The service of the living God must flow from a new principle of life in the soul. The Divine word must be the rule of our actions. The Divine will must be consulted and obeyed. We must remember that God is holy, and jealous of his honor. The consideration that he is everywhere, and sees every thing, and will bring every work into judgment, must fill us with reverence and godly fear. An ardent love for his law and his character must supplant the love of sin, and prompt to a cheerful and impartial obedience.
And let us remember that he is “the _living_ God.” Pharaoh is dead, Herod is dead, Nero is dead; but Jehovah is “the living God,” and it is a fearful thing to have him for an enemy. Death cannot deliver from his hand. Time, and even eternity, cannot limit his holy anger. He has manifested, in a thousand instances, his hatred of sin; in the destruction of the old world, the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah, the drowning of Pharaoh and his host in the sea; and I tell thee, sinner, except thou repent, thou shalt likewise perish! O, think what punishment “the living God” can inflict upon his adversaries—the loss of all good—the endurance of all evil—the undying worm—the unquenchable fire—the blackness of darkness for ever!
The gods of the heathen have no life in them, and they who worship them are like unto them. But our God is “the living God,” and “the God of the living.” If you are united to him by faith in “the blood of Christ,” your souls are “quickened together with him,” and “the power which raised him from the dead shall also quicken your mortal body.”
May the Lord awaken those who are dead in trespasses and sins, and revive his work in the midst of the years, and strengthen the feeble graces of his people, and bless abundantly the labors of his servants, so that many consciences may be purged from dead works to serve the living God!
“There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins, And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.
“The dying thief rejoiced to see That fountain in his day; And there may I, as vile as he, Wash all my sins away.
“Dear dying Lamb! thy precious blood Shall never lose its power, Till all the ransomed sons of God Are saved to sin no more!”