Common Sense Not Needed By Corrie Ten Boom

Corrie ten Boom

Many Christians know the story of Corrie ten Boom through her book The Hiding Place, and the motion picture released by the same name in the 1970s.

It is the story of a Gentile Christian family who spearheaded a rescue operation in Holland that helped hundreds of Jews escape the Nazi extermination camps.

Like faithful Ruth, the ten Booms took their allegiance to the Jews seriously.

Common Sense Not Needed
By Corrie Ten Boom
INTRODUCTION

 

Before World War II I started a work to bring the Gospel to feeble-minded people who were not in institutions. They were not able to go to church: they could not understand the sermon. But did they not need the Lord Jesus, just like you and I? We learn from the Bible that the Lord Jesus has a great love and concern for everyone who is in need. For He said, “Come unto me all…”

Everyone needs the Holy Spirit to understand spiritual truths. I found that when we taught the Gospel in an uncomplicated way the Holy Spirit did not need a high I.Q. to reveal Himself.

The feeble-minded whom I taught in the Bible class we had every Sunday afternoon called it their church. We tried to make it as “churchy” as we could to please them!

In this booklet I tell something of what I learned and experienced during the five years I carried on this small work. It was perhaps unimportant in the eyes of the world, but not worthless in God’s eyes. No effort can be valueless when it is in obedience to the command of Jesus, “You must go out to the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15, Phillips).

I am sure that earthly values are different to heavenly ones. I believe that the joy among the angels of God is as great when a subnormal person is saved as when a V.I.P. gives his heart and life to the Lord. Possibly greater. One cannot tell.

A WASTE OF TIME?

 

Once, in a concentration camp, I was questioned by a Nazi officer. He asked me much about my life, about my work in the Underground, and about my spare time. I told him that I had given Bible lessons to subnormal people.

“Don’t you regard that as a waste of time?” he asked. “Surely it is much better to convert a normal person than a subnormal one.”

This was fully in accord with his Nazi way of thinking. So I told him about Jesus, who had always cared for all who were weak and despised, adding that it might well be possible that the officer and I were much less important in the sight of the Lord Jesus than one of these poor creatures. I was sent back to my cell.

The next morning the officer sent for me and said that he had slept badly. He had thought much about what I had said.

“You spoke about Jesus,” he said, “I don’t know anything about Him. Tell me what you know of Him.”

A conversation about the feeble-minded had changed a most dangerous moment for a prisoner into a testimony to the glory of God.

EFI NEWS: November 19-2009: Persecution Report from Karnataka and Chhattisgarh

EFI NEWS

 

Persecution Report from Karnataka and Chhattisgarh

 

November 19, 2009:

Church desecrated in Karnataka

Hindu extremists on November 17 again attacked a church in Karnataka’s district Bidar, Hamunabad.

Our correspondent Rev. Noel Kotian reported from Bangalore that Hindu extremists desecrated Beersheba Church of God in the wee hours of the day.The extremists forced into the church by smashing the doors and windows, destroyed the cross on the altar leaving behind heaps of debris.

Local dailies and television channel CNN IBN telecast the incident. Local church leaders maintained that it was a deliberate act of desecration as nothing was stolen.

The Christians lodged a police complaint and First Information Report was filed at Hamunabad police station. Investigation is underway.

Prayer meeting disrupted

On November 6 in Shimago, Karnataka, Hindu extremists disrupted a house church service, accusing a physically challenged Pastor Kannan Ramesh of forcible conversion and verbally abused him.

EFI correspondent Rev. Noel Kotian reported that at about 12: 30 p.m. Hindu hardliners barged into the Faith Christ house church where three families gathered for their weekly service. The extremists questioned the Christians about “conversion activities” at the church.

The extremists dragged Pastor Ramesh and two church members identified only as Kumar and Thrimurthi to Old Town police station and interrogated him about his tailoring business and warned him against using his house as a church.

The Christians were released at about 11 p.m. without any charges.

Believer assaulted

A mob of about 20 Hindu extremists attacked a Christian on November 3 on the pretext of “forcible conversions” near an apartment complex in Attavar, Mangalore.

The Hindi hardliners attacked a Christian and a construction worker identified only as Manjunath with their bare hands as he stood outside his rental unit in B G Court Apartments, reported our correspondent, Rev Noel Kotian.

Manjunath and his friends occasionally assembled at his house for a prayer meeting. The extremists noticed this and mobilized a mob, bringing along local television crew and filmed the attack.

After an investigation, police confirmed that there is no case of forceful conversion going on as Manjunath’s neighbors also said that they had no knowledge of any conversion activity in his apartment.

Violence against Christians went unabated in Karnataka with at least 70 incidents of attacks on them within this year. Kindly continue to pray for all the Christians in Karnataka.
Christian woman arrested in Karnataka

On 1 November (Sunday), Karnataka police barged into the children hostel of Christianity Outreach Ministry (COM) and arrested the manager on charges of forceful conversion in Udupi.

EFI correspondent Rev. Noel Kotain reported from Bangalore that COM hostel provides shelter, food and clothing to 65 girls from various castes and religious backgrounds. On June, two girls who need shelter went to see Mrs. Helen, headmistress of Christian High School and she recommended the COM hostel. The hostel manager, Saroja Margaret gladly accepted the two girls.

Speaking to EFI, Rev Joseph Jamkandi, husband of Margaret said, “The two girls were two of our best students, they were on their best behavior within the four months of their stay here and we have been very happy with them.” Their accusation against my wife came as a great shock for us too, he added. These two girls lodged a complaint against Margaret of forceful conversion and of criticizing Hinduism.

At about 8 a.m, Margaret was cooking for the girls when the police stormed in to the hostel and dragged her to Kapu police station. She was detained in the police station for the entire day.

In the meantime, at about 10 a.m. a group of police went to COM hostel and made a thorough investigation on the hostel. They questioned the children, neighbors and checking all the hostel facilities. No one testify against Margaret.

The 63 girls claimed that there never was an instance when they were forced to read the Bible or participate in the devotion and criticism of any religion was never uttered in the hostel, according to reports.

At about 3:30 p.m., the Deputy Superintendent of Police informed Kapu police to produce Margaret before the Magistrate as First Information Report was already registered against her. She was arrested under Section 298 of the Indian Penal Code and 153 Part 1(b) for uttering words with intend to hurt religious feelings of others and for creating problem in the community respectively.

Margaret was taken before the magistrate; judicial custody was decided against her. At about 5:30 p.m. she was sent to Mangalore District Prison.

Margaret was released on bail on Nov 3. Kindly pray for her as the incident left her shaken and also pray for all the girls in the hostel.

Christians attacked in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh

Hindu extremists on November 8 beat up Christians till one fell unconscious in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh.

Our correspondent Akhilesh Edgar reported that a Christian, Tekchand invited a couple Keshup and Suneeta Baghel to his home to pray for his sick child.

At about 8 p.m., about 50 extremists stormed the house, accused Baghel and his wife of forceful conversion and started beating the Christians not even sparing the women. They hit Tekchand on his head and he fell unconscious on the floor.

The extremists dragged Baghel and his wife to the police station and filed a complaint against them of forceful conversion. About 100 extremists’ pressured the police to file a case against the Christians.

In the meantime, four Christians who went to the police station to give support to the Christians were mercilessly beat up upon their arrival by the intolerant Hindu extremists.

Tekchand lodged a police complaint against the attackers and police filed First Information Report against the extremists. The Christians were taken to a hospital for medical treatment.

No case was registered against the Christians. Kindly continue to pray for Chhattisgarh where violence against Christians becomes a common occurrence.

John 4

When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John,

 ²(Though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples,)

 ³He left Judaea, and departed again into Galilee.

 ⁴And he must needs go through Samaria.

 ⁵Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

 ⁶Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour.

 ⁷There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.

 ⁸(For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.)

 ⁹Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.

 ¹⁰Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

 ¹¹The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?

 ¹²Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?

 ¹³Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:

 ¹⁴But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

 ¹⁵The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.

 ¹⁶Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither.

 ¹⁷The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband:

 ¹⁸For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.

 ¹⁹The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.

 ²⁰Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.

 ²¹Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.

 ²²Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

 ²³But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

 ²⁴God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

 ²⁵The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things.

 ²⁶Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.

 ²⁷And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her?

 ²⁸The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men,

 ²⁹Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?

 ³⁰Then they went out of the city, and came unto him.

 ³¹In the mean while his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat.

 ³²But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of.

 ³³Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat?

 ³⁴Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.

 ³⁵Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.

 ³⁶And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.

 ³⁷And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth.

 ³⁸I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.

 ³⁹And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I did.

 ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days.

 ⁴¹And many more believed because of his own word;

 ⁴²And said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.

 ⁴³Now after two days he departed thence, and went into Galilee.

 ⁴⁴For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country.

 ⁴⁵Then when he was come into Galilee, the Galilaeans received him, having seen all the things that he did at Jerusalem at the feast: for they also went unto the feast.

 ⁴⁶So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum.

 ⁴⁷When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judaea into Galilee, he went unto him, and besought him that he would come down, and heal his son: for he was at the point of death.

 ⁴⁸Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.

 ⁴⁹The nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down ere my child die.

 ⁵⁰Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth. And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way.

 ⁵¹And as he was now going down, his servants met him, and told him, saying, Thy son liveth.

 ⁵²Then enquired he of them the hour when he began to amend. And they said unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.

 ⁵³So the father knew that it was at the same hour, in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth: and himself believed, and his whole house.

 ⁵⁴This is again the second miracle that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judaea into Galilee.

THE BLOOD OF CHRIST By Watchman Nee

      WHAT is the normal Christian life? We do well at the outset to ponder this question. The Object of these studies is to show that it is something very different from the life of the average Christian. Indeed a consideration of the written Word of God–of the Sermon on the Mount for example-should lead us to ask whether such a life has ever in fact been lived upon the earth, save only by the Son of God Himself. But in that last saving clause lies immediately the answer to our question.

 

      The apostle Paul gives us his own definition of the Christian life in Galatians 2. 20. It is ” no longer I, but Christ “. Here he is not stating something special or peculiar-a high level of Christianity. He is, we believe, presenting God’s normal for a Christian, which can be summarized in the words: I live no longer, but Christ lives His life in me.

 

      God makes it quite clear in His Word that He has only one answer to every human need- His Son, Jesus Christ. In all His dealings with us He works by taking us out of the way and substituting Christ in our place. The Son of God died instead of us for our forgiveness: He lives instead of us for our deliverance. So we can speak of two substitutions-a Substitute on the Cross who secures our forgiveness and a Substitute within who secures our victory. It will help us greatly, and save us from much confusion, if we keep constantly before us this fact, that God will answer all our questions in one way only, namely, by showing us more of His Son.

 

      OUR DUAL PROBLEM: SINS AND SIN

 

      We shall take now as a starting-point for our study of the normal Christian life that great exposition of it which we find in the first eight chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, and we shall approach our subject from a practical and experimental point of view. It will be helpful first of all to point out a natural division of this section of Romans into two, and to note certain striking differences in the subjectmatter of its two parts.

 

      The first eight chapters of Romans form a self-contained unit. The four-and-a-half chapters from 1. 1 to 5. 11 form the first half of this unit and the three-and-a half chapters from 5. 12 to 8. 39 the second half. A careful reading will show us that the subject-matter of the two halves is not the same. For example, in the argument of the first section we find the plural word ’sins’ given prominence. In the second section, however, this is changed, for while the word ’sins’ hardly occurs once, the singular word ’sin’ is used again and again and is the subject mainly dealt with. Why is this?

 

      It is because in the first section it is a question of the sins I have committed before God, which are many and can be enumerated, whereas in the second it is a question of sin as a principle working in me. No matter how many sins I commit, it is always the one sin- principle that leads to them. I need forgiveness for my sins, but I need also deliverance from the power of sin. The former touches my conscience, the latter my life. I may receive forgiveness for all my sins, but because of my sin I have, even then, no abiding peace of mind.

 

      When God’s light first shines into my heart my one cry is for forgiveness, for I realise I have committed sins before Him; but when once I have received forgiveness of sins I make a new discovery, namely, the discovery of sin, and I realise not only that I have committed sins before God but that there is something wrong within. I discover that I have the nature of a sinner. There is an inward inclination to sin, a power within that draws to sin. When that power breaks out I commit sins. I may seek and receive forgiveness, but then I sin once more. So life goes on in a vicious circle of sinning and being forgiven and then sinning again. I appreciate the blessed fact of God’s forgiveness, but I want something more than that: I want deliverance. I need forgiveness for what I have done, but I need also deliverance from what I am.

 

GOD’S DUAL REMEDY: THE BLOOD AND THE CROSS

 

      Thus in the first eight chapters of Romans two aspects of salvation are presented to us: firstly, the forgiveness of our sins, and secondly, our deliverance from sin. But now, in keeping with this fact, we must notice a further difference.

 

      In the first part of Romans 1 to 8, we twice have reference to the Blood of the Lord Jesus, in chapter 3. 25 and in chapter 5. 9. In the second, a new idea is introduced in chapter 6. 6, where we are said to have been 11 crucified ” with Christ. The argument of the first part gathers round that aspect of the work of the Lord Jesus which is represented by ‘the Blood’ shed for our justification through ” the remission of sins “. This terminology is however not carried on into the second section, where the argument centres now in the aspect of His work represented by ‘the Cross’, that is to say, by our union with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection.

 

      This distinction is a valuable one. We shall see that the Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin. The latter aspect will be the subject of our consideration in later chapters.

 

      THE PROBLEM OF OUR SINS

 

      We begin, then, with the precious Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and its value to us in dealing with our sins and justifying us in the sight of God. This is set forth for us in the following passages: ” All have sinned ” (Romans 3. 23). ” God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God through him ” (Rom. 5.8, 9). Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, by his blood, to shew his righteousness, because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; for the shewing, say, of his righteousness at this present season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus ” (Romans 3. 24 – 26).

 

      We shall have reason at a later stage in our study to look closely at the real nature of the Fall and the way of recovery. At this point we will just remind ourselves that when sin came in it found expression in an act of disobedience to God (Rom. 5.19). Now we must remember that whenever this occurs the thing that immediately follows is guilt. Sin enters as disobedience, to create first of all a separation between God and man whereby man is put away from God. God can no longer have fellowship with him, for there is something now which hinders, and it is that which is known throughout Scripture as ’sin’. Thus it is first of all God who says, “They are all under sin ” (Rom. 3. 9). Then, secondly, that sin in man, which henceforth constitutes a barrier to his fellowship with God, gives rise in him to a sense of guilt —of estrangement from God. Here it is man himself who, with the help of his awakened conscience, says, ” I have sinned ” (Luke 15. 18). Nor is this all, for sin also provides Satan with his ground of accusation before God, while our sense of guilt gives him his ground of accusation in our hearts ; so that, thirdly, it is ‘the accuser of the brethren’ (Rev. 12. 10) who now says, ‘You have sinned’.

 

      To redeem us, therefore, and to bring us back to the purpose of God, the Lord Jesus had to do something about these three questions of sin and of guilt and of Satan’s charge against us. Our sins had first to be dealt with, and this was effected by the precious Blood of Christ. Our guilt has to be dealt with and our guilty conscience set at rest by showing us the value of that Blood. And finally, the attack of the enemy has to be met and his accusations answered. In the Scriptures the Blood of Christ is shown to operate effectually in these three ways, Godward, manward and Satanward.

 

      There is thus an absolute need for us to appropriate these values of the Blood if we are to go on. This is a first essential. We must have a basic knowledge of the fact of the death of the Lord Jesus as our Substitute upon the Cross, and a clear apprehension of the efficacy of His Blood for our sins, for without this we cannot be said to have started upon our road. Let us look then at these three matters more closely.

 

      THE BLOOD IS PRIMARILY FOR GOD

 

      The Blood is for atonement and has to do first with our standing before God. We need forgiveness for the sins we have committed, lest we come under judgment; and they are forgiven, not because God overlooks what we have done but because He sees the Blood. The Blood is therefore not primarily for us but for God. If I want to understand the value of the Blood I must accept God’s valuation of it, and if I do not know something of the value set upon the Blood by God I shall never know what its value is for me. It is only as the estimate that God puts upon the Blood of Christ is made known to me by His Holy Spirit that I come into the good of it myself and find how precious indeed the Blood is to me. But the first aspect of it is Godward. Throughout the Old and New Testaments the word ‘blood’ is used in connection with the idea of atonement, I think over a hundred times, and throughout it is something for God.

 

      In the Old Testament calendar there is one day that has a great bearing on the matter of our sins and that day is the Day of Atonement. Nothing explains this question of sins so clearly as the description of that day. In Leviticus 16 we find that on the Day of Atonement the blood was taken from the sin offering and brought into the Most Holy Place and there sprinkled before the Lord seven times. We must be very clear about this. On that day the sin offering was offered publicly in the court of the tabernacle. Everything was there in’ full view and could be seen by all. But the Lord commanded that no man should enter the tabernacle itself except the high priest. It was he alone who took the blood and, going into the Most Holy Place, sprinkled it there to make atonement before the Lord. Why? Because the high priest was a type of the Lord Jesus in His redemptive work (Hebrews 9.11, 12), and so, in figure, he was the one who did the work. None but he could even draw near to enter in. Moreover, connected with his going in there was but one act, namely, the presenting of the blood to God as something He had accepted, something in which He could find satisfaction.

 

      It was a transaction between the high priest and God in the Sanctuary, away from the eyes of the men who were to benefit by it. The Lord required that. The Blood is therefore in the first place for Him. Earlier even than this there is described in Exodus 12. 13 the shedding of the blood of the passover lamb in Egypt for Israel’s redemption. This is again, I think, one of the best types in the Old Testament of our redemption. The blood was put on the lintel and on the door-posts, whereas the meat, the flesh of the lamb, was eaten inside the house; and God said: “When I see the blood, I will pass over you “. Here we have another illustration of the fact that the blood was not meant to be resented to man but to God, for the blood was put on the lintel and on the door-posts, where those feasting inside the house would not see it.

 

      GOD IS SATISFIED

 

      It is God’s holiness, God’s righteousness, which demands that a sinless life should be given for man. There is life in the Blood, and that Blood has to be poured out for me, for my sins. God is the One who requires it to be so. God is the One who demands that the Blood be presented, in order to satisfy His own righteousness, and it is He who says: ‘When I see the blood, I will pass over you. ‘The Blood of Christ wholly satisfies God.

 

      Now I desire to say a word at this point to my younger brethren in the Lord, for it is here that we often get into difficulties. As unbelievers we may have been wholly untroubled by our conscience until the Word of God began to arouse us. Our conscience was dead, and those with dead consciences are certainly of no use to God. But later, when we believed, our awakened conscience may have become acutely sensitive, and this can constitute a real problem to us. The sense of sin and guilt can become so great, so terrible, as almost to cripple us by causing us to lose sight of the true effectiveness of the Blood. It seems to us that our sins are so real, and some particular sin may trouble us so many times, that we come to the point where to us our sins loom larger than the Blood of Christ.

 

      Now the whole trouble with us is that we are trying to sense it ; we are trying to feel its value and to estimate subjectively what the Blood is for us. We cannot do it; it does not work that way. The Blood is first for God to see. We then have to accept God’s valuation of it. In doing so we shall find our valuation. If instead we try to come to a valuation by way of our feelings we get nothing; we remain in darkness. No, it is a matter of faith in God’s Word. We have to believe that the Blood is precious to God because He says it is so (1 Peter 1. 18,19). If God can accept the Blood as a payment for our sins and as the price of our redemption, then we can rest assured that the debt has been paid. If God is satisfied with the Blood, then the Blood must be acceptable. Our valuation of it is only according to His valuation-neither more nor less. It cannot, of course, be more, but it must not be less.

 

      Let us remember that He is holy and He is righteous, and that a holy and righteous God has the right to say that the Blood is acceptable in His eyes and has fully satisfied, Him the Lord Jesus. I approach God through His merit alone, and never on the basis of my attainment; never, for example, on the ground that I have been extra kind or patient to- day, or that I have done something for the Lord this morning. I have to come by way of the Blood every time. The temptation to so many of us when we try to approach God is to think that because God has been dealing with us-because He has been taking steps to bring us into something more of Himself and has been teaching us deeper lessons of the Cross-He has thereby set before us new standards, and that only by attaining to these can we have a clear conscience before Him. No! A clear conscience is never based upon our attainment; it can only be based on the work of the Lord Jesus in the shedding of His Blood.

 

      I may be mistaken, but I feel very strongly that some of us are thinking in terms such as these: ‘Today I have been a little more careful ; to-day I have been doing a little better; this morning I have been reading the Word of God in a warmer way, so to-day I can pray better!’ Or again, ‘To-day I have had a little difficulty with the family ; I began the day feeling very gloomy and moody; I am not feeling too bright now; it seems that there must be something wrong; therefore I cannot approach God.’

 

      What, after all, is your basis of approach to God? Do you come to Him on the uncertain ground of your feeling, the feeling that you may have achieved something for God today? Or is your approach based on something far more secure, namely, the fact that the Blood has been shed, and that God looks on that Blood and is satisfied? Of course, were it conceivably possible for the Blood to suffer any change, the basis of your approach to God might be less trustworthy. But the Blood has never changed and never will. Your approach to God is therefore always in boldness; and that boldness is yours through the Blood and never through your personal attainment. Whatever be your measure of attainment to-day or yesterday or the day before, as soon as you make a conscious move into the Most Holy Place, immediately you have to take your stand upon the safe and only ground of the shed Blood. Whether you have had a good day or a bad day, whether you have consciously sinned or not, your basis of approach is always the same-the Blood of Christ. That is the ground upon which you may enter, and there is no other.

 

      As with many other stages of our Christian experience, this matter of access to God has two phases, an initial and a progressive one. The former is presented to us in Ephesians 2 and the latter in Hebrews 10. Initially, our standing with God was secured by the Blood, for we are “made nigh in the blood of Christ” (Ebb. 2. 13). But thereafter our ground of continual access is still by the Blood, for the apostle exhorts us: —Having therefore … boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus … let us draw near ” (Heb. 10. 19, 22). To begin with I was made nigh by the Blood, and to continue in that new relationship I come through the Blood every time. It is not that I was saved on one basis and that I now maintain my fellowship on another. You say, ‘That is very simple; it is the A.B.C. of the Gospel.’ Yes, but the trouble with many of us is that we have moved away from the A.B.C. We have thought we had progressed and so could dispense with it, but we can never do so. No, my initial approach to God is by the Blood, and every time I come before Him it is the same. Right to the end it will always and only be. on the ground of the Blood.

 

      This does not mean at all that we should live a careless life, for we shall shortly study another aspect of the death of Christ which shows us that anything but that is contemplated. But for the present let us be satisfied with the Blood, that it is there and that it is enough. We may be weak, but looking at our weakness will never make us strong. No trying to feel bad and doing penance will help us to be even a little holier. There is no help there, so let us be bold in our approach because of the Blood: ‘Lord, I do not know fully what the value of the Blood is, but I know that the Blood has satisfied Thee ; so the Blood is enough for me, and it is my only plea. I see now that whether I have really progressed, whether I have really attained to something or not, is not the point. Whenever I come before Thee, it is always on the ground of the precious Blood.’ Then our conscience is really clear before God. No conscience could ever be clear apart from the Blood. It is the Blood that gives us boldness. ” No more conscience of sins these are tremendous words of Hebrews 10. 2. We are cleansed from every sin ; and we may truly echo the words of Paul : ” Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin ” (Romans 4. 8).

