| Devotional | Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord
There is no spiritual value in depression. One bright and thankful look at the cross is worth a thousand morbid, self-condemning reflections. The longer you look at the evil the more it defiles and mesmerizes you into its own likeness. Lay it down at the cross, accept the cleansing blood, reckon yourself dead to the thing that was wrong, then rise ...read |
| Sermon | Finishing Our Work
It is this thought of finishing things that I think God wants to speak to us about today. We are finishing, this morning, our ministry in this place; at least, we are gathering this Sabbath morning within these walls for the last time. For two years and one month the Lord has permitted us to labor in this place that was built for the worship of God ...read |
| Devotional | First gave their own selves to the Lord
In order to be successful in Christian work, it is essential that a person be loyal not only to Go d but to the work with which he or she is associated. The more deeply a person knows the Lord, the easier it is for him to get along with others. Superficial Christians are apt to be eccentric. Mature Christians are so near the Lord that they are not ...read |
| Devotional | For it is God which worketh in you
Sanctification is the gift of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the prepared inheritance of all who enter in. It is the obtainment of faith, not the attainment of works. It is divine holiness, not human self-improvement or perfection. It is the inflow into man's being of the life and purity of the inf ...read |
| Devotional | For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free
There is a natural law of sin and sickness. If we just sink into the trend of circumstances we shall go down and sink under the power of the tempter. But there is another law of spiritual life and physical life in Christ Jesus to which we can rise and through which we can counterbalance and overcome the law that bears us down. But to do this requir ...read |
| Devotional | For the Lord God will help me
Here is the language of trust and victory. It was through this faith, as we are told in Hebrews, that in His last agony Jesus for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame (12:2). His life was a life of faith, His death was a victory of faith, His resurrection was a triumph of faith, His mediatorial reign is one long vi ...read |
| Devotional | For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain
The secret of a sound body is a sound heart, and the prayer of the Holy Spirit for us is that we may prosper and be in health, even as [our] soul prospereth (3 John 2). We find Paul in his Letter to the Philippians expressing a sublime and holy indifference to the question of life or death. Indeed, he is in a real strait, whether preferring to depa ...read |
| Devotional | For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ
It will not always be the day of toll and trial. Some day we shall hear our names announced before the universe and the record read of things that we had long forgotten. How our hearts will thrill, and our heads will bow, as we hear our own names called, and then the Master shall recount the triumph and the services which we had ourselves forgotten ...read |
| Devotional | For ye are dead
This definite, absolute and final putting off of ourselves in an act of death is something we cannot do ourselves. It is not self-mortifying, but it is dying with Christ. Nothing can do it but the cross of Christ and the Spirit of God. The church is full of half-dead people who have been trying to slay themselves for years and have not had the cour ...read |
| Devotional | Freely ye have received, freely give
When God does anything marked and special for our souls or bodies, He intends it as a sacred trust for us to communicate to others. Freely ye have received, freely give. It has pleased the Master in these closing days of His dispensation of grace to reveal Himself in peculiar blessing to the hearts of His chosen disciples in all parts of the Christ ...read |
| Devotional | Fret not thyself in any wise
A life was lost in Israel because a pair of human hands were laid unbidden upon the ark of God. They were placed upon it with the best intent to steady the ark as the oxen drew the cart carrying it along the rough way. But they touched God's work presumptuously, and they fell paralyzed and lifeless. Much of the life of faith consists in letting t ...read |
| Sermon | From Strength to Strength
"From strength to strength."-Psalm lxxxiv 7.
This is a chapter of the "Pilgrim's Progress" through the valley of Baca, of which this beautiful psalm is a picture. It is the story of the life of trust, and its two keynotes are the fifth and twelfth verses of the psalm, "0 Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee." "Blessed is the ...read |
| Devotional | Get thee behind me, Satan
If when it seems your old self has come back, you listen to it, fear it, believe it, it will have the same influence upon you as 'f it were not dead. It will control you and destroy you. Instead, simply ignore it and say: "You are not I, you are Satan trying to make me believe that my old self is not dead. I refuse you. I treat you as a demon pow ...read |
| Devotional | Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in
In the parable in Luke 14 of the great supper an ancient lord prepared for his friends and neighbors, there is a significant picture and object lesson of the program of Christianity in this age. In the first place, it is obvious to every thoughtful mind that the Master is hearing an increasing number of excuses from the gospel-hardened people of Ch ...read |
| Devotional | God . . . calleth those things which be not as though they were
The Word of God creates what it commands. When Christ says to any of us Now are ye clean through the word which I have spoken unto you (John 15:3), we are clean. When He says no condemnation (Romans 8:1) there is none, though there may have been a lifetime of sin before. And when He says, mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds (2 Co ...read |
| Devotional | God hath set some in the church . . . helps
In the Apostle's lists of officers in the church, the helps are mentioned before the governments, By the ministry of prayer, by the ministry of giving, by the ministry of encouragement, by the shining face and mute pressure of the hand and a little word of cheer, and by the countless ways in which we can help-or at least can keep from hindering-we ...read |
| Sermon | God's Measureless Measures
"But they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves are not wise. But we will not boast of things without our measure, but according to the measure of the rule which God hath distributed to us, a measure to reach even unto you." 2 Cor. x:12, 13.
"With what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you; and unto ...read |
| Sermon | Grace Abounding
"Where sin abounded grace did much more abound." Rom. v: 20.
We find in nature a beautiful approximation to the truth declared in this verse, a sort of parable and symbol of the glory of redemption. It is this. Go into the woods and cut a wound in the side of a living tree, and then go back again a few years later and see how the tree has endea ...read |
| Devotional | Grow up into him in all things
Harvest is a time of ripeness. Then the fruit and grain are fully developed, both in size and weight. Time has tempered the acid of the green fruit. It has been mellowed and softened by the rains and the heat of summer. The sun has tinted it into rich colors, and at last it is ready and ripe to fall into the hand. So the Christian life ought to be. ...read |
| Devotional | Happy are ye if ye do them
You little know the rest that comes from the yielded will, the surrendered choice, the meek and lowly heart that lets the world go by and knows that it shall inherit the earth which is has refused. You little know the relish that it gives to the blessing to hunger and thirst after righteousness and to be filled with a satisfaction that worldly deli ...read |
A.B. Simpson