What an enormous contrast these verses bring out between a believer and unbeliever. May we ensure that we are trusting in Christ, and not among the foolish ones who by their speech so readily show that they will eternally die for want of God’s wisdom. The true state of both the believer’s and unbeliever’s hearts is made known by their words. May the Lord help us to use our tongues to His own glory and may our speech be seasoned with salt, pure and wholesome, so that our words are a blessing to those around us.

God takes the initiative to draw non-believers to Christ by means of an external work of the Holy Spirit upon their corrupted hearts. Those who respond to this drawing will then experience the mighty internal work of the Spirit, creating within them a new heart and causing them to be born again. This is the Christian Gospel. The non-Christian is told, Break up the untilled fallow ground of your hardened hearts. He must ‘circumcise’ his heart, that is he must cause hios sinful heart to be cut away and removed, as he repenest of sin and trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ for mercy and salvation. God is reaching out to all in His love and mercy. He is drawing men to the Saviour, but man is under an obligation urgently to respond to the Holy Spirit’s drawing work by fleeing to Christ.

Job has undergone a series of personal disasters, including being bereaved of his children in an horrific natural disaster, having his estates devastated, and also suffering from a painful and debilitating physical illness as well.

Eliphaz, one of his friends, comes to visit him and tells him that his suffering must be due to sin in his life. This was cruel, for Job was an exemplary man of great holiness. Eliphaz fails to understand that in a fallen world all people suffer afflictions, trials and tragedies in some way or other. We read in Psalm 34, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous” (verse 19). No one is immune, for example, from sickness. We shall all die of some form of sickness one day. Many people today, not understanding the doctrine of ‘the Fall of man’, as seen in Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God in the Garden of Eden, use the existence of suffering in the world to justify their failure to believe.

Eliphaz’s attempts to counsel Job showed that he was lacking any humility of spirit. He spoke as one who was confident in his own virtue and goodness (as many non-believers are today), but the true Christian is one who acknowledges that he has no goodness of his own, and relies only upon God’s grace in Jesus Christ for his acceptance by God.

One of the marks of the true believer is an assiduous desire to know more of God's word. We abide in Christ by ensuring that His words abide in us, by ensuring that the truth of Scripture keeps our hearts upon fire with devotion to him. The believer can say of the words of Christ, as Solomon does here in v22, that they are life and health to him, both in terms of benefits to his earthly existence, and above all in terms of the eternal life of his soul.

There is nothing more important, as Christians, than keeping our hearts, than ensuring that “the word of Christ dwells within them richly”. How the believer must maintain a constant state of spiritual alertness, ensuring that he never drifts into sin and half-heartedness. May the Lord help each one of us to make love and service for Christ the absolute priority of our lives by a diligent attendance to the truth of God’s word.

EPHESIANS 3:13-19

4 vital principles as we press on in our Christian lives in the year ahead :

1) we must faint not (v13), whatever our perosnal trials and whatever the hostility of the world is like.

2) we must be strengthened with might (v16), constantly growing and maturing in our faith, knowing more and more of God’s word.

3) we must be rooted and grounded in love for Christ (v17). This must be the focus of our everyday existence, to serve and glorify Him.

4) we must be filled with all the fulness of God (v19).

May the Lord make each of us equal to this noble and exalted task in 2025.

The message of these verses is that the believer in Christ is sustained by a glorious hope. He is sustained “in the midst of trials by the prospect of the future deliverance and inheritance of the sons of God” . The sons of God currently suffer, but they will be manifested to all the world and publicly vindicated in great glory. The sons of God, by the indwelling Spirit, experience a measure of liberation already in this life, but they also possess the glorious hope of complete liberation at the resurrection. Yes, we labour and suffer in this vain and fallen world, but let us remember that “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us”.

Whilst Solomon focuses in this passage upon breaking the 7th commandment, we must constantly be on our guard against the onset of all sin, diligently seeking to know God’s will in every situation. We have seen what utter havoc adultery wreaked in the life of Solomon’s father, David, and that David fell having been a believer for many years. “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall”. So we must guard the knowledge of God’s word in our hearts as our most precious possession to enable us not to sin. His commandments must be diligently kept before our minds. How invaluable this will be, when temptation assaults. “Keep my commandments … Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the table of thine heart”. Let us ensure that we walk circumspectly, understanding what the will of the Lord is .

The spirit of antichrist is denying who Jesus Christ actually is, namely He who is both fully God and fully man. To deny that the Lord Jesus is “God manifest in the flesh” is no minor or merely academic matter. Even John in apostolic times had to deal those denying the Son of God’s true nature. In so doing, they were also denying God the Father. God’s truth is always under attack, and so today there are many antichrists denying who the Lord Jesus Christ really is.

This is an explanation of the Parable of the Lord of the Vineyard in Luke 20. It is delivered initially to the nation of Israel in our Lord's day, which had been given very special privileges : a unique revelation of God’s word down the centuries. However, these privileges had been horribly abused. Addressed in particular to the nation's leaders, the parable describes the leaders as wicked husbandmen of the vineyard which is Israel, having so often rejected and mistreated the prophets whom the Lord had sent to them.

This tragic account, however, applies equally to nations which reject the Lord Jesus Christ TODAY, because God never changes. The Lord Jesus is the son and heir in the parable who is sent to Israel to receive the produce of the vineyard, namely the faith and obedience that are due to Him. If our own nation today carries on rejection the one true faith of Jesus Christ, He, the chief corner stone, will grind it to powder.

The only solution therefore is that the citizens of our nation urgently examine their hearts and turn in repentance and faith to the only Saviour of sinners, the Lord Jesus Christ, whilst there is still time.

The address of Pastor Peter Simpson of Penn Free Methodist Church at the 2024 ‘Britain’s Only Hope - the Gospel’ Conference.

It is to the greatness of the supreme Counsellor, the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom our nation must urgently turn today, because, as our text tells us, “Where no counsel is, the people fall" (Proverbs 11:14). This is why we must challenge governments and politicians with the truth of the Bible, as well as preaching salvation to the lost.