We Love God!

God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)

Between the two comings of Jesus, believers experience what is often called the tension between the already and the not yet. Jesus’ followers can look back and see that D-day, the decisive strike, has already occurred and now guarantees thorough defeat of the enemy. Nevertheless, the time after the first coming and before the second coming involves ongoing warfare with the spiritual forces of darkness and their terrestrial supporters. V-day has not yet arrived, and so the potential for setbacks and defeats still exists. All too often, God’s people succumb to temptation and score a victory for the enemies of God. Still, the decisive strike at the first coming of Jesus guarantees ultimate victory at the second, and Jesus’ followers fight the good fight with assurance that God who has begun a good work at the first coming of Jesus will bring it to completion at the second.
Dean Ulrich

XXIV. Hear Christ.

MATT, xvii 5. “Hear ye Him.”

I. WHY should we hear Him?
1. Because God Himself commands us.
2. Because He deserves to be heard.
3. Because the message He has come to communicate
concerns our most solemn interests.
4. If He is our master and our Lord, we are bound to
hear Him. That is an argument suitable for those who
have believed.
II. What are we to hear? The fulness of all revelation
is embodied in Himself. As the sound of many waters
hear this: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to
Himself.”
The Lord Jesus has many varieties of utterance; He in-
structs, He commands, He consoles, He warns.
III. How are we to hear Him?
1. It becomes us to listen with devout reverence.
2. Let us hear believingly. The word of God applied to
the soul by the Eternal Spirit is the voice of Christ.
IV. When shall we hear Him? Evermore. When our
Christian career begins, when we greet Him in the upper
skies. The great matter, however, is that we hear Him
now.
Charles H. Spurgeon