Jesus is a Patient, Kind, Gentle Refiner

Excerpted from Helps from the Pulpit, or Sketches and Skeltons of Sermons by William Nicholson, 1862

Christ sits and watches by the furnace He has put you in as the Great Refiner. He manages the whole process wisely and with compassion. He sits there to regulate the heat, comforting you, while keeping in mind your particular infirmities and weaknesses. He watches as the dross is drained to accomplish improvement in your soul, your graces, and your practice, conforming you further to His Image.

Real gold receives no injury from fire, only the removal of dross reduces its size. Pure gold does not lose one grain of dross. In the Day of His Coming, when He will sit as a Refiner, in a Day of deep distress and great tribulation, as the Church is refined it will be made less in bulk and quantity, yet in quality it will shine more gloriously and purely, and be more precious to God.

Affection for George Whitefield

from a letter by Mrs. Jonathan Edwards, Sarah Peirpont, to a minister in New Haven recommending that he heartily welcome George Whitefield, dated 1740.

He is a born orator. It is perfect music to listen to his melodious voice. And he speaks so easily, without any apparent effort. I have seen more than a thousand people hang on his words with breathless silence. He impresses both the ignorant and the refined, educated men here. Moreover, he is a very devout and godly man and his only goal seems to be to reach and influence men in the best way. He speaks from a heart all aglow with love. James, when he reaches New Haven, show him warm hospitality.
Yours, in faithful affection, Sarah.

Your Enemy!

An excerpt from Joseph Alleine’s, Alarm to the Unconverted (1671)
note to Pastors: try preaching this one next Sunday!

"I myself, the Sovereign Lord, am now your enemy!"
Ezekiel 5:8

"O consider this, you who forget God, lest He tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver!" (Psalm 50:22)

Submit to mercy. Let not dust and stubble battle against the Almighty. "Woe to him who strives with his Maker!" (Isaiah 45:9)

You who neglect God and revel in unbelief, know that you are not only against God--but God is against you!

As there is no friend like Him--so there is no enemy like Him. As much as heaven is above the earth, so is His omnipotence above your powerlessness. How terrible it is to fall into the hands of the living God, a consuming fire. Who or what will deliver you when God Himself becomes your tormentor!? If He sends you strong delusion, how will you return?

The infinite God is engaged against you! He hates all workers of iniquity. Doesn't your heart tremble to think of your being an object of God's hatred as you store up wrath for the Day of Wrath?

"As surely as I live, when I sharpen My flashing sword and begin to carry out justice, I will bring vengeance on My enemies and repay those who hate Me!" (Deuteronomy 32:40-41)

The power of God is mounted like a mighty cannon against you--and omnipotent power and anger together make fearful work. Fear Him and plead for love to Him, thankfulness, for repentence and to be reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ.

An Infinite Gospel

Excerpted from a Charles H. Spurgeon sermon:
Some modern divines whittle away the Gospel to the small end of nothing; they make our Divine Lord to be a sort of blessed nobody; they bring down salvation to mere possibility; they make certainties into probabilities and treat verities as mere opinions. When you see a preacher making the Gospel smaller by degrees, and miserably less, till there is not enough of it left to make soup for a sick grasshopper, get you gone with him! As for me, I believe in an infinite God, an infinite atonement, infinite love and mercy, an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure, and of which the substance and reality is an Infinite Christ.