Isaiah 1:4-9

THE CELEBRATED PRAYER of the great German astronomer, Kepler, has been a benediction to many: "O God, I thank Thee that Thou hast permitted me to think Thy thoughts after Thee."

This prayer is theologically sound because it acknowledges the priority of God in the universe. "In the beginning God" is undoubtedly the most important sentence in the Bible. It is in God that all things begin, and all thoughts as well. In the words of Augustine, "But Thou, O Lord, who ever livest, and...

Help is needed to discharge duties that are too great for us, to encounter dangers that are too severe for us, to face enemies that are too powerful for us, to bear up under sore disappointments, under the loss of friends, of health, of fortune, to sustain the consciousness of our deep demerit, and in fact it is difficult to exhaust the catalog of the ends for which we need help. Yet there are very few who are visited with a sense of any such need as this. The reason is that men generally...

The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; they have not been closed or bound up, or soothed with ointment. § We are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. § I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells.You were washed … you were sanctified … you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the...