Leaves From The
Book
"BREADTH AND LENGTH AND DEPTH AND
HEIGHT." (Ephesians iii. 18.)
HIS expression does not refer to the dimensions of the
love of Christ, which the apostle immediately after represents as "passing
knowledge," whereas he prays that they may be "able to comprehend what is the
breadth and length and depth and height." Yet these things surely have a
connection with one another. God's counsels and His ways are what give us the
thoughts and actings of Divine love, and we are continually having the lesson
of it enforced upon us, while yet the fullness of it none can fathom. And it is
our joy that we cannot fathom it. For while unfathomable holiness might seem to
put us at a distance, and infinite wisdom and power alone shut us up in folly
or in nothingness, love that passes knowledge only holds us by that fact with a
closer embrace. Blessed to learn it as it is, it is wonderful blessing indeed
to learn it as passing knowledge.
What then are these dimensions of God's
ways, which are to give us points from which we may look off into infinity, to
find everywhere beyond us still this love everywhere displayed? Let us try very
briefly to think of these just now.
First, the BREADTH.
An
infidel measures the earth, contrasts its puny measurement with the grandeur of
the heavens, and argues that God could never have given His Son to save the
puny inhabitants of an orb like this. Scripture only argues from this the
wondrous love of Him who could do this. The Psalmist too beholds the heavens,
the work of God's fingers, the moon and the stars which He has ordained, and he
too asks, "What is man that Thou art mindful of.him? and the son of man, that
Thou visitest him?" But for him Christ is not a stumbling-block, but the
sufficient answer. "Thou hast made Him a little lower than the angels; Thou
hast crowned Him with glory and honour; Thou hast set Him over the works of Thy
hands; Thou hast put all things in subjection under His feet." "In that He put
all in subjection under Him," argues the apostle," He left nothing that is not
put under Him." Thus he sees man in Jesus elevated to the throne of the
universe - of those very heavens which had made him ask the question,- and he
has nothing but adoration for Him who has done this.
But in truth we cannot
follow this out as we should do until we see why God has taken up feeble man to
put him in such a place of power and dignity. The Psalmist sees this connected
not only with the excellency of His name declared in all the earth, but also
with His glory being set above the heavens. God in setting man so high is
indeed setting His own glory there, whence it may shine upon the whole
universe. In that condescending grace of His at which man scoffs, He is
actually putting a candle upon a candlestick, that all His creatures may be
gladdened with the light. Because Christ taketh not hold of angels but of the
seed of Abraham,- because His blood was shed for men alone,- we must not
imagine that there is no significance for angels in the wondrous union of
manhood with Deity in Him. There is a deep significance - the very deepest. The
love that reaches down to the lowest link of creation, and fastens it
irrevocably to the eternal throne, has thereby linked indissolubly all
creaturehood to God. He, gone up on high, is Himself "the beginning of the
creation of God "- all that is to abide in relation to God as His. Thus all has
taken a new start with Him, and in Him the angels themselves have a new and
abiding link with God. If man is brought near, they surely are not more distant
thus, but nearer; indeed, how much nearer for that wondrous Presence in a
creature form, of the God of all creatures - the Creator-God!
But this is
not all. Not merely are they in a new place with God, but they have a
revelation of God also in Christ, which the apostle Peter tells us they "desire
('crave,' we may better say) to look into." Nor is this meant at all as
ineffectual craving: we are told expressly that "God, who is rich in mercy, for
His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath
quickened us together with Christ, and raised us up together, and made us sit
together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; that in the ages to come He might
show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us through
Christ Jesus." And again "to the intent that now unto the principalities and
powers in heavenly places might be known through the Church the manifold wisdom
of God." (Eph. ii. 5, 7, ; iii. x.)
How plain the ulterior purpose! How
blessed to know that the joy that fills the Father's house when prodigals are
brought home,- the joy of the Father's household is not only in their finding
afresh their place with Him, but joy also in Himself, the Father, who could
thus receive in God, whose plan and purpose salvation is!
We are "made,"
too, "the righteousness of God in Christ." Thus wisdom, righteousness, grace,
shine forth as what in God was never so revealed before. And all this becomes,
as it were, the pulse of a new life in "every family in heaven and earth,"
which "is named of, (or from,) the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph. iii.
14, 15). This is the " breadth" then of God's purpose and plan, as Scripture
reveals it. Let us now look at-
Secondly, its LENGTH.
