* Pray for revival, reformation, and awakening within the visible church in America.
* Pray for MIC Discipleship on Wednesdays and Sundays this summer.
* Pray for the leaders of GFC.  That the Lord might revive our hearts according to His Word and that we might be anointed by the Holy Spirit. And pray Psalm 73:25 for us.
* Pray for a Bible-saturated, Christ-intoxicating revolution to take place in the local, state, and federal levels of government in the USA.
Who is this amazing
spectacle of woe and torture?
(
Samuel Davies,
"The Preaching of Christ Crucified, the Means of Salvation")
"Christ died for
the ungodly!" Romans 5:6
In
the cross of Christ--
God's
hatred to sin
is manifested in the most striking light! The evil of sin is exposed in
the most dreadful colors! Now it appears, that such is the divine
hatred against all sin, that God can by no means forgive sin, without
punishment and that all the infinite benevolence of His nature towards
His creatures cannot prevail upon Him to pardon the least sin--without
an adequate satisfaction.
Nay, now it appears that when so malignant and abominable a thing is
but imputed to His dear Son, His co-equal, His darling, His
favorite--that even He could not escape unpunished--but was made a
monument of vindictive justice, to all worlds!
What can more
strongly expose the evil of sin--than the cross of Christ? Sin
is
such an intolerably malignant
and abominable thing, that even a God of infinite mercy and
grace--cannot let the least instance of it pass unpunished!
It was not a small thing that could arm God's justice against the Son
of His love. Though He was
perfectly innocent in Himself--yet
when He was made sin for us--God spared not His own Son--but delivered
Him up unto death--the shameful, tormenting, and accursed death of the
cross!
Go, you fools, who make a mock at sin! Go and learn its malignity and
demerit--at the cross of Jesus!
WHO is it that hangs there writhing in the agonies of death--His
hands and feet pierced with nails, His side with a spear, His face
bruised with blows, and drenched with tears and blood, His heart
melting like wax, His whole frame racked and disjointed forsaken by
His friends, and even by His Father tempted by devils, and insulted by
men?
Who is this amazing spectacle of woe and
torture? It is Jesus, the eternal Word of God His Elect, in
whom His soul delights His beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased!
And WHAT has He done? He did no wickedness He knew no
sin--but was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. And
WHY then, all these dreadful sufferings from heaven, earth, and hell?
Why, He only stood in the law-place of sinners He only received their
sin by imputation. And you see what it has brought upon Him! You see
how low it has reduced Him! What a horrid evil must that be--which has
such tremendous consequences, even upon the Darling of heaven!
Oh! what still more dreadful havoc would SIN have made, if it had been
punished upon the sinner himself in his own person! Surely all the
various miseries which have been inflicted upon our guilty world in all
ages, and even all the punishments of hell--do not so loudly proclaim
the terrible desert and malignity of sin--as the cross of Christ!
The infinite malignity of sin, and God's hatred to it,
appear nowhere in so striking and dreadful a light--as in the cross of
Christ! Let a reasonable creature take but one serious view of that
cross, and surely he must ever after tremble at the thought of the
least sin!