessedness to those who hear the Word of God and keep it (see Luke
11: 27, 28).
The 144,000 elect out of Israel are beheld
before they enter into the time of Jacob’s trouble (see Rev.
7: 3) while the innumerable company of saved Gentiles come out
of great tribulation (see v14).
Baptism with water does not put me in “the
assembly, which is his body” (Eph. 1: 22, 23) but in the kingdom. I
am professing submission to His name.
The ecclesiastical outlook of some Christians
seems to be defined by their past ecclesiastical
experience—particularly if they perceive it to have been too strict
or unpleasant in some way. What drives them now is a reaction
against that past, and their doctrinal perspective is subjected to
that reaction. All this is perfectly understandable, but it is not
right. Our ecclesiastical outlook (as, indeed, every aspect of our
Christian lives) ought to be defined solely by what is found in the
Word of God.
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It is not ‘When we sin, we have a patron with the
Father’ but “if
any one sin …” (1 John 2: 1, my emphasis). Sinning is not
inevitable in the believer.
Lowliness means that I do not exalt myself; meekness
means that I do not defend myself.
The unbeliever may rejoice in the fact that God is
good, God is gracious and God is merciful, but never in the fact that
God is holy.
The staves were of the same material as the ark—what
bears the testimony must be in keeping with the testimony.
The prayer the Lord taught in Matt. 6: 9-13 is not
“in my name” (John 15: 16; 16: 23, 24, 26) and is of its era. It does
not belong to Christianity.
Those who require intelligence in those seeking to be
received, only demonstrate their own lack of intelligence.
John 3: 16 speaks of the greatest love, while 1 John
3: 16 tells how having known such love, “We ought for the brethren to
lay down [our] lives”.
We are not spiritual pygmies through lack of gift but
through lack of application: “apply thy heart” (Ezek. 44: 5) and “Occupy
thyself with these things; be wholly in them” (1 Tim. 4: 15).
Keeping the unity of the Spirit (see Eph. 4: 3) is
the antithesis of the competitive spirit so undeniably prevalent in the
way many ‘churches’ advertise themselves today. Churches are not
businesses, and preachings are not products, and if we fail to recognise
this, then we are serving the market and not God.
God has shone in our hearts for the
shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ (see 2 Cor. 4: 6). Yes, this treasure is in “earthen vessels”
(v7) but how glorious the message!