This
requires little development. The purpose is an "eternal purpose," from
eternity, embracing an eternity to come. God does not shape His thoughts
according as circumstances arise, but the circumstances are controlled by His
thoughts and plans. How blessed to know that He is absolutely Master of all
things; that even "He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder
of wrath He restrains." It is the only thing that can give the smallest comfort
in the midst of such a scene of confusion as that around us is. Thus He goes on
with His own thoughts. In another sense than Job meant, "He is of one mind, and
who can change Him?" Redemption was not with Him an impulse, (impulse comes
from without,) but the fruit of a purpose which was His before the world was.
Eternity will be the seal of His approbation of what is the fulfilled purpose
of His own mind.
I need not dwell upon this; it is all plain and obvious,
but not on that account the less noteworthy or blessed.
Thirdly, the
DEPTH.
And here how can we do better than follow the apostle's track in
Phil. ii.? Here from a height which we cannot measure, a series of wonderful
steps lead down to a depth again immeasurable. But one blessed Person has
travelled the whole way. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ
Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with
God; but made Himself of no reputation "- or, literally, "emptied Himself"-"and
took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and
being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross."
Each step here, how much is involved
in it! First, in the form of God, and equal, without robbery, to God, He
emptied Himself - abandoned the form, (He could not give up the reality), and
took another form, the form of a servant! Who can measure this descent? Still
He might have served as an angel. He would not: He had no mind to tarry there.
He was made in the likeness of men. Still there He might have paused. The
descent was already immeasurable; was it not enough? As man, death at least had
yet no title over Him; but "being found in fashion as a man," still "He humbled
Himself and became obedient unto death." You and I do not humble ourselves to
become obedient unto death: He did; but more; and how much more!-" even the
death of the cross." For that was how different from other or ordinary death!
Here again we cannot follow or fathom. We can only discern amid the darkness
One in whom even there darkness had no part; glorifying God in the place of
unequalled trial; bearing up singly and alone, in depths that had no bottom,
the honour of God, the cause of ruined man, the full weight of those eternal
purposes which are to fill heaven and earth with unceasing joy.
This is a
"depth" we cannot plumb. It is easy to speak of the death of the cross. We may
say, the cross measures this death. After all, what do we mean? Our lives alone
can tell how far we know it. Paul's life such as we know it was the expression
of his knowledge: "the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith
of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me!"
But the passage
in Philippians does not end here. From the depth it takes us up into -
Fourthly, the HEIGHT:
and "He who descended is the same also who
ascended up, far above all heavens, that He might fill all things." For "God
hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name that is above every name, that at
the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in
earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
This introduces us
to all our blessings. It is as Man He suffered and died; it is as Man He is
ascended; as Man He has entered upon the possession of what for men He has
earned. Thus our place before God is measured by the place which He has as Man,
and as the fruit of His accomplished work. We stand already in the value of
what He is, and of what He has done, for God.
Here the whole heart of God
comes out. Restrained, pent in, until the accomplishment of that which set
divine righteousness upon the side of the sinner, and justified God in
justifying the ungodly, He was then free to declare fully what had been from
the beginning in His heart. Eternal love found at this lowest depth its spring
and outflow, and from thence could bear up the happy objects of it up to Him
from whose heart it came. Think, oh think, of the rapturous joy of being thus
upbornel divine love satisfying itself in not only delivering us from the
burdens under which we lay, but enriching us with the fulness that is in Christ
for us! Shall we not give its way to love like this? Is it not faith's part to
enter into its meaning, and receive with simplicity and adoring thankfulness
the assurance of what, passing all human thought, approves itself only thus to
be indeed divine?
The link in all this -" breadth, length, depth, height,"
- is apparent with what precedes and follows
"For this cause I bow my knees
unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom every family in heaven and
earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory,
to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may
dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may
be able to comprehend with all saints the breadth and length, and depth and
height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye may be
filled with all the fullness of God."
THE MAN OF GOD.
LECTURE I.
I
KINGS XVI. 29
I HAVE just read these closing verses in the sixteenth
chapter, beloved friends, in order that we may have before us in some measure
the times in which Elijah stood forth. My desire is, if the Lord will, in this,
or a lecture or so, to look at what, in the most striking features, the man of
God is. We find, in the times of Israel, that word "man of God" coming up
repeatedly in connection with Elijah and Elisha. The title, while actually
found, as the character itself is prominently brought out, in times of failure,
is still really applicable to all the Lord's people, as what they are all, I
may say, positionally, and as purchased by the blood of Christ. They are surely
God's men ; but the "man of God" is the title here of one who is practically
that,- one whose practical character answers to his position.
