III.
We next see that jewels, in themselves are valueless, unless they are brought in contact with light. If they are put in certain positions, they will reflect the beauty of the sun. There is no beauty in them otherwise. The diamond that is back in its gallery or down in the deep mine, displays no beauty whatever. What is it but a piece of charcoal, a bit of common carbon until it becomes a medium for reflecting light? And so it is also with the other precious gems. Their varied tents are nothing without light. If they are many sided, they reflect more light, and display more beauty. If you put paste around a diamond, there is no brilliancy in it. In its crude state it does not reflect light at all. So we are in a crude state, and are of no use at all until God comes and shines upon us.
The light that is in the diamond is not its own possession; it is the beauty of the sun. What beauty is there in the child of God? Only the beauty of Jesus. We are His peculiar people, chosen to show forth His excellencies who hath called us out of darkness into His marvellous light. It is not your excellencies, for there is no light in you. So, poor sinner, there is nothing in you that is worth anything, until you have come in contact with Jesus; until you are encompassed with Him, and until you are filled more and more with His blessed presence, and God is shining upon you more and more of His Heavenly light.
III.
We learn another lesson from the places in which these jewels are found. They always come from some dark depth; either from the abyss of the sea, from the sand of the river’s bed, or out of the heart of the rocks. They are all scattered, and the great thing is that these fragments of wrecks which are strewed like waifs upon the sea, shall be carefully found and gathered together, So it is with God’s peculiar treasure. It, too, was lost. You were torn and wrecked, and scattered, and He found you, and gathered you out of the darkness. I do not know where He has found all His treasure, but I know it has been in very dark places. Oh, that we, His children, were as zealous in embracing our opportunities of snatching more of this treasure from the depths of sin that He might wear it as a precious jewel forevermore.
IV.
The origin of precious gems is also suggestive of precious lessons. The existence of the diamond is due to the action of fire, and the convulsion of earlier creations. It is uncertain what the force was which produced diamonds, but they are probably due to the action of heat on vegetable substance, which consumed all that was consumable, and left only bits of condensed carbon. The action of heat, and the convulsion of nature was necessary to their existence. God makes his treasures thus. Our hearts must be purified before they can shine. They must endure the fire of testing before they can reflect His character. The pearl has the strangest origin of all the gems. It is formed from the very life of the pearl oyster.
It is the result of fluid which has crystallized around something within its shell; a grain of sand, perhaps, or a little parasite’some nasty thing which irritated and vexed it, until it killed it with kindness. It wrapped it up there with its own precious life, and made a jewel of it; it turned it into an exquisite pearl. It was not able to fight it; it could not resist the evil thing. If it had, it would only have been wounded and made to suffer without harming its enemy. But it wrapped it all around with its soft arms, it smoothed it gently over, and made it into a gem. This is the genesis of the pearl, and this is the genesis of everything precious in human character.
If sin comes in, we learn not to strike it, but to put our arms around it, and cover it with the blood of Calvary, until we are saved from its power. The grains of sand that come in your life and mine, if we resist them will only irritate and make the sore places sorer, and gall and vex us. There is no use in attacking them. We must learn to make them into pearls, and they will become perhaps the most beautiful things in all our life. The little parasites that prey upon us, the doubts and fears that enter into our lives, the temptations that the devil sends against us, there is no use in merely resisting. We shall get the worst of it if we do.
The only way to overcome them is to love them to death; we shall get the victory over them only through love. The most beautiful things in Christian life are those which have come out of some trial, or some sickness, or some difficulty. If you want any beautiful furniture in your heavenly house, you must make it out of the knots and twisted fibres of trees that can be made beautiful because they are so cross-grained. Oh that God would take the babyishness out of our discontent! We deserve to have these irritating things until we can learn to stand in them in His strength.
Then we shall be able to turn them into priceless jewels, which can be worn as exquisite ornaments, far more valuable than those which are used to adorn the beauty of woman, or the magnificence of princes and kings, or the crown of royalty. Christ is preparing you and me, dear friends, for places of glory. He expects us to be so lovely that we shall decorate his palace. He expects us to be so beautiful that we shall adorn even the gospel; we are to ‘adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.’ We are to make the doctrine more beautiful. It is to seem more beautiful to others on account of the lives that you and I are living.
The Word to be engraved upon us in precious letters. God means you shall not be commonplace nor home-spun, but He would have you show forth His glorious workmanship. The King’s daughter is all glorious within; her clothing is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto the King in raiment of needle-work. ‘As a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with jewels.’ That is what God expects of us, that our lives shall be lives of victory and praise to His glory.
V.
The jewels are to be made ready and fit for the place they are to occupy. Nearly all jewels require to be polished and prepared by the most skilful handi-work that the world affords. In all ages the art of engraving precious stones has been one of rare value, and has commanded the highest recompense. The polishing of diamonds is more rare than the finding of them. The finest diamonds have lost the greatest portion of their substance in their preparation. The largest diamond in the world weighs now 367 carats, but it weighed originally four times that amount and it lost all this weight in the process of cutting. In its present reduced state it is worth $1,250,000.
The next is the Orloff of Russia, which weighed originally 780 carats, but now weighs only 195. What is the reason the diamond was so cut down? Why was all this waste? Ah, it is worth much more in its reduced state than it was before. The next, and by many people considered the purest and most beautiful gem of all, is the Pitt diamond, the treasure of the Prussian crown. It weighs now 136.75 carats, and originally 600. It has been cut down into one of the most exquisite gems to be found in the world.
The best known diamond of all is the Koh-I-Noor diamond. It is the most popularly known of all the royal gems, although it is not the largest. It was bought from a Hindoo Prince, and weighed at first 900 carats. It was reduced to 106 carats. It lost 800 carats simply to be made beautiful. It seems to me I have known Christians, who, years ago, weighed 900 carats also, but who have now not more than 100 carats of consequence. But I would give more for them a great deal than in their old condition. What is the reason? They have been reduced, that is all. God has been polishing them, putting on their many sides of beauty and glory, and He will go on grinding, and filing, and polishing, until they are proportional, symmetrical and beautiful.
They will not show themselves at all then. But everywhere you look at them, you will see the reflection of Jesus. They were formerly dull, dead glass, but this is what God has been doing for them. The process has not been pleasant, and they have felt like asking, ‘What does it all mean? Why is it that things are trying me so much?’ These things will come and continue to come until they have done their work. This very morning, perhaps, you have met them, and they will meet you again, until their work of polishing is done, and then you will be tried in some other place. God is not purifying us in one part of our nature only.
If He did the soul would be only a flat surface, and a flat diamond is not worth much. God is rubbing you on every side, but you will yet thank Him that He has allowed the trouble to come. Next month He will rub you upon another side, and so prepare another face of this exquisite gem to reflect the glory of the sun. When a workman wishes to polish a gem, he does not use a chisel and mallet to do it; he does not even use fine steel, the most perfect that ever was made. He does not take the finest sand or emery. What does he do? He uses another diamond, very often small bits of diamond, called diamond dust.
Beloved, God is purifying you, by means of all the people that you meet with in life. Everyone is polished, not with tools and edges, but with diamond dust. The people that try you and with whom you are thrown in contact so often, and with whom you have so little real companionship, are the diamond dust God is using for this purpose. I am afraid to follow out this thought too far, lest some one should be impressed with the thought itself, and that is not what God wants. He would have us lay hold upon the living truth. Every position that you are in in life can yield this ministry of polishing to you. The trifling business transaction of yesterday, so trifling that perhaps no one knew anything about it, may have thrown a pressure on your heart for hours, because of some little hasty word in it.
You cannot go down town and spend an hour with a printer or a clerk, without feeling when you get home that you have had diamond dust rubbed on you, which has either smoothed you, or made you feel how rough you were. From Monday morning until Saturday night is the most important work of the week. The practical tests of life are what are doing the polishing work for men and women, and are showing them how much reality there is in their religion. The sermon is of no use, unless you can live it out all the week. The lesson will be but idle, unless you take it home and let God work it out to His divine praise, and honor, and glory.
VI.
Precious gems have utility as well as beauty. There is service for them to do. The wheels of a watch would be useless unless they rested on jewels. Some precious stones are worn on people’s breasts and some are carried in their watch cases. Are you willing to be inside, unseen in your work, and simply help to make the wheels go round. As a stamp is used to impress wax, so may we be willing to stamp other lives in every way He may choose to make us. Shall we let Him use us for others, and prepare us also for the more beautiful place He has for you and me in the more glorious future.
