R.C. Chapman’s S.O.S. 2:10

By R.C. Chapman

 

“My Beloved Spoke, and said to me: Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” (Song of Solomon 2:10)

Don’t you hear, my soul, the voice of Jesus, the voice of the Beloved! He is able to speak in thunder, His word can shake heaven and earth; and can you despise His gentleness, His tender tones of love and grace?  Fie upon you, sluggish soul! What hinders you from rising up at His call, upon eagles’ wings of faith and hope? Are you hindered with much serving? Are idols of clay set up within you, Where you should be for your Beloved, and for Him alone?

If your heart is now divided and cold, consider the heart of Jesus toward you! It is full of the love he had for you before the world’s foundation, when he rejoiced in His Church, and His “delights were with the sons of men” (Proverbs 8:31).  He is the same Jesus who took your place and died for you on the tree! What a heart of mercy is His! What yearnings of His heart over you! What pity and countless number of displays of compassion!

Can you defile His temple with idols?  He sees you as all fair! He found you foul and made you clean by His own blood! He presents you to Himself without spot, or wrinkle, or blemish, or any such thing.

Let such love, of thy glorious Immanuel, your God, and your Brother; let such love stir and awaken you; fill you with repentance and self-loathing! Go, humble yourself to your Friend, and make sure the communion of His love.  “My love, my fair one;” so speaks my Lord Jesus to you.  Do not doubt it.  O, my soul! Know, it is your cunning enemy that whispers in your ear suspicions of your Lord.  The liar would cause you to become feeble in faith, that he may poison the spring of your peace, joy, and love.  But I will confound your unbelief! I tell you, Jesus, your “breaker”, has gone up before! He is risen, and in triumph ascended; your head and your Forerunner.  Flee to the blood of sprinkling with all your pollution! Take yourself to Him; and He will surely wash you, bind up your wounds, pour in the oil and wine, and cause you to rest in His love, and by faith to live together with Him in the heart of the Father.

 

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Modernized in places by this site.

Peter’s Masterpiece 2

by Paul M.

1st Peter 1

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy became the father of us again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, (3)

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to an incorruptible and undefiled inheritance, and that doesn’t fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith to a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (4-5) 

I believe God(Father, Son, Spirit) is good, merciful, gracious and reasonable.  God is love. He obviously desires us to be these to one another, He is the source the from which these streams of love flow.  This is the God who gave us an illustration condemning the the rich man who cared little for poor Lazarus, at his door step.  God being the ultimate “rich man” does not treat us poor and needy ones as the rich man He condemned, if we would only believe, He is, who He says He is.  This is the God who communicates Himself as running to meet His son, this son who had rejected and treated his father as if he were dead to him.  This father also reaffirmed his love to his older ungrateful and unmerciful son.

This is the heart of the gospel.  “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy became the father of us again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,”  First and foremost the gospel message of reconciliation is one of the mercy, goodness, graciousness and love of God.  God through His reconciling mercy is reaching to us all, at times almost as if He is begging us to trust and come.  He lowers himself at times in the scripture to the place of beggar, tenderly entreating us not to destroy ourselves, through disbelief.

We are given hope, raised to a much greater hope than we have ever known.  Before coming to know this hope, we had our minds on other inheritances, we wanted and sought in a variety of ways, the respect, the love and the honor of other people.  We sought things that enhanced these  for us, we wanted more than anything else, to be seen as successful, great, and worthy of these things from others.  Many of us envisioned the “blessed life” the “good life” as being one of independence, one of finding peace and security in our own greatness, ingenuity and character.  We are learning now, the blessed life is one of meekness and dependence on God.

God came to this earth, lowly and meek.  The hope He gives us which replaces our former hopes to varying degrees, and I hope great degrees is to an incorruptible and undefiled inheritance.  This inheritance doesn’t fade away as the spindle of our lives run out. This is a hope which grows stronger year after year, decade after decade.  He has reserved the best for last, reserving for us a place with Him in heaven.  He himself guards this hope within us.  We are guarded by this merciful and loving God, through His power.  He gives, renews and revives our faith in Him.  He sustains and grows the perfect seed within us, though it resides along side our remaining sin.  This remaining sin that we grow to hate, believe and pray against.