We have, in a
very striking way, in the second epistle to Timothy, the man of God spoken of
as the one for whom, in a sense, all Scripture was written, and whom alone it
would profit as it ought; and so it becomes a very serious thing with us
whether we haye that character. "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto
all good works." (2 Tim. ii. i6, 17.)
There you find that Scripture only
has its proper effect on the man of God; and though, of course, no child of God
is shut out, and it is written for all in this sense, that all may be and
should be such, yet of necessity the profit of it is limited to those who have,
in a measure at least, the character of the man of God,-God's man; of those who
stand out for Him - those who are manifestly and practically His.
The
character naturally becomes only the more distinct as the times are trying.
Even in the apostle's time it could be said, "All seek their own, not the
things which are Jesus Christ's." (Phil. ii. 21) Just in proportion as that is
so, of course it makes more striking the reality of one who is a man of God; it
makes him shine out in the darkness; as it is said of John the Baptist, who in
his day took up Elijah's mission: "He was a burning and a shining light,"- not
merely a shining light, mark, as the dead and decaying wood may shine, but a
burning light as well. And it is a great point to understand, that while, of
course, the darkness is not of God,- surely it is not - yet, at the same time,
it is used of God to make His light more apparent. We should accustom ourselves
to think of it in that way; not excusing the evil, or thinking lightly of it,
but as certainly not sinking down under it, or being controlled by it. For
God's lights, as such, are made for the darkness, which does not hide or put
them out, but manifests them. Such a light, in the very darkest days in Israel,
was Elijah the Tishbite.
In the chapters before this, how little one seems
to find one's way amid the discordant shapes of evil that fill the page, where
the son is but spiritually the "brother of his father," as Ahab's name imports,
and that which is born of the flesh is only flesh again. It is so beautiful
that you get God at once brought into the scene when Elijah steps into it.
Then, while there is still darkness all around, it is not unrelieved darkness
any more. If you consider, you will see how largely God's people have lived in
such times as these; how from the very beginning of all dispensations that
which was intrusted to man's care he failed in, and the ruin of what was set up
became a settled thing. If you take Israel, God says of their course in the
wilderness, "Ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god
Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them; and I will carry you away
beyond Babylon." (Acts vii. 43.) The failure in the wilderness is there
connected with the Babylonish captivity, though a great number of years
intervened. The whole thing failed there, and Babylon was the necessary result
of the failure in the wilderness.
Take, again, the Church, before the
apostles had passed off the scene. It was the mercy of God that they had not
passed away before we get His judgment through them of the condition of things.
One of them can tell us, "It is the last time; and as ye have heard that
Antichrist shall come, even now there are many antichrists; whereby we know
that it is the last time." (i Jno. ii. i8.) Another, "The mystery of iniquity
doth already work" (2 Thess. ii. 7); and a certain hindrance has only to be
removed for the man of sin to be fully manifested. Look into the writings of
those called "fathers," but a generation or so after the apostles. There was a
sudden dropping down into the very depths of darkness, we may say, at once.
From that time to this, nearly eighteen hundred years, has been a time in which
God's people have had to walk with God alone. It is what we ought always to do,
of course, but still more does a time of general departure call on those who
would be overcomers to walk alone with Him. If the stream be adverse, we need
more spiritual energy, that is all.
If you compare the second epistle of
Peter, the first chapter, with the first chapter of the first epistle, you will
find such a difference. There is a call in the second for greater energy;
because God does not leave us to the influences of every kind about us. He does
not fail, if man does. Yet it is so astonishing that we should be ready almost
to credit Him with failure, because we fail. And at a time of general failure,
as if delivered up to it, we claim it as even a sort of humility, not only not
to pretend to be Pauls, but even to take his path at all.
Yet such as he
were men of like passions with ourselves; and we, as they, are redeemed with
the precious blood of Christ. The Spirit of God was no more in them than in us;
because if the Spirit of God is in us, it has no measure from God. You find
everybody almost imagining that there is a "measure of the Spirit," whereas
there is not, in that sense, a measure of it at all. That word which the
apostle gives in the epistle to the Ephesians, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein
is excess; but be filled with the Spirit" (v. i8.), is to all Christians. If we
were filled with the Spirit, should we be any thing less than men of God?