Let us stop and gather up the meaning of these thoughts for each of us. Do not let them glide away from the memory without stopping before them and searching our heart to see if we have learned the lesson He would bring. Let us behold the great Redeemer of our soul; let us think of how much we owe to His precious blood; let us think how He prizes us far above our worth; let us think what His death has saved us from and the glorious possession it has bought for you and me. Then let us be ashamed of our fears and wanderings, and come and yield our being to Him in full surrender, and let Him make of us what He would have us be. Let us see how much we are going to lose by resisting His purpose concerning us, remembering, that He must increase, and we must decrease. He knoweth the way He taketh. Let sorrow do its work in us. Let grief and pain be His messengers coming with the sweet refrain:
More love to Thee, O Christ;
More love to Thee.
God help you to be among those who are His jewels, in the day that He shall make them up. Some are not His jewels. But may He be able to say of each of us, ‘they shall be mine; no breast but mine shall wear them.’
‘They shall be mine, saith the Lord of Hosts when I make up my jewels.’
20. Spiritual Senses
"But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." Hebrews 5:14
WE are to speak of the spiritual senses as they are typified by the bodily ones. Those five gate-ways of the soul are the sense of hearing, of sight, of touch, of taste, and of smell. God has made these, figures of our perception of the deeper world’the world of spiritual things. It also has its portals through the organs of perception ; its senses of hearing, feeling, touching, tasting, and smelling; and it is the duty of the Christian to have these senses exercised. We should be able to hear the voice of God by the inner ear; to feel His presence, to catch the sweet taste of spiritual things.
He should be able to perceive in the finest and most delicate part of his being, through these inner senses, that God is communicating with him, and trying to implant within him His own image. Although we are surrounded by the grossest elements, and our very life is founded, to some extent, on the physical senses, yet there should be nothing wrong in all that. There is nothing wrong in the material world in itself, and God has made these senses, by which we touch it, types of something higher and holier. We have the same five senses in spiritual things as in physical ones.
I.
God has given us the sense of spiritual hearing, to enable us to understand the things of truth. As Christ says of His people, ‘The sheep follow Him, for they know His voice, and a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from, for they know not the voice of strangers.’ That is spiritual hearing. I asked a sister the other day, who came to me for some advice, if she had ever heard the voice of God. She had known of His will only by intelligent apprehension, but through her spiritual senses never. I advised her, instead of getting a word from me, to go alone before God, and to get still, and listen, and then to take what He should speak to her. The next time I saw her, she said that she had done so.
It was in the midst of terrible suffering, even of strong agony, but she handed it over to God, and asked Him what He had to say about this, asking also for some word to comfort her. It was the cry of her heart, ‘Speak to me, O Lord!’ Then she was still for five minutes, and through her inner senses somehow, she could hardly tell how, the answer came, and she knew that it was from God. ‘Come unto Me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 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. For My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’
She said the sweetness that this brought, and the comfort and rest, were indescribable; and the very fact that God had spoken, added much to the beauty of the message. She fell asleep, rested and refreshed, and awoke in gladness. Before twenty-four hours had passed, there came another voice; another difficulty had arisen, and she thought, ‘Cannot God speak to me again about this, as He did last night?’ Clear and plain there came another verse into her mind, with a vivid sense of its being sent by God. The reason we do not hear this voice oftener, is because our sense of hearing has not been exercised by use. There will be other voices also, but we shall be able to know the difference between them, if we are patient and still, and good listeners.
We must have both ears open, the right one to God, and the left one to the devil, and we shall come to know them both by and by, and not be fooled by a voice that is not from God. We shall not be caught by every deceiver who would plausibly try to catch the ear. We shall detect that it is not the voice of God. We shall know it somehow, though friends may advice us to the contrary, and we may not be able to answer their reasonings. We shall know that it does not seem like the Master’s voice, and God will keep us from following it. We may listen to a most eloquent sermon, and be obliged to say at its close, ‘That was not the voice of Jesus.’ It was beautiful, but there was nothing of Christ in it.
It was more full of beauty than of the wounds of Him who was ‘So marred more than any man, and His form than the sons of men.’ I have been astounded by that mixture of paganism and pantheism called Christian science, which is being read and followed all over our land today. There is very little Christianity in it, not enough to keep it afloat, and yet Christians everywhere are caught by it. They are the stupid followers of the Lord. They have listened to it with both ears open, and yet there is no Calvary in it, and no Atonement. There is no reality about it, yet people are gulled and fooled by it, because they do not listen to the voice of God alone. They have not got their ears quickened to distinguish that voice from the voice of the stranger.
Their senses have not been exercised by reason of use. They have not become detectives to know the voice of God, to hearken unto it, and to listen ready to obey. One of the first directions that God gave to ancient Israel was to diligently hearken unto the voice of the Lord their God, and they had the promise that they should be quiet from fear of evil. God is willing to educate our ears. If we take him for that, He will give us quick, ready ears, with a readiness to obey His word. There are many people who do not want God to speak to them at all times, for they might have to change their plan of life, and they do not want to do that. Are you willing to hear that voice this morning, beloved, in everything? Are you hungry to know His will? Are you reserving your judgment, your opinion, and your choice, until you do know it? If so, He will not have to pull up plants by the roots, which you have allowed to grow in your hearts ; but your lives will go on, happily for yourselves, because they are pleasing to Him.
II.
Another spiritual sense is that by which we receive illumination. God does not say of His dear children, ‘Having eyes they see not,’ but He says, ‘Blessed are your eyes for they see.’ Christ has come to ‘Open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.’ Paul’s earnest prayer for the Ephesian Church was, ‘The eyes of your understanding being enlightened that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe according to the working of His mighty power.’
That is one of the things we are to see. We are to know ‘The love of Christ that passeth knowledge.’ There are infinite depths to this spiritual vision. We are not only to recognize the truths of God, to believe that they are to become true in the future, and are to be brought out in our own lives in some measure, but we are to see the glory of the coming of Jesus. ‘Our eyes shall see the King in His beauty, they shall behold the land that is very far off.’ God would have us take in the great things of His Gospel, the spiritual as well as the worldly ones. Our eyes have to be exercised.
When the blind man was healed, he at first saw men as trees walking. That was because he was looking down. But when Christ ‘Put His hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up, he was restored, and saw every man clearly.’ We need to get the habit of looking up before we can see plainly, and even then this spiritual faculty has to be wrought out. Things grow gradually clearer and clearer to us. The vision becomes lighter and lighter. We see more and more until we get upon the heights with Abraham, and look abroad upon the land, north and east, and south and west, and are conscious that the promise given to him is ours also. ‘All the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever.’
We know that the promise is to us and to our children, but it is also clearly ours for the future of the race, the coming of the Lord, and the glory of the coming ages. This vision, however, is not given to us, until we have our senses exercised. There must be a habit of seeing spiritual things. God wants us to see these things. He would have divine things become clear to us. They are too often shadowy, like figures in the moonlight. He wants them to stand out in their full beauty and magnitude, in distinctness of detail, and all the richness of their coloring. God will lead us to this, beloved. He will enable us to see in yonder world more then many see over there, whose senses have not been exercised here by reason of use.
I believe there will be multitudes of Christians in heaven, who will scarcely see its highest glory. They have not the visual organs to perceive it. They see a little of its beauty, and are satisfied. If a little mouse should pass through this church this morning, it would only see the crumbs that lay upon the carpet; it would not see the windows, nor the organ, nor the glory in the faces of the Christians. So the swindled soul that gets into heaven will be able to see that it has got out of hell, and that’s about all. It will not perceive all that other raptured souls do, because it has not got the organs to see them.
I suppose if you should take me into Theodore Thomas’s concert tomorrow I should not be able to understand all the little tricks of music that might be noticed there, because I have not been educated in that respect. But God is educating his children every day to perceive the things that He is preparing for them that love Him. How is this done? They are revealed by his Spirit. ‘For the Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep things of God.’ I would invite you this morning to go out into this beautiful world of vision. It is not sentimental nonsense we are talking. It is the clear teaching of the Holy Ghost, and, as following that guidance we go forth, the vision will become clear to us. We shall have the light spoken of here, and will be able to understand a little of the glory that shall be revealed to us more fully hereafter.
III.
God would have us learn also the spiritual sense of touch. Our Saviour understood this perfectly. He knew when the woman touched him in the midst of the throng, and asked instantly, ‘Who touched me?’ The disciples did not know it so clearly, and marveled that He could ask this question when the multitude was thronging so closely about Him. Ah they only touched His flesh; she had touched His spirit, His very life. We know the human touch of friendship ; when some dear one clasps our hand the touch has a meaning in it. There is a life and power there that is so different from the others. It will illustrate a little this contact with Christ. When some poor, weary heart drops into the everlasting arms, there is real rest and refreshment.
