The Sign of the Sabbath
Samuel Slater
We find the Sabbath was given unto Israel for a sign between God and them. So you have it in Ezekiel 20:12 "I gave them My Sabbaths, to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD that sanctify them." By this they were distinguished from all other nations. These were a plain and evident proof that they were the Lord's people, and that Jehovah was their God. This did loudly proclaim God's choosing and calling them out from the rest of the world, and gracious setting them apart for Himself, as His peculiar portion and inheritance. And indeed, where there is no care of sanctifying the Sabbath by nations, families, or persons, it is a plain case, it amounts to a demonstration, that they are unsanctified nations, families, and persons.
- Rev. Samuel Slater, English Puritan Pastor
O give thanks unto the LORD.
Giving thanks, Spurgeon style!
Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever. Oh, give thanks to the God of gods! For His mercy endures forever. Oh, give thanks to the Lord of lords! For His mercy endures forever: To Him who alone does great wonders, For His mercy endures forever.
- Psalm 136:1-4
The exhortation is intensely earnest: the Psalmist pleads with the Lord's people with an "O," three times repeated. Thanks are the last that we can offer, and these we ought freely to give. The inspired writer calls us to praise Jehovah for all his goodness to us, and all the greatness of his power in blessing his chosen.
- C.H. Spurgeon
Unmixed Goods
The Sabbath is an unmixed good for man's soul. The soul has its wants just as much as the mind and body. It is in the midst of a hurrying, bustling world, in which its interests are constantly in danger of being jostled out of sight. To have those interests properly attended to, there must be a special day set apart; ther emust be a regularly recurring time for examining the state of our souls; there must be a day to test and prove us, whether we are prepared for an eternal heaven. Take away a man's Sabbath, and his religion soon comes to nothing. As a general rule, there is a regular flight of steps down from "no Sabbath" to "no God."
- J.C. Ryle
Join us for prayer Wednesdays at 7pm!
We need not detract from the excellency of private devotions, to magnify the public prayers of the church. Both are necessary, and highly pleasing to God. Yet it is no wrong to the private devotions of a particular saint, to give the precedency to the public prayers of the church. God Himself tells us He "loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob," Ps. 87:2. No doubt the prayers which the faithful put up to heaven from under their private roofs were very acceptable unto Him; but, if a sain'ts single voice in prayer be so sweet to God's ear, much more the church choir - His saints' prayers in consort together. A father is glad to see any one of his children when he visits him, but much more when they come together: the greatest feast is when they all meet at his house. The public praise of the church are teh emblem of heaven itself, where all the angels and saints make but one consort.
- William Gurnall
Awake & Arise
"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork; day unto day utters speech, night unto night shows knowledge." Every time the sun rises up you, it really calls you to turn; as if it should say, "What do I travel and compass the world for, but to declare to men the glory of their Maker, and to light them to do his work? and do I still find you doing the work of sin, and sleeping out your life in negligence? Awake you that sleep and arise from the dead and Christ shall give you light." "The night is spent, the day is at hand: it is now high time to awake out of sleep: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strike and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof."
- Richard Baxter
A Natural Homage
Prayer is the natural homage due from the creature to his heavenly Father. Man ought to thank God for all good; it is the natural homage due from receiver to Giver. Man ought to confess all his sin and guilt; it is the natural homage due from sinfulness to sovereign holiness. Man ought to deprecate God's anger; it is the appropriate homage due from conscious guilt to power and righteousness. Man ought to praise God's perfection. Thus only can the moral intelligence God has created, pay to Him its tribute of intellectual service. Conceive of God as bestowing all the forms of good on man which his depndent nature needs, without requiring any homage of prayer from man as the means of its bestowal; and you will immediately have, man being such as he is (an active being), a system of practical atheism. Religion, relation between man and God, will be at an end. True, God would be related to man, but not man to God! Anamalous and guilty condition! No feeling of dependence, reverence, gratitude, wholesome fear, would find expression from the creature.
- R.L. Dabney
Prayer Meeting tonight @ 7pm – No Superfluous Labor
Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation. Give heed to the voice of my cry, My King and my God, for to You I will pray. - Psalm 5:1-2
Now in saying that he continually prayed unto God, herein [David] shows us what the manner is to pray well: that we should be constant to follow it, and not to be weary, not that God needs to be importunately urged, but it is to exercise our faith, and the better to try us, whether we seek all our felicity in Him or not. For it is so, that the Holy Scripture requires constancy in our prayers, especially and above all other things, and not to pray unto God this day, and quite forget Him tomorrow, but we must continue, if we will be heard. And lo wherein we must show ourselves to have trusted in God, that is, that although it seems to us that He has stopped His ears, yet for all that we must not cease to go continually unto Him, and pray unto Him an hundred times as much as we did before: knowing it to be no superfluous labor, when as we have thus prayed.
- John Calvin
The Lord’s Blessings in 2009!
At midnight I will rise to give thanks to You, because of Your righteous judgments. I am a companion of all who fear You, and of those who keep Your precepts. - Psalm 119:62-63
As if he should have said that the day was not sufficient enough for him, but that in the time of his quiet rest, he lifted up his mind into heaven to give thanks unto God. In this he signifieth that he continued praising of God without wearisomeness. Now then, if we rightly follow the example of David, we must not give God thanks when we think good, and when we shall have remembered Him once in fifteen days, or I know not when: or else when as it shall be for fashion's sake, as when the Bell ringeth to cause us to come to the Sermon. But it must be always, for we must both in the evening, and morning, and also at midnight, have our minds waking to give Him thanks.
- John Calvin
Faith Through the Ages
The faith of God's people relates to things past, present, and to come. It believes that God made the world. There is a past. It believers that God is. There is the present. It believes that there will be a day of judgment. There is the future. Of old, for thousands of years, the pious believed in a Savior to come. In the days of His flesh, His disciples believed in a Savior to come. For... two thousand years God's people have believed in a Savior that has come. In all these cases, the faith was the same in principle, and in its effect also.
- William Plumer
Join Us For Prayer! Wednesday @ 7pm
Progress yourselves to prayer meeting!
Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? - Exodux 15:11
- John Bunyan
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