 

      OVERCOMING THE ACCUSER

 

      In view of what we have said we can now turn to face the enemy, for there is a further aspect of the Blood which is Satanward. Satan’s most strategic activity in this day is as the accuser of the brethren (Rev. 12. 10) and it is as this that our Lord confronts him with His special ministry as High Priest ” through his own blood” (Hebrews 9. 12). How then does the Blood operate against Satan? It does so by putting God on the side of man against him. The Fall brought something into man which gave Satan a footing within him, with the result that God was compelled to withdraw Himself. Man is now outside the garden-beyond reach of the glory of God (Romans 3. 23) Because he is inwardly estranged from God. Because of what man has done, there is something in him which, until it is removed, renders God morally unable to defend him. But the Blood removes that barrier and restores man to God and God to man. Man is in favour now, and because God is on his side he can face Satan without fear.

 

      You remember that verse in John’s first Epistle and this is the translation of it I like best: ” The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from every sin “.* It is not exactly ” all sin ” in the general sense, but every sin, every item. What does it mean? Oh, it is a marvellous thing! God is in the light, and as we walk in the light with Him everything is exposed and open to that light, so that God can see it all-and yet the Blood is able to cleanse from every sin. What a cleansing! It is not that I have not a profound knowledge of myself, nor that God has not a perfect knowledge of me. It is not that I try to hide something, nor that God tries to overlook something. No, it is that He is in the light and I too am in the light, and that there the precious Blood cleanses me from every sin. The Blood is enough for that!

 

      *1 John 1. 7: Marginal reading of New Translation by J. N. Darby

 

      Some of us, oppressed by our own weakness, may at times have been tempted to think that there are sins which are almost unforgivable. Let us remember the word: ” The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from every sin.” Big sins, small sins, sins which may be very black and sins which appear to be not so black, sins which I think can be forgiven and sins which seem unforgivable, yes, all sins, conscious or unconscious, remembered or forgotten, are included in those words: “every sin “. ” The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from every sin “, and it does so because in the first place it satisfies God.

 

      Since God, seeing all our sins in the light, can forgive them on the basis of the Blood, what ground of accusation has Satan? Satan may accuse us before Him, but, ” If God is for us, who is against us? ” (Romans 8. 3 1). God points him to the Blood of His dear Son. It is the sufficient answer against which Satan has no appeal. ” Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that shall condemn? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us ” (Romans 8. 33, 34).

 

      So here again our need is to recognize the absolute sufficiency of the precious Blood. ” Christ having come a high priest … through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption ” (Hebrews 9. 11, 12). He was Redeemer once. He has been High Priest and Advocate for nearly two thousand years. He stands there in the presence of God, and ” he is the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2. 1, 2). Note the words of Hebrews 9. 14: ” How much more shall the blood of Christ “. They underline the sufficiency of His ministry. It is enough for God.

 

      What then of our attitude to Satan? This is important, for he accuses us not only before God but in our own conscience also. ‘You have sinned, and you keep on sinning. You are weak, and God can have nothing more to do with you.’ This is his argument. And our temptation is to look within and in self-defence to try to find in ourselves, in our feelings or our behaviour, some ground for believing that Satan is wrong. Alternatively we are tempted to admit our helplessness and, going to the other extreme, to yield to depression and despair. Thus accusation becomes one of the greatest and most effective of Satan’s weapons. He points to our sins and seeks to charge us with them before God, and if we accept his accusations we go down immediately.

 

      Now the reason why we so readily accept his accusations is that we are still hoping to have some righteousness of our own. The ground of our expectation is wrong. Satan has succeeded in making us look in the wrong direction. Thereby he wins his point, rendering us ineffective. But if we have learned to put no confidence in the flesh, we shall not wonder if we sin, for the very nature of the flesh is to sin. Do you understand what I mean? It is because we have not come to appreciate our true nature and to see how helpless we are that we still have some expectation in ourselves, with the result that, when Satan comes along and accuses us, we go down under it.

 

      God is well able to deal with our sins; but He cannot deal with a man under accusation, because such a man is not trusting in the Blood. The Blood speaks in his favour, but he is listening instead to Satan. Christ is our Advocate but we, the accused, side with the accuser. We have not recognized that we are unworthy of anything but death; that, as we shall shortly see, we are only fit to be crucified anyway. We have not recognized that it is God alone that can answer the accuser, and that in the precious Blood He has already done so.

 

      Our salvation lies in looking away to the Lord Jesus and in seeing that the Blood of the Lamb has met the whole situation created by our sins and has answered it. That is the sure foundation on which we stand. Never should we try to answer Satan with our good conduct but always with the Blood. Yes, we are sinful, but, praise God! the Blood cleanses us from every sin. God looks upon the Blood whereby His Son has met the charge, and Satan has no more ground of attack. Our faith in the precious Blood and our refusal to be moved from that position can alone silence his charges and put him to flight (Romans 8. 33, 34) ; and so it will be, right on to the end (Revelation 12. 11). Oh, what an emancipation it would be if we saw more of the value in God’s eyes of the precious Blood of His dear Son!

 

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article1921.shtml

THE COVENANT OF GRACE By Watchman Nee

 

  One striking feature marks the thirteen years that followed Ishmael’s birth. Throughout them all God did not speak to Abraham. His record is empty. What we have done on our own, God leaves us to get on with; He does not speak. But when Abraham was ‘dead’-dry and old, and could no longer have a son if he wanted one – then, God spoke to him.

 

      The starting-point of all our progress is in God’s gracious call; not in our desires. Abraham had not repented. Rather, Ishmael was growing yearly more precious to him. He had not realized his wrong, nor sought after God. From our standpoint, measuring him by all we have said so far, there was not much hope for him. But his hope was not dependent on whether he wanted God but on the fact that God wanted him. God was still at work on him; He had not let him go. If God wants a man, that man cannot escape His hand. How we need to learn to commit ourselves to the hand of the Almighty God!

 

      So, after these years, God spoke to Abraham again. ‘When Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be thou perfect’ (Genesis 17: 1). For the first time He uses the title El Shaddai, ‘God Almighty’. Abraham knew God had power and was almighty, but he did not know Him as all-mighty. God said, ‘Learn this, and be perfect,’ that is to say, without mixture. The perfect are unmixed in everything; they are even perfectly weak, letting the Almighty do it all!

 

      Now God made a covenant with Abraham. God wanted a people who should spring from Him, and He defines in the terms of the covenant where they must stand in order to be such a people. ‘I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. Behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be the father of a multitude of nations. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee’ (17: 2, 4, 7).

 

      The sign of the covenant was circumcision. They were to be a people with no confidence in the flesh. They must not only be born, and called forth, by Him; they must bear in their flesh His sign. To be born, and to be bought with a price, is not enough. God has redeemed us, and begotten us again, but we are still not in the position of God’s people, maintaining His witness in the earth, fulfilling His purpose, unless there is effective in us what is meant by circumcision. ‘Ye shall be circumcised,’ runs the command, ‘and it shall be a token of a covenant betwixt me and you.’ And it continues: ‘The uncircumcised male . . . shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant’ (17: 11, 14). Note carefully that those not circumcised were not therefore exterminated (like the people of Canaan). For this is not a question of salvation but of witness only. Their name was ‘cut off’. In other words, we may be redeemed and possess new life, but if we do not recognize the Cross of Christ as dealing with the flesh in us, we have no name as His witnesses.

 

      What, then, is circumcision? The apostle Paul tells us that in Christ ‘ye were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ’ (Colossians 2:11). Elsewhere he says, ‘we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh’ (Philippians 3. 3). And then he goes onto catalogue the various grounds he had previously felt himself to have for such confidence. They turn out to be things in no way sinful or wrong in themselves. His racial purity, his strict religious upbringing, his sincere zeal for God-these things were not sinful at all. They were simply grounds for natural pride. But ‘they that are in the flesh cannot please God’ (Romans 8. 8). The trouble today is that we do not recognize this. Romans chapter 7 is Paul’s description of one who is doing his best to please God in the flesh, and it is one big ‘cannot’

 

  Sin in a man is comparatively easy to deal with. But when it comes to having a part in God’s work of recovery, the trouble arises with the flesh that wants to please God. It is here that the Cross of Christ comes to our aid. It undermines our self-confidence, so that, for example, we can no longer speak as dogmatically as we did, but it gives us a wonderful confidence in God.

 

      It is as though God said to Abraham, ‘What you need is faith and not works. You tried thirteen years ago; but I promised, not in order that you should bring it about but because I intended to bring it about.’ Circumcision was the sign of that. It is to be a sign, for all generations of His children, that they know that in the flesh they are helpless.

 

      A sign is a peculiarity. We see it, and by it we recognize a person. What is the distinctive mark of our Christian life before men? Is it wisdom, or honesty? Is it love, or eloquence in the Word of God? No; the feature that distinguishes the people of God is their lack of an overweening self-confidence. Alas, it is a feature hard to find. As young Christians we know everything: salvation, the fullness of the Spirit, the will of God! We are quite sure we know God’s plan for us. But where is the fear and the trembling? Where is the uncertainty that knows it may well be mistaken, and that leans-yes leans-on God?

 

      In chapter 15 we read of Abraham that he believed. Now, in chapter 17, the fulfilment of the promise is near; yet it seems that Abraham’s faith has dwindled. We are told that he fell on his face and laughed (17: 17). It was probably the only position in which he dare laugh! For him and Sarah to have a son now was ridiculous. After all he was a man of a hundred. He had heard nothing like it. His early faith had been true faith, but even that had had an element of self-confidence in it, and now even his faith was dead! He had not back-slidden. This was part of God’s work in him. The Father of the faithful had to lose his faith! For it had been a mixed faith-in God and in Abraham.

 

      God was bringing about in Abraham a new quality of faith. That laugh was not a laugh at God, but a laugh at himself. ‘Without being weakened in faith he considered his own body now as good as dead (he being about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb: yea, looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. Wherefore also it was reckoned unto him for righteousness’ (Romans 4: 19-22). This is true faith. When we are defeated and God does not speak, He is leading us to the end of, ourselves and to a complete confidence in Him. There is no substitute for that. We try to help God out, and inflate our faith, and make long prayers, but nothing happens. There is prayer which shows no self-confidence, which cries out in the midst of doubt and fear: ‘I don’t know whether it is any use or not to do so, but I believe!’ God can use faith that is exercised in the midst of extreme doubt, faith as small as a grain of mustard seed.

 

      With the matter of circumcision settled we move into chapter 18 and find Abraham in the most privileged position of a friend of God. This is quite the most remarkable chapter in the Old Testament. Abraham is still in Mamre, the place of fullness. Three men come to him, and one of them is God in human form. This occurs in no other place in the Old Testament. God appeared, not as before in glory, but walking, bringing two angels. Abraham recognized Him and addressed Him as ‘my Lord’. He received the three of them as guests, inviting them to rest and wash and eat. This was fellowship and intercourse with God of a new order. As the latter part of the chapter shows, Abraham was taken into the divine counsels to have a part in them. He was God’s friend.

 

      They talked of Abraham’s son, yet to be given. Now it was Sarah that broke into laughter. With Abraham the question was already settled. It was this that had qualified him to be God’s friend. The story of Sodom works itself out, and after that a strange thing happens. Abraham is subjected to his second test with regard to his son. This takes place at Gerar in the land of the Philistines. Here Abraham comes to dwell, and as he did before in Egypt, he tells a lie to Abimelech king of Gerar. After chapter 18 and Abraham’s fellowship with God, this is difficult to understand.

 

      But there is a difference here from the incident in chapter 12. For when Abimelech rebukes him, Abraham explains why he did it. It was a thing they had planned together back in Mesopotamia. ‘We thought God wanted us to move about in this land. We thought you were idolaters, and we were afraid, so we made this plan.’ The thing had not originated in Egypt: it only came to the surface there. It had its roots in Mesopotamia, and now here in Gerar it crops up again. Abraham is put to shame. He has to learn that Sarah cannot be separated from him. In Mesopotamia he had thought she could.

 

      Abraham represents faith; Sarah represents grace. It is impossible to separate them. If the one is gone the other is useless. Here was one more treacherous thing that had to be rooted out before Isaac could be given. Faith that does not rest on God’s grace is valueless. You cannot sacrifice Sarah.

 

      For Sarah’s sake the whole of Abimelech’s house was punished (20: 17). Abraham was required to pray for them. It cannot possibly have been an easy thing to do. The women of Gerar were barren. How could he pray for them when his own wife had the same trouble? For other things, yes; but how for this?

 

      But he did not ask that question. Now he had completely overcome the fears and questions and doubts that had had their root in Mesopotamia. ‘My wife is God’s affair, and so are theirs. I have no confidence except in God.’ The lurking fear had been dragged out into the light of day, and slain. He was free to pray for others. He did not pray for Sarah, for now he had no need to. Immediately after this Isaac was conceived. ‘The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken. And Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac’ (Genesis 21. 1-3).

 

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article1870.shtml

The Principle of Praying Thrice By Watchman Nee

 

 ”And He left them again, and went away, and prayed a third time, saying again the same words.” – Matt 26:44

 

      ”Concerning this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.” – 2 Cor 12:8

 

      There is one particular secret about prayer that we should know about, which is, a praying three times to the Lord. This “thrice” is not limited to only three times, it may be many times. The Lord Jesus asked God three times in the garden of Gethsemane until His prayer was heard-at which point He stopped. Paul too prayed to God three times, and ceased praying after he was given God’s word. Hence all prayers should heed the principle of thrice. This “thrice” does not mean that we need only pray once, twice, and three times, and then stop. It simply signifies the fact that before we stop we must pray thoroughly until God hears us.

 

      This principle of three times is most significant. Not only in our personal prayer do we need to pay attention to such a principle, even in our prayer meetings we must attend to it. If we expect our prayer in a prayer meeting to fulfill the ministry of the church in accomplishing whatever God wants us to accomplish, we should well remember this important principle. The principle of praying thrice is to pray thoroughly, a praying through until we are clear on God’s will, until we obtain His answer. In a prayer meeting, never reflect that since a matter has already been prayed for by a certain brother it does not need my prayer anymore. For example, a sister is sick and we pray for her. Not because one brother has already prayed for that sister do I not need to add my prayer. No, that brother has prayed once, I may pray the second time, and another may pray the third time. This does not imply that each prayer must be prayed by three persons. Prayer must be offered with burden. Sometimes we may have to pray five or ten times. What is important is that there needs to be prayer till the burden is discharged. This is the principle of praying thrice. This is the secret to success in a prayer meeting. Let us not allow our prayer to jump about like a grasshopper: hopping to another matter before the first one is thoroughly prayed through, and before this second matter is thoroughly prayed for, we are found skipping back to the very first matter. Such hopping around prayer does not discharge burdens, and is therefore difficult to obtain God’s answer. Such prayer has little use and does not fulfill the ministry of prayer.

 

      In order to fulfill the ministry of prayer we must have a burden for prayer before God. We do not intend to set up a law; we only wish to present this principle here. Let us recognize this one thing: burden is the secret of prayer. If a person does not feel within him burden to pray for a particular matter he can hardly succeed in prayer. In a prayer meeting some brothers and sisters may mention a great many subjects for prayer. But if you are not touched inwardly, you cannot pray. Therefore every brother and sister who comes to a prayer meeting ought to have prayer burden so as to pray. At the same time do not be totally absorbed in only considering what burden you yourself have; you should also sense the burdens of other brothers and sisters in the meeting. For example, one sister may be troubled by her husband; one brother may be sick. If in a prayer meeting one person asks God to save the sister’s husband, and this is followed by another person who asks God to heal the brother’s sickness, and in turn this is followed by still another individual who remembers before God something else, then each person is only praying for his own particular matter. Such prayer is not in accordance with the principle of praying thrice. For in the example just given, what is happening is that before one matter has been thoroughly prayed for the second topic is already being prayed for. Consequently, in a prayer meeting the brethren who are gathered must notice if a prayer burden for the first matter has been discharged. If all pray for that sister and the prayer burden is discharged, the believers can then pray for the sick brother. Before the prayer burden of the first topic has been lifted, those praying together should not switch to the second and third subjects of prayer. Suppose the entire gathering is yet involved with one particular matter. Then no one present should try to inject another prayer that is only according to his own personal feeling.

 

 

Brethren should learn to touch the spirit of the entire gathering. They must learn to enter into the feeling of the whole assembly. Let us see that some matters may only need to be prayed once and the burden for such is over and done with. But other matters perhaps need to be prayed twice. While still other matters probably have to be prayed three or five times before the various burdens for them are discharged. Irrespective of the number of times, the burden must be discharged before prayer on a particular item is ended. The principle of praying three times is none other than to pray until the burden is lifted. In all this, of course, believers should also understand the difference between personal prayer and corporate prayer. When one is praying alone he thinks only of his personal burdens; but in corporate prayer each one should notice the burden of the meeting instead of paying attention to one’s own burdens alone. Hence in a prayer meeting the brethren must learn to sense the feeling of the gathering. For some items, praying once for each of them is enough. There is no need to pray again, since the assembly has no longer any burden for it. But for other items, praying once is not sufficient. Each of these matters needs to be prayed for again and possibly a third or fifth time. Before one burden is discharged, no one should commence to pray about another item. All must wait until the first burden has been lifted and then someone can change to another subject as the Lord gives another burden for prayer.

 

      So in the prayer meeting, let us learn to pray over a matter by allowing one person, two persons, three or five persons to pray as necessary. Yet not in the sense of each praying his own prayer, but a praying with one accord as we gather together. Praying with one accord is something we must learn. A person may be able to pray by his own self, five persons may all be capable of praying respectively, but all of us, when we come together must learn a new way of praying, which is a praying with one accord. Let us see that corporate prayer does not come automatically; it has to be learned. If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt.18.19). This is not a small concern. We should learn how to sense the feeling of others, learn to touch what is called the prayer of the church, and learn when a prayer burden has been lifted. And thus will we know how to fulfill in the meeting the ministry of prayer.

 

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article887.shtml

“Thy Way Was in the Sea” (Psalm 77) By T. Austin-Sparks

 

Reading: Psalm 77

 

      The heading of this psalm shows that it was contributed by Asaph, who was David’s choir master – the leader of the singers. Quite a number of psalms are attributed to him, and in this one he was in real trouble; he was a man of music who had lost his music, a song leader whose only song was a lament. We do not know the actual cause of his difficulty, but it seems quite clear that it was due to the lack of evidence of God’s presence or power. The signs which should have manifested God’s glory were not forthcoming; Asaph could see nothing to indicate that the Lord had any interest or concern in his situation; and so, cast down and depressed, he brooded over the circumstances; and the more he did so the more he found himself in the mire of despair.

 

      The words are alarming, but right in the full flow of his outpoured complaint there came a turning-point, when he pulled himself up short and decided that he would not allow his weakness or infirmity to govern any longer, adding, “But I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High” (verse 10). This became the turning point. From then on the dark night began to give place to the rising sun of a new outlook. Once again life had a meaning.

 

      In the course of his recollection there had come to mind one of his own experiences, “I will call to remembrance my song in the night” (verse 6). This does not mean that he proposed to recall that there had been a time when he was more cheerful and sang even in the dark, but implies that he called back to mind the subject matter of that nocturnal song. There had apparently been a night when he could not sleep and so occupied his waking hours by composing a song for the choir. Its subject matter was that ever-recurring theme of Israelite psalmody, the exodus from Egypt. Asaph remembered how he had indulged his poetic gift in describing the way in which the Lord got His people out of Egypt and through the Red Sea, celebrating the mighty work of God which was expressed in this deliverance. As the words came back to him, he suddenly realised that he himself was now in the same predicament, needing to find a way through, and that the song which had applied to the nation was now valid for him – he needed to take a dose of his own medicine. He remembered what he had said and sung to encourage others in their times of difficulty and was able to appropriate the same comforting truths for himself. It was at that moment that streaks of dawn came into his dark sky, heralding a coming day, so that his psalm finished in a blaze of light.

 

      The operative phrase, which seems to be the focal point of his awakened memory, was “Thy way…” Asaph’s own trouble was that he could see no way. His situation was such as to be like a siege around his soul; the dark forces had compassed him about and he could see neither a way out nor a way through. This is so often the perplexity of God’s children: they can see no way through.

 

      In his song that night, Asaph had made much of the fact that the Lord’s way was in the sea and His paths in great waters. Israel could first of all find no way out – they were held fast in Egypt’s bondage. Then God solved that problem, only for them to be faced by another and a greater, for they had been given a way out but there was no way through. The Red Sea lay in front of them, Pharaoh’s pursuing army was coming up behind; and the desert and the mountains were on either side. So it was that they were confronted by that impassable, threatening sea which straddled their path ahead and only suggested death and the grave. They had come out, but now it seemed that shame, reproach and calamity were imminent. It looked very much like the end of the road.

 

      On that occasion the problem was no problem to God. He was not in a panic, not even in a quandary, nor did He propose to lead them around by detours and by-passes. No He went straight through. We may be without a way, but God never is. He led them right through the deep. For others, great waters present an impasse, but the Lord has His own path through them. The words, “Thy footsteps were not known” suggest that everybody was wondering where the Lord could tread, for there was no visible foothold. When it was all over they were still wondering how He had done it, but the thing that mattered was that they were out on the other side. The Lord was not daunted by the waters – He just made His way through them and led His people with Him. Sea or mountains do not present obstructions to Him, for He proceeds unhindered on His way. He took His people with Him; He led them through the impassable.

 

Ukraine -HOLODOMOR 1932-33- A Genocidal Famine?

UKRAINE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine

Holodomor

The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор; translation: death by starvation) refers to the famine of 1932–1933 in the Ukrainian SSR during which millions of people starved to death as a result of the economic and trade policies instituted by the government of Joseph Stalin. The famine was a part of wider Soviet famine of 1932–1933. There were no natural causes for starvation and in fact, Ukraine – unlike other Soviet Republics – enjoyed a bumper wheat crop in 1932.^[1][2] The Holodomor is considered one of the greatest calamities to affect the Ukrainian nation in modern history. Millions of inhabitants of Ukraine died of starvation in an unprecedented peacetime catastrophe.^[1][3][4][5] Estimates on the total number of casualties within Soviet Ukraine range mostly from 1 million^[6] to 10 million.^[7]

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor}

Denial of the Holodomor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor

 

Ukraine’s forgotten famine

A political row over Russia’s refusal to recognise the Holodomor is obscuring the horror of a famine in which millions died

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/18/ukraine-famine-russia-holodomor

 

HOLODOMOR 1932-33

Welcome to the Holodomor.org.uk site, associated with the campaign for  UK government to recognise the Holdomor, or genocidal famine, of 1932-33 in Ukraine as genocide.

http://www.holodomor.org.uk/

HOLODOMOR IMAGES

http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&rlz=1T4GGLJ_en___IN244&q=holodomor&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=bgsES9nMLZ-W6wOsx-2SAQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CCQQsAQwAw

 

Peter: the Rock that Sank By A.W. Tozer

Peter contained or has been accidentally associated with more contradictions than almost any other Bible character.

