Do you fancy that the eternal God is to be put off with these vain resolutions and to be mocked with these idle dreams of what you will do, when you do nothing whatever? Oh, may God save you from such a delusion!
I am certain that to preach the wrath of God with a hard heart, a cold lip, a tearless eye, and an unfeeling spirit is to harden men, not benefit them.
I note that some whom I greatly love and esteem, who are, in my judgment, among the very choicest of God's people, nevertheless, travel most of the way to heaven by night.
If any man is not sure that he is in Christ, he ought not to be easy one moment until he is sure. Dear friend, without the fullest confidence as to your saved condition, you have no right to be at ease, and I pray you may never be so. This is a matter too important to be left undecided.
If one dear saint of God had perished, so might all; if one of the covenant ones be lost, so may all be; and then there is no gospel promise true, but the Bible is a lie, and there is nothing in it worth my acceptance. I will be an infidel at once when I can believe that a saint of God can ever fall finally. If God hath loved me once, then He will love me forever.
Topics: Assurance Source: Sermon, A Defense of Calvinism
If the faith whereby I have laid hold on Christ to be my Savior be altogether wrought in me by the Holy Ghost through grace, then I defy the devil to take away that which he never gave me or to crush that which Jehovah Himself created in me. I defy my free will to fling what it never brought to me. What God has given, created, introduced, and established in the heart, He will maintain there.
If we be married to Christ, and He be jealous of us, depend upon it this jealous husband will let none touch His spouse.
Topics: Assurance Source: A Jealous God, Sermon 502, March 29, 1863.
You never hear Jesus say in Pilate's judgement hall one word that would let you imagine that He was sorry that He had undertaken so costly a sacrifice for us. When His hands are pierced, when He is parched with fever, His tongue dried up like a shard of pottery, when His whole body is dissolved into the dust of death, you never hear a groan or a shriek that looks like Jesus is going back on His commitment.
Throughout the Old Testament this was always the idea of a sin-offering - that of a perfect victim; without offense on its own account, taking the place of the offender; the transferrence of the offender's sin to that victim, and that expiation in the person of the victim for the sin done by another.
Topics: Atonement Source: Expiation, Sermon 561, Isa. 53:10.
I believe that if I should preach to you the atonement of our Lord Jesus, and nothing else, twice every Sabbath day, my ministry would not be unprofitable. Perhaps it might be more profitable than it is.
Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.