It feels it is not fording the waters alone, but it has got upon the rock; it has touched God; its spirit has become linked with Him; it is resting upon the Rock of Ages, which is as immutable as eternity itself. Every need has become supplied through this contact with God. His touch has invigorated the body and strengthened the spirit. Have you come so near to God as that, dear friends? When John saw the vision of Christ at Patmos, he fell at his feet as dead, but Jesus came and touched Him; He lifted him up, and that contact strengthened him to go on with the vision.
Jesus has still a hand beloved, which reaches deeper than our flesh, even to the very extremes of our being, and holds us firmly, saying to us, ‘Fear not.’ Let us reach out our hands and clasp Him, and be able truly not to fear, knowing that He is near that justifieth. So, let us set our faces like a flint, and go on in fearless courage. God will educate this sense within us also, and will enable us to go on through life and death, with our hands locked in the clasp of Him, who gives us all needful strength through that conscious touch.
IV.
There is also a spiritual sense of taste, which it is our privilege to exercise, and which enables us to distinguish between the bitter and the sweet in the spiritual life. This taste also needs to be educated, that we may be able to discern the infinite fine flavors of spiritual things. There are men who know the taste of wines so well that they can detect every grade of it, and almost every year of its age. It is a poor kind of education, but it is a type of how our spiritual taste may be educated. God says that we may taste of Him. ‘Come, taste and see that the Lord is good.’ We are not to eat, and drink, and get good only, but we are to know the taste of spiritual things, and get sweetness and enjoyment from them.
They can be partaken of with zest, for there is a variety of taste in them as well as strength to be derived from them. There should be a variety of spiritual tastes as well as in our physical tastes at the table. When we partake of sour things they should sicken us, as when a lover of mushrooms eats toadstools. Mr. Kimball told us at Old Orchard that his colored boy brought in some mushrooms one day, which he was a little fearful were toadstools, but the boy was not afraid of them. He said he would know if they were mushrooms, when he ate them. He knew them by the taste. He had an educated taste for the rooms.
Have you got an educated taste in spiritual matters, beloved? I remember well when God stopped me from reading novels. I was a broken-down minister at the time, and did not know God very well, and I took up one by way of diversion. But God sickened me so of it before I had finished it, so that I had to throw it away, and I have not read one since. Sometimes we have to learn the nature of poison by tasting it a little; enough to make us know it when we meet it. There are many people who are omnivorous in their habits of reading. They read God’s Word, and everything else almost that comes in their way, apparently making no difference between them. You can know them by their restless, unhappy lives.
If we would keep our lives pure, beloved, we must be guarded at this point also. ‘Doth the fountain send forth at the same time, both sweet and bitter waters? ‘We should have our sense of taste so educated, that the moment a pleasure comes we shall know whether it is safe or not. We shall not have to reason about it. We shall not enjoy this or that society, because God is not in it. Some of it will partake of the world, and some of the bitterness of the devil. We should learn the taste of it enough to escape from it. We should be educated for God, and so lose taste for every thing else. And we shall thus become so satisfied in Him, so filled with His love, and so happy in it, that we shall not want anything else.
V.
The last spiritual sense we speak of this morning is the sense of smell. There is a great deal said in the Bible about this. It is prophesied about our Saviour: ‘The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, and shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord; and He shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears, but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.’ The thought that is brought out here is that of quick smell. It means that Jesus does not need to look at things closely to recognize them, but he is able to know them at a distance by the odor.
So we should be able to understand spiritual things by a kind of spiritual intuition. We can know in this way the Master’s will for us, His thoughts concerning us, and all the exquisite meaning of His love. There are many things in Nature that appeal to this sense, and show us how we can understand the finer creations of God. The exquisite odor of flowers is something that no chemist could evolve; but Nature has given them freely, and they speak to us of that inner world, of sweetness which we can catch in this way. In the temple there was not only the sound of God’s voice speaking from between the cherubim; the taste of the bread for the strengthening of God’s people; but above all else there was the sweet smell of incense rising from the golden altar and filling the entire tabernacle.
It was God’s heart poured out in sweetness, and man’s heart meeting it in love. So God meets us in the inner sanctuary of the soul. He does see and speak with us merely, but He fills us with a precious sense of His presence, pouring it over us in fragrant clouds of love. As we bow before Him He meets us with sweetness, and we know that He is present by this delicate inner consciousness. If we wait before Him He will come to us in this way. We have not only the sound of His voice and the vision of His face, the touch of His hand and the taste of His love, but He makes us say, ‘All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia.’ He is the chief among ten thousand.’ And we are filled with this perfume as we go out, bearing it abroad, like those spice ships from the shores of Mozambique and Arabia, spreading the odor of the gums and spices upon the air.
We have entered into the inner soul of spiritual things, and our hearts have been filled with their essence. The reason we do not catch these things quicker is because we live so much in the external world. There is so little quiet in our lives, and so much bustle and hurry. God wants something finer from us. He would have us go through our work every day, carrying the sweetness in our hearts which we have breathed in from heaven and so always breathing it out wherever we go. The reason we do not do this is because we are not keeping close to God. We do not find this fragrance in the land of snows. We must go to the South land to find it. And so we must go to Him for all the spirit needs: we must have Him touch the senses of the soul and satisfy them, and then we can carry this fragrance to others.
As it is in the outward life, so must it also be in the spiritual. God makes our physical life a type of the inner, which is exactly the same in details, but more real. Have you all these senses open to God’s influences? or are you so diseased with spiritual catarrh and hay-fever that you cannot catch the sweet fragrance of those finer spiritual things which God would make known to you in this way? If you are not able to do this, give your spiritual senses to Him today, to quicken by His living touch: nay, let Him come within, to live as the resources of all the inner life. What are you going to do when you draw near to the valley of death and hear faintly the ‘good-bye’ of wife and children? Will you be able to hear His voice, saying, ‘Fear not, for I am with thee’? The time will come when all these outward things will be withdrawn, and there will be nothing left but the inner senses by which to apprehend God.
A gentleman once tried to rouse his dying brother by leaning over him and shouting, ‘Do you know me, John?’ But the sick man only shook his head. His wife came up and repeated the question, but met with the same response. Then they asked him, ‘Do you know Jesus?’ that woke him out of his stupor : he threw up his hands, exclaiming, ‘He is with me now! Jesus of Nazareth, blessed Jesus!’ And he went home to heaven in His arms. Have you got that precious consciousness of His presence that will go with you when the tide is swelling high around you, and carry you safely to the other shore? You have heard of the stage-driver in San Francisco, who, when he was dying, thought he was driving the stage-coach down a steep grade, and that he could not get his feet upon the brake. Do you know what it is to get your feet upon the solid ground? Have you got Him forever as an eternal possession? Can you say,
‘On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand?’
When the time comes that you will not be able to eat or drink, and they bring you all the stuff they are making now for sick people, can you say, as did the dying saint, ‘He has brought me into His banqueting house?’ When everything around smells of the mold, will you be able to catch above it the odor of sweet flowers, and sing,
‘A sweet perfume upon the breeze
Is borne from ever vernal trees.’
Can you say, as another of God’s dying saints exclaimed. ‘There is no dying here; there is no bitterness here. I smell the mold, but faith comes, and, blessed be God! I smell the rose above the mold.’ When all sight is gone for every earthly thing, will you be able to see those dearer visions opening upon the inner sight? I have sometimes thought, the more dear our earthly surroundings, the more bitter it makes the hour of parting. The more lovely are the things that are around us in this sensuous life, the more terrible do they make the dying hour.
I beseech you, dear friends, to keep this life here full of God. Keep the Master with you who goes through both worlds with you. There will be nothing in the golden streets up there but what will have had their beginnings down here. May God give us a little heaven here below, with Himself as its joy and its centre.
21. Business Terms As Types Of Spiritual Things
"But now hath He obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also He is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises." Hebrews 8:6
NOT only are all the objects of Nature used as emblems of spiritual life and truth, but God has put teachings of His own holy truth into the framework of man’s secular and social life. He has used the ordinary employments and business arrangements of every day as types of His own transactions with us. In every part of commercial life, we can see a finger pointing upward like a church spire, and telling us of God. On our business streets, and in all the marts of trade, we can learn many precious lessons of God’s covenant blessings. The business man, as he goes to make a deposit in the bank, can think of the great treasure he has laid up for him in Heaven.