This gospel, of the good news of mercy, peace and love, has been revealed to the world through Christ.   This gospel goes against our natural inclinations, of finding respect, love and honor through our own greatness, ingenuity and character and in resulting material security.   The gospel message is one of progressively dying to these things, meaning the loving and seeking of these things.  These deceptive dreams and prizes of our former lives, before God’s merciful invasion of us personally.  By the mercy and grace of God we will turn more and more from ourselves, our greatness, our glory, our character, and our love and dependence on these things will fade.  Our Lord will pull us out of this horrible pit, of muddy and boggy false dreams more and more.  He will by giving us a growing faith and love for Him, for Jesus, for His righteousness, character and glory, increase the clarity of our eyes and hearts.  Though we may stumble at times and fall from this clarity, if we are His, he will draw us back, and even to a place of greater clarity.  We can have this expectant hope, even at and in the low places.

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.  I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly trust in Jesus’ name.  On Christ the solid Rock I stand, All other ground is sinking sand; All other ground is sinking sand.  When darkness seems to hid His face, I rest on His unchanging grace.  In every high and stormy gale, My anchor holds within the veil.  His oath, His covenant, His blood, Support me in the whelming flood.  When all around my soul gives way,  He then is all my Hope and Stay.  When He shall come with trumpet sound, oh may I then in Him be found.  Dressed in His righteousness alone, Faultless to stand before the throne.-Edward Mote

 

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The Storm

Clarity

 

 

 

 

Excerpts of Mercy

Richard Baxter

The Conviction of Sin

Hugh Binning

Christ’s Righteousness

Christian Love: T.O.C.

John Bunyan

Merciful Appeal to Sinners

R.C. Chapman

Meditations on the Song of Solomon: T.O.C.

Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Ch. 1

Thomas Manton’s Merciful Appeals

John Newton “Benefit of Affliction”

John Newton “Those mistakes, blemishes and faults in others”

Richard Sibbes Sweet Drops:

1          2          3          4          5          6          7          8          9

Life of Faith: T.O.C.

 

 

Some Drops of Sweetness 2

By Richard Sibbes

 

 

“God in Christ would save us by a triumphant and abundant love and mercy  and, the Spirit of God never goes but where there is a magnifying of the love and mercy of God in Christ; therefore the ministry of the gospel, which only reveals the kindness and love of God to mankind, being now reconciled in Christ, the gospel is accompanied with the Spirit, to assure us of our own inclusion and taking in of those benefits, for the Spirit is the fruit of God’s love as well as Christ. Christ is the first gift, and the Spirit is the second, therefore the part of the word that reveals God’s exceeding love to mankind, leaving angels when they were fallen, in their cursed state, and yet giving his Son to become man, and “a curse” for us for the revealing of this love and mercy of God, and his Son Christ to us, is joined with the Spirit.  For by the Spirit we see our cursed state without the love and mercy of God in Christ, and likewise we are convinced of the love of God in Christ, and thereupon we love God again, and trust his mercy, and out of love to him we are enabled to all cheerful obedience. Whatever else we do, if it is not stirred by the Spirit, apprehending the love of God in Christ, it is but morality.  A man shall never go to heaven but by such a disposition and state of mind and soul as is worked by the Holy Spirit, persuading the soul first of the love and favor of God in Christ.  What are all our doings if they aren’t out of love to God?  And how shall we love God except we be persuaded that he loves us first?  Therefore the gospel brings forth love in us to God, and this love has the Spirit with it, working a blessed state of growing in holiness, whereby we are inclined to every good duty. Therefore if we would have the Spirit of God, let us think, meditate and believe on the sweet promises of salvation, upon the doctrine of Christ, Himself; for together with the knowledge of these things, the Holy Spirit slides, insinuates, and infuses himself into our souls.”

 

 

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[ language slightly modernized in places by this site]

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Some Drops of Sweetness

“It is said of Noah, Genesis 8:21, that he offered a sacrifice after the flood, and “the Lord smelled a sweet savor of his sacrifice”, and thereupon he says, ” I will not curse the earth again.”  So God loves and delights in Christ as he offered himself a sacrifice of a sweet smelling savor wherein God rests; he felt such a sweet savor in the sacrifice of Christ, he is so delighted in it, that he will never destroy mankind, he will never destroy any that believe in Christ.  The sacrifice of Noah was a type of Christ’s sacrifice.

