Christ's sympathy He is the infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, gracious, just, holy, and unchangeable I AM! The last day of the year This is the last evening of the year! Mary might well complain of Martha! The carrion which professors can now feed upon! The funeral of all your sorrows! Grace Gems for MAY 2007 The presence of a loving God! Orthodox in creed--but heterodox in life! My politics! Three golden balls! Spoiled children! He was infinitely happy and glorious without us! Yes, He is altogether lovely! A far-off Hell is the dread of no man! A Bag, a Book, and a Bottle! The Infinite has become an infant! Short pithy quotes from the Puritan Thomas Brooks! Grace Gems for MAY 2007 The presence of a loving God! The hen which does not sit on her eggs! The bags will come to an end, long before the treasure is exhausted! Who cares for pebbles--when jewels glitter before him? A golden master-key!
Today's Puritan AUDIO Devotional:
J.C. Ryle's Devotional Commentary, Mark chapter 3
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You will find it helpful to READ the text--as you listen to the audio!
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We were dead men rotting in a dunghill of sin!
(Charles Spurgeon, "Treasury of David")
"The Lord raises the poor out of the dust, and lifts the needy from the dunghill!" Psalm 113:7
What a gracious stoop of love! He frequently lifts the lowest of mankind out of their poverty and degradation, and adopts them into His family.
His gracious Spirit is continually visiting the down-trodden, giving beauty for ashes to those who are cast down, and elevating the hearts of His mourners until they shout for joy.
These upliftings of grace are here ascribed directly to the divine hand, and truly those who have experienced them will not doubt the fact that it is the Lord alone who brings His people up from the dust of sorrow and death. When no hand but His can help, He interposes and the work is done.
"And lifts the needy from the dunghill" whereon they lay like worthless refuse, cast off and cast out--left as they thought, to rot into destruction, and to be everlastingly forgotten.
How great a stoop from the height of His throne, to a dunghill! How wonderful is that power which occupies itself in lifting up beggars, all befouled with the filthiness in which they lay! For He lifts them out of the dunghill, not disdaining to search them out from amidst the base things of the earth--that He may bring to nothing the great ones, and pour contempt upon all human glorying.
What a dunghill was that upon which we lay by nature!
What a mass of corruption is our original estate!
What a heap of loathsomeness we have accumulated by our sinful lives!
We could never have risen out of this corruption by our own efforts--we were dead men rotting in a dunghill of sin!
Almighty were the arms which lifted us, which are still lifting us, and will lift us into the perfection of Heaven itself!
~ ~ ~ ~If you desire additional reading, may we suggest James Smith's helpful article, "SANCTIFICATION".