Such verses as this may come to his mind : ‘I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep my deposit against that day.’ So, too, the broker’as he prepares his insurance papers, and the proprietor man as he takes them from his hand’may think of the greater security he has obtained for the future. When the flames of dissolution shall sweep over this dissolving world, he need not fear for he is safe from loss or danger. The notary, as he places the stamp upon the paper, and hands over the sealed document, and the one person who receives it, may each think of the greater covenant written with God’s own finger and sealed with His own stamp. So through the whole circle of business life, there is something which speaks of God.
The Scriptures are framed on these moulds, and, to understand all their meaning, we must understand business forms among men, especially among God’s ancient people. God is definite in His transactions, even far more than man. The whole plan of salvation is precise, and yet wonderful in its adaptation to the needs of the community or people to whom comes, bringing its promises of help. The act of faith, by which its offers are received, is as much a business matter as a letter written to a person accepting some offer in every day commercial transactions. It is setting our seal to God’s covenant of grace. The work of the Holy Ghost is described under these figures. The great act by which God secures redemption to us, is called a covenant. The Communion service in which we so often participate, is described by a commercial term. It is not only a supper of which God and His dear children partake together, but it is a will and testament’the seal of a covenant. It is a business transaction repeated often in the presence of men and angels.
These terms, which are employed so freely in the Bible, give us insight not only into God’s character, but they present His truth in such a definite way that we are able more readily to grasp it. We will speak this morning of two or three of these and the manner in which they are intended to help our struggling faith. The first of these is the word ‘covenant;’ the second, ‘seal,’ and the third, ‘earnest.’ They are all closely linked together.
I.
In the first of these we shall, perhaps, be able to get a view of God’s covenant with us. In the text it is spoken of as a better covenant of which Christ is the surety. The word means a treaty which is formed between communities or individuals. Such things were very common in ancient times, and particularly in Oriental countries, they were considered very sacred. An Arab today counts his word or his covenant as sacred as his life. With them they were ratified by some simple ceremony. The covenant of salt was always ratified by each party partaking of bread and salt, and striking hands together heartily when the rite was over. The compact then was as good as the life of each man. In certain parts of Africa the persons, forming a covenant, partake of each other’s blood.
A vein is opened in the arm of one of them, and the other drinks his blood. There is then a blood covenant between them which can never be broken. In the distant East, that land of spiritual symbols, a covenant is regarded as a very sacred thing, and God has taken this form and made it the pledge of His love and help for His lost and redeemed people. We find covenants running all through the Scriptures. There was first the covenant of works by which Adam, and his posterity were to be saved if they kept it unbroken. Then there was the covenant written in stone by the finger of God in presence of the holy angels. Still further back there was a covenant before man was born by which the sin of the world was to fall upon Christ, by whose sufferings lost man was to be redeemed and brought back to God.
This was a covenant in which Christ and the Father participated. It was the covenant of grace. The other covenant of works was broken, and God knew it would be; the covenant of grace through Jesus Christ never can be broken. It is the best and strongest of all the covenants. It is made with God’s dear Son. I like to think that God did not make this covenant with me personally, but with Jesus Christ for me, and it is kept by Him. All through the Old Testament this truth is taught. Salvation is a great transaction, in which the Father and the Son are the transacting parties. Jesus stands as the head of the redeemed race and undertakes to fulfill all the conditions of the agreement. He stands there with the Father in the ages before the world was formed, as though man had already fallen.
He assumes all the guilt of the fall, undertakes to suffer for the sin, to fulfill the rightousness which man has lost, and to pay all the debt he has incurred. He measures all the possibilities of man’s failure, and assumes all the responsibility of preserving his love and faith and obedience unbroken. He undertakes the whole of it, and agrees to make the matter right on man’s part. God on the other hand agrees to remit the penalty for sin, to blot out all the transgressions, and to accept sinful man in His Son through all the ages to come. It is of this that the Father speaks when He says: ‘I will give Thee for a covenant of the people.’ Jesus came down to earth for this very thing, to be the surety of a better covenant. If God had made the covenant with us we would certainly have broken it, but Christ has made it sure for us by fulfilling all its stipulations.
He took the hardest place that could be found in the universe. He overcame all its difficulties, and until the end He shall not fail. His holy life was lived in the presence of sinful men, the burden of our guilt was fully borne, and until death He stood without a failure. Then He could raise the exultant cry, ‘It is finished.’ The price was all paid, the purchase was complete, and we have nothing to do but to enter into the possession He has prepared for His beloved and redeemed ones. Then He ascended up on high, having led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. As soon as the work of redemption was complete the Father began to deliver over into His hands the results of His wonderful sacrifice and toil, and He shares it with us, His brethren.
He is the elder brother, and so inherits everything, but we enter into His possession and enjoy it with Him. He takes us in as joint heirs with Himself. The covenant of salvation was not made with us. It was made with Christ for us. He became the surety of this better covenant. He undertook to be the sponsor for you and me. We do not promise God to do this or that, and then He will do His part. That old covenant of works was broken in the garden of Eden, and never can be kept by man.
Christ becomes surety for the frail heart of man. He knows it is nothing but a rope of sand, yet he says: ‘I will stand for it.’ Christ becomes through this covenant of grace surety for our rightousness. As we let Him live in us and control us perfectly He meets God’s expectation in us, and the covenant is fulfilled. What is the language of the old prophets in this connection? ‘I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them.’ ‘I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever.’ God puts Christ’s spirit within you, beloved. Christ is in you as the strength of your life and He is for you, the surety of better a covenant. Let us be very careful that we lean only on that inner consciousness of the Spirit’s presence.
There is another sense of this word which is also very sweet. God has not only made a covenant with Christ, He makes a personal covenant with each one of us. We have come to trust in the fulfillment of Christ’s great covenant with the Father for us all collectively as His people. But besides that, it is very blessed to have separate covenants with God for ourselves, each in his own life. They are little circles of precious links with God, revolving within the greater circle of Christ’s marvelous work for us, and working out the fulness of their purpose with as great certainty as Jesus’ own work is being fulfilled.
One of the first acts I did as a child after my conversion was to write out such a covenant with God. I had been reading the severe but profoundly heart-searching writings of Dr. Philip Doddridge, and I took his suggestion about such a plan. I wrote it out carefully and signed and sealed it. I could weep sometimes as I think of the many little things God let me put into that covenant, and the marvelous way in which He fulfilled them, trifling as they seemed afterward. I was careful even then, to make it in accordance with Scripture, and so it was not presumptuous. I have learned more fully since then, that a knowledge of His will is the highest thing we can ask for. More than anything else we need that there shall be a perfect understanding between His heart and ours.
What He does not wish me to know I do not care about knowing; and away back in those early days I had a consciousness that not one of His thoughts for me would ever fail. One of the things that as a child I chose in that first covenant was the working out of His best thought for me. I chose even then the will that He intended for me, as the best thing that could be wrought into my life. Later, as my life has been more fully yielded to Him, I have known that He was fulfilling it, and am sure that He will to the very end. We can lean back upon the knowledge of this truth, and find it supporting us like cables of steel, each one of them a separate line of communication with heaven.
Yes, beloved, the Lord has a covenant for each of us, a better covenant than our wills could frame. It is sweet to think of it. It is a covenant by which God is specially pledged to you, and you are immutably bound to Him. Let us then lift up our heads in confidence, and realize what it means, for we have a ‘strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us, which hope we have as an anchor to the soul, both sure and steadfast.’ It is sure; it cannot be shaken. There is nothing that need frighten you. God has made it sure, that we may be free from fear. We know it is strong and safe. We can go to sleep on it. We can awake and go to work upon it. We can suffer and die upon it.
There is nothing more secure and solid in the universe. It is as stable as eternity, as deity itself. ‘It is an anchor to the soul sure and steadfast.’ God is under covenant to each one of you, beloved friends. He has bound Himself to you so strongly that He can not tear Himself away. It is a safe place to be in, but all it cost Him to provide it for us not even the angels can know. God help us to abide in it, and say evermore:
‘On Christ the solid rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand.’
II.
The next expression, we will refer to this morning, is the word seal. It is used in the epistles as a type of the stamp of the Holy Ghost which God puts upon us when we accept His word. There are two seals spoken of in the New Testament: one is the seal of faith; the other is the seal of the Spirit. ‘He that hath received His testimony hath set to His seal that God is true.’ That is the seal of faith. ‘In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.’ That is the work of God. I put my seal upon the document, and then God puts His there.
He will not do this, however, until you have committed your faith irrevocably to Him and His word first. As in business transactions the most responsible party reserves his signature until the other has affixed his, so God does also. When you accept Him wholly and without reserve, then He gives the stamp of inner gladness and joy and peace. The trouble is we are too apt to want His seal before we have put down our own, forgetting the word of Jesus, ‘He that believeth not the Son shall not see life.’ There must be faith on our part before God will seal us with the Holy Spirit.