Elijah had a special mission, of course, and so had Paul ; but still, as to
spiritual character, should we be any other than even these? If the night is
dark, will not even the faintest light be brighter?
The times in Israel
were not times in which we should look for such a light as Elijah the Tishbite;
it was, exactly, God's time. God delights in showing, in the very midst of it
all, that He is quite as sufficient for the darkest times as for the brightest.
Elijah's name shows where his strength was. "My mighty One is Jehovah" is its
full significance. "Eli" means "my God," but yet also "my strength," or "my
mighty One." It is the word used by the Lord upon the cross,-" Eli, Eli,"-" My
God, My God;" but the very force of it there is, that He is appealing to One
who has got abundant power (if it were only a question of power,) to bring Him
out of all the difficulty in a moment; instead of which, the mighty One, His
strength, forsakes Him. So here, it is "Jehovah is My mighty One," and it is
the power pf God we see in Elijah,- a power as available for you and me as for
him.
"Tishbite "is said by some to mean "the converter,"- the one in whom
there was power to turn men from the way in which they were unto Himself, and
who sought to bring a nation back to God. In his own lifetime there might seem
to be little apparent success in that ; even so there is the lesson for us. For
while God never allows His Word to fall fruitless to the ground, and we may
surely trust Him for that, on this very account we may leave success to Him,-
not indifferent, but still not daunted, if it do not much appear; and anxious,
first of all, that the seed and sowing should be to His mind, rather than to
see results which perhaps the day of manifestation will alone disclose.
That is what God would have before us: success is in His own hands, and God is
content sometimes to work in a way to us inscrutable. Look at the Lord's life:
how many apparently were converted - a few disciples gather in an upper room
after His resurrection. There was quite a number at Pentecost, and a mightier
work; but as you go on, you find no such large success, even in apostolic
hands, as you would expect perhaps from the gospel. Very various indeed it is:
in many places to which the apostle Paul went, instead of having, what people
expect now from a few weeks' revival-meetings, converts by the score, very
often but a few, so far as we can see. And only in a few places at first was
there large response. In an exceptional one, you find the Lord saying, "I have
much people in this city;" but in no wise was that the rule. And the Lord, in
His own parable of the mustard-seed, indicates that the growth of the little
gospel-seed into the "tree" was as little likely a result as it argued little
for Christianity. Alas! the great spread of this took place in proportion to
its adulteration; and as it became popular, so it became corrupt.
Why do I
speak of this? Because if we make success our object, it will become a snare to
us. We shall get our eyes upon the results, and by this, test our work untruly.
For if that Were the test, what about His who said, "I have laboured in vain: I
have spent My strength for naught!" "Yet surely," was His confidence, "My
judgment is with the Lord, and My work with My God." God, on the other hand,
would have us look, in the most careful way possible, at walk and work and
life, and as to what comes of it,- the issue of it all,- leave that to be made
manifest in the day fast approaching, which shall make every thing manifest.
Are you content to leave it to that? Care for souls and love to them is of
course another thing. God forbid that I should say one word which should make
that a matter of little moment! but beware of what on every side people are
doing; and beware of thinking that quantity, with God, will atone for
quality.
Now with Elijah, while God honoured the man in the most remarkable
way, as you know,- put Himself along with him, authenticated his word, and gave
the fire from heaven which consumed the sacrifice,- yet there seemed no
adequate result. Did the nation turn to God? "Hear me," Elijah prays,-"Hear me,
0 Lord! hear me! that this people may know that Thou art the Lord God, and that
Thou hast turned their hearts back again." (i Kings xviii. 17.) In the very
next chapter, he is fleeing from the face of Jezebel, because she had said, "So
let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one
of them by to-morrow about this time." (Chap. xix. 2.) There you find, perhaps,
how the ill-success of his mission affected one like Elijah. When he looked at
that, he was asking, "Would God I might die!" and sank down in discouragement.
There he was, just the man that..was not going to die,- just the man who, as
you know, was taken straight into heaven without seeing death at all,
vanquished by the apparent want of success, after all this wonderful display of
power. Is this not to us a most wholesome warning not to look at the success so
much as at the being with God which will insure success? If we are to wait for
the success - for the end - in order to see what the thing is we do, is it not
manifest that we must do it in the dark in the meantime, as to whether it be of
God or not? Yet only as knowing this can we do it in communion with Him. What
comes of it is God's account, not ours. We need not be afraid that His purpose
will not be fulfilled, or that which is of Him not prosper.
