A Goodly Heritage

The Church is not the world. It should not try to imitate the world. It is lousy at imitating the world. If people want the world, they will go to the world for it, they don't need a cheap imitation of the world in the Church. The Church should be different. It should model holiness, godliness and Christian love. The Church should not try to put on a variety show in a night-club atmosphere. It should not try to imitate the world's entertainment. The Church is the Bride of Christ, called to be holy and set apart. When Christians bring the world into the Church, they are not fooling the world. They are certainly not fooling God. They are only deceiving themselves.David Bugbee

It is five years today, brethren, since I began my ministry among you in this place. It will be good for us today to stand up in the sight of God, and see how we have improved the years that are gone by. Let us observe, first of all, that faithful ministers preach Christ Jesus the Lord. Verse 5: 'For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord.' Now there may be two things implied in preaching not ourselves.  We do not preach the fancies of ourselves, but the truth of Christ. Many men preach themselves—they preach their own theories. Many before the days of the apostles did this—they taught their own fancies. But when the apostles came they took a very different manner. Witness John the Baptist-'Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world' (John 1:29). So the apostles; they said, 'We are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree' (Acts 10:39). And then you re

It was Pilate's last appeal. He hoped that the spectacle of Jesus wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe would so move the people to pity, that they would cry out for His release. But the appeal was in vain. While the Holy Sufferer stands before us, we may think of Him as He appeared that moment. "Behold the man!" Recall His life. It had been beautiful in its sinlessness and in its revealings of God. In His trial, His enemies had sought to find some flaw in Him—but they could find nothing. Pilate said, "I bring Him forth to you, that you may know that I find no fault in Him." Witnesses could have been gathered from all over the land to testify to His kindness, His thoughtfulness, His mercy, His love—but not one could they find anywhere to testify to any wrong He had ever done, any injustice, any injury. He had been the Friend of the poor, the Comforter of sorrow, the Helper of the weak. As He stands before us now, He appears as the man of sorrows. His

Some young men belonging to the Salvation Army came to old Andrew Bonar, and they said: " Dr. Bonar, we have been" all night with God. Can't you see our faces shine? " The old man said: "Moses wist not that his face shone," When you have got the real article you do not need to advertise it, the public will come for it; but the man who has got what we call in England, Brummagem ware, a sham, must puff it. If you have got Christ in you, people will not glorify you, they will glorify Christ in you, and they will say: "Teach us about Christ who has made you so fair." "They glorified God in me." Dear brother ministers, when you get this, they will not glorify your sermons, they will not glorify your intellect, and they will not glorify your eloquence; but they will glorify God who shines through you as the Shekinah shone through the temple of old.

It is a very solemn thought that one sin may forever, so far as this world is concerned, wreck our usefulness. It is not always so. Sometimes -- as in the case of the apostle Peter -- the Lord graciously restores and recommissions for His work the one who might have been counted unfit ever again to engage in it. "Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs." But against this one case we may put three others, in each of which it would seem as if the sentry angel, who forbade the return of our first parents to Eden, were stationed with strict injunctions to forbid any return to the former position of noble service. The first case is that of Moses. No other man has ever been honored as was he, "with whom God spake face to face" -- the meekest of men, the servant of the Lord, the foster-nurse of the Jewish nation, whose intercessions saved them again and again from destruction. Yet, because he spake unadvised with his lips and smote the rock twice in unbelief and passion, he was co

It is the Holy Spirit alone that can draw us to the cross and fasten us to the Saviour. He who thinks he can do without the Spirit, has yet to learn his own sinfulness and helplessness. The gospel would be no good news to the dead in sin, if it did not tell of the love and power of the divine Spirit, as explicitly as it announces the love and power of the divine Substitute. But, while keeping this in mind, we may try to learn from Scripture what is written concerning the bond which connects us individually with the cross of Christ; making us thereby partakers of the pardon and the life which that cross reveals. Thus then it is written, "By grace are ye saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God." Faith then is the link, the one link, between the sinner and the Sin-bearer. It is not faith, as a work or exercise of our minds, which must be properly performed in order to qualify or fit us for pardon. It is not faith, as a religious duty, which mus

" Two things a master commits to his servant's care," saith one: "the child and the child's clothes." It will be a poor excuse for the servant to say, at his master's return, "Sir, here are all the child's clothes, neat and clean, but the child is lost!" Much so with the account that many will give to God of their souls and bodies at the great day. "Lord, here is my body; I was very grateful for it; I neglected nothing that belonged to its content and welfare; but as for my soul, that is lost and cast away for ever. I took little care and thought about it. ( Flavel. )

Matt. xi.20. -- "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me," &c. Self love is generally esteemed infamous and contemptible among men. It is of a bad report every where, and indeed as it is taken commonly, there is good reason for it, that it should be hissed out of all societies, if reproaching and speaking evil of it would do it. But to speak the truth, the name is not so fit to express the thing, for that which men call self love, may rather be called self hatred. Nothing is more pernicious to a man's self, or pestilent to the societies of men than this, for if it may be called love, certainly it is not self love, but the love of some baser and lower thing than self, to our eternal prejudice. For what is ourselves, but our souls? Matt. xvi.26, Luke ix.25. For our Lord there shows that to lose our souls, and to lose ourselves, is one and the same thing. But what is it to love our souls? Certainly it is not to be enamoured with their deformed shape, as if it were perfec

The creature is nothing in comparison with God; all the glory, perfection, and excellency of the whole world do not amount to the value of a unit in regard of God's attributes; join ever so many of them together, they cannot make one in number; they are nothing in His regard, and less than nothing. All created beings must utterly vanish out of sight when we think of God. As the sun does not annihilate the stars, and make them nothing, yet it annihilates their appearances to our sight; some are of the first magnitude, some of the second, some of the third, but in the daytime all are alike, all are darkened by the sun's glory: so it is here, there are degrees of perfection and excellency, if we compare one creature with another, but let once the glorious brightness of God shine upon the soul, and in that light all their differences are unobserved. Angels, men, worms, they are all nothing, less than nothing, to be set up against God. This magnificent title "I AM," darke

In One Of His Letters to Erasmus, Luther said, "Your thoughts of God are too human." Probably that renowned scholar resented such a rebuke, the more so, since it proceeded from a miner’s son. Nevertheless, it was thoroughly deserved. We, too, prefer the same charge against the vast majority of the preachers of our day, and against those who, instead of searching the Scriptures for themselves, lazily accept their teachings. The most dishonoring conceptions of the rule and reign of the Almighty are now held almost everywhere. To countless thousands, even professing Christians, the God of Scripture is quite unknown. Of old, God complained to an apostate Israel, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself" (Ps. 50:21). Such must now be His indictment against apostate Christendom. Men imagine the Most High is moved by sentiment, rather than by principle. They suppose His omnipotency is such an idle fiction that Satan can thwart His designs on every

Three Things are told us in Scripture concerning the nature of God. First, "God is a Spirit" (John 4:24). In the Greek there is no indefinite article. To say God is a spirit is most objectionable, for it places Him in a class with others. God is spirit in the highest sense. Because He is spirit He is incorporeal, having no visible substance. Had God a tangible body, He would not be omnipresent, He would be limited to one place; because He is spirit He fills heaven and earth. Second, "God is light" (1 John 1:5), the opposite of darkness. In Scripture "darkness" stands for sin, evil, death; and "light" for holiness, goodness, life. "God is light" means that He is the sum of all excellency. Third, "God is love" (1 John 4:8). It is not simply that God loves, but that He is Love itself. Love is not merely one of His attributes, but His very nature. There are many who talk about the love of God, who are total strangers to the