Jeremiah was so convinced that the children of Israel would be brought back from their captivity that before they were carried away, he bought back part of his old paternal estates, believing God’s word that fields and vineyards should again be possessed in the land. He sealed the covenant he thus made with its former owner with two seals, one of which was open and the other was closed. Beloved, God’s covenant with us has two seals also. The open one is faith in the Word of God. But there is a secret seal He puts upon His dear children, that is fore each one personally. This is the Holy Spirit by which God impresses upon our hearts a sense of His acceptance, and a consciousness of His presence and blessing.
III.
The last business term, which we will look at today, is the word earnest. It occurs in the same verse which we read before. Eph 1: 13’’Ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession.’ God not only seals us when we become His children, but He gives us something which He calls an earnest. The old Hebrew custom will convey some meaning of this figure. The earnest was a guarantee and in some sense a sample, a first installment of the thing covenanted for. So with us it is the beginning of that which God means to give later more fully.
When Jeremiah bought back his old estate, he probably received from its former owner a handful of soil taken from the farm according to the ancient custom, as a token that he should have the whole of it. This first installment or earnest of future possession used to accompany all the deeds of ancient times. The covenant was not only sealed, but along with it came a little pledge of future possession. God uses this figure to teach us a precious truth. He not only gives us a promise, confirmed by an oath, of what He is going to do for us, but the Holy Spirit gives a part of that which is yet to come into our hands. He begins to pay it over to us from the very commencement of the contract. As fast as we can take in the soil of heaven we are put in possession of it.
The future inheritance is transfused into our life here in some measure. There is nothing that we shall have or that we shall be in the fullness of glory but we begin to have and to be in the days of grace. There is not a song we shall sing in heaven but we shall begin to learn it here. There is not a glory or a purity or a power awaiting us yonder but we have received the beginnings of here. The fullness of eternal life we begin to receive here on earth : and if we do not have it here in foretaste, beloved, we shall not have it there. As we sit here this morning in His holy presence, do we realize that we have all heavenly things, not only in promise, but that we are really tasting them?
This word earnest is used not only in reference to our spiritual possessions, but about our physical life also. It has been very impressive to me to find out this truth about divine healing. God begins to give us the resurrection life of His dear Son here on earth. We have an earnest not only of the purity and bliss of heaven, but the beginnings of resurrection life in physical power in our nerves and veins. Speaking of this, Paul says:
‘For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven:
If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.
For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.
Now he that hath wrought us for1 the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.
Therefore we are always confident.’
The Spirit is giving us now the first fulfillment of the promise of resurrection life. We can know it in the beating of the heart, and the fresh energy of the whole frame. Resurrection life has indeed already begun.
God has given us this morning three great words: His covenant of grace; the seal of the Holy Spirit; and the earnest of an inheritance which Jesus died to bring to us, and of which He has become the sponsor and guardian. Are you sure that you have them all, dear friends? Are you sure you are trusting in His covenant, and not your own, and that you have received His pledges and the surety of His word and love? May God begin today to renew His covenant and seal, and press into our lives the earnest of His promises of future glory in abundant foretaste, so that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
22. Natural And Spiritual Transformations
"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." II Corinthians 3:18
THE mythology of ancient languages and of ancient peoples is full of wonderful pictures of transformations. The beautiful objects of nature, flowers, buds, and even the foam upon the sea waves are represented as changing into other forms of purity and loveliness. It tells us also of metamorphoses by which lower orders of animals are changed into higher and more glorious ones. This idea, however, did not originate with them, nor did it find its birth in the regions of poetry.
We see the same thing taking place every day in the realms of nature. We have only to look around us to find these delicate transformations going on upon every side. The ugly bulb is being transformed constantly into the beautiful blossom. The crawling thing of earth is becoming a glorious thing of heaven. The repulsive worm we saw yesterday creeping along our path, today has taken to itself wing, and is soaring on high a beautiful creature of the air. These transformations of common things into beautiful ones are to be seen everywhere. The canvas of the artist is made to glow with exquisite loveliness.
The cold marble is changed into the radiant face of an angel, whose countenance expresses all the emotions that a human face could assume. Even the common things of the street are taken up by art and beautified and refined into something far above their original place. Such is the beautiful paper upon which we write our letters of love to our friends. Such are the lovely gems with which so many of the votaries of fashion are decked. It is a transformation from a lower into a higher order of things. Art takes the light of the sun, and with it paints its pictures of life and beauty.
Perhaps these thoughts will lead us up a little to the beautiful picture of our test. Paul gives a Bible illustration of the same principle in the context. He has been speaking of Moses. He tells us that he went up into the mount with a face of common dull clay, but up there he listened to God’s voice, he looked up into His face, and the glory of His presence filled his whole being. It penetrated his very blood and flesh and veins. It caused him to glow with the same radiance. When he came down after being up there forty days his face was shining like the sun. The people could not look upon it, and they begged him to cover it up. Gazing upon God had made him like God. It had transformed him into the same likeness.
The apostle uses this principle to illustrate the spiritual transformation that God is constantly making, taking man’s coarse, sinful nature and changing it into the glorious image of His own beautiful face. He was alluding to Moses when he said: ‘We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.’ This is a picture of spiritual life and growth into the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ. No other such transformation as this has ever been wrought upon earth. All else is but the scaffolding around this inner and eternal temple.
All that art has accomplished or taste and skill performed, are nothing to what the Holy Ghost is able to do. Where can you find such a change as is going on in the heart of a reformed man, who was once perhaps a low drunkard, but whose life is now filled with the glory and beauty of God. That is the kind of transformation that is taking place now in the history of each one of us. The week that has just passed has been full of opportunities for such touches. The week that is coming will put us under the chisel again, to bring out more fully and with new beauty the light of His countenance in ours.
Are you yielding yourselves to this transforming power, dear friends? Are you becoming thus changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ, through the patient care of the Master’s hand? Are you allowing Him to press out of your nature all the materials that are common and unclean, and that would spoil the beautiful likeness He is laboring to bring out within you? Are we allowing these baser elements in our character to rule us, corrupting the good and us unfit to touch the holy things of God, or are we being transformed by the renewing of our minds into the image of Jesus? Certainly if we desire it we shall be made into that glorious image. That is what we are elected for. There is no other election but that which is making us pure.
God has no other election for any man but to change him into the likeness of His dear Son. We are just bits of canvas put upon an easel and stretched there with the pattern above it, and the Master sits down patiently before it and begins the work of reproducing it in us. We are just blocks of marble brought rough from the quarry, but each one of them contains an angel, and the great Sculptor begins to bring it out. He works on and on and on until this glorious work is done’the gentle, patient Holy Ghost, whose work it is to purify and transform us and make us like the blessed Saviour.
There are many principles in these words, which show us how this may be made real in Christian life.
I.
We are to become copies of the glory of the Lord. We are to be changed into the image of God. We are to sit down and be copied into Him. We cannot comprehend all that this means, nor indeed any of it till we know Him well, but this is the first thought, to be made over into His image. We shall find that includes His holiness, purity and perfect love. It would be presumption for us to think of assuming this if He did not direct us to do so, but that certainly is a part of the picture we are to copy. It is not our own picture that we are to reproduce, but His. It is set before us, but we must get very near it to make a perfect copy.
It is not a few delineations of character only we are to get, but the likeness of the full glory. ‘We are to be changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.’ Are you venturing, my brothers and sisters, to make this copy? Are you going about feeling that you are standing as God, and that you are representing God and the glory of God to others, and that you are a copy of His divine perfection? This will not bring with it any spirit of self exaltation, for it is not your own perfection you are showing forth, but His.
II.
God gives us a miniature of this glory to copy. We behold it as in a glass. We could not gaze upon divinity itself unveiled, and so God puts all these attributes, He would have us be possessed of, in a glass, so that we may see them clearly and yet not be dazzled by their brightness; and that glass is His dear Son. Jesus is the image of the Father. We could not look upon the sun steadily without destroying our vision, but we can smoke a piece of glass and look at it thus in a partial shadow without being injured. We could not look upon God in His splendid majesty, and He kindly veils His glory and shows it to us in softer light in the person of Jesus Christ. ‘We see Him in miniature in the gospels, upon the level on which we live ourselves, filling positions which we are able to understand.