Now let us look
at Elijah in the attitude expressed here in a few words. "Elijah the Tishbite,
who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, "As the Lord God of
Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years
but according to my word." (Chap. xvii.) He stood before the living God: God
was for him that - the living God. That is the first thing. "As the Lord God of
Israel liveth," he says. He can find no way of expressing assurance equal to
that. It was the surest thing he knew, the most vividly realized, that the God
of Israel lived. And that is just the thing that we want to realize on the way
down here. The living God is what we want in the midst of scenes like this; in
the midst of all so full of life and activity, the life around and about,
brushing us on every side, how we do want to realize the living God I know,
when you look at Elijah's life, you may say, "Certainly God did manifest
Himself to Elijah in a marvelous, miraculous way, which we do not see at all
.
To only some is it given to work in that way with God. We cannot see
these things now." Yet God is the same living God; and we may be sure of this,
that while it is true we do not realize what Elijah did, the failure is clearly
our failure, and not God's. I do not mean to say there are what people call
miracles in the self-same way now; that is not exactly what I am speaking of.
We do not expect fire to fall from heaven, or any thing of that sort, very
likely; but while all this is true, as we see how the draught of fishes could
bring the living God home to a soul ready for the announcement, so we may see,
and should be prepared to see, Him acting in every little event of our lives.
We only need to look: just as with those people who are not prepared to find
great things in the Word, so are never able to find great things in it. The
open eye is faith. It is the new sense of the child of God, and more certain
than any other. In proportion as this is in exercise will the Word be permeated
by a living Presence. "Quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged
sword," it will bring us under the eyes of "Him with whom we have to do." So
with God's presence about us. The earth is still full of Him. What has drawn a
vail over His presence? Really, it is unbelief,- that is all. Unbelief! I grant
you that vail is perfectly impenetrable unless the Word has approved itself to
us as His revelation in the way we have spoken of. But then creation becomes,
from mere materialism, spiritualized and transfigured. Our own history becomes
the story of an omnipotent love, under which "all things work together for good
to them that love God." He counts the very hairs of our head, goes beyond all
our thought and care for ourselves, and fills our loneliest moments with His
presence.
It is only that which will make our lives at all what they ought
to be; it is only that which will redeem them, so to speak, from the littleness
and meanness and unimportance otherwise attaching to them. The meanest life in
His presence ceases to be drudgery, and becomes ennobled; the noblest without
it, what is it but utter vanity?
You must not imagine that Elijah's life
was made up of miracles. How small a part of it these miracles were! And when
he stands forth here to answer for the living God, we do not find that the
faith he manifested had been nurtured upon miracles. It is not God's way. Those
who believed in Christ's name when they saw the miracles He did were not those
in whom He confided. It is when we have faith in His presence and nearness that
He will respond to the faith we have. It would be merely tempting God to want
Him to show Himself in this wonderful way just to prove He was with us. To
question is to tempt Him. He is near us, and we ought to know it; and when we
realize that, then we may see, perhaps, what to unaccustomed eyes may look not
unlike miracle even in the present matter-of-fact day. But again, to Elijah,
the living God was not merely his God: He was the God of Israel. That is a
beautiful thing, quite characteristic of the man of God. Israel were God's
people. He was not standing before Israel, re-member; he stood before the Lord
God of Israel, not before Israel. But Israel was something to him, because his
God was Israel's Gcd; and because the Lord God was the Lord God of Israel,
therefore Israel was in his thought connected with the Lord God for whom he
spoke.
Now, that is of immense moment to us, to whom God has revealed the
mystery of His Church. We may easily have the Church before us, and be
monopolized with the thought of the Church in such a way as really to take us
out of the presence of God. What is the Church without the God of the Church?