He appeared to be a combination of courage and cowardice, reverence and disrespect, selfless devotion and dangerous self-love.

Only Peter could solemnly swear that he would never desert Christ and then turn around and deny Him the first time he got in a tight place.

Only Peter could fall at Jesus’ feet and acknowledge his own sinfulness and then rebuke his Lord for suggesting something with which he did not agree.

The two natures that strove within him made him say and do things that appeared to be in direct contradiction to each other–and all within a matter of hours.

 Peter was a “rock,” yet he wavered, and so, I suppose, managed to become the only wavering rock in history. And he surely was the only man in the world who had faith enough to walk on water but not enough faith to continue to do so when the wind blew.
      For better or for worse, that was Peter, and it took God a long time to unify his nature so that the strife within him ceased. And he had to learn some things the hard way even after Pentecost.

 

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article5537.shtml

The Prophetic Call – What is Prophetic Church? By Art Katz

      If apostles and the prophets are the foundation of the church, it would not be wrong to conclude that the superstructure itself must be made of the same substance and kind; that the church in its entirety is itself a prophetic and apostolic phenomenon. It itself is the interpretive agency in the locality where it is, and in the nation where it is, to give meaning and understanding to the nation of its own events and its own history.

 

      The heart of what is prophetic and apostolic is an absoluteness toward God in the jealousy for His glory and consequently an utter obedience without regard to the consequence to oneself. When we say, therefore, that the church has got to be prophetic, then this is what we are talking about. A fellowship that lives for God with an utterness toward God, without any regard for itself and consequences to itself, that has at its heart a jealousy for God, His glory, the fulfillment of His will and particularly His eternal purposes-then that church is prophetic.

 

      Anything that we are saying about prophetic and the prophetic word is not only appropriate to the individuals that have such a calling, but to the church itself of the last days in its prophetic constituency. If the church of the last days is not prophetic in its character, make-up and use, in the locality where it is and the nations where they are, then God’s program cannot be effected. A prophetic church is a church that understands these things and can bear these things. It can have men of a prophetic kind in their bosom and be able to sustain them and not be offended by them. It can understand the peculiarity of their calling and why they are required to function as they do, and not give itself to the criticism and the negative speaking or thinking about them that would discredit both itself and them.

 

      Prophets see more than others the continuing influences that issue from the past and profoundly affect the present and the ultimate future. They see the continuum, the unbroken span of past, present and future as few see it. They know who they are in God. Whatever therefore the issues of the immediate future, however uncertain, a prophet can bear them. They can encourage others to bear them and communicate the sense both of the things that were past and the things that are future as being integral and related. This is also the distinctive privilege of the church.

 

      Regrettably, the church more or less does not have this context. It does not see itself in the broad perspective of God, nor in the eternal purposes of God, and therefore everything suffers loss. The Lord Himself has said that He will not return until Elijah first comes and restores all things. The ministry of restoration must precede the Lord’s coming. Part of that restoration is the apostolic and the prophetic view of the faith, which view has been itself been lost.

 

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article401.shtml

 

The Church in Prophetic Perspective – By John MacArthur

INTRODUCTION

The book of Revelation is the Apocalypse–the unveiling and manifestation of Jesus Christ in His full glory. It is a book in which all things find an echo and a reverberation. It delineates the consummation of the ages. It touches things in heaven, in earth, and under the earth. It speaks predominantly about Jesus Christ. But it also talks about angels, demons, war in heaven, Armageddon, the judgment of God, the breaking of seals, the sounding of trumpets, and the pouring out of bowls. It speaks of the new heaven and the new earth. It announces the destruction of the grave–of death, hell, and the enemies of Christ. It is our destiny because it tells us where we will spend eternity.

John said, “… the time is at hand” (Rev. 1:3). When John looked upon Jesus in His eternal deity, he fell over like he was dead (Rev. 1:17). That is how the book of Revelation begins. In Revelation 1:13-16, Christ was pictured as moving among seven lampstands, or seven churches. In Revelation 2–3, the identity of those churches–and their meaning in time, history, and prophecy–are unfolded for us.

 

READ HERE: 

http://www.gty.org/Resources/Study+Guides/40-5115

 

The Tithe is Illegal

by Gary Amirault

When I say “illegal,” I certainly do not mean from the government’s point of view. The American federal government has been extremely generous in allowing religious organizations almost free hands in their money raising endeavors, even to the point of giving them many kinds of tax advantages. By illegal, I mean that God never authorized Christian leaders to take a tithe from God’s people. One will not find the modern church tithe authorized in the Old Covenant, nor in the New Covenant. Certainly, church historians are in agreement, when they say that tithing was not practiced by the early believers.

 

The tithe is a subject that is very dear to most church leaders. Those denominations that can get their members to actually bring in a full 10% of gross income can create very powerful forces far beyond their strength in numbers. The leading “tithing” sects according to an article in Christian Ministry, are interestingly what Evangelicals would term “cults.” The Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and the World Wide Church of God are the leading givers. The fourth is the Assemblies of God. Recently, the World Wide Church of God abandoned the tithe as un-Scriptural. Donations dropped 30 per cent in the first year. (While the article in Christian Ministry lists the Jehovah’s Witnesses among leading tithing denominations, I’ve since been informed by that organization that Jehovah’s Witnesses do not practice tithing.)

 

According to Newsweek, most church members give far less than 10%, most giving under 2 per cent. Not surprising is the fact that the poor give a far greater portion of their income than the rich. USA Today (Oct. 25, 1990) tells us that families earning less than $10,000 give 5.5 per cent of their income to charity (not necessarily to church). Families earning between $50,000 and $60,000 give only 1.7% of their earnings.

 

We hope to show in this book that while many church fund-raising organizations and Christian financial counseling ministries tell us that not paying “the tithe” is robbing God, the actual Biblical facts are that those who teach tithing as a Christian doctrine are, in fact, the ones who are “robbing God.” As we go through this article, keep in mind the above statistic that the poor far out-give the rich percentage-wise.

 

I am going to make a statement that will probably shock many Christians who have been in church for a long period of time and feel they know the Bible pretty well. I hope this statement encourages the reader to “see for themselves” that this statement is 100 per cent Biblically true. My hope is that when we see how far off Scriptural ground we have come in such basic Christian teachings as giving, we will renew our desire to study to “show ourselves approved.” Here is the statement: The tithe as taught by most Christian denominations as being 10 per cent of gross or net income is not contained on the pages of the Bible!

 

READ HERE:

http://www.tithing.christian-things.com/illegal.html

Kong Hee – wife-Sun Ho-and the City Harvest- Singapore

Kong Hee (born August 23, 1964) is the founder, honorary and volunteer senior pastor of City Harvest Church in Singapore. Kong is a Christian leader based in the Charismatic Movement, with a philosophy of ministry that emphasizes the Great Commandment, Great Commission, and Cultural Mandate.^[1] Under his leadership, City Harvest Church has grown to 27,086 members and has 45 affiliate “Harvest” churches. There are 27 affiliate churches and 9 Bible schools in Asia,namely Singapore, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan. Another 18 affiliate churches in the East and West Malaysia are under the Malaysian Harvest Fellowship which Kong Hee has co-founded. ^[2][3].^[4][5] Kong has also co-founded an education center, a performing arts school, a publishing house, a missions agency, a ministerial fellowship and a magazine.^[6] Kong is a motivational speaker and runs a retail business.^[7]

Kong Hee’s wife, Sun Ho, is a pop music singer, who currently resides in the United States. They have a son, Dayan Kong.

READ HERE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong_Hee

Pastor Kong Hee on “Cheap Grace Preachers”

http://alvinology.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/pastor-kong-hee-on-cheap-grace-preachers/

KONG HEE-BIOGRAPHY

http://www.konghee.com/www/kong-hee-biography/

CITY HARVEST CHURCH

http://www.chc.org.sg/eng/index.php

KONG HEE-CITY HARVEST CHURCH

EXCERPT

The church has evangelists such as Ulf Ekman, John Avanzini, Benny Hinn, Richard Roberts etc. City Harvest became the first church in the world to be awarded the ISO 9001:2000 certification.

READ HERE:

http://abominationnation.blogspot.com/2008/02/kong-hee-city-harvest-church.html

Non-Biblical Teachings Of Kong Hee Of City Harvest Church

http://healtheland.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/non-biblical-teachings-of-kong-hee-of-city-harvest-church/

 

PASTOR KONG HEE’S WIFE- UN HO- MUSIC VIDEO

China Wine – SUN aka Geisha [OFFICIAL RELEASE!]

WHY SETTLE DOWN? By A.W. Tozer

      Why should a Christian “settle down” as soon as he has come to know the Lord?

I blame faulty exposition of the New Testament for stopping many Christians dead in their tracks, causing them to shrug off any suggestion that there is still spiritual advance and progress beckoning them on.

It is the position of some would-be teachers that everyone who comes into the kingdom of God by faith immediately obtains all there is of God’s spiritual provision.

I believe that such a teaching is as deadly as cyanide to the individual Christian life.

It kills all hope of spiritual advance and causes many believers to adopt what I call “the creed of contentment.”

 I am sure you agree with me that there is always real joy in the heart of the person who has become a child of God.

Sound teaching of the Word will then hold out the goal of moving forward, emulating the Apostle Paul’s desire to become a special kind of Christian!

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article4965.shtml

“BE STILL AND KNOW” – By A.W. Tozer

      Prayer among evangelical Christians is always in danger of degenerating into a glorified “gold rush.”

Almost every book on prayer deals with the “get” element mainly. How to get things we want from God occupies most of our space.

Christians should never forget that the highest kind of prayer is never the making of requests.

Prayer at its holiest moment is the entering into God to a place of such blessed union as makes miracles seem tame and remarkable answers to prayer appear something very far short of wonderful, by comparison.

We should be aware that there is a kind of school where the soul must go to learn its best eternal lessons. It is the school of silence.

“Be still and know,” said the psalmist. It might well be a revelation to some Christians if they were to get completely quiet for a time-a time to listen in the silence for the deep voice of the Eternal God!

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article4828.shtml

Shepherding Movement

The Shepherding Movement (sometimes called the “Discipleship Movement”) was an influential and controversial movement within some British and American charismatic churches, emerging in the 1970s and early 1980s. The doctrine of the movement emphasized the “one another” passages of the New Testament, and the mentoring relationship described in 2 Timothy.

Read here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherding_Movement

 

Repellent Personalities – By A.W. Tozer

      Sometimes we Christians are opposed and persecuted for reasons other than our godliness. We like to think it is our spirituality that irritates people, when in reality, it may be our personality.
      True, the spirit of this world is opposed to the Spirit of God; he that is born after the flesh will persecute him that is born of the Spirit. But making all allowances, it is still true that some Christians get into trouble through their faults instead of through their likeness to the character of Christ.

We may as well admit this and do something about it. No good can come from trying to hide our unpleasant and annoying dispositional traits behind a verse of Scripture.

      It is one of the strange facts of life that gross sins are often less offensive and always more attractive than spiritual ones. The world can tolerate a drunkard or a glutton or a smiling braggart but will turn in savage fury against the man of outwardly righteous life who is guilty of those refined sins, which he does not recognize as sins, but which may be more exceeding sinful than the sins of the flesh.

 

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article5472.shtml

Nephilim / Giants

Giants in the Bible: Demons or big brutes?

 

The bible uses several Hebrew words that have been translated as ‘Giant’ in the KJV of the English bible. The very first occurrence is in Gen. 6:4 ‘There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

A great deal of misinformation is floating around on the Internet and in print regarding the nature of these giants.

Hundreds if not thousands of websites claim that the Nephilim (one Hebrew word for giant) were a product of intercourse between fallen angels and earth women and therefore some sort of mutant hybrids. Whether these angels had fallen before they mated with women or they fell as a result of this mating is not clear. Since they were supposedly a result of a union between two species (angels and women) they had to be hybrids or at least that is the assumption. This interpretation, first of all assumes that the bible claims that the sons of God referred to in Gen. 6:2 and 6:4 were angels whereas the bible makes no such claim. Secondly the assumption is made that the Nephilim were a product of the union between these ‘angelic’ sons of God and earthly women; this too is an incorrect assumption. Here’s what the bible actually says about both the giants (Nephilim) and the sons of God in Gen. 6:4.
Read full article here:

http://www.signsoftheend.net/Pages/Article1-Nephilim.html

Remembering the Forgotten – By A.W. Tozer

Gospel churches which mostly begin with the lowly are usually not content till they attain some degree of wealth and social acceptance. Then they gradually fall into classes, determined largely by the wealth and education of the members.

The individuals that comprise the top layer of these various classes go on to become pillars of the religious society and are soon entrenched in places of leadership and influence.

It is then that their great temptation comes upon them, the temptation to cater to their own class and to neglect the poor and the ignorant that make up the swarming population around them. They soon become hardened to every appeal of the Holy Spirit toward meekness and humility.

Their homes are spotless, their clothes the most expensive, their friends the most exclusive. Apart from some tremendous moral upheaval, they are beyond help. And yet they may be among the most vocal exponents of Bible Christianity and heavy givers to the cause of the church.

Let us not become indignant at this blunt portrayal of facts. Let us rather humble ourselves to serve God’s poor. Let us seek to be like Jesus in our devotion to the forgotten of the earth who have nothing to recommend them but their poverty and their heart-hunger and their tears.

 

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article5509.shtml

The War Against Christianity Episode 1

Mark 12:1-12

 ¹And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the winefat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country.

 ²And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard.

 ³And they caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty.

 ⁴And again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled.

 ⁵And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some, and killing some.

 ⁶Having yet therefore one son, his wellbeloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son.

 ⁷But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.’

 ⁸And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard.

 ⁹What shall therefore the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.

 ¹⁰And have ye not read this scripture; The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner:

 ¹¹This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?

 ¹²And they sought to lay hold on him, but feared the people: for they knew that he had spoken the parable against them: and they left him, and went their way.

 

The Parable Of The Wedding Feast -SPURGEON

The Parable Of The Wedding Feast

 

A Sermon (0975)
Delivered on Lord’s Day Morning, February 12th, 1871, by
the REV C H SPURGEON
at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

 

The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed and all things are ready: come unto the marriage. – Matthew 22:2-4

 

If God grant me strength I hope to go through this parable, but at this present we shall confine our thoughts to the opening scene of the royal festival. Before, however, we proceed further, it is most fitting that we give expression to our deep gratitude, that it has pleased the infinite mind to stoop to our narrow capacities, and instruct us by parable. How tenderly condescending is God to devise similitudes, that his children may learn the mysteries of the kingdom! If it be sometimes marvelled at among men that great minds are ever ready to stoop, what a far greater marvel that God himself should bow the heavens and come down to meet our ignorance and slowness of comprehension! When the learned professor has been instructing his class in the hall in recondite matters of deep philosophy, and then goes home and takes his child upon his knee, and tries to bring down great truth to the grasp of his child’s mind, then you see the great love of the man’s heart: and when the eternal God, before whom seraphim are but insects of an hour, condescends to instruct our childishness and make us wise unto salvation, we may well say, “herein is love.” Just as we give our children pictures that we may win the attention, and may by pleasing means fix truth upon their memories, so the Lord with loving inventiveness has become the author of many a charming metaphor, type, and allegory, by which he may gain our interest, and through his Holy Spirit enlighten our minds. If he who thunders till the mountains tremble, yet deigns to speak with us in a still small voice, let us gladly sit in Mary’s place at his gracious feet, and willingly learn of him. O that God would give to each one a teachable spirit, for this is the greatest step towards understanding the mind of God. He who is willing to learn, in a childlike spirit, is already in a considerable measure taught of God. May we all so study this instructive parable as to be quickened by it to all that is well-pleasing in the sight of God, for after all true learning in godliness may be judged of by its result; upon our lives. If we are holier we are wiser, practical obedience to the will of the Lord Jesus is the surest evidence of an understanding heart.

 

In order to understand the parable before us we must first direct our attention to the design of the “certain king” here spoken of. He had a grand object in view; he desired to do honor to his son upon the occasion of his marriage. We shall then notice the very generous method by which he proposed to accomplish his purpose; he made a dinner, and bade many: there were other modes of honoring his son, but the great king elected the mode which would best display his bounty. We shall then observe, with sad interest, the serious hindrance which arose to the carrying out of his generous design—those who were bidden would not come. There was nothing to hinder the magnificence of the festival in the riches of the prince—he lavished out his stores for the feast; but here was a hindrance strange and difficult to remove, they would not come. Then our thoughts will linger admiringly over the gracious rejoinder which the king made to the opposers of his design; he sent other servants to repeat the invitation, “Come ye to the marriage.” If we shall drink deep into the meaning of these three verses, we shall have more than enough for one meditation.

 

I. A certain king of wide dominions and great power designed to give a magnificent banquet, with a GRAND OBJECT in view. The crown prince, his well beloved heir, was about to take to himself a fair bride, and therefore the royal father desired to celebrate the event with extraordinary honors. From earth, look up to heaven. The great object of God the Father is to glorify his Son. It is his will “that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father.” (John 5:23.) Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is glorious already in his divine person. He is ineffably blessed, and infinitely beyond needing honor. All the angels of God worship him, and his glory fills all heaven. He has appeared on the stage of action as the Creator and as such his glory is perfect, “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him.” He said, “Light be,” and it flamed forth. He bade the mountains lift their heads, and their summits pierced the clouds. He created the water-floods, he bade them seek their channels, and he appointed their bounds. Nothing is lacking to the glory of the Word of God, who was in the beginning with God, who spake and it was done, who commanded, and it stood forth. He is highly exalted also as the preserver, for he is before all things, and by him all things consist. He is that nail fastened in a sure place, upon which all things hang. The keys of heaven, and death, and hell, are fastened to his girdle, and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful. He hath a name which is above every name, before which all things shall bow, in heaven, and earth, and under the earth. He is God over all. He is blessed for ever. To him that is, and was, and is to come, the universal song goeth up.

 

But there is another relation in which the Son of God has graciously been pleased to stand towards us. He has undertaken to be a Savior, in order that he might be a bridegroom. He had enough glory before, but in the greatness of his heart, he would magnify his compassion even above his power, and he therefore condescended to take into union with himself the nature of man, in order that he might redeem the beloved objects of his choice from the penalty due to their sins, and might enter into the nearest conceivable union with them. It is as Savior that the Father seeks to honor the Son, and the gospel feast is not for the honor of his person merely, but for the honor of his person in this new, yet anciently purposed relationship. It is for the honor of Jesus as entering into spiritual union with his church, that the gospel is prepared as a royal entertainment.

 

Brethren, when I said that here was a grand occasion, it certainly is so in God’s esteem, and it should be so in ours; we should delight to glorify the Son of God. To all loyal subjects in any realm, the marriage of one of the royal family is a matter of great interest, and it is usual and fitting to give expression to congratulations and sympathies by suitable rejoicings. In the instance before us the occasion calls for special joy from all the subjects of the great king of kings. For the occasion in itself is a subject for great delight and thankfulness to us personally. The marriage is with whom? With angels? He took not up angels. It is a marriage with our own nature, “he took up the seed of Abraham.” Shall we not rejoice when heaven’s great Lord is incarnate as a man, and stoops to redeem humanity from the ruin of the fall? Angels rejoice but they have no such share in the joy as we have. It is the highest personal joy to manhood that Jesus Christ who thought it not robbery to be equal with God, was made in the likeness of men that he might be one flesh with his chosen. Arise ye who slumber! If there was ever an occasion when ye should bestir your spirits and cry “wake up my glory, awake psaltery and harp” it is now, when Jesus comes to be affianced to his church, to make himself of one flesh with her, that he may redeem her, and afterwards exalt her to sit with him upon his throne. Here were abundant reasons why the invited guests should come with joyful steps, and count themselves thrice happy to be bidden to such a banquet. There is overwhelming reason wily mankind should rejoice in the glorious gospel of Jesus and hasten to avail themselves of it.

 

Beside that we must consider the royal descent of the Bridegroom. Remember that Jesus Christ our Savior is very God of very God. Are we asked to do him honor? It is right, for to whom else should honor be given? Surely we should glorify our Creator and Preserver! Wilful must be the disobedience which will not pay reverence to one so highly exalted and so worthy of all homage. It is heaven to serve such a Lord. His glory reacheth unto the clouds; let him be adored for ever and ever; O come let us worship and bow down, let us cheerfully obey those commands of God which aim at the honor of his Son.

 

Remember also the person of Immanuel, and you will desire his glory. This glorious Son, whose fame is to be spread abroad, is most certainly God—of that we have spoken, but he is also most assuredly man, our brother, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. Do we not delight to believe that he, tempted in all points as we are, has never yet submitted to be stained by sin? Never such a man as he, head of the race, the second Adam, the everlasting Father—who among us would not do him reverence? Will we not seek his honor, seeing that now he lifts our race to be next to the throne of God.

 

Remember, too, his character. Was there ever such a life as his? I will not so much speak of his divine character, though that furnishes abundant reason for worship and adoration, but think of him even as a man. O beloved, what tenderness, what compassion, yet what holy boldness; what love for sinners, and yet what love for truth! Men who have not loved him have nevertheless admired him, and hearts in which we least expected to see such recognition of his excellence have nevertheless been deeply affected as they have studied his life. We must praise him, for He is “chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely.” It were treason to be silent when the hour has come to speak of him who is peerless among men and matchless among angels. Clap, clap your hands at the thought of the marriage of the King’s Son, for whom his bride hath made herself ready.