An astronomer constructs a telescope by which he can view the stars of the heavens as they are reflected in a glass which acts as a mirror. He does not have to strain up to the sky in order to examine the clusters of stars, but he brings a reflection of them down to his own level, and then he can see them clearly. So Christ brings the glory of God down to us. He comes down and lives among us, and thus shows us all that God has it upon His heart for man to become. If we have any desire to become like God, we must study the Saviour and imitate Him. He is the typical man, the perfect picture of what God expects every man to become. Christ is not only a picture of God: He becomes our Head, imparting to us His own life. He is a real inspiration, giving us vital force. He is not only a pattern for us to look at and try to imitate, but He communicates to us the power to become like Himself. He comes and lives in us and helps us to grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.’
III.
‘We are changed into the glory of God by gazing into this glass. A steady look there will bring spiritual beauty into our life. We can get it nowhere else than by looking unto Jesus. We must fix the eye upon Him and keep it there every moment steadily. Thus He becomes to us more than our example; even the very fountain from which we drink in spiritual life. There is another principle connected with this transition that we must not fail to discover. I am sure we do not fully understand the mighty power of a look. There is a strange physical contact which comes to us through the eye.
The little bird catches the eye of the serpent and finds it to contain a strange, magnetic power, which it is not able to withstand. The venomous, crawling thing sees the little innocent creature, and with one look it seems to fasten itself upon its very life, and transfix and hold it captive by that gaze. The ancients represented this principle in their picture of the head of Medusa, a horrid combination of cruelty and abomination, which had the power of changing the person who looked upon it into stone. It was a type of the power there is in coming in contact with evil.
There is a power in this which too few Christians even understand. You cannot look at any picture of evil without taking in its filthiness with your whole being. You cannot look upon scenes of moral degradation and death without having them throw a spell over you which it will take all your powers of resistance to overcome. On the other hand, there is equal power upon the good and true. By gazing steadily upon them you will grow into their likeness. If you see nothing around you but that which is cultivated, you will grow up in refinement. It is easy to fix the social positions of the people before you by their faces.
We take the tone of the influences that surround us, as insects take the color of the plants they feed upon, as the chameleon takes the colors of the passing seasons, and as the conies borrow the color of the rocks they live in. The power of association is intensely strong in human nature. A celebrated artist wished once to paint a picture of the judgment and before he attempted to touch his canvas he went to live day after day in the sepulchre of the dead. He gazed upon all the surroundings, looked steadily at the skeletons, took in the whole atmosphere of the place into his eye and brain, then when his whole being was penetrated with the influences of the sepulchre he went to his studio and transferred it to the canvas.
He could paint it now for it had grown into his very nature. This thought will help us to understand the power of association with Christ. If we fix our eye there we will find His life beginning to flow into us through the power of that gaze. We shall become like Him because we are so much with Him. The eye is so constructed that it takes in the image of the thing upon which it gazes. If you look upon the sun in yonder heaven, the image of it will be formed in your eye. If you look upon the face of some dear familiar friend, that image is brought into your mind through the organs of vision. So gazing on Christ brings Him also into your being. If you look at Jesus, you have Jesus, if you look away from Him you lose Him. It is necessary then to fix the vision ever closely upon Him if you would hold Him as a perpetual presence. How that look will light up your soul, quicken your mind, and irradiate your whole nature.
This gaze must be with open face, there must be no hindrance, nothing to obstruct the view. Neither must the gaze become distracted by anything else that would cause us to look aside this way or that. There must be a steady, open, fixed look straight up to Christ. So only can we know of having spiritual growth or of being transformed into His glorious image. Perhaps this will be made clearer by the art of photography. The image there is transferred by the power of steady contact. You know the person must get in front of the camera and gaze steadily upon it. Then the image is formed upon the prepared plate inside. If anything comes between, there is no picture formed.
If a curtain should be placed there, or if some other person should stand there, or even if the sitter should not sit still or should not look steadily at the camera there would be no picture. If he moves a little to one side or winks his eyes there will be a slight aberration of the lines. He must look steadily and sit still until the picture is taken. So in divine transformations, we must look at Jesus with open face with no barrier between. We must keep the heart fixed on Jesus if we would grow like Him, if we would be able to grasp Him by our instincts, if we would have the Holy Spirit through the consciousness of His presence, in our hearts constantly. We shall become used after a while to the fact that there is some one there besides ourselves, who is not a disturbing element, but who adds power to our thought and peace to our heart and who can be always apprehended by an inner perception which we could not perhaps put into words.
Flowers do not speak to us to tell us of their presence, but we detect it by the sweet fragrance shed upon the air. This presence does not hinder our work. We go on with that as before, hurrying too in its busy parts, faithful as ever in all its details, yet conscious all the time that some one is with us. Have you never had a dear friend at your side to whom you were too busy to talk, but who was ever present to your mind as you went on with your busy toil? So Christ’s presence in our heart does not interfere with our occupations, but rather helps us in them. It leaves us free, yet overshadowed with the purity and sweetness and strength of God. This is the presence that the Holy Spirit comes to us to keep constantly before our minds. The devil comes also and tries to inject another vision there.
Perhaps it is something intended to distract our thoughts, or to introduce fear. Perhaps something crosses our path, over which we allow ourselves to be irritated, and the sweet image is gone. The consciousness of God’s presence leaves us. Therefore it is necessary to hold steadily to the view of Christ which has been presented to us, looking at Him with open face. Therefore it is necessary to keep the eye on Christ, and turn resolutely away from the other vision, which would allure us from Him. We must refuse to listen to its suggestions or to give it attention in any way. We are not, however, to be frightened by it. It cannot hurt us, while we are holding steadily to Jesus. Hand the evil thing over to Him and trust Him to conquer it for you.
Abide in Him at all times. ‘Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him.’ ‘Thou wilt keep Him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee.’ The time to keep stayed on Him is, when all around is in commotion. When everything is surging and restless about you, then let your anchor of trust take fast hold on God, and it will keep you steady. Let your eye never be taken from Him, no matter how the adversary may try to hinder you. He will spoil the simplicity of your faith, if once he can cross its path. It often happens that God’s dear children have gone home from some service for Him or from listening to some teaching that has filled their hearts with holy peace, and they almost feel that they shall abide in Him forever, but the enemy comes in some subtle guise, and the whole thing is shivered in an instant, and the sweet piece destroyed.
Ah! it has not been beholding with open face the glory of the Lord. It is not always annoying things that have this power of hiding God’s face from us. It is often simply distracting things, or pleasant thoughts that are not sent by Him. The devil goads us sometimes off the right path, sometimes he allures us by false lights. The apostle tells us a little later: ‘If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.’ The literal reading is, ‘by the things that perish, by which the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them, which believe not.’ By these perishing things of earth their minds are blinded.
If the face of Jesus Christ is hidden at all it is by the perishing things of this world. The vain, idle pleasures, the vanities that last so short a time, have power to ‘blind the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.’ If you try to look at Jesus Christ the devil will try to get your attention. He will surely come and throw some beautiful bandage over your eyes to prevent you from seeing Him. It may be some petty article of female adorning. It may be a love of art, or the pleasures you engage in every day, and which in themselves may be innocent, and he says to you, ‘look at these: See how lovely they are.’ The instant you turn away to look at these things which perish, he bandages your vision so you cannot see Jesus.
How can you when you see so many other things? They must blind you to the vision of heaven. It is very easy to be so engrossed with social life, so busy and preoccupied with the things that relate to this world only, that there is no time for gazing even for a little while upon the beauty of Jesus. The summer is a ceaseless round of pleasure in the country, the winter is a hurried pursuit of the same kind of things in the city. If a serious thought for a moment arrests the mind, or an earnest appeal reaches the heart, if the eyes are turned an instant only toward heaven, the devil is more quickly there with some beautiful bandage to blind them.
That is the reason the people are not saved, they are so busy with the pleasures of earth that they have no time. One excitement after another keeps them in a whirl of unrest that destroys all thought of God. There is no leisure for quiet growth in the divine life. We must with open face behold His glory constantly. We must take time to gaze on His beauty. We must walk with Him constantly, and then we shall be transformed into His image day by day. This will not come to us all at once. We must be patient in waiting for its fulfillment. There is an instant when our sanctification is made sure to us. After that there is a gradual development of it in the life. There is first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.
So we are changed from glory to glory. We have not reached the full ideal yet. It would be a pity if we had. God comes to us this week with an infinitude of blessing for needs we have never felt before. There are heights and lengths and depths in the fullness of God, which we have not begun to measure. We can form some conception of the illimitable blessing there is in Him for us, by the measureless promise contained in Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians, that ye ‘may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.’
IV.
