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November 9, 2020 - March 4, 2021
Obedience to His revealed will. It is not enough to hear God’s voice, but we must obey. Obedience is part of the honor we owe to God.
Obedience without knowledge is blind, and knowledge without obedience is lame.
It is not our obedience, but Christ’s merits, that procures our acceptance with God. In
While the sinner thinks to slip the knot of obedience, he twists the cord of his own damnation, and he perishes without excuse.
There is love in every command. It is as if a king would command one of his subjects to dig in a gold mine, and then let him keep the gold for himself.
If God’s Spirit gives life to and draws the heart, it is not hard to obey. When a gale of the Spirit blows, we go full sail in obedience.
Grace changes a Christian’s goals and delights.
A gracious soul can do without health, but cannot do without God, who is the health of his countenance (Psalm 43:5).
Sin makes God hide His face; therefore, the zeal of a Christian’s hatred is set against it.
If we have true love in our heart for God, we will grieve for those things that grieve Him. We will lay to heart that which dishonors Him: the luxury, drunkenness, and contempt of God and of true Christianity.
True love to God cannot be silent. It will be eloquent in proclaiming His preeminence. There is no better sign of loving God than to speak of Him as lovely and to draw converts to Him.
It is in vain for someone to say he loves God while ignoring His commands! One who loves God submits to His will. If God wants him to suffer for Him, he does not complain, but obeys.
Omnipotent grace alone can make a stony heart melt in love to God.
If you will love Him, you will have a reward that is greater than you could imagine. He will betroth you to Himself in the dearest love.
Through neglect of duty, or because of too much love of the world, our love to God will cool. Preserve your love to Him! As you would be careful to preserve the natural heat in your body, so be careful to preserve the heat of love to God in your soul. Love is like oil to the wheels – it refreshes us in God’s service. When you find that your love for God has diminished and grown cool, use all means to revitalize it. When the fire is going out, you throw on fuel, and when the flame of love is going out, make use of the Word of God and prayer as sacred fuel to keep the fire of your love burning!
The message of this commandment is that we should sanctify God in our hearts and give Him precedence above all created beings. There are two parts of this commandment: We must have God for our God. We must have no other God.
God is really God to us when we are convinced in our hearts, confess with our tongues, and subscribe with our hands that He is the only true God and that there is none comparable to Him.
The wicked sin and fear not, but the godly fear and sin not.
The fear of God destroys the fear of man.
In order to have God be God to us, we must trust in Him.
The immovable is undisturbed by any commotion. Only God is a sufficient foundation to build our trust upon. When we trust Him, we make Him God to us. When we do not trust Him, we make Him an idol. Trusting in God is to rely on His power as a Creator and on His love as a Father. Trusting in God is to commit our chief treasure, our soul, to Him. Into Your hand I commit my spirit (Psalm 31:5). As the orphan trusts his estate with his guardian, so we trust our souls with God. Then He becomes God to us.
A good Christian believes that if God feeds the ravens, He will feed His children.
Faith cures the trembling in heart. it gets above fear, just as oil swims above the water. Trusting in God makes Him to be God to us.
Those who will not believe God will still experience Him: It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31).
They say they love God, but they will not give up anything for Him.
God made man of the dust of the earth, and man makes a god of the dust of the earth! Money is his creator, redeemer, and comforter. Money is his creator, for if he has money, he thinks he is made and has achieved success. Money is his redeemer, for if he is in danger, he trusts in his money to redeem him. Money is his comforter, for if he is sad, money is the golden harp that he tries to use to drive away the evil spirit. Thus, by trusting in money, we make it a god.
We must conceive of Him in His attributes – His holiness, justice, and goodness – which are the beams by which His divine nature shines forth.
The wife who loves her husband is safe from the adulterer, and the soul who loves Christ is safe from the idolater.
Let us pray that God will preserve pure ordinances and powerful preaching among us. Idolatry came in at first because of the lack of good preaching. The people began to have golden images when they had wooden priests.
Let us give God no reason to be jealous. A good wife will be discreet and chaste so that she will give her husband no valid reason to be jealous. Let us avoid all sin, especially that of idolatry or image worship. It is reprehensible, after we have entered into a marriage covenant with God, to prostitute ourselves to an image. Idolatry is spiritual adultery, and God is a jealous God; He will avenge it.
A godly parent does not invite God’s wrath, but helps to keep off wrath from his child. He prepares his child with pious principle and prays down a blessing on him. He is a magnet to draw his child to Christ by his good counsel and example. Oh, what a privilege it is to be born of godly, pious parents!
Wicked idolaters bring misery on their children, and God visits the iniquity of the fathers upon their children; but pious parents secure a blessing upon their children, and God reserves mercy for their children.
Do not say that you are unworthy, for mercy is free. If God would show mercy only to those who deserve it, He would show mercy to no one!
The vial of God’s wrath only drips for now, but the fountain of His mercy runs. The sun is not as full of light as God is of love.
Every time we draw our breath, we breathe in mercy! God has mercies under heaven, and those we taste. He has mercies in heaven, and those we hope for.
God never cuts off the generosity of mercy from the elect. We are all living monuments of God’s mercy!
God shows mercy in correcting us. He is angry in love. He smites so that He may save. His rod is not a rod of iron to break us, but is a fatherly rod to humble us. God disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness (Hebrews 12:10). In each affliction, God will subdue some corruption or exercise some grace. Is there not mercy in this? Every cross, to a child of God, is like Paul’s crosswind, which, though it broke the ship, it brought Paul to shore upon the broken pieces (Acts 27:44).
Pardon is the only right remedy for a troubled conscience.
Mercy overflows more in God than sin overflows in us. His mercy can drown great sins, just as the sea covers great rocks. Some of the Jews who had their hands stained in Christ’s blood were saved by that blood. God loves to magnify His mercy and display the trophies of free grace! Therefore, hope in His mercy. Application
The love of God and the love of sin can no more mix together than iron and clay. Every sin that is loved strikes at the being of God. He who loves God abhors sin.
He who loves God uses the world, but chooses God. The world is his pension, but God is his portion.
We swim in a sea of mercy! It is a hard heart indeed that receives God’s continuous blessings and does not love Him. Love attracts love.
We cannot love that which we do not know. God is the most comprehensive good. All excellencies that lie scattered in the creature are united in Him.
If we knew God more and better, and if we saw His shining beauty with the eye of faith, our hearts would be fired with love for Him!
This fire of love is kindled from heaven; plead with God that it would burn upon the altar of your heart.
Because faith sees Christ in every duty. It is in Him that both the person and offering are accepted.
This commandment has two parts: A negative expressed: We must not take God’s name in vain; that is, we must not cast any reflections and dishonor on His name. An affirmative implied: We should take care to reverence and honor His name. Of this latter part I will speak more fully, under the first petition in the Lord’s Prayer, Hallowed be Your name (Matthew 6:9).
Many sermons lie dead and buried in earthly hearts. We tell people to get their hearts in heaven, but where covetousness is predominant, it chains them to earth and makes them like the woman whom Satan had bent down for eighteen years so that she was unable to stand up straight (Luke 13:11, 16). You may as well expect an elephant to fly in the air as a covetous person to live by faith.
Those whose hearts are rooted in the earth will be so far from profiting by the Word that they will be ready rather to ridicule it.
The root of covetousness is distrust of God’s providence. Faith believes that God will provide, that He who feeds the birds will feed His children, that He who clothes the lilies will clothe His lambs; and thus, faith overcomes the world. Faith is the cure for covetousness and discontent.