 

Think, too, of his achievements. We take into reckoning whenever we do honor to a prince all that he may have done for the nation over which he rules. What, then, has Jesus done for us? Rather let me say what has he not done? Upon his shoulders were laid our sins; he carried them into the wilderness, and they are gone for ever. Against him came forth our foes; he met them in shock of battle, and where are they now? They are cast into the depths of the sea. As for death itself, that last of foes, he has virtually overcome it, and ere long the weakest of us through him shall say “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” He is the hero of heaven. He returned to his Father’s throne amidst the acclamations of the universe. Do we not, for whom he fought, for whom he conquered, do we not desire to honor him? I feel I speak with bated breath upon a theme where all our powers of speech should be let loose. Bring forth the royal diadem and crown him! Is it not the universal verdict of all who know him? Ought it not to be the cry of all the sons of men? East and west, and north and south, ought they not to ring the joy bells and hang out streamers on his marriage day, for joy of him? Is the King’s Son to be married, is there a festival in his honor? O then let him be great, let him be glorious! Long live the King! Let the maidens go forth with their timbrels, and the sons of music make sweet melody—yea, let all creatures that have breath break forth with his praises. “Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

 

II. Secondly, here is a GENEROUS METHOD of accomplishing the design. A king’s son is to be honored on the day of his marriage, in what way shall it be done? Barbarous nations have their great festivals, and alas, that men should have sunk so low; on such occasions rivers of human blood are made to flow. To this very day, on the borders of civilisation, there is found a wretched tyrant whose infernal customs, for I dare not call them by a less severe term, command the murder of hundreds of his fellow creatures in cold blood, on certain high days and festivals. Thus would the monster honor his son by acting like a fiend. No blood is poured forth to honor the Son of heaven’s great King. I doubt not Jesus will have honor even in the destruction of men if they reject his mercy, but it is not so that God elects to glorify his Son. Jesus the Savior, on his wedding-day with manhood, is glorified by mercy, not by wrath. If blood be mentioned on such a day, it is his own by which he is glorified. The slaughter of mankind would bring no joy to him, he is meek and lowly, a lover of the sons of men. It has been the custom of most kings to signalise a princely wedding by levying a fresh tax, or demanding an increased subsidy from their subjects. In the case of the anticipated wedding of our beloved Queen’s daughter, the dowry sought will be given with greater pleasure than upon any former occasion, and none of us would lift a whisper of complaint; but the parable shows that the King of kings deals with us not after the manner of man. He asks no dowry for his Son; he makes the marriage memorable not by demands but by gifts. Nothing is sought for from the people, but much is prepared for them, gifts are lavishly bestowed, and all that is requested of the subjects is, that they for awhile merge the subject in the more honorable character of the guest, and willingly come to the palace, not to labor or serve at the table, but to feast and to rejoice.

 

Observe, then, the generous method by which God honors Christ is set forth here under the form of a banquet. I noted Matthew Henry’s way of describing the objects of a feast, and with the alliteration of the Puritans, he says, “A feast is for love and for laughter, for fullness and for fellowship.” It is even so with the gospel. It is for love; in the gospel, sinner, you are invited to be reconciled to God, you are assured that God forgives your sins, ceases to be angry, and would have you reconciled to him through his Son. Thus love is established between God and the soul. Then it is for laughter, for happiness, for joy. Those who come to God in Christ Jesus, and believe in him, have their hearts filled with overflowing peace, which calm lake of peace often lifts up itself in waves of joy, which clap their hands in exultation.

 

It is not to sorrow but to joy that the great King invites his subjects, when he glorifies his Son Jesus. It is not that you may be distressed, but that you may be delighted that he bids you believe in the crucified Savior and live. A feast, moreover, is for fullness. The hungry famished soul of man is satisfied with the blessings of grace. The gospel fills the whole capacity of our manhood. There is not a faculty of our nature which is not made to feel its need supplied when the soul accepts the provisions of mercy; our whole manhood is satisfied with good things and our youth is renewed like the eagles. “For I have satisfied the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul.” To crown all, the gospel brings us into fellowship with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. In Christ Jesus we commune with the sacred Trinity. God becomes our Father, and reveals his paternal heart. Jesus manifests himself unto us as he doth not unto the world, and the communion of the Holy Ghost abides with us. Our fellowship is like that of Jonathan with David, or Jesus with John. We feast on the bread of heaven, and drink wines on the lees well refined. We are brought into the heavenly banqueting house where the secret of the Lord is revealed to us, and our heart pours itself out before the Lord Very near is our communion with God; most intimate love and condescension does he show to us. What say you to this? Is there not here a rich repast worthy of him who prepares it. Here all your capacious powers can wish, O sinner, shall be given to you; all you want for time and for eternity God prepares in the person of his dear Son, and bids you receive it without money and without price.

 

I have already told you that all the expense lies with him. It was a very sumptuous festival, there were oxen, and there were fatlings, but none of these were taken from the pastures, or stalls of the guests. The gospel is an expensive business; the very heart of Christ was drained to find the price for this great festival; but it costs the sinner nothing, nothing of money, nothing of merit, nothing of preparation. You rosy come as you are to the gospel feast, for the only wedding dress required is freely provided for you. Just as you are, you are bidden to believe in Jesus. You have nothing to do but to receive of his fullness, for to “as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” You are not asked to contribute to the provision, but to be a feaster at the divine banquet of infinite compassion.

 

How honorable, too, is the gospel to those who receive it. An invitation to a regal marriage was a high honor to those who were bidden. I do not suppose that many of us are likely to be invited to the Princess’s wedding, and, if we were, we should probably be greatly elated, for we should most of us feel it to be one of the great events of our lives. So was it with these people. A king’s son is not married every day, and it is not everybody that is bidden to the monarch’s entertainment. All their lives long they would say, “I was at his wedding, and saw all the splendor of the marriage festival.” Probably some of them had never before enjoyed such a feast as the luxurious potentate had prepared for that day, and had never before been in such good company. My brethren nothing so honors a man as for him to accept the gospel. While his faith honors Christ, Christ honors him. It is no mean thing to be a king’s son, but those who come to the marriage feast of God’s own Son shall become King’s sons themselves—themselves participators in the glory of the great heir of all things. While I am speaking of this generous method my heart glows with sacred ardor, and my wonder rises that men do not come to the banquet of love which honors all its guests. When the banquet is so costly to the host, so free to the guests, and so honorable to all concerned, how is it that there should be found any so unwise as to refuse the favor. Surely here is an illustration of the folly of the unrenewed heart, and a proof of the deep depravity which sin has caused. If men turn their backs on Moses with his stony tables, I do not marvel, but to despise the loaded tables of grace, heaped up with oxen and fatlings—this is strange. To resist the justice of God is a crime, but to repel the generosity of heaven, what is this? We must invent a term of infamy with which to brand the base ingratitude. To resist God in majesty of terror is insanity but to spurn him in the majesty of his mercy is something more than madness. Sin reaches its climax when it resolves to starve sooner than owe anything to divine goodness. I feel I must anticipate the period for delivering my message, and as I have described to you the way in which God honors his Son, I must at once proclaim the invitation, and cry to you, “Come to the wedding feast. Come ye, and glorify Jesus by accepting the provisions of grace. Your works will not honor him, if you set them up as a righteousness in competition with his righteousness. Not even your repentance can glorify him, if you think to make it a rival to his precious blood. Come, guilty sinner, as you are, and take the mercy Jesus freely presents to you, and accept the pardon which his blood secures to those who believe in him.” Methinks when the messenger went out from the King and first of all marked signs of neglect among those who were bidden, and saw that they would not come, he must have been mute with astonishment. He had seen the oxen, and seen the fatlings, and all the goodly preparations, he knew the King, he knew his Son, he knew what joy it was to be at such a feast; and when the bidden ones began to turn their backs on him, and go their way to their farms, the messenger, repeated his message over and over again with eagerness, wondering all the while at the treason which dared insult so good a Being. I think I see him, at first indignant for his Master’s sake, and afterwards melted to pity as he saw what would surely come of such an extravagance of ingratitude, such a superfluity of insolence. We mourned that his fellow-citizens whom he loved should be such fools as to reject so good an offer, and spurn so blessed a proclamation. I, too, am tossed to and fro in soul, with mingled but vehement feelings. O, my God, thou hast provided the gospel, let none in this house reject it, and so slight thy Son and dishonor thee, but may all rejoice in thy generous way of glorifying Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom of his church, and may they come, and willingly grace the festival of thy love.

 

III. We now advance to our third point, and regretfully remember THE SERIOUS HINDRANCE which for awhile interfered with the joyful event.

 

The king had thought in his mind, “I will make a great feast, I will invite a large number. They shall enjoy all my kingdom can afford, and I shall thus show how much I love my son, and moreover all the guests will have sweet memories in connection with his marriage.” When his messengers went out to intimate to those who had received previously an express invitation that the time was come, it is written, “They would not come;” not they could not, but they “would not come.” Some for one reason, some for another, but without exception they would not come. Here was a very serious hindrance to the grand business. Cannot the king drag his guests to the table? Yes, but then it would not accomplish his purpose. He wants not slaves to grace his throne. Persons compelled to sit at a marriage-feast would not adorn it. What credit could it be to a king to force his subjects to feast at his table? No for once, as I have said before, the subject must be merged in the guest. It was essential to the dignity of the festival that the guests should come with cheerfulness to the festival, but they would not come. Why? Why would they not come? The answer shall be such as to answer another question—Why do not you come and believe in Jesus! With many of them it was an indifference to the whole affair. They did not see what concern they had in the king or his son. Royal marriages were high things and concerned high people; they were plain-speaking men, farmers who went hedging and ditching, or tradesmen who made out bills and sold by the yard or pound. What cared they for the court, the palace, the king, the prince, his bride, or his dinner! They did not say quite that, but such was their feeling; it might be a fine thing, but it was altogether out of their line. How many run in the same groove at this hour? We have heard it said, “What has a working man to do with religion?” and we have heard others of another grade in life affirm that persons who are in business cannot afford time for religion, but had better mind the main chance. The Lord have mercy upon your folly! Here is one great obstacle to the gospel, the stolid indifference of the human mind concerning this grandest of all conceptions—God’s glorifying his dear Son by having mercy upon sinners.

 

At the bottom the real reason for the refusal of those in the parable was that they were disloyal, they would not come to the supper because they saw an opportunity for the loyal to be glad, and not being loyal they did not wish to hear the songs and acclamations of others who were. By staying away they insulted the king, and declared that they cared not whether he was a king or not, whether his son was a prince or not. They determined to disavow their allegiance by refusing the invitation. They said in effect, “Anyhow, if he be a king and his son a prince, we will do him no honor, we will not be numbered with those who surround his board and show forth his splendor. No doubt a feast is worth having, and such a feast as there will be provided t’were well for us to participate in, but for once we will deny our appetites that we may indulge our pride. We proclaim a revolt. We declare we will not go.” Ah, ye who believe not in Jesus, at the bottom of it your unbelief is enmity to your Maker, sedition against the great Ruler of the universe, who deserves your homage. “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib,” but ye know not, neither do ye consider; ye are rebels against the Majesty of heaven.

 

Moreover, the refusal was a slight to the prince as well as to his father, and in some cases the gospel is refused mainly with this intent, because the unbeliever rejects the deity of Christ, or despises his atonement. O sirs, beware of this, I know of no rock more fatal than to dishonor Christ by denying his sonship and his deity. Split not upon it, I beseech you—”Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little.” Indifference covered the refusal in the text, “they made light of it,” but if you take off the film you will see that at the bottom there was treason against the majesty of the king, and distaste to the dignity of his son.

 

No doubt some of them despised the feast itself. They must have known that with such a king it could not be a starveling meal, but they pretended to despise the feast. How many there are who despise the gospel which they do not understand, I say which they do not understand, for almost invariably if you hear a man depreciate the gospel, you will find that he has scarcely even read the New Testament and is a utter stranger to the doctrines of grace. Listen to a man who is voluble in condemnation of the gospel, and you may rest assured that he is fond because he is empty. If he understood the subject better he would find, if he were indeed a man of candour, that he would be led at least to be silent in admiration if he did not become loyal in acceptance.

 

Beloved friends, the feast is such as you greatly need, let me tell you what it is. It is pardon for the past, renewal of nature for the present, and glory for the future. Here is God to be our helper, his Son to be our shepherd, the Spirit to be our instructor. Here is the love of the Father to be our delight, the blood of the Son to be our cleansing, the energy of the Holy Spirit to be life from the dead to us. You cannot want anything that you ought to want, but what is provided in the gospel, and Jesus Christ will be glorified if you accept it by faith. But here is the hindrance, men do not accept it, “they would not come.” Some of us thought that if we put the gospel in a clear light, and if we were earnest in stating it our hearers must be converted, and God forbid we should ever try to do otherwise than make it plain and be earnest, but for all that the best ministry that ever was, or ever could be, will be unsuccessful in a measure; yea, and altogether so, unless the effectual work of the Spirit be present. Still will the cry go up, “Who hath believed our report?” Still will those who serve their Master best, have reason to mourn that they sow on stony ground, and cast their bread on thankless waters. Even the prince of preachers had to say, “Ye search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, but ye will not come to me that ye might have life.” Alas, alas, that mercy should be rejected and heaven spurned.

 

IV. So now we must close with the most practical matter of consideration, THE GRACIOUS REJOINDER of the king to the impertinence which interfered with his plans. What did he say? You will observe that they had been bidden, and then called; after the Oriental custom, the call intimated that the festival was now approaching, so that they were not taken unawares, but knew what they did. The second invitation they rejected in cold blood, deliberately, and with intent. What did the monarch do? Set their city in a blaze, and at once root out the rebels? No, but in the first place, he winked at their former insolent refusal. He said in himself, “Peradventure they mistook my servants, peradventure they did not understand that the hour was come. Perhaps the message that was delivered to them was too brief, and they missed its meaning. Or, if perchance, they have fallen into some temporary enmity against me, on reconsideration, they will wish that they had not been so rude, and ungenerous to me. What have I done that they should refuse my dinner? What has my son done that they should not be willing to honor him by feasting at my table. Men lone feasting, my son deserves their honor—why should they not come? I will pass over the past and begin again.” My hearers, there are many of you who have rejected Christ after many invitations, and this morning my Lord forgets your former unkindnesses, and sends me again with the same message, again to bid you “come to the wedding.” It is no small patience which overlooks the past and perseveres in kindness, honestly desiring your good.

 

The King sent another invitation—”all things are ready, come ye to the marriage,” but you will please to observe that he changed the messenger. “Again he sent forth other servants.” Yes, and I will say it, for my soul feels it, if a change of messengers will win you, much as I love the task of speaking in my Master’s name, I would gladly die now, where I am, that some other preacher might occupy this platform, if thereby you might be saved. I know my speech to some of you must be monotonous. I seek out images fresh and many, and try to vary my voice and manner, but for all that one man must grow stale to you when heard so often. Perhaps my modes are not the sort to touch your peculiarities of temperament—well, good Master, set thy servant aside, and consider him not. Send other messengers if perchance they may succeed. But to some of you I am another messenger, not a better, but another, since my brethren have failed with you. Oh, then, when my voice cries, “Come unto Jesus, trust in his atonement, believe in him, look to him and live,” let the new voice be successful, where former heralds have been disregarded.

 

You notice, too, that the message was a little changed. At first it was very short. Surely if men’s hearts were right, short sermons would be enough. A very brief invitation might suffice if the heart were right, but since hearts are wrong God bids his servants enlarge, expand, and expound. “Come, for all things are ready. I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fatlings are killed, all things are ready, come to the marriage.” One of the best ways of bringing sinners to Christ is to explain the gospel to them. If we dwell upon its preparations, if we speak of its richness and freeness, some may be attracted whom the short message which merely tells the plan of salvation might not attract. To some it is enough to say, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” for they are asking, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” but others need to be attracted to the wedding feast by the description of the sumptuousness of the repast. We must try to preach the gospel more fully to you, but we shall never tell you of all the richness of the grace of God. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are his thoughts above your thoughts, and his ways above your ways. Forsake your sins and your thoughts and turn to the Lord, for he will abundantly pardon you. He will receive you to his heart of love, and give you the kiss of his affection at this hour, if, like prodigal children, you come back and seek your Father’s face. The gospel is a river of love, it is a sea of love, it is a heaven of love, it is a universe of love, it is all love. Words there are none, fully to set forth the amazing love of God to sinners, no sin too big or too black, no crime too crimson or too cursed for pardon. If you do but look to his dear crucified Son all manner of sin and of blasphemy shall be forgiven you. There is forgiveness. Jesus gives repentance and remission. And then the happiness which will be brought to you here and hereafter are equally beyond description. You shall have heaven on earth and heaven in heaven; God shall be your God, Christ shall be your friend, and eternal bliss shall be your portion.

 

In this last message the “guests were pressed very delicately, but still in a way which if they had possessed any generosity of heart at all, must have touched them. You see how the evangelist puts it, he does not say, “Come, or else you will miss the feast; come, or else the king will be angry; come, come, or else you will be the losers.” No, but—he puts it, as I read it, in a very remarkable way. I venture to say—if I be wrong, the Master forgive me so saying—the king makes himself the object of sympathy, as though he were an embarrassed host. See here, “My dinner is ready, but there is no one to eat it; my oxen and fatlings are all killed, but there are no guests.” “Come, come,” he seems to say, “for I am a host without guests.” So sometimes in the gospel you will see God speaks as if he would represent himself as getting an advantage by our being saved. Now we know that herein he condescends in love to speak after the manner of men. What can he gain by us? If we perish what is he the loser? But he makes himself often in the gospel to be like a father who yearns over his child, longing for him to come home. He makes himself, the infinite God, turn beggar to his own creatures, and beseeches them to be reconciled. Wondrous stoop; for, like a chapman who sells his wares, he cries, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no money, let him come.” Do you observe how Christ, as he wept over Jerusalem, seems to weep for himself as well as for them. “How often would I have gathered thy children together.” And God, in the prophets, puts it as his own sorrow, “How can I set thee as Admah, how can I make thee as Zeboim,” as if it were not the child’s loss alone, but the father’s loss also, if the sinner died. Do you not feel, as it were, a sympathy with God when you see his gospel rejected? Shall the cross be lifted high, and none look to it? Shall Jesus die, and men not be saved by his death? O blessed Lord, we feel, if nothing else should draw us, we must come when we see, as it were, thyself represented as a host under our embarrassment, for lack of guests. Great God, we come, we come right gladly, we come to participate of the bounties which thou hast provided, and to glorify Jesus Christ by receiving as needy sinners that which thy mercy has provided.

 

Brethren and sisters since Christ finds many loath to honor him, my exhortation is to you who love him, honor him the more since the world will not. You who have been constrained to come, remember to sing as you sit at his table, and rejoice and bless his name. Next go home and intercede for those who will not come, that the Lord will enlighten their understandings, and change their wills, that they may be yet constrained to believe in Jesus; and as for those of you who feel half inclined this morning by the soft touches of his grace to come and feast, let me bid you come. It is a glorious gospel—the feast is good. He is a glorious king—the Host is good. He is a blessed Savior, he who is married, he is good. It is all good, and you shall be made good too, if your souls accept the invitation of the gospel which is given to you this day. “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved: he that believeth not shall be damned.” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” The Lord send his Spirit to make the call effectual, for his dear Son’s sake. Amen.

 

 

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON – Matthew 21

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http://www.apibs.org/chs/0975.htm

Bethlehem, Break Forth Like the Dawn

Isaiah 58:1-12

“Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. 3 ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. 4 Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. 5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord? 6 “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? 8 Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, 10 if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. 11 And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. 12 And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.

As we set our faces to worship corporately in two different places beginning next week, I want to remind us as a church that we have been saved for the sake of God-exalting good works. We have been saved not merely to avoid evil, but to do good. Therefore the people of Christ should not be known primarily for what we don’t do, but what we do do.

You recall how Paul said it in Ephesians 2:10, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” And you recall how he said it in Titus 2:14, “[Christ] gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” And you remember the words of Jesus, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). We are saved for the sake of God-exalting good works. This is the aim of our justification—not the ground, but the aim and the fruit.

If God gives us growth at the Roseville site and at the downtown site, may it be a growth in God-exalting good deeds in the name of Jesus. “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17). Today’s message is a simple call to be doers of justice, lovers of mercy, and people who walk humbly with our God in Jesus’ name (Micah 6:8).

Pointing Ahead to the Redeemer as Sin-Bearer and Way-Shower

The text is Isaiah 58:1-12. It’s all about social justice and practical mercy. Before I apply it to our church and our situation let’s make sure two things are clear. One is that Isaiah, writing just before 700 bc, knows that the Redeemer has not yet come when he is writing, but that he will come, and that when he comes he will bear our sins of injustice. The other is that when he comes he will bring the very justice God demands. We see this in Isaiah 53:5-6, “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” So this Redeemer is our sin-bearer.

But he is also our way-shower. He brought the very justice he demands. He lived perfectly not only to become our righteousness and our spotless sin-bearing lamb, but also to show us how to live. So when he arrives in his home town and speaks at the synagogue according to Luke 4:18-19, he takes up the scroll of Isaiah and reads from Isaiah 61, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” In other words, all the justice and righteousness and mercy that Isaiah demanded of God’s people, Christ is now bringing into the world in his own person. A new decisive time and power for justice and mercy has arrived.

Therefore when we read Isaiah’s prophetic indictment of God’s people 2,700 years ago and his call for justice, we hear not just as Jews would have heard it then, but as Christians hear it now on this side of Jesus Christ the promised Messiah. He came to bring it with his power, and he came to buy with his blood. And therefore, when we hear Isaiah call us to do justice and to love mercy and keep this in mind: Christ has come and shown this justice with his life so we could see it, and bought this justice by his death so that we can do it.

The Main Point of Isaiah 58

The point of Isaiah 58 is this: Piety that does not produce a passion for God-exalting social justice and practical mercy is worthless. Or to put it positively: God promises that we will break forth like the dawn if our piety produces a passion for social justice and practical mercy.

The first five verses are Isaiah’s indictment of piety without fruit. Devotions without deeds. “Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God.” In other words, they are pious, religious, “Bible reading,” praying folk – they even enjoy being this way. They delight in their religious practices. But they don’t enjoy God and his ways; they enjoy self-justifying religion, while forsaking the judgments of God. O let us take heed to this frightening specter of private piety without public fruit. God is not pleased with this piety.

So they ask in verse 3: “Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?” And God answers that their fasting and their self-afflictions are a religious cover for finding pleasure in unjust gain. “Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers.” O how relevant Monday is to Sunday! You fast. You make yourself look low and pious and prayerful. But God says, “I see your business practices. I see your attitudes on Monday. I see your merciless, harsh, oppressing ways of dealing with people at your work.

Verse 4: “Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. 5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord?” The authenticity our worship on Sunday is shaped by our justice on Monday.

Will the Piety of Sunday Produce a Passion for Justice on Monday?

There is a well-known sermon that many of you have heard about the pain of Good Friday turning into the joy of Easter, called “Sunday’s comin’!” The refrain occurs over and over, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s comin’!” Well, we need another sermon to become well-known, namely, “It’s Sunday, but Monday’s comin’!” We’re here with our voices lifted and our heads bowed and our prayers rising! What does God think of it? You’ll find out tomorrow: “It’s Sunday, but Monday’s comin’!” Will the piety of Sunday produce a passion for justice on Monday? That’s the question of Isaiah 58.

Then in verses 6-7 and 9b-10a Isaiah tells us what the social justice and practical mercy look like that please God. “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?” Then look in the middle of verse 9: “If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, 10 if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted.”

Five Kinds of Human Need for Passionate Concern

In addition to the all-important need for faith and forgiveness and personal holiness, there are five kinds of human need that Isaiah – and Jesus – are passionately concerned about. 1) The need for freedom from bondage and oppression. Four times in verse 6 and once in verse 9 he hits on this. Verse 6: “Loose the bonds of wickedness, undo the straps of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke.” Verse 9b: “Take away the yoke from your midst.” 2) The need for food. Verse 7a: “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry?” 3) The need for housing. Verse 7b: “[Is it not] to bring the homeless poor into your house?” 4) The need for clothing. Verse 7c: “[Is not this the fast I choose:] When you see the naked, to cover him?” 5) The need for respect. Verse 9b: “Take away . . . the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness.” In other words, stop accusing unjustly and belittling and exploiting.

