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The Quick And The Dead
FOR A COMPLETE ORDER OF WORSHIP, INCLUDING BIBLE READING, HYMNS AND SERMON...
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The Quick And The Dead
The word ‘quick’ has an old meaning of ‘alive’ or ‘animated’ and this is the sense in our Bible verses today from Ephesians. Here Paul tells the church that God the Father has quickened, or given spiritual life to them when they were spiritually dead in sin. The emphasis in Paul’s words is that spiritual life comes from God when sinners, being dead in trespasses and sins, are incapable themselves of doing anything for their own spiritual good. The new birth Paul shows the Ephesian believers that the motivation, or moving power, for quickening comes from God’s love and mercy. The spiritual transformation that follows is a new creation into which spiritual life is infused. Spiritual sense is enabled where before there was none. Suddenly,…
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The Work Of The Holy Spirit
After exposing and explaining anti-Christ, with some account of his devotees who separate themselves from a profession of the truth, being "sensual, having not the Spirit" (Jude 19), the apostle describes and distinguishes the true saints in the language of our text:— I.—The saints anointed. II.—Their saving knowledge. "But ye," "little children,'' conscious of their weak, feeble, and helpless condition, who feel they must be washed, cleansed, clothed, comforted, fed, and educated, as all God's people are by Himself; "ye," as distinct from all others, "have an unction”—the anointing oil, Divine influence, and experimental tuition of the eternal Spirit, without which all is sham and ''strong delusion." The allusion is to the "holy anointing oil for Aaron and his sons, and the vessels of the…
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Precious Faith
This we have not by nature. So far are we from being capable of faith in Christ, in a state of unregeneracy, that it is altogether contrary to our nature. God created Adam holy, and placed him in the garden of Eden in a state of sinless perfection; but he by disobedience merited the displeasure of Heaven, and being the head of the covenant of works, plunged not only himself, but the whole human race into a state of sin, degradation, misery, and death; and the word of God declares us all to be sinners of the deepest dye—dead in trespasses and sins, and blinded by the god of this world. We are all like sheep gone astray; and so fallen are we, that by…
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The Nature And Increase Of Faith
Faith is the gift and the operation of God. It comes by the Holy Spirit’s power rising and strengthening the sublimest faculties of the soul, and is really a regeneration—a rebegetting—a revival of life from the dead. Thus the believer is said to be “born of the Spirit,” because it is the Spirit’s office in the covenant of grace to regenerate, and because it is the promise concerning the Spirit to all, “even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” And thus also the Christian is said to be “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” When the principle of divine life and light is given to the soul, it…
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On Faith
As faith is no way to be understood so well as by its effect, we cannot do better than trace it in its operations, for as it is a divine principle, emanating from God and taking possession of his beloved family, disposing them to love and serve God with all their hearts and souls, working in them both to will and to do of His own good pleasure; so it is a grace that human reason can never comprehend, nor fallen nature submit to, nor the will of man embrace, as this faith is the gift of God, Eph. 2:6, and without it it is impossible to please God, for what is not of faith is sin. Thus it appears that without this divine principle…
Further Study
“God Is For Me”