The last point is the artist who is carrying out this wonderful transformation. It is the Spirit of God. He is the photographer, and He is standing over His work, keeping the lenses right, and carefully finishing up the picture. The Holy Ghost is ever at hand to arrange everything, to color the picture and to put away and guard it so that the colors shall not fade. It is comparatively easy to take the picture, but we can’t keep it from fading. We keep it in our hands; that is the trouble. We have had many pictures but they have all faded. Some vexing thing would sweep over us and they are gone.
Some of these views of Christ have been very clear and blessed, and we have thought we could never make a mistake in that direction again. But the picture did not last. Ah, dear friends, the Holy Ghost must be the artist and He must keep the picture if it is to last. Lay the vision over into His hands as soon as it is given, and say, ‘Now, Lord, keep this for me, and keep me to it.’ Raphael was for months among the dead before he ventured to paint the judgment. It has taken the Holy Ghost two thousand years to paint Christ on the dead hearts of men. Jesus Christ is the great copy before us, the Holy Ghost is the artist to do the copying, and the Father is the great original.
Let this glory be painted on us day by day. Bye-and-bye we shall be taken up into His palace to live with Him forever, and then we shall be like Him forevermore.
24. Girdles
"Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end." I Peter 1:13
AMONG the various articles of apparel much used in the Bible as a symbol of spiritual equipment and character there are few more important and striking than the spiritual girdle. Literally the girdle was a large broad scarf usually of costly materials which the owner wrapped around his person to keep his loose flowing garments in place. It generally contained many receptacles in which were carried small swords, knives and wallets, and various other small articles as numerous as those to be found in a boy’s pockets. It was a very useful appendage to the costume.
It was sometimes made of plain linen, and sometimes of the costliest materials that could be obtained. The curious girdle of the High Priest was made with very great expense and unspeakable care and skill. The Lord Jesus was girded as a symbol of His priestly character. It has several special meanings’and it is indispensable for some uses. The Indian uses his belt to regulate his strength. Then too on long marches which were sometimes taken without food, as day after day passed, the ancients would lighten their belts and imagine that their hunger was satisfied.
Their loins being thus girded up they would press forward with fresh vigor. The girdle has several meanings for us this morning. The Holy Ghost is saying to us ‘Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober and hope to the end.’ He would equip us for the journey that is waiting us; or better, He would establish us and quicken us in the will of God.
I.
We read of the girdle as a symbol of official position, ‘Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a child, girded with a linen ephod.’ One of the most wonderful promises concerning the coming Saviour is to be found in Isa. Xxii; 21-24.
‘And I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand: and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah.
And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder: so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.
And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house.
And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring and the issue.’
This has reference to Christ under the special type of Eliakim. He received a girdle as an expression of his being set apart for some definite work. If God has girded you beloved, He has given you something to do, He has given you some official standing and responsibility. It is a very solemn place you are called to fill. It is a place of service, discipleship and of witnessing for Jesus. God has made us stewards in trust for the world. There are multitudes of names for this figure of our high calling. Do you recognize the place to which you are called? Are you true to your trust? Have you got your girdle on? Are you fulfilling God’s expectation of you in your work? Do you understand just what He wants of you? God help you to be faithful.
‘Help me to watch and pray,
And on Thy strength rely,
Assured if I my trust betray,
I shall forever die.’
This girdle of office is for every Christian. He gave ‘to every man his work.’ It is a glorious place to be in, a great privilege to be the stewards of the Most High God, the bearers of His messages to men; however humble that place may be.
II.
The girdle is also a token of service, and especially lowly and even menial service. Jesus rose from that last supper among His disciples, and took a towel and girded Himself, and then washed their feet. In another place He said of Himself ‘I am among you as He that serveth.’ The kings and princes of this world are called great. His teaching was ‘Let him that would be chief among you be the servant of all.’ The word minister means a high servant, in the New Testament, and servant a low servant, an underservant or slave, whose duty it was to wash the feet of the guests. Jesus uses the lower word.
I am among you as a bondservant, with an apron on ready to serve you at the table, ready to wash your feet or serve you in any lowly way. That is Christ’s idea of service, and if you want any experience of serving Him you must get it in this lowly way. ‘Which of you having a servant ploughing, or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, go and sit down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shall eat and drink?’
This is the true interpretation of being His servant. Very tenderly Christ explains it to us and adds. ‘So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, we are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.’
That is the meaning of putting on the towel. It is a literal going to work. Many Christians would like very much to honor the Lord Jesus Christ by some great service, and perhaps think they have done so when they have put a few dollars in the collection plate on the Sabbath. Christ says ‘that is not even paying your board.’ When we think of what it cost Him to procure salvation for us we must see that we are but unprofitable servants. How great is His work for the creatures of His care. Every morning He feeds the little fowls with open hand, beside all the greater He is constantly doing.
He is doing as much now as He did in those earthly years of lowliness and suffering. There is nothing for us but shame when we think of the best work we have done for Him. By His grace let us be more faithful in our work both in the large and in the small things. There is a great deal that can be done in little ways. Have you got the girdle on for these things also? Lay aside the grand and selfish robes. The great cause of our lack of energy in the little services for God is because we have the wrong garment on. We are dressed for the drawing-room, or the bedchamber, when we ought to be in the scullery or the kitchen or the dining-room with our apron on, finding plenty of service with Christ among the bond-servants.
III.
The girdle also is a preparation for a journey. When the angel brought Peter out of the prison, the first direction he gave to him was, ‘Gird thyself.’ After Elijah’s contest with the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel was over and the fire from heaven had devoured his sacrifice, the heavens gathered blackness, and rain was about to fall. Then Elijah girded up his loins and ran before Ahab’s chariot to the entrance of Jezreel. The flowing robe of the Orient was not a good one to run a race in. It was necessary to tighten it. Some Christians try to run the heavenly race, as boys run a sack-race, and are so hampered and fettered that of course they stumble.
Others attempt it in their night-robes instead of being girded with strength. They are much more ready to fall asleep than to win the prize at the end of the race. Indulgence in apathy and repose, and self-indulgence will not help us on this race. ‘Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober and hope to the end.’ That is God’s call to you. If it is too loose you will soon become languid. Don’t be afraid of buckling it in tightly, and let it be of genuine elastic. There must be some spring your spirit. You cannot even walk fairly because you are not girded.
Christian life is too apt to be loose, and flabby, and spongy, and soft, and lax, and languid. That is the reason you are so ready to stumble and fall over the slightest temptation. Gird up the loins of your mind. Prepare for the march. It is a long way to heaven. There is much yet to be accomplished before we reach the land that is very far-off.
IV.
The girdle is connected with war as well as walking and running. The soldier has not only his armor on, but he has a girdle for his sword. The Lord is represented as girding His sword upon His thigh, and going forth to meet His enemies. So when we are thus girded we are ready for victory. We shall never be able to say that we have no temptations, but we can say that we have Christ as our full victory over them. In the time when strong temptations pour upon us, we can meet them with Him, and thus have grace and power and victory forever. When the forces of the enemy come down in great numbers, go forth to meet them with the shield of faith in the left arm, the sword of the Spirit in the right hand, the helmet of perfect assurance in the head, and the breast-plate of Christ’s righteousness on the bosom. But we are not to stand on the defensive alone.
We are to carry the battle into the enemy’s country. We must be ready without loss of time when the victory is gained, to take the aggressive, and fight the next battle on the soil of the adversary. If it amounts to anything the devil will be sure to try to stop it. When Paul and Silas were preaching in Philippi, he managed to get them thrust into the common prison, but they were given the victory then in the conversion of the jailer. Every time a blessing comes there will certainly be something to oppose it from his hand, but if the conflict is carried on in Christ’s name, and trusting in Him there will be ceaseless victory through His love. Gird on then the sword of the Spirit. Get it ready for the attacks of the adversary. You have been prepared for the conflict by the things you have suffered. When the battle is finished don’t think it is all over. Be ready to do better fighting for the Master next time than ever before. Go forth with the old refrain:
‘We’ll work till Jesus comes,
And then we’ll rest at home.
Battling for the Lord.’
V.
The girdle is not only a symbol of the extension of our work, but of its compactness and conciseness. It means singleness of aim rather than a scattering of forces. The girdle firmly bound the whole dress together and made it secure. It speaks of a well-knit frame. It means that we should rise out of scattering aimless work, and say with Paul, ‘This one thing I do.’ There should be a united heart among God’s children, a singleness of aim and a union of all their powers. It is a good thing to be united closely with some work for Christ, yet not in the sense of bigotry. Remember your brother’s work is as good as yours, and yet be true to yours. Throw your whole soul into it. It is not merely your work. It is serving God.