Isaiah preaches justice to the people of God, and Jesus displays justice to the people of God and suffers to cleanse and empower the people of God, so our piety will produce a passion for social justice and practical mercy. If it doesn’t, our piety is empty. And if it does – if our faith and love and devotion to Christ do produce a passion freeing the oppressed, and feeding the hungry, and housing the homeless, and clothing the naked, and putting away belittling talk and demeaning gestures – then, O Bethlehem, you will break forth like the dawn.

All the rest of this text is promise for what good things happen in our lives when we give ourselves away to others in the cause of justice and mercy. And we know from the fulfillment of this prophecy in Jesus that this does not mean we earn God’s blessings. God himself, through Christ, purchases them for us at the cross and empowers us to fulfill the conditions for them. Verse 8: If you give yourself away to bring justice and mercy in the world, instead of just living for your own comforts,

“Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’.” [He continues in the middle of verse 10:] “then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. 11 And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. 12 And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.”

Descriptions and Dreams of Who We Want to Be

Is this not a beautiful description of what we would like to experience as a people in Roseville and downtown Minneapolis:

• light in darkness,
• healing for wounds,
• righteousness in front and the glory of God behind,
• a God who hears when we cry to him,
• guidance from the Lord,
• satisfaction for our souls in scorched places,
• our very bones made strong for battle,
• being so watered by the Lord that we become a spring of water for others to drink and find refreshment,
• being used by God to rebuild what has been destroyed and make a place of life and hope.

To me it is amazing that all this and more is promised to people whose piety produces a passion for God-exalting justice and practical mercy. So, Bethlehem (Roseville attenders and downtown attenders) dream a dream for you and your family and your friends for how you can

• free the oppressed
• feed the hungry
• house the homeless
• clothe the naked,
• and put an end to belittling gestures and words.

This is the will of God, this is the work of Christ, and this is the way to break forth like the dawn. Amen.

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Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

The Murder of God’s Son: A Prophetic Parable, Part 1B-2

11 September 2009

God has given to you certain privilege, to hear the truth, to know the truth, hear the message of Christ. Not everybody in the world has that privilege. You have. In that sense, you have been under the knowledge of the truth which produces responsibility. What are you going to do with that truth? You going to be like the leaders of Israel who because something else is more important to you that you possess the love of your own sin, or your own system, or your own philosophy, or your own relationships, you will spurn Christ and hold on to what condemns and damns. This is the time to let go of everything, put your trust in Christ so that youre not destroyed and added to the number of those who forfeited all the potential and offered blessings of His Kingdom.

The Murder of God’s Son: A Prophetic Parable, Part 2

The Murder of God’s Son: A Prophetic Parable, Part 1A

Superstitious Shadows By A.W. Tozer

      Faith honors God by accepting the biblical revelation of the divine character. Faith lets God be what He says He is and adjusts its concepts accordingly.

Superstition degrades the reputation of God by believing things unworthy of Him. One rests upon fact and the other upon fancy.
      As I said before, there is probably a streak of superstition in everyone, even in the genuine Christian.

Any notions we may have of God that have not been corrected and purified by the Word and the Spirit are likely to have some element of error in them, and the religious beliefs resulting from them will of necessity contain a certain amount of superstition.

The Christian who flares indignant at such a statement as this and denies that it describes him is not therefore free from superstition; he merely compounds his faults by adding bigotry and anger to the rest.

      But if superstition dishonors God, is it not an evil thing and is not the Christian who harbors it guilty of serious sin against the Majesty in the heavens? . . .

 

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article5651.shtml

Are We Going Full Speed Backward To Paganism? by Lottie Beth Hobbs

Volume 20 Number 6 November/December 2009

 

From the Editor: The following article was written around 1986. The author of the article, Lottie Hobbs, is now 88 years of age and lives with her remaining sibling (out of a family of in Fort Worth, Texas. Lottie was delighted that we were publishing her article. In speaking to her, I realized that I was speaking to a dear child of God whose focus in life has been to serve the Lord and remain faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Read here:

http://www.discernment-ministries.org/NLNovDec_2009.htm

 

MOV017- Scott Sepanek

This was my first video circa 6/7/09. It was your basic testimony with a very specific admonition being “don’t go to hell”. Believe me – you don’t want to.

Don’t go to hell.

Reformation Theology: An Introduction

 

—On the Sovereignty of God and the Reformation

EXCERPT

492 years ago, on this day, October 31st, Martin Luther marked the beginning of the Reformation with his famous 95 theses. It was said that the hinge that the door of Christianity swings is on the doctrine of justification by faith, such is what was fought for at the time of the reformation, the reformers prior to Luther and those who went after him.

Contrary though to popular belief the issue did not merely hang on justification by faith as if to assert that Rome never affirmed such a thing. Rome and every other religious cult glazing itself with Christian teaching and doctrine openly affirm that salvation is by faith and by grace. It’s interesting to me that many of those who would call themselves protestants do not know that point. Rather the main issue of the reformation and that which was defended and contended even centuries upon centuries before Luther’s time is if salvation is by faith alone through grace alone.

Read here:

http://newdemonstration.com/reformed-theology/reformation-theology-an-introduction

What is Reformed Theology?

Calvinism (also called the Reformed tradition, the Reformed faith, or Reformed theology) is a theological system and an approach to the Christian life.^[1] The Reformed tradition was advanced by several theologians such as Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Huldrych Zwingli, but it often bears the name of the French reformer John Calvin because of his prominent influence on it and because of his role in the confessional and ecclesiastical debates throughout the 16th century. Today, this term also refers to the doctrines and practices of the Reformed churches of which Calvin was an early leader. Less commonly, it can refer to the individual teaching of Calvin himself.^[2] The system is best known for its doctrines of predestination and total depravity, stressing the absolute sovereignty of God.

Read here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_theology

You are not yet in harbor – By J.C. Ryle

Are you prosperous in the world?

 Have death, sickness, disappointment, poverty, and family troubles passed over your door up to this time and not come in?

 Are you secretly saying to yourself, ‘Nothing can hurt me much. I shall die quietly in my bed and see no sorrow.’  

Take care.

You are not yet in harbor.

A sudden storm of unexpected trouble may make you change your note.

 Set not your affection on things below. Hold them with a very loose hand and be ready to surrender them at a moment’s notice.

Use your prosperity well while you have it; but lean not all your weight on it, lest it break suddenly and pierce your hand.

Self-Control in a Wired World

Where do you need self-control? Does living in a wired world distract you from pursuing God and serving him? In this clip Josh describes an all-too-familiar moment of e-mail, blog, Facebook, Twitter distraction.

We Do Not Play ‘Sloshed in the Spirit’ Anymore

EXCERPT

When Lee Grady (Apostle in the New Apostolic Reformation and editor for Charisma Magazine (with founder being Stephen Strang) not once during the duration of the Todd Bentley Lakeland Outpouring Revival say in any of his articles anywhere;   

‘No, people, No.  This is not God.  Stop, don’t go, you are being conned out of your money, you are being lied too, there is a fake spirit coming over you”  

Never did Lee Grady say this or anything remotely similar, there was NO warning what-so-ever.  In fact Lee Grady endorsed it and helped spread the fire (that fake holy) spirit.   So coming out now with an article like this is just laughable, telling people to calm down, as the ‘play play’ games are now over.   None of this should have ever happened in the first place if you and your apostle and prophets friends read the Word of God and had an ounce of discernment.

 

READ HERE:

http://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/11/13/we-do-not-play-sloshed-in-the-spirit-anymore/#more-6825

 

You’ve got 3 types of Christians: Christians, Christians and Christians

Confusing isn’t it?   Well I don’t blame anyone for being confused. Because this is what it’s come down too:  

The 4 Types of Christians: 

Confusing isn’t it?   Well I don’t blame anyone for being confused. Because this is what it’s come down too:  

The 4 Types of Christians: 

Read here:

http://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/11/15/youve-got-4-types-of-christians/

WHEN I CAME HOME

WHEN I CAME HOME is a documentary about homeless veterans in America: from those who served in Vietnam to those returning from the current war in Iraq. The film was recently awarded the “NY Loves Film” Best Documentary at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. For more information, visit: www.whenicamehome.com

1 minute trailer

Documentary about homeless Iraq veterans.

9.45mins

A Peal of Bells (Zechariah 14:20)

A Peal of Bells

A Sermon (0399)
Delivered on Sunday Morning, July 7th, 1861, by
the REV C H SPURGEON
at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

 

In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD. – Zechariah 14:20

 

There are many days already past which we might well have wished to see. Who would not have rejoiced to have beheld the day when God smote Rabab and broke the dragon in the deep waters, when Miriam took the timbrel and went forth with the daughters of Israel, saying, “Sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea?” Who might not have wished to have witnessed the glorious victories of the judges when they put to rout the oppressors of Israel, or that day when David returned from the slaughter of Goliath, or that auspicious morn when Solomon’s temple, glittering in unrivalled magnificence, was dedicated by a vast concourse of people with generous sacrifice to the worship of the true God? Many days there were in the chronicles of the Jewish Church which are never to be forgotten earth’s red letter days when God made bare his arm and showed forth his might. Days there were, too, in Christ’s history which it was a high privilege to see. The day of his birth—would that we had been among the shepherds on the plain when they heard the angels sing “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men, “or the day of his death when he cried, “It is finished,” and yielded up be ghost, or, better still, the day of his resurrection, when he routed all our foes by rising again for our justification, or the day of his ascension, when he led captivity captive and ascended up on high, or even that day of Pentecost, when the Spirit of God fell on the disciples, and when they, preaching with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance multitudes being added to the Church of these who were ordained unto eternal life. Those days are gone, we look back upon them with faith, and as Abraham rejoiced in prospect, so would we do in retrospect. But there are days yet to come for whose advent we may well be eager. There is the day when Ephraim shall not envy Judah nor Judah vex Ephraim, for all the Church of Christ shall be one in spirit. There is the day when the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. There is the day, too, when Israel shall be restored to its own land, when its country shall be called no more desolate, but Beulah, and no more forsaken, but Hepzibah shall its name be, for the Lord delighteth in it. There is specially the day of the Second Advent, that day of days for which methinks all other days that went before were made, that day which shall be the summing up, the total of all ages, for the fullness of time shall come, and Christ in the fullness of his glory shall reign among the sons of men. I think I may with your permission add to the test of days which we might desire to see that which is spoken of in the text—”In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord.” What connection there may be between that day and others which I have mentioned it is not my purpose this morning to explain. I would that this were to us personally the day when it should be fulfilled in us as individuals, and may the Lord hasten the happy day when universally throughout the Church this text has be fulfilled, and upon the bells of the horses there shall be “Holiness unto the Lord!”

 

The text, as you perceive, deals with horses which were unclean under the Jewish law yet, in the day spoken of in the text, the horses themselves shall be purged from commonness or uncleanness, and their harness shall be dedicated to God as certainly as the vestments of the High Priest himself. It will be a happy day indeed when the men who deal with horses, too often a race anything but honest and upbeat shall exhibit in their common transactions a consecration to God, so that on the horses’ furniture shall be written. Holiness to the Lord. The original Hebrew word translated “bells” is a very singular one, because nobody knows precisely what it means. The fact is, the Hebrews knew so little of horses from being interdicted from their use that they had not a very large vocabulary to describe the harness and other equipments of the horse. The word is translated by some critics, “bells,” by others, “bits,” by some, “frontlets,” by others, “collars,” by some, and by Calvin especially, “blinkers,” and Calvin also hints that the word may mean “stables.” The words must then mean—”The furniture of the horses shall be, Holiness to the Lord,” and there is no doubt a comparison between the horses and the High Priest: if it be the frontier—just as the High Priest upon his brow the Hebrew letters in gold “Holiness to the Lord,” so on the frontlet of the horses shall be Holiness to the Lord, and as the High Priest wore bells about his garments, so the horses are decorated with their silver bells, there shall be on the bells, Holiness to the Lord, and if it signify any other kind of vestment, even as on the very ornaments of the Priest, on his ephod and breastplate holiness was written, so in every article that shall be by the horse shall holiness to God be most clearly manifest, yea, even the stables, unconsecrated as one could suppose they must always remain, shall be consecrated to God. The commonest buildings, set apart to meanest uses, being frequented by worshippers of the Lord, shall become temples of him dwelleth in humble and contrite hearts.

 

The simple meaning of the text is just this, that the day shall come when in common life holiness shall be the guiding star, when the ordinary actions of human existence shall be as much the worship of God as the sacrifice of the altar or the mission of the high priest when he went within the vail. Everything, that which was most despised—the horses, the places seemed the least likely to be consecrated—the stables, and those things which seemed the least holy, even the horses’ harness,—all shall be so thoroughly used in obedience to God’s will that everywhere there shall be, “Holiness unto Jehovah.” Common things, then, in the day spoken of by Zechariah, are to be dedicated to God and used in his service.

 

I shall work out this great thought in a somewhat novel manner. First, let us hear the horses’ bells; secondly, let us commend their music; and then, thirdly, let us go home and tune our bells, that they may be in harmony with this sacred chime—”Holiness unto the Lord!”

 

I. First of all, let us HEAR THESE HORSES BELLS, which, according to the text are to be tuned to the heavenly note of “Holiness unto the Lord.”

 

First, let us mark the trappings of the steed as he goeth forth to war. “He champs his bit and is eager for the fray: his snortings are terrible, his neck is clothed with lightning, and he crieth in the midst of the battle, “Aha! Aha! Aha!” War is to our minds the most difficult thing to sanctify to God. The genius of the Christian religion is altogether contrary to everything like strife of any kind, much more to the deadly clash of arms. Yet it may be possible that occasions may arise in which war itself might become hallowed; and certainly we must not deny that many of those who have to deal with war are at this day consecrated men, like Cornelius’ devout soldier, and as truly servants of Christ in the arm as though they were civilians. Now I say again, I am no apologist for war, from my soul I loathe it, and I do not understand the position of a Christian man as a warrior, but still I greatly rejoice that there are to be found at this present day in the ranks many of those who fear God and adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour. I may almost venture to say that the war against the tyrant, Charles I., was a consecrated fight. The people of God had been hunted like partridges upon the mountains, in the reigns of Elizabeth, and James, and Charles. At last their lion-like spirits turned at bay, and their enemies driven back before their gallant fury; Cromwell, the Christian hero, mounted his charger, and bade his saintly warriors, with the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other, fight for England’s liberty. I think in those valiant charges when they shouted their battle-cry—”The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge”—there was, as if ever there was, upon the frontlets of the horses, their collars, and their bits, “Holiness unto the Lord.” May such a war never rise again, but honor to the ashes of the consecrated brave! If I could believe that there were in America a sincere desire on the part of the Northerners to set free every slave, I would say, “God speed their swords and bless their arms.” If I could believe that the chain would be broken, and that it was their intent to do it,—if I did not fear that they will yet compromise and make terms with the bloodhound’s master, and let him still hold his blood-stained property in the souls and bodies of men, I would say that that might be, if war ever could be, a consecrated war, and the bits of the horses would be “Holiness unto the Lord.” But since that is a difficult point to speak of, since, as I have said before, the very genius and spirit of Christianity go against war altogether, though I must believe there have been occasions in which the bells of war-horses have been Holiness unto the Lord, yet I would rather speak of individuals. If there ever lived a man who, disinterested in spirit, and without any desire of aggrandizement or selfish honor, held in his hand a consecrated sword, it is Garibaldi. I think of him, for his speeches make me believe it, not only as a hero, but as a Christian, as the scourge of Popery and the enemy of all despotism, it might be said that his war-garments are Holiness to the Lord. The like might we say of Hedley Vicars, whose history, so well-written, you have all so often read and of Havelock, our own true Havelock, who for the deliverance of our own wives and sisters, in silence rushed upon his prey, and delivered women and children out of the fierce jaws of the blood-loving tiger. These men preached Christ wherever they went. I love not their trade, but I love them. I would wish them to put up their swords into their scabbards, but when they did draw them, I am sure they did it in the full conviction that they were doing their duty, and though even that may not justify the error, yet it must prevent any of us from condemning them. I believe that they did it as in the sight of God, and what they did was to them Holiness unto the Lord Oh! may there never be war again! may peace reign! but if there must be wars, may they all be just ones! if there must be fighting may it ever be for the freedom of the slave and the deliverance of the helpless! and in all this may Jehovah, even in the battle in the garments rolled in blood, and in the fire and vapor of smoke, still be acknowledged and across the field of fire may there be written, “Holiness to the Lord!”

 

We turn aside awhile, for other horses are coming, and their bells are ringing forth Holiness unto the Lord. Horses are used in state. In splendor, kinds, princes, and judges of the land ride through the crowd. The text says, “Upon the bells of the horses shall be, Holiness unto the Lord.” Drawn by noble steeds, glittering with rich caparisons, an exalted personage passes through the thronging mass, it is a sovereign and oh! when the sovereign of a nation hath a heart which boweth before God, and hath a hope of an immortal and an imperishable crown, then regal state is sanctified and the bells upon the horses are Holiness unto the Lord. When a Sir Matthew Hale rode in the judge’s chariot to distribute justice, surely the state which attended the Lord Chief Justice of the land was holiness to God, and when a Sir Thomas Abney even on the night of the Lord Mayor’s banquet, retired awhile that he might have prayer with his family and his servants, surely then the too gaudy show of civic pomp was for that once Holiness unto the Lord. And, I think, when Wilberforce went to the House of Commons, however he might ride, the bit of his horse was Holiness to the Lord. Since we cannot dispense with the ceremonial honor which surrounds governors, we must consecrate it, as long as kingdoms remain, it must be the prayer of Christians that the state may be a holy state, and that its officers and governors may be devout and upright men. Little do we know, my brethren, what mischief would soon be done in the high places of the land, if we had back again upon the throne a George the Fourth, if once again our eminent men were found indulging in the lowest pastimes of the very scum of this city, if again unblushing bribery defiled the judgment-seat; if a bloody Jeffreys could browbeat the saints of God once more—then we should consider it a matter of importance to pray to God for kings and those in authority. Had we not, my brethren, better think it a matter of importance now, and pray daily to God that he would cause the state to be more and more consecrated to him, so that the very bells upon the horses, as they walk in solemn pomp, may be Holiness unto the Lord?

 

But I hear the tinkling of other bells. The day is to come when, not only war and the states shall be consecrated to Christ, but even pleasure and recreation shall become Holiness to the Lord. When you are travelling in Alpine regions, you will be amused by the ringing of the little bells upon the horses. You are there for rest, to recruit the body, but let that rest be taken in the spirit of holiness. I fear that many leave their religion behind them when they go to the sea-side, or to continental countries. It ought not to be so, in our pleasures as well as in everything else, on the very berms of the horses there should be, Holiness unto the Lord. A Christian man needs recreation as well as another man, the bow must be unstrung, for the soul always bent to work shall soon lose the energy to labor. There must be times for breathing the fresh country air, and looking upon the meadows and the fields. I wish such days came oftener to the poor toiling population of this huge labyrinth of bricks; would that you could oftener see the laughing face of the verdant earth, and the smokeless heavens! But mark this, let us as Christian men see to it that we carry the spirit of this text with us wherever we go; that the bells of the horses be, Holiness to the Lord, and our very recreations be done as sacredly and as much in the sight of God as our sacraments and our solemn feast days. Does recreation mean sin? Then, indeed, you have nothing to do with it. Does pleasure mean iniquity? Deny, deny yourselves. But there are pleasures which mean no such thing. As you traverse Alpine regions, let your thoughts stand on the mountain-tops and talk with God, or if you walk the fair lanes of England, let the cool retreat become an oratory for your soul. Why everything that your eye looks upon, from the king-cup in the meadow to the cedar upon the mountain may make you praise God, and when it is so, then the bells upon the horses are Holiness to the Lord. If in seeking rest you are really desiring to get strength that you may spend it in his service, if you take rest not for your pleasure’s sake, but that stringing your muscles once more and getting your soul into tune, you may with greater vigor serve him in days to come; then, again, the bells of the horses are Holiness to the Lord. And if you avail yourself of any opportunities which your recreation throws in your way, to speak a kind word and a word for Christ to those whom you pass or with whom you have chance communion in your travellings, then, again, the bells of the horses are Holiness to the Lord. It is greatly to be regretted that the mass of our people who go to the sea-side, and especially who go to Paris, leave their godliness behind them. One of the Ministers of the Church at L’Oratoire told me, the manner in which English Christians spend their Sabbath days in Paris is a very serious impediment to the growth of religion in France. Men think that when they are abroad they may leave their habits which they practiced at home behind them. Full often have I known that at the sea-side, Christians knowingly and wilfully keep the proprietors of the houses where they lodge from places of worship, to prepare their sumptuous repasts on the Sabbath day, and so virtually prevent them from hearing the Word of God for six or nine months in the year. There may be some of you who are going out by-and-bye, I beg you in your recreation not to leave your religion behind you. You will put on your black coat and put on your tourist’s suit, but take your Christian character with you I beseech you. Why should it be thought of you that your religion is a local thing, and that out of the way of society, which is a sort of check upon you, you may be free to sin as others do.

 

Listen to the bells again. Horses are used for journeying. We must all journey sometimes, and when we do, the bells upon the horses and the shrill scream of the steam-engine should still be—”Holiness unto the Lord.” The missionary is crossing the sea; perhaps at this very hour while we are sitting quietly here, his boat is leaping the billows and springing from mountain-wave to mountain-wave. I believe that every motion of the paddles is holiness to the Lord, because the ship is carrying forth God’s appointed messenger to proclaim the gospel among the heathen. There are Christian men on board who are not giving forth to preach, but to emigrate and settle down now if they intend in emigrating to establish a Church of Christ where they are to live and to preach the gospel where they may be called to go, every motion of the vessel is Holiness unto the Lord. Perhaps she carries merchants who go abroad to trade and return again, but if they are about to trade as Christians, and then consecrate their substance unto God, that vessel, though when she leaves a black trail across the sky in her cloud of smoke, is as accepted as the smoke of sacrifice—is Holiness unto the Lord. Where there is a true heart, the horse that bears it is a consecrated one. Let our goings out be in the Lord’s night. We are lights: if the light is moved, it should be to illuminate other places. We are salt: if the salt be scattered, it should be that the conserving influence should be felt the more widely. Do not go from home unless you feel that you can take your Master with you; and when you are from home, ever seek to be doing something for your Master, that when you are gone, you may leave a fragrance behind you. How much good might some do who are called to travel continually! There are some few in this Church, for instance, who travel as commercial gentlemen; I know one or two of them who scarcely ever go into a town without preaching the Word there, and I know others of them who, in the commercial room where they meet with some who despise the religion of Christ, speak boldly for the truth as it is in Jesus, and are as useful in their daily journeyings as any Christian men could be who filled up a place in the Sabbath-school, or officiated as deacons in the Church at home. Let your journeyings, then, always be with the ringing of these bells, “Holiness until the Lord!”

