A Goodly Heritage

Spiritual worship is done with sincerity. When the heart stands right to God, and the soul performs what it pretends to perform; when we serve God with our spirits, as the apostle (Rom. i. 9), “God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son:” this is not meant of the Holy Ghost; for the apostle would never have called the Spirit of God his own spirit; but with my spirit, that is, a sincere frame of heart. A carnal worship, whether under the law or gospel, is, when we are busied about external rites, without an inward compliance of soul.   God demands the heart; “My son, give me thy heart;” 490  not give me thy tongue, or thy lips, or thy hands; these may be given without the heart, but the heart can never be bestowed without these as its attendants. A heap of services can be no more welcome to God, without our spirits, than all Jacob’s sons could be to Joseph, without the Benjamin he desired to see. God is not taken with the cabine...

 God is without beginning. “In the beginning” God created the world (Gen. i. 1). God was then before the beginning of it; and what point can be set wherein God began, if he were before the beginning of created things? God was without beginning, though all other things had time and beginning from him. As unity is before all numbers, so is God before all his creatures.   Abraham called upon the name of the everlasting God (Gen. xxi. 33) the eternal God. 545 —It is opposed to the heathen gods, which were but of yesterday, new coined, and so new; but the eternal God was before the world was made. In that sense it is to be understood; “The mystery which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the command of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith” (Rom. xvi. 26). The gospel is not preached by the command of a new and temporary god, but of that God that was ...

It is a part of atheism not to think the acts of God in the world worth our serious thoughts. And if you would know the meaning of his administrations, grow up in the fear of God:  Psalm 25:14  "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him." God is highly angry with those that mind him not:  Psalm 28:5  "Because they regard not the operation of his hands, he shall destroy them, and not build them up". He shall utterly root them out. Study Providence Universally The darkest: God brings order out of the world's confusion, even as he framed a beautiful heaven and earth out of a rude mass. The terriblest: these offer something worth our observation; the dreadful providence of God makes Sodom an example to after ages:  Jude 7 ; they are 'set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire,' etc. The smallest: God is a wise agent, and so the least of his actions are significant. There is nothing superfluous in those acts we account...

 "Hedu men to kata fusin", says the philosopher. As all actions which flow from life are pleasant, so those which flow from a divine life in the soul. It is a joy to a just man to do judgment, Prov. xxi. 16. That is, the entire inclination of the soul stands right to such actions; and as much a joy to him to do judgment, when enabled thereunto by a gracious habit, as it is to a sinful man under the bonds of iniquity to commit it. His soul leaps as much at an opportunity of pleasing God, as John Baptist did in his mother's womb at the appearance of Christ, as much as his heart sprang up before at the proposal of a sinful object. Never did the sun naturally rejoice so much 'like a strong man to run its race' in the heavens, Ps. xix. 5, as the new man does spiritually rejoice to run his race to heaven. It is a mighty pleasure to have our spiritual enemies under our feet, to be estranged from them. It is the purest delight to comply with God, and be embosomed in him....

The appeasing the wrath of God for us . God was willing to be appeased (hence the sending of Christ is every where in Scripture ascribed to the love and grace of God), but his justice was not actually appeased till the death of Christ. As a merciful God, he pitied us; but as a holy God, he could not but bate our transgression; as a God of truth, he could not but fulfil his own threatening; as a God of justice, he must avenge himself for the offence against him. He gave Christ as a God of mercy, and required satisfaction as a God of justice. He set him forth as a propitiation, that he might be just, Rom. iii. 25, 26. His mercy rendered him placable, but his righteousness hindered the actual placation. He had a kindness for man, but could not have a kindness for his sin; he had compassions for his creature to free him, but none for his transgression to let that go unpunished. That justice, whereby he can no more absolve the guilty than condemn the innocent, was an obstacle to the full i...

Silencing the law . Christ crucified by satisfying the justice of God, brake the thunders of the law, and dissolved the frame of all its anathemas; " Being made a curse for us, he hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, Gal. iii. 13, i.e. from the sentence of the lawgiver, denounced in his law against the transgressors of it; so that now " there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, " Rom. viii. 1, because they are "dead to the law by the body of Christ, " Rom. vii. 4. By the body of Christ as slain and raised again; for this "handwriting of ordinances, which was contrary to us, is taken out of the way by God, being nailed to his cross, " Col. ii. 14. He hath abolished the obligation of the moral law as to any condemning power, it being the custom to cancel bonds anciently by piercing the writing with a nail.*(Pearson on the Creed, p.424.) The ceremonial law was abolished in every regard since the substance of it was come, and that...

“The Lord is slow to anger”—Nahum 1:3 Slowness to anger, or admirable patience, is the property of the divine nature.  God's patience is seen in His providential works in the world: “He suffered the nations to walk in their own way”; and the witness of His providence to them was His “giving them rain, and fruitful seasons, filling their heart with food and gladness” (Acts 16:17).  His patience is manifested to our first parents. His slowness to anger was evidenced in not directing His artillery against them when they attempted to rebel. God did not presently send that death upon man which he had merited, but continued his life to the space of 930 years. The earth did not swallow him up, nor a thunderbolt from heaven raze out the memory of him. Though he had deserved to be treated with such a severity for his ungrateful demeanor to his Creator and benefactor, and affecting an equality with Him, yet God continued him with a sufficiency for his content after he turned rebel, tho...