Now, that Christ’s sacrifice was so acceptable to God, there is a direct place for it in Eph. 5:2 “Walk in love as Christ has loved us, and has given himself an offering and a sacrifice to God of a sweet smell.”  And indeed how many sweet savors were there in the sacrifice of Christ offered on the cross!  Was there not the sweet savor of obedience?  he was “obedient to the death of the cross,”  Phil. 2:8.  There was the sweet savor of patience, and of love to mankind.  Therefore God delighted in him, as God, as man, as mediator God-man, in his doings, in his sufferings, everyway.”– Richard Sibbes

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Richard Sibbes [“The Sweet Dropper”]: Works of Richard Sibbes, The Description on Christ, Vol.1 , Loc. 310(Kindle)  [Language slightly modernized]

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Excepts of Mercy

Sweet Drops: This is 1

1          2          3          4          5          6          7          8          9

 

 

Peter’s Masterpiece

I was reading 1st Peter 1 a few weeks ago.  This chapter is now one of my favorites.  It is a great summation of faith in Jesus Christ, faith in God.  If you would, please read this chapter.  1st Peter 1

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the chosen ones who are living as aliens in the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,   2  according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, to obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied.  

The chosen ones of God were living as aliens in places into which they were dispersed.  They were made missionaries, [many by seemingly unfortunate circumstances to other peoples.]  God brings wonderful things out of seemingly bad things.  Those who are His children are aliens to this world.  The world does not understand us, why we do the things we do.  They misjudge our motives and hearts, they cannot figure us out.  We have become God’s children through the sanctification of the Spirit.  The Spirit most immediately to us, initiated our salvation.  He, in one way or another, turned our thoughts to Jesus, He drew us to Jesus, and Jesus reconciles us with God.  God led us to God, and God reconciles us with God. We have a sure and trustworthy salvation.   “and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”  Thank God, our salvation is His doing and keeping, and not our own.  May His grace and peace be multiplied to us.  May we come more and more to rely on His mercy, grace, and love for us, which will produce peace when trusted and relied on.

 3  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy became the father of us again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,   

Oh, Blessed be Our Father, God, and the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  This reminds us of God the Father’s love and loyalty to His Son Jesus Christ.  It is from this love of God the Father to God the Son, from which our faith in God’s love for us can rest.  There is not much in us practically, in our deficient morality, goodness, conduct, hearts; seen by us and others in this world, that is at all worthy of God’s love for us.  You see, this is not where our hope lies.  Our hope is only sure, steadfast and truly hopeful when resting on The Fathers love and acceptance of His Son, Jesus Christ.  It is in the righteousness, love, obedience, the covering of Jesus Christ Himself, that we may have a living hope.   This is His wonderful and merciful gift to us.  This living hope, who is the living God, Who dwells within us indeed,  He is the source and only true Spiritual Life within us.  His dwelling within us is what brought us from death to life.  As Jesus was raised from the dead.

 ^“that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that you, being rooted and grounded in love,  may be strengthened to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know Christ’s love which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. ²⁰ Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,“

This same resurrection power has occurred in us, and continues to give us hope and life.  

”  and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might which he worked in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places,  far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come. ”  

We have a sure, and powerful Living Hope within us.  The Ruler of All is within us, in a mysterious, but true way.  Though we may be feeble, and weak in ourselves, we do have access to great strength and power.  If only we had a fuller, deeper, more trusting faith in God to believe more fully in His power.  I hope, you and I will seek, trust and believe more of the mercy and grace of God for us, to help us experience more of His wonderfully powerful working within us.  May we share His great mercy and power more effectively with others, through His working in us. 

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I will continue this at a later date, Lord willing.- Paul M.

John Bunyan’s Merciful Appeal

 

John Bunyan’s merciful appeal to sinners:

There is a people that therefore fear lests they should be rejected of Jesus Christ, because of the greatness of their sins; when, as you see here, such are sent to, sent to by Jesus Christ, to come to him for mercy: “Begin at Jerusalem.” Never did one thing answer another more fitly in this world, than this text this world, than this text fits such a kind of sinners.  As face answers face in the glass, so this text answers the necessities of such sinners.  What can a man say more, but that he stands in the rank of the biggest sinners? Let him stretch himself whither he can, and think of himself to the utmost, he can but conclude himself to be one of the greatest sinners.  And what then?  Why, the text meets him in the very face, and says, Christ offers mercy to the biggest sinners, to the very Jerusalem sinners.  What more can be objected?  No, he does not only offer them His mercy, but to them it is commanded to the offered in the first place: “Begin at Jerusalem.”  “Preach repentance and remission of sins among all nations: beginning at Jerusalem.”  Is not here encouragement for those that think, as far as wicked hearts go, they have no competition in the world?