 

But horses of old were also used for merchandise, and when the pack-horses went in long strings, the fore-horses always had bells that the others might be guided in the darkness. I think there is an allusion to that in the text, for such may have been the custom of the Eastern caravans, as indeed it was, and the text means, then, that merchandise and our common trade should be Holiness unto the Lord. O sirs! when you take down your shutters in the morning, let it be with a prayer that your business of the day may be as much a sacrifice to God as the business which I may have to transact as the pastor of the Church, and when you stand behind the counter ask of God, that in your dealings, though they be common to the eyes of men, there may be an inward spirituality which God shall discover, that thus there may be Holiness to the Lord. Sometimes when some of you have been stored up by a sermon, you have come to me and said, “Mr. Spurgeon, could I go to China? Could I become a missionary? Could I become a minister?” In very many cases the brethren who offer are exceedingly unfit for any service of the kind, for they have very little gift of expression, very little natural genius, and no adaptation for such a work, and I have constantly and frequently to say, “My dear brother, be consecrated to Christ in your daily calling; do not seek to take a spiritual office, but spiritualise your common office.” Why, the cobbler can consecrate his lapstone while many a minister has desecrated his pulpit. The ploughman can put his hand to the plough in as holy a manner as ever did minister to the sacramental bread. In dealing with your ribbons and your groceries, in handling your bricks and your jackplanes, you can be as truly priests to God as were those who slew the bullocks and burned them with the holy fire in the days of yore. This old fact needs to be brought out again. We do not so much want great preachers as good upright traders, it is not so much deacons and elders we long for as it is to have men who are deacons for Christ in common life, and are really elders of the Church in their ordinary conversation. Sirs, Christ did not come into the world to take all fishermen from their nets though he did take some, nor to call all publicans from the receipt of custom though he did call one, he did not come to make every Martha into a Mary though he did bless a Martha and a Mary too. He would have you be housewives still, be sisters of mercy in your own habitations. He would have you be traders, buyers, and sellers, workers and toilers still, for the end of Christianity is not to make preachers, but to make holy men, the preacher is but the tool; he may be sometimes but the scaffold of the house; but ye are God’s husbandry; ye are God’s building; ye, in your common acts and your common deeds, are they who are to serve God. That wicked fiction of the Church of Rome, that her cathedrals are holy, has made us think that our houses are not holy. Why, my friends, our houses are as holy, or ought to be, as ever church or chapel. Some seem to think that there is some peculiar sanctity about aisles and oak seats, stone pillars and gothic arches. Holiness cannot belong to stones, holiness has to do with nothing except the acts and thoughts of intelligent subjects, and if holiness can by metaphor belong to places or substances, it must be through the Christian holy minds that are in contact with them. I will not have it that yonder parish church or that this place is one who more holy than that room where you live if you there offer prayer and praise. Oh! brethren, you must not think that the table, and the font, and the baptistry are holy; no, no, if there be holiness in them so may there be in your own table, in your own labors, and in your own tools which you handle, at least, there will be as much in one as in the other if with a holy mind you serve God in both. Not confined holiness—that is superstition; universal holiness—that is Christianity, not the bowls upon the altar holy—that is Judaism, but the bells upon the horses holy—that is true living godliness and vital Christianity. See to it, then, Christian friends, in your common daily doings, that the bells upon the horses are Holiness unto the Lord.

 

But horses were also used, as they still are, for toil, and toil though I have already anticipated the subject, toil is to be holiness to the Lord. The horse is turning over the furrow with the plough, and if it be held by a godly husbandman, the bells upon that horse are Holiness unto the Lord. And now it is time when the hay should be cut down and carted, if with gratitude in his bosom, the husbandman takes home the fruit of the earth, the carting is Holiness to the Lord. And when harvest-time comes round, and all the country is glad, every shout of harvest-time ought to be a holy shout, every smile that is on the brow of the tiller of the soil should be a holy smile; and when he has consecrated his wave-sheaf unto his God, when he has given a part of his increase to the poor and needy, and when he has bowed his knee and thanked the Universal Giver of all good, then the farmer’s toil is Holiness to the Lord. I would, my dear brethren, that you would make your common toils Holiness unto the Lord. Come to look upon your meals as though they were sacraments, your clothes as though they were priestly vestments; your common words as though you were preaching daily sermons; and your every-day thoughts as though you were thinking for the Sabbath of holy things. It is not to be always talking religion, but to be talking religiously that makes the Christian; it is not to be performing outward symbols, it is to be possessing the inward spirit. I do believe that there is more piety in going to visit the poor and needy and scattering your substance among them; more piety in teaching the poor ignorant ragged child, more piety in seeking to help some poor struggling tradesman, than there is in many a long prayer, and many a sanctimonious whine, ay and in many a long and eloquent discourse. That common piety which like common sense is oftenest the uncommonest of all, is what we need to have, and if I could make one man among you become thus consecrated, I should think I had, under God, done as much as though I poured you out in scores upon the plain of Hindostan, or sent you to edify the Chinese, or to instruct the Ethiopian. We want you as missionaries here; we want you as missionaries in daily life, and we must have you too, or else the Church will not increase, nor will the name of Christ be magnified. I have thus sought to make you listen to the ringing of these bells.

 

II. Now for the second point; let us COMMEND THE MUSIC of the bells upon the horses.

 

The religion of common life I must commend, first of all, for its loudness. These are many men who do not hear the Church bell, who will hear the bells upon the horses, by which I mean that preach as frequently as we may, some people will never believe us, but they cannot help believing what they see in your lives. We may extol Christ, and they will say, “It is his office and duty,” but if your actions are what they should be, if your lives are saturated with the spirit of Jesus, they cannot help hearing them. They may put their fingers in their ears and not hear our sermons, but they must hear your sermons, for they can hear them through their eyes as well as through their ears, if you in your daily walk act as becometh the gospel of Christ.

 

Then, again, I commend the music of these horses’ bells, not only for loudness, but for clearness. Many people cannot understand our sermons. There are words we use that they do not try to comprehend, and some which the carnal mind cannot receive but they can understand your sermons, if they cannot mine. If you have traded honourably, if you, instead of taking undue advantage, have only taken that which is your due, if they have seen you refuse to tell a lie though you might have gained much by it, if they have known you to stand firm in your integrity, while others laughed at you as a fool and a madman, they can understand it. My sermons may be mistifying, but yours would not be. The church bell may sometimes have a cracked note, but the bells upon the horses will be so clear that they will be compelled in their consciences to believe what you teach.

 

Again, I commend the music of these bells for its constancy. The church bell rings but once a week; I am preaching to you some three or four sermons in a week, but you if you consecrate your common things, will be preaching all day long. You will keep the bells upon the horses ringing every time the horses nod their heads. Every time they move there will be a fresh peal, and that is the advantage of putting the bells not on the steeple, but on the horse, so that they must always ring. This place is shut up a great portion of the week, and only opened occasionally for worship, but you ought to keep your preaching places open always. There, behind the counter, should be your pulpit, or in the Corn Exchange, or the Market, or in the family; you should be always preaching. Your life should be always one continual sacrament, always one constant service of God. I commend this music, then, for its constancy as well as for its loudness and for its clearness.

 

Again, we must praise it for its universality. My church bell can only ring in one place, and the bells in the parish church only ring in the steeples where they hang; but the bells upon the horses ring wherever the horses go; and so with your piety, it will ring wherever you go. You can preach in the lodging-house, you can preach in the backroom yonder, where poverty has found a haunt, you can preach wherever God in his providence has cast you; at the Boardroom table, in the midst of the Corporation, in the Senate, in the House of Commons, you can preach wherever God calls you. I say again, the bells upon the horses ring wherever the horses go, and so must your piety ring wherever you are. This universal preaching in every court, and lane, and alley, is better far for effect than our preaching ever can be.

 

Once more, I commend the bells upon the horses for their harmony. You know our church bells ring different notes. You go into one, you hear Puseyism; you go into another, and you hear sound evangelical doctrine, you enter another and you hear all but infidelity. Church bells run through the octave of tone. Among true Christians, our bells often ring a little differently. My Wesleyan brothers’ bell does not ring quite the same as mine, nor mine exactly the same as the Independents’; but, mark, the bells on the horses all are alike. One Christian man’s life is like another Christian man’s life. There is nothing contradictory in the practical sermon, if there be in the doctrinal. If the vocal testimony of the Church should be somewhat divided, yet the loving testimony of the Church is always one, if it be always holiness, holiness, holiness unto the Lord. See to it, then, that you ring these bells upon the horses for their lovely harmony, and the absence of all discord.

 

And then once more. I commend the bells upon the horses, for they ring out a divine note. Our church bells do not always do that. Sometimes our sermons are a little to the honor and glory of the speaker, a little to the honor and glory of a particular Church, but the bells on the horses ring out not the glory of man, but holiness to the Lord, to the Lord, to the Lord. And so if you consecrate your whole life, the testimony of that life may be to your credit, but still it will be far more to the honor and glory of God. There will be no fear that man shall take the honor of your pious consecration, of your holy watchfulness, of your humble integrity, of your industry, your perseverance, and your constancy in the path of right. The bells upon your horses shall ring a diviner note than I fear will yet be rung from the bells of our pulpit. I have thus sought to commend the music.

 

III. And now I close, by asking you to go home and TUNE YOUR BELLS TO THIS NOTE.

 

You have many bells in your house, go home and tune first of all the chamber bell. It is an ill thing when a Christian husband is a worse husband than a wordly one; it is an evil thing when the husband and wife do not live together as partakers of the grace of Christ. Perhaps you will say this is a very homely remark, but I think it is a very necessary one, for if a man cannot conduct himself well in his own family, what is he in the Church? I fear there have been many who have been mighty men in the Church who, if their private affairs had been a little examined, might have come out a little scarred and marred in the ordeal. Should I have a Christian man here who is not acting according to the Christian mandate, should I have a Christian woman here who pulleth her house down with her own hands, through idleness and carelessness, let me speak to them. How can the husband think of edifying others at the prayer-meeting until first he is what he should be before his own house? The husband is to love his wife, even as Christ loved the Church, the wife must see that she reverence her husband, the children must be obedient, and the household affairs must be ordered with discretion, or else your bells are not Holiness unto the Lord.

 

Then when you have looked at that, look at the kitchen-bell; see that it sounds forth Holiness to the Lord. Let the servant, not with eye-service, as a man pleaser, serve her master, and let the master take care that he giveth unto his servant that which is just and equal. Oh! it is a blessed thing when there is piety in the kitchen, and when the whole household is a Church. Indeed, my brethren, I can speak the joy of one who has servants that fear God, very often have my eyes been filled with tears through the peace, and joy, and rest of spirit that I have had in my own household since God has given me those that fear his name. See to it, that the kitchen-bell does not ring a contrary note to your parlour-bell, for if the kitchen can say, “My master is pious abroad, but he is wicked at home; he can talk very well in the pulpit, and pray very nicely at the prayer-meeting, but he neglects us; he is harsh, over-bearing, and passionate, it will spoil all my sermons. If you say to the servants “Come and hear our minister,” she will say, “I do not want to hear him, if he is not a better man than you are, he will not do much good to me.” Mark then, if the bells of the horses are to be holy, certainly the bells of the kitchen should be holy too.

 

Then some of you have got a shop bell, a little bell which rings as soon as ever any one comes in. Now take care that this is Holiness to the Lord. If people get cheated at other shops, do not let them get cheated at yours, or they still be sure to say, “Ah!” you hear Spurgeon; that is your religion, is it?” They shall be sure to throw the blame on your religion and not on you. If there be a place where they get short-weight, let it never be at yours; if there be a place where there is a want of integrity, or civility, or attention, let it not be yours, but seek so to act that you do not make your religion help your trade, yet you keep your trade always in subservience to your religion, and seek to glorify God in all that you do. Some of you have got a factory bell, that bell rings at certain hours, and I see your men come streaming down the street to work. Now make that bell Holiness to the Lord. When will the time come when all these quarrellings shall be done with between master and man? When shall the day come when both of them shall seek to have perfect peace and harmony? For it is to their mutual interest, let them know. Oh! when shall it be that the workman shall feel that he has all that which is just and equal? And on the other hand when shall the master feel that he has not to deal with men who when given an inch will take an ell, but who are content to deal as fairly with him as he would with them. If I have any of your great cotton lords here, if I have any men who have many servants, let them take care that their religion turns their factory-bell, or else I would not give a farthing for all their religion, let them give what they may towards the maintenance of it. Then some of you have got visiting-bell, for I have seen it marked over, “visitors.” And what are visits among the higher classes? It was my misfortune once to sit in the corner of a drawing-room, and listen to the conversation during a visit. If it had been condensed into the sense or usefulness it contained, it might have been spoken in something like the thousandth part of a second. But there it went on, talk, talk, talk, about nothing at all and when it was done they went away I have no doubt greatly refreshed. Now I think the visits of Christian people should never be of that kind. If you go to see anybody, know what you are going for and have a message to go with, and go with some intention. If God had meant you and me to waste our time in flying visits he would have made us butterflies and not men. He would have made us so that we might sip the nectar from the flowers like bees instead of which he has made men whose time is precious and whose hours cannot be weighed in the scale with diamonds. Let your visits be rather to the sick to give them comfort, to the poor to give them help, to your friends to show yourself friendly, and to the godly to get godly refreshment, than to the frivolous to waste an hour or to the fashionable to maintain a fancied dignity. Let everything, whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do be done to the glory of God. Physician, there is a bell at your door, let that be holiness to the Lord. Let those kind acts of yours to the distressed poor, let those divine acts of stooping down to the poor wayfarer in his suffering, consecrate your practice. Let your bell be Holiness to the Lord. Let each of you, whatever his calling may be, seek to find some special way in which that calling may conduce to the glory of Christ. You are a little star in the Pleiades, do not wish to be the pole-star, if you were taken out of the Pleiades, the constellation would not be what it now is. Keep where you are, but shed your special rays upon the earth; and if you be but a little star, do not the little stars together shed much light, and earth were dark if they all were quenched? I have tried to preach a plain homely sermon, but, perhaps I have not hit the mark, perhaps I have not made you feel what I want you to feel. Why, I would have every dustman’s bell Holiness unto the Lord. Whatever your business is, though you are a scavenger, though you sweep a crossing, though you black shoes—whatever you have to do, let everything be done to the glory of God. And, if any say it cannot be done, do you show them the way, for the best practical proof is the proof of fact. I may preach to-day, and preach twenty days about making the bells upon the horses holiness to the Lord, but if you do not tune your own private conversation, the text will but excite laughter among some, and no practical profit will it be to any. Is there anything wrong at home? go and set it to rights. Is there anything wrong in the shop or in the kitchen? If you have not done what you ought to have done as a Christian man, if you have not acted as you ought to have done in your trade, go and do better. Not that you are to be saved by works, I have been speaking to those who are saved already. Being saved, show by your profession what you believe and would by your acts glorify your Master. Let me pray you to think often of this text—”In that day shall there be on the bells of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord.”
http://www.apibs.org/chs/0399.htm

 

REJOICE-OR GRUMBLE – By A.W. Tozer

 

I think all of us meet Christian men and women who always seem to look on the gloomy side and are never able to do anything with life’s problems but grumble about them! I meet them often and when I do, I wonder: “Can these people be reading and trusting the same Bible I have been reading?”

The Apostle Peter wrote to the tempted, suffering and persecuted believers in his day and noted with thanksgiving that they could rejoice because they counted God’s promises and provisions greater than their trials!

We do live in a sinful and imperfect world, and as believers in Christ we acknowledge that perfection is a relative thing now-and God has not really completed a thing with us, as yet! Peter testified that the persecuted and suffering Christians of his day were looking, in faith, to a future state of things immeasurably better than that which they knew, and that state of things would be perfect and complete!

 

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article4684.shtml

 

The Holy Spirit, the Church, and the Nations

 

by T. Austin-Sparks

 

Chapter 1 – Introductory

 

Reading: Acts 1:1-5.

 

“Jesus… was received up, after that he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles whom he had chosen… and, being assembled together with them, he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, said he, ye heard from me: for John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days hence.”

 

It is of the greatest importance that we, as the Lord’s people, should be deeply concerned about two things.

 

There should be in our hearts, in the first place, a very real concern for the fullest Christian life that it is possible to know. Such a concern is a necessary link between us and that which is the Lord’s will for us: for you notice that when the incoming of the Holy Spirit is spoken of in the Word, the expression ‘filled’ is often used. The Lord’s thought is ‘fulness’: it is not just that we should ‘receive’ the Spirit (cf. Acts 8:15,17), but that we should be filled with the Spirit; not just that we should be ‘filled’ (cf. 1 Cor. 4:8), but that we should be filled with the Spirit. If, therefore, we are to come into God’s thought for us, we need to be deeply exercised about this matter of knowing a life of as great a fulness as the Lord intends it to be.

 

And, in the second place, we should have a deep concern for the most effective possible witness in the world by the Church – that the Church’s testimony in the nations should be as effective as the Lord would have it.

 

These two things are essential to the realisation of the Lord’s thought and intention. But, in relation thereto, there are certain important considerations.

 

No Church or Christianity Without the Holy Spirit

 

In the first place, ‘Christianity’ – the Christian life and the Church – owes its very existence to the advent of the Holy Spirit, to that day which is marked out in history as ‘the Day of Pentecost’. There had been many days of Pentecost before that one, for the Feast of Weeks, the feast of the firstfruits of the wheat harvest (Ex. 23:16, 34:22), observed on the fiftieth day (Gk. pentekostos, fiftieth) after the Passover, was one of the seven principal festal seasons in Israel. The day of Pentecost had been observed year by year throughout the centuries. But there had never been a Day of Pentecost like this one. So much was this so, that this is the only ‘Pentecost’ that we ever think of when we use the word. We forget that it was an annual event, and so a commonplace in the life of Israel. Although, of course, the actual term ‘Pentecost’ only entered into the common vocabulary of the Greek-speaking Jews and proselytes of the latter centuries B.C., the feast itself formed part of the common course of Israelitish festivities; it was what we might almost call an ‘everyday idea’ in Israel. But that particular occasion swallowed up all the others. It brought into full meaning all that the others had foreshadowed; it was The Day of Pentecost, rightly called that in the Scripture. Christianity and the Church owe their existence to what happened on that Day. This means that there is no Christianity – there is no Church, as recognised in Heaven and in the Word of God – that is not the product of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, neither Church nor Christian life is possible.

 

From which, of course, it follows that Christianity and the Church can never fulfil their purpose, or reach their Divinely intended goal, on any other ground than that upon which they started, that is, upon the ground of the Holy Spirit. No alternatives are open to them; there are no substitutes for the Holy Spirit available. If the Holy Spirit does not continue with them, then Christianity and the Church lose the very meaning of their existence.

 

Fundamental Principles Underlay the ‘Acts’ of the Spirit

 

A second consideration is this. The opening phase of the Holy Spirit’s activity was not just a set of unrelated acts. We have sometimes substituted for the artificial and unwarranted title in our Bible, ‘The Acts of the Apostles’, that other and better title, ‘The Acts of the Holy Spirit’; but we have still regarded the events that are here recorded as a mere set of acts. We rightly attribute them to the Holy Spirit; but for us they are still just so many – of course very wonderful – ‘acts’. And yet, they were not just unrelated acts of the Holy Spirit, and certainly not of the apostles. The falsity of the latter title is seen in the fact that not half-a-dozen of the apostles have a place in the book, after the first chapter. After being listed there in toto, most of them then disappear from the book completely; and the apostles who really play a part in the ‘Acts’ are very few – Peter and Paul, and one or two others. No; this may be a record of the acts of some apostles, but it certainly is not a record of the Acts of the Apostles, as a whole.

 

My point is this: that the ‘acts’ that are here narrated were related to fundamental principles of the Holy Spirit. These events were not the beginning and end of everything, in themselves, they were the demonstration of certain spiritual realities which lay behind them. We go completely astray when we fail to recognise this. They were not merely isolated ‘happenings’, without further meaning than themselves. They had a very deep meaning – a much greater significance than what merely appeared on the surface; they carried with them deep spiritual truths. If you and I are really concerned about this matter of a full Christian life and of the Church’s effective witness in the nations, we have got to get behind the ‘acts’ to the meaning of the acts, to the principles which the acts demonstrated, for they were all most significant things, as we shall see later.

 

The Church at the Beginning – and Now

 

At this point, we must note – what is, alas, only too obvious – the sad contrast existing between the first thirty years of Christianity and of the Church, and that of all the centuries since. There really has been nothing in all these centuries comparable to those thirty years. The known ‘world’, certainly, was a very much smaller place than it is now. But, even so, making all allowance for this, the indisputable fact remains that then, in that more limited known world of nations and people, an impact was registered with which nothing that has occurred since bears any comparison. It is doubtful whether all the subsequent centuries put together could represent the spiritual force that was there in those early years. The witness in the nations was unparalleled in its effectiveness. We need only to recall what happened during the lifetime of the Apostle Paul alone: to think of how things were when Paul was converted – the Church small and struggling, limited in range and in effect – and then of the situation when Paul went to the Lord – churches in practically every nation, and many far beyond all national locations. “Their sound went out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world” (Rom. 10:18) – that is the statement. It is a tremendous record for a mere thirty years of Christian service, on the part, mainly, of one man. There has been nothing to compare with it since.

 

But there then set in something which checked the spiritual impact almost entirely – indeed, started a downgrade movement; so that, but for little lamps of testimony, from time to time, here and there, in remote places, the Church as a whole lost its testimony in the world, and its sense of responsibility for it. So deeply and terribly was that true, that, even at so late a period as the end of the eighteenth century, when William Carey (1761-1834), away in a country church, was speaking about the obligation that rests upon the Church of God for taking the Gospel of Christ to the heathen, he was immediately pounced upon by a member of the gathered company, and rebuked with: ‘Young man, if God ever wants to evangelize the heathen, He will do it with better material than you!’ ‘He will do it without our help’ – that was the thought. There was an utter loss of a sense of responsibility.

 

But then there came a revival – what we may call a ‘renaissance’ – of that responsibility. I am not going to give a history of missions: that is not the point; but just think of all that has been devoted to this undertaking during, say, the last hundred years. Think of all the lives that have gone out into the nations with the inspiration to evangelize – a great and mighty army of men and women; think of all the millions of money that have been poured into this. If it were possible to produce a comprehensive document, or statement, showing how many Societies have been, and are now, engaged in this work, and how many representatives they have had since they were founded, and how much organization there has been, and how many countries have given of their resources in persons and means and energy; it would be a startling and amazing story.

 

Today, with it all, not half of the world knows anything about the Gospel! not half the world is touched! And what is more, Christianity is losing its influence in this world – you have only to look at our own country of Britain to see this. We are noting it in these very days. How tragic is the loss of testimony in high places, the loss of the place of God amongst authorities and rulers; the terrible growth of godlessness, and God-forgetfulness, and God-ignoring, in the Western world. What is the matter?