We may easily be making much of the Christian and leaving out the God of the
Christian, and leaving out all that gives Christianity or Christians the least
importance. On the other hand, let us understand that to stand before the God
of Israel implies this, that we are linked in heart with what is God's cause in
the world. "Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it,"- not for a
fraction of it, even the most intelligent,- aye, or the most devoted. Every one
of the tribes had its name upon the high-priest's breast-plate; and even so all
His saints are upon Christ's heart now. Can we be God's men and yet not in
active earnest sympathy with that with which His heart so intimately concerns
itself? Surely it is impossible. "I fill up that which is behind of the
afflictions of Christ," says the apostle," for His body's sake, which is the
Church." Thus, while God, who forgets not the smallest in His care for the
greatest, nor one of His people in His concern for the rest, is to be for us
personally and intimately ours, at the same time, He is to be the Lord God of
Israel to us, and we are to stand before Him as such. Now, this standing before
Him, what does it mean? It is not an expression of confidence - there is
abundant confidence you see at once - or of rest, or of peace. Too often we
make that the whole thing. He stands before the Lord God of Israel. This is the
attitude of service. He is waiting, ready at His bidding. Not merely walking
before Him; not running about, surely, with the restless hurry of many, too
busy with His service to listen to His word. "Standing" is waiting to have His
will expressed. We stand before the Lord God when we are waiting for Him to
direct us, and do not move without His guidance. There may be much more
standing than moving even, no doubt. If you take Elijah's life, how much more
of standing, or waiting, or being alone with God, than there was of acting for
Him; but the acting for Him, in consequence, came just at the right time. So
should we be ready to serve, not merely occupied with the service, much less
hurrying about, as if to be doing was the whole matter, but to be in His path,
to be doing His will, conscious that all else is worse than idleness.
Now
notice how God identifies Himself with the men who stand before Him in this
way. "As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be
dew nor rain these years but according to my word.' What a bold thing to say!
Of course, Elijah did not mean to assert that because of his word the Lord
would do these things. It was not that the Lord was going to accomplish
Elijah's will, but that Elijah was accomplishing the Lord's. "The secret of the
Lord is with them that fear Him." "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He
revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets. . . . The Lord God hath
spoken, who can but prophesy?" (Amos iii. 7, 8.) The prophet and the man of God
are nearly identical. Would He keep back any thing from those who stood before
Him, seeking to be servants of His will and toward the people of His choice?
What a wonderful place that is to be in! For God to identify Himself so with
one, not to be ashamed of him, as it is said in the eleventh of Hebrews of
those old worthies; not ashamed to identify Himself with, and uphold before the
face of the world, the word of a poor, untitled man, but to whom His word and
will were all. Thus was it with Elijah, and so he became linked with the
fulfillment of the purposes of One to whom the universe is but the scene of the
display of a glory which transcends it still.
Now, that is the character of
the man of God. Do we know what it is to have the living God before our eyes in
this kind of way? Do we know what it is to be able to see, not only His actings
in our lives, but what He is doing in the world, and toward His people, because
we are with Him and therefore have His mind? Do we know what it is, as sons of
God, to be His servants, working with the zeal and intelligence of those who
both know the Father's will and know the Father?
Of course, we must be sons
before we are servants; but, being sons, do not let us imagine that this is
every thing! People put service in the wrong place often. They are serving
before they are sons, or before they are conscious of being sons ; and
slipping, therefore, into that hired service for which God has no place. On the
other hand, it is surely the right thing when sonship ripens into service, and
the full reality of sonship can hardly be enjoyed when this is not so.
Even
so, rest from labour develops into rest in labour, or it is not the full rest
Christ gives. Rest for the conscience is attained when we have known that the
work of Christ is what God alone accepts, and has accepted, as justifying us
before Him. Therefore He gives rest. "Come unto Me all ye that labour, and are
heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." (Matt. Xl. 28.) Does He stop there? Is
that all? No; "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly
in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls." (v. 29.) That is the only
way in which rest in the full sense is attainable. It is rest, not apprehended
by the conscience merely, but laid hold of by the heart; rest from all
restlessness, - perfect and complete repose.
But notice, it is His yoke and
His burden. It is not a yoke of our own making or imposing. It is not setting
ourselves to so much work for Him. It is another thing to take Christ's yoke
and His burden, and learn of Him, the Doer of the Father's will, and whose meat
and drink it was to do it. In Him, the true Son was the perfect servant. Have
we apprehended that because we are sons, from the very nature of the child's
relation to the father, we are necessarily and always servants? The child is
never released from it, as a mere ordinary servant may be. His very
relationship makes him a servant to his father. A servant of love, no doubt,
and thus completely one.
Our service, from first to last, is .to have His
Word to justify it. Our own wills religiously are no more really right than
irreligiously. God has one path for us to walk in, one work at any moment for
us to be about. While the Word guides, it must be a living guidance - guided by
His eye.
The Lord grant it to us, for His name's sake.
Lecture II. His Discipline.
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