Objection:  But I have a heart as hard as a rock.

Answer:  Well, but this only proves you are a greatest sinner.

 

Objection: But my heart continually frets against the Lord.

Answer:   Well, but this only proves you are a greatest sinner.

 

Objection:  But I have been desperate in sinful courses.

Answer:  Well, stand with the number of greatest sinners.

 

Objection:  But my gray head is found in the way of wickedness.

Answer:  Well, you stand in the rank of the greatest sinners.

 

Objection but I have not only a base heart, but I have lived an immoral life.

Answer:  You stand among those called the greatest sinners.  And what then?  Why the text swoops you all; you cannot object yourselves beyond the text.  It has a particular message to the greatest sinners.  I say it swoops you all.

 

Objection:  But I am reprobate.

Answer:  Now you are talking foolishly, and where you do not understand:  No sin, but the final impenitence, can prove a man a reprobate; and I am sure you have not arrived as yet to that; therefor you do not understand what you are saying, when making groundless conclusions against yourself.  Say you are a sinner, and I will say too;  Yes, say you are one of the greatest sinners, and spare not;  for the text is yet beyond you, is yet between hell and you; “Begin at Jerusalem” has yet a smile on you;  and you talk as if you were a reprobate, and the greatness of your sins prove you to be, When yet they in Jerusalem were not such, whose sins, I dare say, were such, both for greatness and heinousness, as you are not capable of committing beyond them; unless now, after you have received conviction that the Lord Jesus is the only Savior of the world, you should wickedly and despitefully turn yourself from him,  and conclude he is not to be trusted for life, and so crucify him for a cheat afresh……But I say, what is this to him that would fain be saved by Christ?  His sins did, as to greatness, never yet reach to the nature of the sins that the sinners intended by the text had made themselves guilty of.  He that would be saved by Christ, has an honorable esteem of Him; but they of Jerusalem preferred a murderer before him; and as for him, they cried, away, away with him, it is not fit that he should live.  Perhaps you will object, that you have a thousand times preferred stinking lust before him:  I answer, Be it so; it is but what is common to men to do; nor does the Lord Jesus make such a foolish life a bar to you, to forbid you coming to him, or a bond to his grace, that is might be kept from you; but admits of your turning to him away from sin, and He offers himself to you freely, as you stand among the Jerusalem sinners. 

Take therefore encouragement, man; mercy is, by the text held forth to the greatest sinners;  Yes, put yourself into the number of the worst, by believing you may be one of the first, and may not be put of until the greatest sinners are served;  for the greatest sinners are invited first; consequently if they come, they are likely to be the first that shall be served.

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Text was slightly modernized -Paul M.

Link to page  https://wordpress.com/page/overcomebymercy.com/2495

When He Stills Our Hearts

I was listening to a song today.  A couple lyrics, set me to thinking.  “You steal my heart, and You take my breath away.”  Where are we standing with Him, with the almighty stiller of hearts, and taker of the breaths of men? Are we ready for the stilling of our own hearts and His taking of our own breaths away?  Has He “stolen” your “heart” before he stills your heart?

It is my hope that you as a reader have begun the supernatural detachment from the naturally precarious circumstance of man.  I hope He has had mercy on you, implanting within you His merciful, gentle and gracious Spirit.  I hope you have placed and are progressively placing more and more of your hope onto our only Hope.  I hope you have a growing peace with God.

I hope your thoughts and meditations have begun to be moved off this present world and on to a future living with our Hope.  I hope he has begun to live within you, and there is more and more evidence of this as time goes by towards our day.  I hope you are becoming more gracious, merciful, and gentle as time hurries on.  He is One of Mercy that triumphs over judgment and condemnation.  The father of most in this world is the expert on judgment and condemnation, the giver of “poison rain” which leads to so much hurt, harm and death.  Who is wise and understanding among you?  Let him show by his good conduct that his deeds are done in gentleness of wisdom.  But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, don’t boast and don’t lie against the truth.  This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, sensual, and demonic.  For where jealousy and selfish ambition are, there is confusion and every evil deed.  But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceful, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.  Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. 