 

I say all this by way of drawing a comparison. In the beginning, the Church registered such an impact upon this earth that men were provoked to say: “These that have turned the world upside down are come hither”! (Acts 17:6). Rulers and nations – and hell – were stirred, were provoked with fear for the presence of this ‘thing’. It is not like that now. I do not dwell too much upon it, but, with every honour and respect for all that is devoted and true and sacrificing, the spiritual ineffectiveness today, the kind of Christianity that is so very general, makes a terrible story – I am speaking quite generally. Why? what is the matter?

 

The Lord Would Continue His Original Work

 

It brings us back to this whole question of the Holy Spirit. And it challenges us, and provokes in us, surely, some questions. The question that immediately arises in our hearts is: Have we any ground for believing that the Holy Spirit would continue or repeat the works of those first thirty years? Was it just something for a time? Did God just then, in this massive way, demonstrate something, which He did not intend to be perpetuated or repeated: something that was for a time only, something merely to be looked back upon?

 

I think the answer lies in two directions.

 

First of all, surely it is at least implied in the words of Luke at the beginning of this second treatise of his: “The former treatise I made… concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach, until the day in which he was received up”. Implicit in that statement is – not only that now Luke is saying: ‘I am going to tell you what Jesus continues to do after He is received up’ – but, surely, that His ‘receiving up’, and His continuing of the work from His heavenly position, is something that is not related to time at all, much less to the few short years of one man’s life, His life on earth. Surely we have ground for believing that the Lord, from His heavenly position, would go on. And in reality He is going on with His work: because, as the Scriptures throughout testify, it is a work for a whole dispensation. The Lord Jesus Himself said: “I am with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the age” (Matt. 28:20, mg.). The end of the age did not come when the Apostle Paul was executed and went to the Lord!

 

But we have other evidence that answers our question: namely, the fact that through this age, and even in our own day, wherever the Lord has His required conditions He does this very thing. He does it – the thing happens! It may not be world-wide; nevertheless, here and there, from time to time, the Lord has done something comparable in its range to what happened at the beginning – He has just done it. And, in some parts of the world, He is doing it now: it is there, and it can be seen. The Lord is doing something quite wonderful, and when you see it and know it, you have to say: This is just what we read of in the book of the Acts! Yes, there are instances through history that prove that, if the Lord has His required conditions, He would go on with the same kind of work as He did at the beginning.

 

That leads us, of course, to ask the further question: Why was the work arrested? why, at a certain clearly defined point in the history of Christianity, did the work begin to fade out? You can see when it began to happen; and, if you look into it carefully, you can see why it began to happen. We could, in fact, put the question in another form: What is the ground of the Holy Spirit’s work? If we can answer the second question, we have answered the first – why it was arrested? The answer is found in a discovery of the ground upon which the Holy Spirit works, and continues His working.

 

http://www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/001581.html

 

Notes on the Book of Ruth -Part 1 – by T. Austin-Sparks

 

In a peculiar way, largely because of its comprehensiveness and conciseness, this book sets forth what was brought before us at the beginning of this conference: faith, through adversity, unto enlargement, establishment, and life. That would be so apparent if you could read the little book right through.

 

If I were to take any particular fragment from this book which I consider to be the key to it, I think I should take from chapter 4, verse 5, the last clause: “to raise the name of the dead upon his inheritance.” You could add to that what is in the 15th verse, first clause, “He shall be unto thee a restorer of life.” I think everything in the book circles around and finds its focal point in that fragment in verse 5 – “raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance.”

 

By universal consent and accord, this book goes by the name of Ruth. But why not Boaz? He was a man, to begin with, without the slightest suggestion of individual comparison, he was not a woman. He was a wealthy man, a religious and highly respected man; a man of outstanding personality; an honored and distinguished citizen. And he seems to have been the chief and most responsible actor in this drama — and he was of Israel. Who was Ruth, after all? What was Ruth? She was a widow. Nothing discreditable about that. She was a Moabitess, and there was a good deal discreditable and dishonorable about that. We shall see that she was a stranger, an alien in the land – why should the book go down in history under her name? Well, you see, the answer to that question is, firstly, the message of the book. But more than that, it is the sum of the whole Bible.

 

For the whole plan of redemption, in all its principles and in all its glories, is gathered into this little book. You can read it in ten minutes. There is no more comprehensive book in the Bible in relation to the principles of God’s way of redemption. This book needs to be rescued from the backseat. I trust that today something of that will be done. I have said that the whole great plan of redemption is found here in principle. And oh, how very much there is here of help for the life of the Lord’s people. I confess to you that though I have read it many times and have known it for many years, in some early morning hours, recently, in the far west of America, it brought a new thrill to my own heart as I meditated in this book. I felt the Lord was speaking to me in relation to this conference.

 

Well, let us come to it, and begin to extract, or take note of, some of the beautiful and wonderful things that it has to say to us.

 

The book is so simple, isn’t it? There’s nothing profound here. We’re not dealing with mysteries. It’s the easiest book of all to read. And so these wonderful things about the Lord, and His people — you and me — are brought to us, without any strain or effort, in the very simplest way. We must not stumble, though, at its simplicity. This book unfolds itself and its message along certain quite clearly discernible lines that run right through it.

 

We note its historic setting. To what place in the history of the Old Testament does it belong? That is stated for us in the very first sentence: “Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled.” Although it must have been written long after those days, its own internal evidence shows that it was when — not after — the judges ruled. This is not a sequel to the book of Judges. This is something that actually took place in the days of the Judges.

 

Now you need to be refreshed as to the content of the book of Judges. All that we can say at the moment is that the book of Judges is one of the most terrible books in the whole Bible. Indeed, the most shocking things in the Bible are found there. There are those things that you don’t like to read; you like to pass over them; you just want to shut your eyes, and take no notice. Yes, a dark, terrible and at times a very evil situation existed, showing capabilities of the people of God which are altogether beyond imagination: the depths of iniquity in the human heart; the remote position from the thoughts of God to which His people can come. It is difficult to speak in exaggerated terms of some things in that book. Indeed, more than once, as we read through the book of Judges we have been amazed at the patience of God; the willingness of God to come back to His people. Well, right in that book, while that condition in general existed, you set this contrast. This beautiful picture is given to us in the book of Ruth.

 

And so we are brought to see God acting, with the long view, in the midst of such conditions, and at such a time. Look at the last words of the book of Judges: “In those days, there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” And the last words of the book of Ruth: “… and Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David.” God, acting, with a long view, in such conditions, and at such a time. Wonderful to contemplate. Everything seems to be a contradiction of God, and indeed it is. Everything seems to say: “This situation is spiritually hopeless. This is spiritual calamity in its last stages.” And right in the midst of that, God is acting, with a long view. And He’s acting toward that day, bringing in David and the glorious kingdom, and through David another greater than David, and a still more glorious kingdom.

 

I think that very first thought is a tremendously inspiring one, a tremendously reassuring, comforting and encouraging one. We are sometimes inclined to think that the situation is spiritually very desperate, and very difficult, and the thoughts of God are far from being expressed and represented amongst His people. Things have gone far from that, and I say, it’s reassuring to recollect that in worse days than these God was acting, secretly and sovereignly, with a long view, to have it as He ever intended it to be. It’s then that He did it.

 

Well, if we said no more, that’s help, isn’t it? And that’s the message here, right at the very beginning.

 

But let us break this up and let us take up these leading lines, above which the message is unfolded.

 

The first line, of course, is a dark line. It’s the line of tragedy. “In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land.” And we know, do we not, that again and again in the history of Israel, the word of the Lord was fulfilled in that very way. In faithfulness to Him, He would bless His people, in their field, in their basket, and in their stores. That was fulfilled again and again. Outstandingly, you remember in the days of Elijah: “Thus saith the Lord, ‘there shall not be rain upon the earth these seven years”, and the drought and the famine followed, with devastating result. And when you look at the book of Judges, you’re not surprised, are you, at this famine? The famine was not just something that happened. It was a part of the divine judgement, because of the spiritual state, because of their lost distinctiveness.

 

Read in the book of Judges again. Sometimes it seems that even the best people were implicated in this. Gideon! Even in Gideon’s own home, the home of his father, there were idols. And later, after the Lord had used Gideon so mightily, he set up an image. The lost distinctiveness of the Lord’s people! He was called to stand apart from all other gods. And resultantly, their lost ascendancy over their enemies. A case of constantly reiterated defeat and subjugation to one nation or another. Lost ascendancy, lost unity — they were a disintegrated people morally and spiritually. They had no authoritative testimony in the world; it was gone. God was not all in the land where He had so signally and wonderfully moved in order that He should be the only God of Israel. We have spoken about this earlier. Dividedness, God was against. And the singleness of God’s place, toward which He moved — firstly in calling Abram out of Ur, from the 5,000 gods that were worshipped there, to be His only God; and then, keeping him waiting till the day when Canaan was assailed; through Joshua, for the destruction of the seven nations because of their gods. Clear that land of idolatry, to bring His people into a land where He alone — utterly — was the object of their occupation and worship. Here, there are other idols in the land, and their testimony is gone. He is not all. No wonder there’s a famine in the land.

 

If you like to translate that into spiritual terms, you see, it works that way spiritually now, as it were, literally and historically in the old dispensation. The measure of our food — our spiritual resources, our plenty, our increase, our enlargement — is the measure in which we are conformed to the thoughts of God. It’s governed in that way. And there’s a great deal of spiritual famine about today. Yes, the Lord’s people today are very hungry; indeed, they’re starving. And everywhere you go you have this complaint: “We can’t find bread. It’s difficult to find any spiritual food. There’s a famine in hearing the Word in any fullness.” And you know, Bible teaching is not always feeding. There may be plenty of Bible teaching. Indeed, there may be Bible Institutes galore and the people may still be starving. A large percentage of the Lord’s people may attend them and go through their sessions and still be poor, thin, scraggly things in their spiritual life. Don’t let us confuse these things for food is food; and there is a dearth of real spiritual food and largely because the full thoughts of God for His people do not obtain, do not govern. It’s otherwise where they do. So then, there is famine in the land.

 

Note: “And a certain man of Bethlehem-judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab; he and his wife and his two sons.”

 

Now Elimelech, his wife and two sons were very decent people, very nice people, were very good people. We haven’t anything at all that’s said against them, in their moral life, in their respectability. Perhaps in their God-fearingness, in heart. But here’s a thing to note: How often good, and honest, and sincere people of God become involved in tragedy because of the general state of the Church. Look at this line of tragedy. Here it is in verse 1. “They went to sojourn in the country of Moab.” Vs.2 “The name of the man is Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the name of his two sons Mahlon and Chilion. And they came unto the country of Moab, and continued there, and they took their wives of the women of Moab. The name of the one was Orpah, the name of the other Ruth. And they dwelt there about ten years. Mahlon and Chilion died, both of them. And the woman was left of her two sons, and her husband.” Vs.20 and Naomi said — “Call me not Naomi; call me Mara — ‘bitterness’. I went out full. The Lord hath brought me home again empty. Why call ye me Naomi? Seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me.”

 

It’s tragedy, isn’t it? Tragedy. And it’s the tragedy of good people being involved in a situation on the part of the Lord’s people more generally, which is not according to the Lord’s mind. Do you know what I mean? You see, this was evidently lost heart. This man Elimelech lost heart, lost hope. He lost faith. He said “It’s no use staying here. There’s nothing for us here. There’s no prospect here, no way here. We’d better get out.” This man lost heart and hope and faith, and made a terrible mistake which led to tragedy — because of the state of the Lord’s people. Oh, how many things there are in the lives of so many of the Lord’s people which would never be if the Lord’s people as a whole were right. You think of all the things which have come in to Christianity, which ought never to have come in, and would never have, if the original position of the day of Pentecost and afterward had been maintained. All the things that came in when spiritual decline came in, and all this terrible heritage of the day when the Church began to lose its spiritual position. And how many have become involved? We’ve got to take this attitude, dear friends, about people who seem to be in a mess. Why are so many in a mess? It’s not their own fault. It’s because they haven’t got the help they ought to have, by the Church, and amongst the people of God. Because things are not in that condition when they can get their help amongst the people of God.

 

You see, the state of the Lord’s people collectively has a very tragic repercussion upon the individuals of the Lord’s people and their lives. When the Lord’s people collectively are in a right spiritual state, corresponding to the Lord’s mind and thought and revealed will, then the individuals find their safety among the Lord’s people, and are saved from a lot of mistakes. They find their life there. They find their guidance there. They find their protection there. They find their wisdom there. That’s how it ought to be. But because that state is not so, as the Lord would have it, lots of people are just making terrible mistakes and blunders. They’re involved in this whole thing, and it’s tragedy for many individuals because they haven’t got the values of the corporate and collective life of the Lord’s people as He would have it. We must be very considerate and very sympathetic, and very understanding. For the blame is not always upon the individual. They have become involved in a Christianity which has brought in a lot of things that God never intended, and which never would have been if things had continued as at the beginning.

 

So here are decent, respectable, nice people, God-fearing in their own heart, but moving out along a line of terrible tragedy, because the nation was wrong, because the corporate body was wrong. It was like that.

 

But then, they’re not altogether without blame, because there is individual responsibility. And tragedy just must overtake those who surrender their faith and principle to policy or personal security.

 

Have you got that? You see, they knew quite well that the covenant related to that land, which was their home. They belonged to the covenant land and the covenant people, and they knew quite well what God had said about other lands and especially about Moab. Whether they’d slipped up, in forgetting their Bibles, I’m not able to say; but, you know, we get into a lot of trouble by not knowing our Bibles. Doing a lot of things that are altogether wrong, whereas the Bible has something to say about that quite precisely and definitely, if only we would know our Bibles, read carefully our Bibles.

 

You know, David got into a terrible, terrible bit of trouble on one occasion because he forgot his Bible. Over the cart and the ark. Putting the ark on the cart. Oh yes, and the Lord said the Levites should carry the ark, not a cart. It was there, in the Bible. David was very upset with the Lord for smiting the drivers of the cart to death. But he went and had it out with the Lord, and took his Bible and found where it was written that the Levites should carry the Ark. And he adjusted things, but it did not mean that he was saved from the tragedy. Listen to this: The Lord has given us the Word and made known His mind to us. He won’t save us from the tragedy. He won’t save us from the tragedy that follows our ignorance of what we could know, and should know. That’s a very deep lesson that comes out of this case.

 

So, tragedy must overtake those who surrender faith. Ah, yes! It was a call to faith, wasn’t it? You see, the whole of this wonderful story in this little book works out to such a triumphant issue because faith comes in somewhere. Faith came back where it had been lost. We mustn’t anticipate, but you see, it came back, right into the family circle of Elimelech.

 

The lost faith led to the tragedy. The recovered faith led to recovery and glory.

 

Ah, yes! A very severe test of faith, it’s true. A severe test of faith, but you’ve got a principle here. The Lord Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights and was hungered. The situation perhaps, physically, was quite critical, perhaps desperate. And Satan said, “Come on, let these stones be made bread.”

 

Here’s a test of faith in the Father, isn’t it? You see the principle? Whether faith in the Father will lead us to do the right thing or loss of faith will lead us to do the wrong thing?

 

What a tragedy it would have been if the Lord Jesus had surrendered faith in His Father to apparent necessity, to the circumstances which seemed after all so desperate and so serious.

 

Here it is: Elimelech let go his faith under testing. Surrendered it to circumstances. Surrendered it to policy. And one of the most disastrous things is policy — what is it politic to do, as over against what God has said? Allowing policy to govern, or our own advantage, our own security, our own well-being, when God has made His mind about it perfectly clear in His Word.

 

You see, we cannot, after all, preserve our fullness (1:21). “I went out full”. We cannot preserve our fullness off of God’s ground. We may have a lot, but get off of God’s ground and you can’t keep it. They thought they would keep it all, you see, by going to Moab. To preserve their fullness, they went out full. Evidently, they took everything with them. They thought they would be quite secure. They’d brought everything with them. Full they went out, she said, and they came back empty.

 

We can preserve nothing at all if we get off of God’s ground, if we get onto ground that is foreign to God. And Moab was altogether foreign to God, and foreign to God’s covenant. Indeed, it was worse than that.

 

And so Naomi said, in these terrible words: “I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home empty.” “The Lord hath testified against me, the Almighty hath afflicted me.”

 

You see, God acted sovereignly, in disapproval. What for? To get them back. Adversity under God’s hand is always intended to be firstly, a corrective and then a restorative. God is sovereign, and He acted sovereignly with them. And so He brought this adversity upon them. He could do no other. In His kindness, in His mercy, and according to His beneficent thought, He chastened them.

 

David said, “Before I was afflicted, I went astray.” How true that is here in this case. Ah, yes, it’s all the dark line. Here is, what? Well, death. Elimelech is dead. His two sons are dead. Death, deadlock, impasse. No way then! Everything has come to a deadlock, to a standstill. All tied up. Barrenness. Naomi tells that of herself and the two wives of her two sons — No children! All is barrenness and death when we act contrary to the revealed mind of God.

 

It is a terrible lesson — No fruitful ministry if we’re off of God’s ground. Oh, take it to heart! God has made His mind perfectly clear: on all matters concerning my life and service, He has laid down His principles. He has told us where and on what ground He will meet us; He has told us that it is in His House that He’ll meet with His people. He has told us that He has appointed in His House certain things and certain people, under the Holy Spirit’s anointing, for our direction, for our safety, and for our good. Let us get off of that ground and see what happens. You can put it to the test. God forbid that you would, but it’s apparent, it’s quite clear. There’s limitation and spiritual death, and barrenness. The lives that are just moving fast on toward their close, with a story of barrenness that might have been a story of fullness, of richness of service, because they would not and will not recognize God’s principles amongst His people.

 

Say what you like about it. Blame the Lord’s people; blame the Lord’s servants if you will. God’s word is perfectly clear on that. We shall find our way, and we shall find our service on the ground that God has laid down. And if we, knowing that, or, having had it given to us in the Word of God, (and we should know it) ignore it, or give ourselves out of it, depart from it, refuse to have it, violate it – alright – spiritual death, spiritual barrenness, spiritual deadlock.

 

These are things that we should lay to heart, hard as they sound. Let’s lay them to heart. The inheritance which ought to be ours, and is ours by right, by covenant, as in this case, either falls into abeyance – we’re deriving nothing from it – or it passes to others. There’s a terrible warning in the book of the Revelation — “Let no man take thy crown.” That crown that could be ours passing to others.

 

Well, that’s one of the lines upon which this whole story unfolds. It’s a tragic line. It’s the dark line. And I know you’re oppressed by it. Still, it’s as well that we recognize the message of this book. Because, dear friends, it’s not only a message which applies to us individually in our Christian lives, but you see, this is one of the major lines of the whole doctrine of redemption, which probably we shall see later on.

 

Until you recognize the ground of death, the reasons for death and deadlock, and barrenness, you’re not in a position to appreciate the wonderful, wonderful mercy of God.

 

So we pass to the next line along which the book unfolds. We could gather that under one little phrase and title of the Lord’s well known to us in the New Testament, the God of hope. That’s a dark, terrible background, but over that stands this — The God of Hope.

 

Ruth 1:6 “Then she arose with her daughter-in-laws, that she might return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab how that the Lord had visited His people in giving them bread.”

 

Vs.22 “Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law with her, which returned out of the country of Moab, and they came to Bethlehem, in the beginning of the barley harvest.”

 

Good news from a far country! Goods news in a far country. She had heard. Out of the land, in the land of Moab God had visited His people. It’s difficult to place this in the book of Judges. But it was evidently one of those periods between the tragedies that were there. There were those periods, as you know in the Judges, when the situation was changed. For a little while, under Gideon, for instance, and under Deborah, and under others — insight patches in a long, dark day of 400 years. It was evidently in one of those brighter periods in that dark history, that this is set. “The Lord visited His people, and gave them bread.” — and they passed from famine to harvest.

 

There is a place where God meets us, but He will only meet us in that place. And that place is resurrection — on resurrection ground.

 

Well, “the Lord is risen indeed!” Says Thomas, “I won’t believe it.” And so he was not with them when the Lord appeared at first. He was somewhere away, outside, wandering about, perhaps, in his despair and darkness. The Lord never went after Thomas. He let him get on with it, let him stew in his misery. “Here is the place where I’ll meet you, where you believe that I am risen.” “Be not faithless, but believing.” It was a question of faith, wasn’t it? To believe in the resurrection.

 

The good news had gone out. “We have seen the Lord. The Lord is risen”, but he wound up not believing the good news; and so he was left outside in the dark — and the Lord didn’t go out to him. It was not until he came in. How it was he came in on that day we don’t know. Something had been going on in him. Perhaps he’d come to the place where he said — “I’m certainly getting nowhere along this line. This is getting me nowhere. If there is any hope at all it seems to be amongst those people, in that room. The least I can do is to go and see.” Ah, yes, and when he got on to the ground where the Lord was believed and where they were enjoying the reality of His resurrection, the Lord met him and he met the Lord.

 

There is always a ground, you know, like that. You know, the story of the prodigal has that aspect to it. The elder brother would not go in. Alright, let him stay outside as miserable as he could be. All the rejoicing is inside. He’s got to come on to resurrection ground in order to be in the good of resurrection life and joy. That’s the place where the Lord meets us, you see, the barley harvest.

 

Now you Bible students know quite well that barley is always the type of resurrection. It’s the first of the harvests of the grain. Barley is referred to quite a lot in this little book, isn’t it? Let’s look. Six times in the little book. And from the barley harvest Ruth comes into her new life, her new fullness, by what Boaz gives her of this store of barley. Everything is resting on the barley and the barley harvest.

 

What about those five barley loaves with which the Lord fed multitudes? What did He go on to say immediately afterwards? “My flesh is life indeed.” “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?” Well, the mystery of Christ imparting His life to us is only known by our being on resurrection ground, isn’t it? The Holy Spirit ministering Christ after His resurrection. His resurrection, His risen Life ministered to us. It’s the barley loaf, you see. You can go through the Bible with it and see it; it’s always this one thing: resurrection.

 

1 Peter 1:3,4 “The living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead unto an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not away reserved for you.” You can read that right in the book of Ruth.

 

So God always moves back, as well as forward, along the line of resurrection. That’s the message here. He’s moving back along the line of resurrection. In other words, God is always on the positive line. This situation is no pleasure to God, no satisfaction to God. This tragedy of things — either in the land or in the lives of these few — gives God no glory. He always reacts to a situation like that on the principle and the line of resurrection.

 

He’s on a positive line. Do believe this. Are you somewhere in a tragic situation? Have you come to arrest? A deadlock, an impasse, and barrenness? Do you feel you’ve got off the Lord’s ground? Listen, the Lord doesn’t accept that, and He doesn’t want you to accept that. The Lord does not believe that is the ultimate thing. The Lord acts on positive lines. There is no despair and tragedy so deep and terrible but that the Lord will react to it in resurrection.

 

Oh, lay hold of this by faith, lay hold of this, that God is the God of resurrection! God is the God of the barley harvest. His answer to death and desolation? He is the God who raiseth the dead.

 

If you feel like that, believe Him, as that. Believe Him.

 

There’s good news for you. As for Naomi, Good News. The reversing of all our misfortunes is in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Have you got that? Yes.

