THE DAY OF HIS COMING--CHARLES SPURGEON

"But who may abide the day of his coming?" (Malachi 3:2)

His first coming was without external pomp or show of power, and yet in truth there were few who could abide its testing might. Herod and all Jerusalem with him were stirred at the news of the wondrous birth. Those who supposed themselves to be waiting for him, showed the fallacy of their professions by rejecting him when he came. His life on earth was a winnowing fan, which tried the great heap of religious profession, and few enough could abide the process. 

But what will his second advent be? What sinner can endure to think of it? "He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked." When in his humiliation he did but say to the soldiers, "I am he," they fell backward; what will be the terror of his enemies when he shall more fully reveal himself as the "I am?" His death shook earth and darkened heaven, what shall be the dreadful splendour of that day in which as the living Saviour, he shall summon the quick and dead before him? O that the terrors of the Lord would persuade men to forsake their sins and kiss the Son lest he be angry! Though a lamb, he is yet the lion of the tribe of Judah, rending the prey in pieces; and though he breaks not the bruised reed, yet will he break his enemies with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. 

None of his foes shall bear up before the tempest of his wrath, or hide themselves from the sweeping hail of his indignation; but his beloved blood washed people look for his appearing with joy, and hope to abide it without fear: to them he sits as a refiner even now, and when he has tried them they shall come forth as gold. Let us search ourselves this morning and make our calling and election sure, so that the coming of the Lord may cause no dark forebodings in our mind. O for grace to cast away all hypocrisy, and to be found of him sincere and without rebuke in the day of his appearing.

A MEASURING OF AFFLICTIONS--JOSEPH CARYL

Satan usually keeps his greatest strength and most violent temptations unto the last. When he thinks we are at the weakest, then he commeth with the strongest assaults. If Satan had sent Job word of the death of his children first, all the rest would have been as nothing to him; he would not have regarded the loss of his cattle when he heard that all his Children were crushed to death by the fall of the house. As one great evil falling upon us, takes the heart off from having any sense and feeling of a lesser evil; that great evil which fell upon the Wife of Phineas, when she heard that the Ark of God was taken, afflicted her so extremely, that she could not at all rejoice in the birth of her son she had no sense of that. Here was therefore the cunning of Satan, lest Job should have lost the smart of the lesser afflictions, least they should have all been swallowed up in the greater, he brings them out in order, the least first, the greatest reserved for the last. We observe in war that when once the great ordinance are discharged, the soldiers are not afraid of the musket; so when a great battery is made by some thundering terrible judgement upon the soul, or upon the body or the estate of any man; the noise and fears of lesser evils are drowned and abated. Therefore Satan keeps his greatest shot to the last, that the small might be heard and felt, and that he last coming in greater strength might find the least strength to resist it.

To lose all our children is as grievous as to lose an only child; now that is made a cause of the highest sorrows, Zach 12:10. They shall mourn for him, as one that mourneth for his only son; that is, they shall mourn most bitterly. Now as the measure of mercies may be taken by the comforts which they produce, so we may take the measure of an affliction by the sorrow which it produceth, and that is the greatest affliction that causes the greatest sorrow.  (Joseph Caryl 1602-1673)

WHERE SIN ABOUNDED--J.C. PHILPOT

"But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." Romans 5:20

In order to know what grace is in its reign over sin, and in its superaboundings over the aboundings of iniquity, we must be led experimentally into the depths of the fall. We must be led by God himself into the secrets of our own heart; we must be brought down into distress of mind on account of our sin and the idolatry of our fallen nature. And when, do what we will, sin will still work,reign, and abound, and we are brought to soul poverty, helplessness, destitution, and misery, and cast ourselves down at the footstool of his mercy—then we begin to see and feel the reign of grace, in quickening our souls, in delivering us from the wrath to come, and in preserving us from the dominion of evil. 

We begin to see then that grace superabounds over all the aboundings of sin in our evil hearts, and as it flows through the channel of the Saviour's sufferings, that it will never leave its favoured objects till it brings them into the enjoyment of eternal life! And if this does not melt and move the soul, and make a man praise and bless God, nothing will, nothing can! But until we have entered into the depths of our own iniquities, until we are led into the chambers of imagery, and brought to sigh, groan, grieve, and cry under the burden of guilt on the conscience and the workings of secret sin in the heart—it cannot be really known. And to learn it thus, is a very different thing from learning it from books, or ministers. To learn it in the depths of a troubled heart, by God's own teaching, is a very different thing from learning it from the words of a minister or even from the word of God itself. We can never know these things savingly and effectually, till God himself is pleased to apply them with his own blessed power, and communicate an unctuous savour of them to our hearts, that we may know the truth, and find to our soul's consolation, that the truth makes us free!