08.05. Volume 5 cont'd
"No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him." John 6:44
"I have loved you, My people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to Myself." Jeremiah 31:3
None can really come to Jesus by faith, unless this drawing power is put forth.
The Holy Spirit—that gracious and blessed Teacher, acts upon the soul by
As the Spirit reveals and manifests these precious things of Christ to the soul, He raises up a living faith whereby Jesus is sought unto, looked unto, laid hold of, and is brought into the heart with a divine power, there to be enshrined in its warmest and tenderest affections.
All through its Christian pilgrimage, this blessed Spirit goes on to deepen His work in the soul, and to discover more and more of the suitability, beauty, and blessedness of the Lord Jesus, as He draws the soul more and more unto Him. There is no maintaining of the light, life, and power of God in our souls, except as we are daily coming unto Jesus as the living stone, and continually living upon Him as the bread of life.
"He gave Himself to redeem us from
Sins of heart.
Sins of lip.
Sins of life.
There are five things as regards sin, from which our blessed Lord came to redeem us . . .
its guilt,
its filth,
its power,
its love,
its practice.
By His death, He redeemed us from sin’s guilt.
By the washing of regeneration, He delivers us from sin’s filth.
By the power of His resurrection, He liberates us from sin’s dominion.
By revealing His beauty, He frees us from sin’s love.
By making the conscience tender in His fear, He preserves us from sin’s practice.
"The blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin." 1 John 1:7
"The old sinful nature loves to do evil, which is just opposite from what the Holy Spirit desires. And the Spirit gives us desires that are opposite from what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so that you cannot do the things that you would do." Galatians 5:17
At times, we can hardly tell how we are kept from evil.
There is in those who fear God, a spiritual principle which holds them up, and keeps them back from the ways of sin and death in which the flesh would walk. This inner principle of grace and godly fear has, in thousands of instances, preserved the feet of the saints, and kept them from doing things that would have . . .
ruined their reputation,
blighted their character,
brought reproach upon the cause of God, and
the greatest grief and distress into their own conscience!
They cannot do the EVIL things that they would do.
The flesh is always lusting towards evil, but grace is a counteracting principle to repress and subdue it. Grace does not wholly overcome the evil lustings of the flesh, but it can prevent those lustings from being carried out into open action. For the Spirit fights against the flesh, and will not let it altogether reign and rule, nor have its own will and way unchecked.
What a mercy lies couched here! For what would you be,
What evil is there which you would not do?
What crime which you would not commit?
What slip which you would not make?
What open and horrid fall which you would not be guilty of—unless you were upheld by Almighty
power—and the flesh curbed and checked from running its destructive course?
We can never praise God sufficiently for His restraining grace—for what would we be without it?
"Hold me up, and I shall be safe!" Psalms 119:117
A pastor has no right to turn the pulpit into
It is cruelly unfair to attack an individual who cannot defend himself—to hold him up, as if on the horns of the pulpit, before the congregation, (who generally know pretty well who is meant), and to condemn him without hearing his side, with the pastor being the only judge and jury.