 

http://www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/000961.html

 

Christ – The Searcher Of Men’s Hearts by David Wilkerson

What is The True Church Of Jesus Christ by David Wilkerson

Reaching the Lost in Uncertain Times by David Wilkerson

Getting to Know the Holy Spirit by David Wilkerson

The Mercy of God (1/5) – Carter Conlon – Times Square Church

If everyone truly understood God’s mercy there would be a continual praise in all the earth. God’s mercy reaches out to the hungry, thirsty, lonely longing soul. His mercy reaches out to the fool that says in his heart there is no God. His mercy rescues those who think commerce and money satisfy the deepest longings of their souls. When God’s people fully understand the tender mercies of God we will begin to cry, “God before your judgment comes let your mercy be known again!” God is stirring His church to stand between the living and the dead, and ask God to one more time to honor His name and save the lost.

John Piper – Remember the Rich Young Man

Don’t want to be rich. Give up treasure in this life because your treasure is in the next.

“How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice”

John Piper – Do Something Risky With Your Life

Have a risky, wild Christian life like Stephen.

“How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice”

John Piper – Are You a Church or a Club?

“What Is the Recession For?”
February 1, 2009
2 Corinthians 1:1-11

Tokin’ the Ghost (and other similar heretical tragedies)

28 February 2009

John Crowder, Ben Dunn, and those following; need to repent of this non-sense.

1 Peter 5:8 – Be of SOBER spirit, be on the alert Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

1 Peter 1:13 – Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep SOBER in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 4:7 – The end of all things is near; therefore, be of sound judgment and SOBER spirit for the purpose of prayer.

2 Timothy 4:5 – But you, be SOBER in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

1 Thessalonians 5:8 – But since we are of the day, let us be SOBER, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation.

1 Peter 4:3 – For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lust, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties and abominable idolatries.

Videos from various YouTube clips.
Music by The Juliana Theory “Emotion is Dead, Pt. 1″
Preaching by Carter Conlon of Times Square Church

Carter Conlon – The Laughing Ministry (God’s not Laughing)

The laughing ministry, God’s not laughing. An eerie trend in a new age movement.

The Great Transition From One Humanity to Another

 

by T. Austin-Sparks

 

Chapter 4 – The All-Governing And Dominating Vision: The Seeing Of Jesus Our Lord

 

Lord, we have to appeal to Thee again for Thy compassion. What a pathetic thing it would be if we tried to do heavenly work with earthly means; Divine work in our own human strength. And that is just where we are now. We need Thy sympathy, Thy compassion, for our speaking and our hearing will really profit us nothing, will have no eternal value. O Lord, help us with Thy Divine help at this time that we may speak under the anointing and with the unction of the Holy Spirit; and also in the same way hear. Anoint our ears, anoint our ears, and give us a hearing that is not just our natural hearing that we may this morning by the power of the Holy Spirit hear the voice of the Son of God and live. Grant us this mercy for Thine Own Name and Glory’s sake, Amen.

 

We have been occupied in these morning hours with the great transition from an old discredited humanity as in Adam to a New accredited Humanity in Christ. Our first attention was with the exposure and the devastation of that discredited humanity as we saw it representatively gathered around the Cross of the Lord Jesus in Caiaphas, Pilate, Judas Iscariot, Peter, and the two on the Emmaus Road. Then we saw what a devastation the Cross was or an exposure of the old humanity at its highest, at its best; and there could have been nothing worse when we were finished. Then we went on to the battleground of the two humanities as we have it in the two letters to the Corinthians: on the one side, “the natural man” which is the old humanity; on the other side, “the spiritual man,” the New.

 

We stood and did little more than look into those letters in a general way, pinpointing a few things in the letters where the carry-over of the old to the New is shown, the conflict being between the natural man and the spiritual man or that which is natural and that which is spiritual, the natural touching so many things, even the most sacred things. The things of the Spirit touched by the hand of the natural man and taken up and used for the natural man’s gratification and glory. That is what is in the First Letter to the Corinthians.

 

There is much more detail, with which we are not going to deal; we have only touched it in order to indicate something. I trust that you have seen the indication of how dangerous it is and with what tragic consequences the touch of the natural man on spiritual things can be. We brought out that most terrible warning, the warning to Christians as in Corinth: to “born again” people called “saints,” separated unto God, came that terrible warning where Israel’s tragedy in the wilderness is taken as the ground of the warning. They perished in the wilderness, and the apostle uses that to warn the Corinthians that the battle can be lost in the wilderness if there is any compromise between the natural and the Spiritual. If you are still in Egypt, while being geographically so to speak out of Egypt but Egypt not being spiritually out of you, then you are positionally where the Corinthians were.

 

Now that is all the negative side, however we came yesterday morning to point out that the answer the apostle gave concerning the whole compass of things in the First Letter, the answer he gave to the ten questions raised by the Corinthians in a letter to him, was not in a code of rules and laws like the Mosaic, but in principles. And all the principles gathered into one principle which amounted to this: how much of Christ is in this? How much of Christ is in your divisions? “Is Christ divided?”

 

Paul, pinpointing the whole question of division, said: “Is Christ divided? Were you baptized into Paul?” Christ is the principle of solving that problem of divisions and all the other matters which I am not going to reiterate now. The answer he gave to the solving of these difficulties is focusing on Christ. The answer he gave them was how much does this minister Christ? How much does this represent of Christ? Everything is tested from that standpoint, judged and settled. Paul said these things are answered by principle and the principle is Christ.

 

“Have I Not Seen Jesus Our Lord?”

 

Now having come past that, with all there is left in the letters, we come onto the positive side. I want you just to look at one or two fragments from the First Letter to the Corinthians. It is only a fragment found in chapter nine at verse one: “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” It is that clause that I want you to take hold of and hold for a moment—“Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”

 

And now over to Second Corinthians, chapter four, verse four: “In whom the god of this age hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, Who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them.” And in verse six: “Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, Who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

 

“Have I Not Seen Jesus Our Lord?”

 

“God has shined into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

 

Again I would like to add another fragment; this time from the Letter to the Galatians, chapter one, verse fifteen. It is in a rather large section, but I would like to lift out just a fragment, “But when it was the good pleasure of God to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the nations”:—It was the good pleasure of God to reveal His Son in me.

 

“Have I Not Seen Jesus Our Lord?”

 

Of course, the immediate context of those words is the apostle authenticating his apostleship and answering those who said that he was not an authentic apostle because he was not one of the twelve. That is connected with that charge, but it has a very much larger and more comprehensive context than that, as you see from these other verses and many more like them. His answer to them: “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” “It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.” God, the same God Who said in the beginning, “Let light be, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”; which means, in the Person of Jesus Christ.

 

The Seeing Of Jesus Our Lord

 

What we are going to be occupied with this morning is this all-governing, all-dominating vision of Jesus Christ. This brings in four of the greatest matters with which we can have to do. The seeing of Jesus—how comprehensive and revolutionary it is! These four things are major things. Firstly: The place and destiny of man in the economy of God. That comes in with a seeing of Jesus our Lord.

 

I am glad the apostle added that last clause, “our Lord,” and I would like to point out that in the New Testament, the name “Jesus” by itself is only used when it relates to His pre-resurrection life. If the name “Jesus” is used alone, you will find that the context is of His pre-resurrection life. However, after the resurrection, the apostles never called Him “Jesus” alone; they always linked on our Lord, our Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us note “Jesus,” yes; but “our Lord” and His Lordship came into view after His resurrection and ascension. Right there on the Damascus Road, “and he said, ‘Who art Thou, Lord?’ ”—“I Am Jesus.” He knew it was Jesus. “Lord, (not, ‘Jesus, what will You have me to do?’ but) Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” The very beginning of a revolution of a transition from knowing after the flesh to knowing after the Spirit. All that is parenthetical. Let us go on.

 

The four magnitudes which come in with a true Spiritual seeing of Jesus are:

 

The Place And Destiny Of Man In The Economy Of God

The Nature And Dynamic Of Ministry In This Dispensation

The Nature And Purpose Of The Church Now And In After-Ages

The Immense Significance In That Three-fold Context Of Jesus Christ Crucified, Risen, and Exalted

 

 

These are four very big things, and they are all comprehended by “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”—“It pleased God to reveal His Son in me”; and when He revealed His Son in me, this is what I began to see. That is what the apostle is saying: “This is what I began to see.” He does not tabulate these things like that, but I have just taken these four magnitudes as the content and substance of the New Testament.

 

This is where we begin; firstly the seeing of Jesus our Lord or God revealing His Son in us, illuminating, unveiling, the place and destiny of man in the Divine Economy. I must say here (though it might get me onto controversial ground) I am a firm believer that the Apostle Paul had a very real hand in the writing of the Letter to the Hebrews. Whether he actually wrote it or dictated it, I am certain that Paul had a very definite and direct influence, to say the least, upon the writing of the Letter to the Hebrews; and you will recognize it in what I am going to say. It is there; it comes out of that.

 

Paul, from the beginning in his First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter fifteen, takes up man from his inception. He says, “The first man, Adam.” It starts with man; it goes right back to the beginning of humanity, mankind, and he follows right through mankind on the battleground of the two humanities until he reaches the point of man glorified. How marvelous that chapter is. I have stood back from that chapter many times, and said, “How did any mortal man know that?” It could only be because he had seen Jesus Christ. That is the only answer:—

 

A New Man In Christ

 

“There are bodies terrestrial, and there are bodies celestial. There are bodies earthy and there are bodies heavenly; and as we have borne the image of the earthy, so we shall bear the image of the heavenly.” Here Paul describes something of the nature of this Heavenly Body, this Heavenly physical Body, this glorified Manhood. This is an amazing unveiling of the destiny of man in the economy of God.

 

So Paul takes up manhood first in Adam, and then by the Cross he smites that race in Adam, discredits it, rejects it, and puts it aside, and starts with the New Man, “The last Adam”: “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation,”—the old humanity past, all is New. We have the whole history of man in this letter, right from his inception in the heart of God, his inception in the creation of the first Adam and his rejection in this letter; and then we have man created in the New Man, Christ.

 

Oh, what a Man this is in glory. In this we groan! But what is the groaning about? Oh, for that for which I was created; which God meant for me. In this we groan waiting, “waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body,” the putting on of our New Man. “When this corruptible will have put on incorruption.” My, do you not groan for that? Incorruption, this mortal dying “will have put on immortality,” eternally living. Now how did Paul get all that? “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” “It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.”

 

Paul said: “God has repeated His Divine fiat in me. Over all the world in chaos and darkness God said, ‘Let light be—and there was light,’ a fiat of God, and He has done that in me. God has repeated and said, In this darkened humanity, ‘Let light be’; and when He said that, I—in that Light—saw His Son and in His Son I saw all that God intended and intends for mankind”—man’s destiny in the economy of God.

 

All that is in chapter fifteen, and Paul tells us out of this seeing that the world to come is going to be entirely subjected to this Man and this Humanity. As I was saying, this is Hebrews two: “For Thou madest Him in order to have dominion over the works of Thy hand. Thou has put all things in Thine economy and intention under His feet,” but we do not see that true of the old humanity. It is discredited, it is lost, it has lost that kingdom.

 

But we see Jesus, we see Jesus the Representative Man of this New Humanity, the Inclusive Man, the Last Adam of this Humanity, we see Him crowned with glory and honor. That is the destiny of man in the intention of God. That is what Paul is saying here by the Spirit.

 

He Must: He Must Have: He Will Have!

 

Paul shows us in these letters to the Corinthians and by his influence, at least, in the Letter to the Hebrews, he shows us God’s intense interest in man and God’s infinite patience and perseverance and pains with man through history. God never, never wiped out any mankind until it had finally gone beyond the point of no return where mankind said, “We will not, we will not,” finally “We will not”—that was Noah’s day. Noah—a preacher of righteousness, and the effect in them was: “We will not.” So God said, “The end of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” God never did anything like that until the cup of iniquity was full to overflowing, and there was no hope because of man’s settled determination not to have the revealed will of God.

 

Apart from that, look at the infinite pains and patience and perseverance of God. Oh, how marvelous is God in His Sovereignty. I think God chose the Jewish race because it was going to extend Him to the fulness of His patience; and it did. God is marvelous in His Sovereignty, sometimes I think that He chose it for no other purpose than just to show what mercy He has. Well, that would take us into another part of First Corinthians: “God hath chosen the foolish things… the weak things… the ignoble things… that are not.” We see what patience, what long-suffering, what pains, what perseverance is shown by the apostle on the part of God with mankind because God has set such store by this kind of creation; and if God should never have a humanity like that at the end, then God is defeated utterly and He is not God, the God of the Bible. He must—He must, and He will have a humanity that His heart is set upon.

 

Moreover, the apostle shows here by the Spirit, that all God’s dealings with His Own children (and the terms are family terms: His Own children, His Own family) he shows that all God’s dealings with His Own children and family had this end in view—the transition unto the glory, bringing many sons to glory, getting many sons to glory. But we must link with that: “My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked or reproved of Him. Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth. He scourgeth every son that He places by Him.” That wonderful chapter in Hebrews 12 about God’s dealings with His children, His family, showing that “no chastening (child-training) for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous”—for the present, grievous.

 

You and I know something about that. But “afterward,” there is an “afterward”; and it is that “afterward” that God is working toward in His dealings with us, difficult as they may be. We will come to that again, and I do not know whether we will get to it this morning, but here is the principle. Oh!! God is not against us when we are having a hard time. The devil says He is. Have a bad time, and there is at once a little demon at your ear accusing God, maligning God, trying to get a twist in your mind that questions God, trying to get you right back into the garden again, “Hath God said?” trying to get you onto the old Adam ground again. Oh, brethren, I can say this more easily than I can go through it, and so can you hear it more easily than you can go through it, but there is that “afterward.” What afterward? The end of One Corinthians, chapter fifteen. Oh, yes, all this, “But thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” All His dealings with us are governed by this great destiny for which He has made us and called us.

 

Destined For Sonship

 

Now all this the apostle shows, all this is represented by the perfected Man in glory, and all this is not only represented by Him there as the ultimate of God for mankind, but it is secured in that Man in the glory. It is security for us, and in this connection the apostle uses a figure from the Greek about the Holy Spirit having been given to us as an “earnest” of our final redemption. You know what the figure is? What is it? You see some goods, some produce at a depot on a railroad station. It is destined for something or somewhere, and there is stamped on it “sample,” “sample,” destined for sonship. It is an earnest, it is a firstfruits, it is a prophecy, but there is more to follow; and a great deal more to follow. This is only the beginning, this is only a piece of what is coming; and the apostle uses that figure of speech. The Greeks understood quite well what he was talking about. Paul says: “He has given us the Spirit as the ‘sample,’ the earnest, the prophecy, of what is to be.” It is secured, it is all there secured in Him to come to us; and He has sent Him (is it irreverent to speak of the Holy Spirit like this?)—He sent the Sample. If you and I really have the Spirit, what have we got?—The earnest of our inheritance, and what is it?—We have this witness, this assurance, and the working of this Power holding us unto something, unto a destiny. Thank God for that holding. To quote the Apostle Peter: “Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto a salvation to be revealed in the last time.”

 

We Are Kept By The Power.

 

Now where would any of us be today if there had not been that holding of us? When we really did let go, when we really did say: “We can go no further, this is the end.” And we would have gone if it had been left to us. Well, the miracle is we are here kept by the earnest of the Spirit unto that because it is secured unto us in Christ. So the apostle says: “Cast not away, cast not away your confidence which hath great recompense of reward. You have need of patience that after you have done the will of God….” Brethren, there is so much in all this. He shows that it is all represented in the Man perfected in heaven; even more, it is secured in Him up there. I am glad it is up there and out of this world beyond any power to undo the security.

 

(1) The Summation Of All—His Son

 

Now the apostle shows then that the advent of Jesus Christ into this world was this: first of all, it was the summation of all God’s former forms and ways of His Self-revelation. “God Who at sundry times and in divers places spake unto the prophets,” spake by the prophets in many-sided fragmentary bits. Here a line and there a line; a bit through this one and a bit through that one, all speaking bits and pieces and fragments. He has summed them all up now, gathered them all together, made One Sum of them; and it is the summation of all when His Son comes into this world Incarnate. That is what is here! See Jesus and you see the summation of all God’s previous methods and ways and times of Self-revelation. It is the full and the final revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

 

That is what this young man Saul of Tarsus, with his background of the Old Testament in his mind (so that he could quote the whole thing without the Book) with that he saw Jesus Christ, the Risen Glorified Lord; and his Bible became a new book. Paul saw that in the One everything was gathered up, everything was summed up. “Have not I seen Jesus our Lord; and when I saw Him, I saw.” There are no more fragments, the thing is complete now; no more bits and pieces, it is just One Great Glorious Whole. No more “then” and “now” and “afterward,” it is all eternally present in Him now: the summation of all God’s previous ways of Self-revelation.

 

(2) His Son—The End Of The Old Economy And The Introduction Of An Entirely New Economy

 

Then Paul saw, and this meant so much to a Jew and an educated Jew, so thoroughly educated as was Saul of Tarsus, he saw that Jesus our Lord was not only the summation of all God’s previous ways of revealing Himself, but He was the consummation of a whole economy, the whole of the Mosaic economy. That is why I say I am sure that Paul had a hand in this Hebrew Letter, because the whole of the Mosaic economy is gone over in that letter. And what is the purpose of that letter? the transition from that Mosaic economy to Christ. He is the High Priest. He is the Sacrifice. He is the Altar. He is the Temple. He is everything that that economy represented in type and figure, but He is the consummation of that. He is the end of that and the introduction of an entirely New economy. It is a Heavenly One in the heavens, “not made with hands.” Oh, the terms are so definite. “Not of this creation.”—The consummation of a whole economy. Brethren, has Christendom seen what Paul saw? Has Christendom grasped this yet? Is it still clinging onto the old economy in its vestments, its robings, its ritual, its external things? Has it failed to see that this is all finished with, and now our robing is the robing of His Righteousness, and no other can appear before God. All our adornments are spiritual.

 

Peter has seen this, for in 1 Peter 3:3-4 he speaks to the dear sisters “whose adorning is not the plaiting of the hair and the wearing of the jewelry.” What is the word “adorning”? “Adorning” in the original is “Whose world (cosmos)”—“whose cosmos” is the word “adorning.” “Whose cosmos, whose world,” whose realm and system of things is not this getting yourself up in making an impression. Oh, I am not holding any agreement with carelessness and slovenliness and that sort of thing, but the question is what “world” do you live in?—how do you appear to others, what impression do you make by these outward things? “No,” says Peter, of the saintly women whose world is not that. That is not their world, that is not their cosmos, their system, but their “adorning” is “the ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit.” So we see one system of externals is gone, and it is all now a system of the Spirit in the heart, a Heavenly thing for a Heavenly people.

 

Now some people have seen the principle, and they have tried to put it into effect by putting on a certain kind of raiment and becoming a sect who wear that kind of raiment. They have seen the principle all right, but you cannot fulfill a principle in that way. It is the Spirit that comes out and expresses itself. The end of an economy, its consummation and then the transition to an entirely new regime, the regime of the Man perfected and installed in glory as God’s Model for this New Humanity. “According to Christ” is the phrase so often used. It is “according to Christ” or “not according to Christ.” That is the test, the challenge, according to the perfected Man and Humanity installed in Heaven, God’s Pattern, to which He is working.

 

He is working, and here we come back again to the place of the Holy Spirit in the Letters to the Corinthians, especially the First Letter. As we look through the letter, what is the full, ultimate, supreme function of the Holy Spirit?—“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, …though I give all my goods to the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, I have nothing.” The supreme work of the Holy Spirit is the Character of Jesus Christ, not love as a thing. You can put on love as a thing. You can put that on, and it can be a pretension, a way of behaving and speaking. Beloved, people can come and put their hand on your shoulder and be treacherous behind your back by pointing out your faults to someone else. It must be “unfeigned love” the apostle says. “Unfeigned, unhypocritical, love of the brethren”: it is the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

 

Are you not surprised when Paul has finished his letters, and he says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ…” (this benediction has become so commonplace and lost so much of its contextual significance as applying and relating to the whole Corinthian situation). What is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? “…though He were rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich.” That is the grace of the Lord Jesus, self-emptying; Paul will later say that to the Philippians.

 

The benediction, what is it? “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.” It is Jesus Christ all the time. “The love of God.” How do you know it? in Jesus Christ only, never in any other way can we know the Love of God. “The fellowship of the Holy Spirit”: the communion, the unity,—the removal of those divisions and that divisive spirit, (“I am of Paul, Apollos, Peter, and so on—”).

 

“Have I Not Seen Jesus Our Lord?”
“He Was Pleased To Reveal His Son In Me”

 

Now time does not permit me to start this morning on that next great thing: how seeing Jesus is the Source, the Character, of all ministry in this dispensation. But let us hold what we have heard this morning quietly before the Lord because it challenges us. How far are we here able to say with the effect of it, the revolution, the transformation, the transition:—“Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”—“He was pleased to reveal His Son in me.” And when that happened, my word, what a lot went. It just went and what a lot came. How different! I have called this section:

 

The All-governing And Dominating Vision,—The Seeing Of Jesus Our Lord.

 

Go and ask Him to do that with you, and let me just say this, it is not something that is going to be all done at once. Oh, no, some of us after many years are seeing more today of the significance and meaning of Jesus our Lord than we have ever seen all through our lives. It has got to be like that, thank God, it has got to be like that. We always have a margin, a plus, an extra right to the end. As one brother has said, “All ministry should have such an overflow that no man ever finishes his sermon,” and you know what he meant. When you have come to the end of your time, you have got far more than your time will allow you to go on with. And it ought to be like that over the Lord Jesus. Oh, how much more I see than I have ever been able to say or could say today. I see He is so vast, so full, so immense. We are here, dear friends, not to talk about the greatness of Christ as a subject, but to be the expression of it!—It may defeat us. We may go to the grave (if He does not come) feeling, “Oh, we haven’t begun yet,” but it should be like that. He is so great, so Wonderful. And may the fiat take place, if it has not. But if it has, and our eyes, the eyes of our hearts, have been enlightened, we have begun to see something of Him. Remember, there should be no stalemate over this, no arrested progress as at Corinth, no undue babyhood. Yes, it is all right to be a baby when you are a baby; but it is a horrible thing to be a baby when you have the years of maturity.

 

That is how it was at Corinth. Growth was stunted, it was arrested, because of what? They had really failed to see the Lord Jesus. They had heard the teaching; they knew what the apostle was talking about, but he has to come back with this: “The eyes of our heart be enlightened.” He has to come back with this Second Letter to them:—“The veil taken away,” and we all with unveiled face see Another Face, “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” and “are changed into the same image from glory to glory.” Shall we pray…

 

So, Lord, we can only say that with the presentation of the truth Thou would go beyond, take us beyond; and grant that every life here may stand in the good of the unveiled face of Jesus Christ—the glory therein… may stand in the good of having seen Jesus our Lord. O make that true of every one of us, very true, wonderfully true, and growingly true, until we finally see His face. We ask it in His Name, Amen.

 

http://www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/001484.html