Trophies of His Grace

Happy New Year everyone!  I thought this topic was a fitting one to start off the new year. May it never get old! This quote is from a recent Grace Gems.

By C. H. Spurgeon

“You yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 2:5

God builds a palace for Himself in heaven, made of ‘living stones’. Where did He get them? Has He brought forth the richest and the purest marble from the fine quarries of Paris? No! Christians, look to “the hole of the pit where you were dug out of, and to the rock where you were cut from!” You were full of sin. Far from being stones that were white with purity–you were black with defilement, seemingly utterly unfit to be stones in the spiritual temple, which would be the dwelling-place of the Most High God. And yet, He chose you to be trophies of His grace!

Goldsmiths make exquisite jewelry from precious materials; they fashion the bracelet and the ring from gold. But God makes His jewels out of base materials. From the black pebbles of the defiling brooks–He has taken up stones, which He has set in the golden ring of His immutable love, to make them gems to sparkle on His finger forever. He has not selected the best–but apparently the worst of men–to be the monuments of His grace!

That quote made me think of this hymn.

How Sweet and Awful is the Place

Tune Here

How sweet and awful is the place
With Christ within the doors,
While everlasting love displays
The choicest of her stores.

While all our hearts and all our songs
Join to admire the feast,
Each of us cry, with thankful tongues,
“Lord, why was I a guest?

“Why was I made to hear thy voice,
And enter while there’s room,
When thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve than come?”

‘Twas the same love that spread the feast
That sweetly drew us in;
Else we had still refused to taste,
And perished in our sin.

Pity the nations, O our God,
Constrain the earth to come;
Send thy victorious Word abroad,
And bring the strangers home.

We long to see thy churches full,
That all the chosen race
May, with one voice and heart and soul,
Sing thy redeeming grace.