I hope you recognize within you a new Spirit of peacefulness and peace making, of gentleness and mercy.  This is the Spirit of God, a Spirit of love, who grieves our premature judgments and condemnations.  If there is more evidence of another spirit within you, one of jealousy, envy, covetousness, selfish ambition which slaughters and tramples mercy, there is a hope for you.  A Hope for you.  He is merciful and kind to the evil, and ungrateful, he is willing and does extend his hands for you and to you.  Turn away from this present world and its trappings which so effectively hold and overcome most.  Allow His gentle Spirit to draw you into the One who brings us to God, the God who brings us to God.  Seek him trusting His mercy and graciousness to be born with in you that you may become full of His mercy and His Spirit.- Paul M.

   Link to page:  https://wordpress.com/page/overcomebymercy.com/2254

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Covering Our Righteousness

I would like to introduce you to Hugh Binning.  I strongly believe it was through reading His writings and the psalms, and meeting with my brother encouraging one another to Jesus, That the Lord finally broke through to me.  I finally trusted in the mercy and goodness of God to save me, and the righteousness I needed from Christ to cover not only my sin but even my own righteousness.  This may be hard reading, but I believe some may be extremely blessed by reading it. — Paul

This is an excerpt from his common domain writings:  The Whole Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning; Heart-Humiliation; Sermon 10

   The whole will of God concerning your duty may be summed up in two, John has one of them 1^st John 3:23, “And this is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment,”  and Paul has another to the Thessalonians 1^st-4:3 “This is the will of God, even your sanctification.”  And these two make up this text, so that it unites both gospel and law.  The commandment of the law comes forth, and it has found that we have broken and are guilty, that we cannot answer for one of a thousand.   The law entering makes sin abound.  Our inability, yes, impossibility of obedience is more discovered.  Well, then, the gospel proclaims the Lord Jesus Christ for the Savior of sinners, and commands us, under pain of damnation, to believe in him, –to cast our souls on him, as one able to save, as one who has obeyed the law for us, so that this command of believing in Christ is answerable to all the breaches of the law, and tends to make them up in Christ.  When he proclaimed the law on mount Sinai, with terror, that which you are in the first instance to obey, for all these we have broken, but It has a gospel command in its bosom, it leads to Jesus Christ, and if ye could read the mind of God in it, you would resolve all these commands which condemn you and curse you, into one command of believing in the Son, that you may be saved from that condemnation.  And if you obey this command, which is his last command, and most decisive, then are the breaches of the rest is fulfilled, though not in your obedience, yet in Christ’s which is better than ours.  Believing in Christ presents God with a perfect righteousness, with an obedience even to death of the cross.  When a sinner hears the holy and spiritual sense of the law, and sees it in the light of God’s holiness, O how vile must he appear to himself!  What original pollution, what actual pollution, what a fountain within, what uncleanness in streams without, will discover itself!  Now, when the most part of men get any sight of this, presently they fall a washing and cleansing themselves, or hiding their filthiness.  And what water do they use?  Their own tears and sorrows, their own resolutions, their own reformations.  But alas, we are still plunged in our own filthiness; that is still clear, because all that is as foul as that we would have washed away.  What garments do men take to hide themselves ordinarily?  Is it not their own righteousness?  Is it not a skirt of some duty that is spread over transgressions?  Do they not think their sins hid, if they can mourn and pray for a time?  Their consciences are eased by reflection upon this.  But alas, your iniquity is still clearly there, and counted.

Your righteousness is as a vile garment, as a menstrual cloth (Isaiah 64:6) as well as your unrighteousness, how then will it cover your nakedness?  Seeing it is so then, what is the Lord’s mind concerning our cleansing?  Seeing stretched out hands and many prayers will not do it, what is there to do?  The Lord has shown you what to do, and that is, that you do nothing in relation to that end, that you should try to wash away the least spot by all your repentance.  Yet, you must be washed and made clean, and the water is made new to you, even the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses from all sin.  Wash in this blood, and you will be made clean.  And what is it to wash in this blood?  It is to believe in Christ Jesus, to lay hold on the all sufficient virtue of it, to trust our souls to it, as a sufficient ransom for all our sins, to spread the covering of Christ’s righteousness over all our righteousness and unrighteousness, as having both alike need to be hid from his holy eyes.  Jesus Christ “came by water and by blood,” (1^st John 5:6), by water to make holy, and by blood to justify, by the power and cleansing virtue of the Holy Spirit, to take away sin in the being of it, and by virtue of his blood, to take away sin in the guilt and condemnation of it.