Be careful not to do it through ambition, or desire to win an illustrious name, or through caprice, or for the excitement of the work. Are you girded for your work in this sense, or is your life scattered in its aim. God has a will for you, and He will show you that will, if you sincerely wait on Him for it. There is something in particular for you to do, some definite work which no other person can do. There is too much vagueness and idle drifting along in Christian work, and therefore there is not so much accomplished as might be. Concentrate your powers of service in one particular field, and do your best to serve Him there until His coming.
VI.
The girdle is a type also of readiness for action. Before the children of Israel started out of Egypt they had their loins girded ready for the march at a moment’s notice. So the Lord tells us: ‘Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning: And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord when He will return from the wedding; that when He cometh and knocketh, they may open unto Him immediately.’ The girded loins indicate readiness for work, for trial, for temptation, or for the Lord’s coming to receive our account.
Always ready, should be our watchword. If we are always full of the Spirit, we shall not so readily transgress. The quick word will not easily vex us. The sudden temptation will not so easily overcome us. We should always be in a recollected state, always ready for every battle, every enemy, every task. If we are asked to preach the gospel, we shall not need three days to prepare for it, but can be ready in three minutes. We shall be always watching, always ready. The Lord will keep us so if we are willing. Don’t let yourself down for a moment, dear friends; don’t get lax, and languid, and soft.
When the task is over, don’t give a sigh of relief, and let go. If you do, the devil is watching, and before that hour is passed, will bring some little temptation that will weaken your Christian life, perhaps, without your being aware of it. Like a vessel with a small hole in it, your blessing will slowly leak away until it is lost. The service of the Lord needs to be followed by vigilance as well as preceded by it. In relaxing there, we give the enemy a chance to strike us, and we deserve to get the blow. The devil knows the instant you are not watching. Be on guard then every minute, with your loins girded ready for action.
VII.
The girdle speaks to us also of endurance. It is easy, perhaps, to follow a certain line of work or trial for three or four days, but we must be ready for prolonged pulls. There are heavy strains of sorrow and testing, and trial to be met and borne. The battle is not always easy. There are often days and days of waiting that try the soul. He that endureth to the end shall be saved. The charity, which God commends, endureth all things. It does not endure for a while and then get impatient and fretful, but it endureth all the way through to the very end. It suffereth long. That is the test of the quality of Christian character.
He that comes in ahead at the end of the race wins. ‘We cannot gain in the heavenly race by a spasmodic, ephemeral burst of energy, but, by going on with patient plodding feet, day after day, steadily and unweariedly. There are hard lessons for us to learn, but they are needed. It is easy to go to Africa, or to the islands of the sea for one brief year, sent there by some sudden transport of emotion, but to wait for twenty-five years at the gate of China, for an opportunity to preach to Chinamen, is a very different matter. Judson was asked after laboring for years in Burmah, with little apparent result:
‘What are the prospects of the work in Burmah?’ His answer was, ‘As bright as the promises of God.’ Livingstone walked over nearly the whole of Africa, enduring privations and toils we would tremble to think of, and seeing very little to encourage him in his labors, yet when in England for a short time, he longed to get back to it, and one of his last utterances before leaving for the last time to go to Africa was ‘Who would not be a missionary.’
Another aged servant of the Lord, who had spent nearly his whole life in India, and who came back to this country to stir up his brethren to more aggressive work there, was told that an incurable disease had fastened itself upon him and he probably could not live very long. ‘Then let me go back to India,’ he said, ‘and finish my work there.’ His body was ready to drop into the grave, but he sold out his possessions, took the savings of a life-time, and prepared to finish his course in the land where His Lord had called him to labor, and where he wished his bones to lie.
There is a great difference, beloved, between reaching out our arms to God and praying for His blessing upon ourselves, or our work, or our dear ones, and looking beyond these selfish interests to the great heathen world, and pouring out our soul to Him persistently for months and years, for His blessing upon the labors of His children there. That is being girded for endurance in His work. That is setting one’s face like a flint, and being settled in the work He gives, not for a day or week but until He comes. May God gird us every one tenderly, yet strongly for endurance in His glorious service, impressing on us the importance of redeeming the time moment by moment and pressing forward with a zeal that shall never flag until He calls us home or comes Himself to reign on earth, in righteousness and beauty.
VIII.
Let us look a little at what this girdle is, that we have speaking of. The Bible calls it by different names.
1. It is the girdle of truth: ‘Let your loins be girt about with truth.’ That, of course, is God’s truth, which is manifested to us in His promises. If your Christian life becomes lax and languid, dear friends, how are you to gird it up and feel that you have received strength? By recalling some of the promises God has made to you: ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.’ ‘Fear thou not, for I am with thee.’ Some such marvelous words as these, ought to be sufficient to fasten our souls with a firmer clasp to God, and bring His life and divine energy into us.
2. It is called a girdle of righteousness: ‘Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins.’’Isa. 11, 5. Christ is our righteousness, not only imputed, but imparted to us. We are partakers of His very nature.
3. The same passage calls it also a girdle of faithfulness. We can lean upon it without fear, and commit ourselves wholly to it.
4. It is a girdle of strength. ‘It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect.’ ‘Thou hast girded me with strength to battle.’ We are girded with God’s own enduring might; clothed upon with the very strength of God.
5. It is a girdle of gladness. ‘Thou hast put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness.’ We must have this girdle on, or we would break down many times. The godly are delivered from gloom and despair. They have no right to hang out the black flag of discouragement. We should count it great disloyalty to look depressed, or to speak sadly. No matter if the spirit is groaning within, never let the lips give expression to it. An Indian never lets his tormentors know how much they are torturing him. Neither should we let the devil see that God’s children are anything but joyous. Get His joy within the heart. Say, with Habakkuk, ‘I will rejoice in the Lord.’
Do as Jesus did, who, for the joy that was set before Him, despised the shame and counted the sacrifice as nothing. He never allowed any one to pity Him, nor should you. Be like Paul, who was able to fill the air with his songs of praise while lying in a Roman prison. Take the joy of the Lord for your strength. Put on the garment of praise and partake of the oil of joy. Be a happy Christian wherever you are. Even in the valley of the shadow of death the devils need have no power to frighten you, if you are trusting in your dear Lord.
6. This is a girdle of love. ‘Above all, put on charity which is the bond of perfectness.’ Paul has been undressing a Christian splendidly in this 3rd of Colossians---even down to his bones. He says, put off, till everything is gone---even the old nature: then he begins to clothe him anew. The first thing he puts on is the bowels of mercy. The very body is new. The last thing he puts on him is charity, the girdle of love, to tie the clothing together.
Nothing keeps us up and gives us a firm footing like love. We need that burning, unquenchable love which never can be exhausted, and which God alone can bring to us. It is a poor thing to attempt to do any work for Him without that spirit of love within us. That only can keep us steadfast unto the end. I pray for it for you, beloved, and for myself, to keep us on fire with zeal for Him. We need the love that brought Christ down to die for us; we need His own love in our hearts to be our perfect girdle.
7. Then there is another bond that should bind all Christians together as one. It does not unite you to your special Christian friends, but it includes all the disciples of the Lord Jesus. That is the bond of peace. When travelers are crossing the Alps they are tied to each other and to the guide, so that, if one chances to fall over the cliff, the others plant their heels in the ice and their alpenstocks in some crevice of ice and snow, and hold on, and he is saved. The little rope that bound him to his brothers was the means of preserving his life. Oh! that we all might be so closely bound together in the blessed work of God!
8. The last name of this girdle is the girdle of hope. It is mentioned in the text we read at the opening. It is the last golden circle, which stretches far beyond the others and embraces the very stars. How much it holds out to us! Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. This glorious girdle of hope keeps us up by showing us a little of the great recompense that awaits us hereafter. We may be under heavy pressures here; we may have to bear loss, and sacrifice, and sorrow; but oh! hope, hope, hope! Everything will be given back to us by and by. Lift up your heads.
Keep always full of joy, hoping for that which is to come. When Christian was asked how he managed to drive away sadness and be always glad, he answered: ‘Sometimes I look at the robe my Lord has given me, and that will do it: sometimes I look back at the cross where He died for me, and that will do it; sometimes I look ahead to the Delectable Mountains, and that will do it; sometimes I look ahead to the spires of the Celestial City, and that will do it.’
His vision was lifted gradually up higher and higher. Hope cannot fail. There is no cry of faith, no tear, or prayer that you have given for God or His work, but the results will be met. If you do not see them here, you will yonder. Go on, then, steadfastly with your work, hoping in God unto the end. May God gird us all with these girdles He has prepared for us, to the glory of His own great Name!
25. Human Relationships As Types Of Heavenly Ones
"And he answered them, saying. Who is my mother or my brethren? And he looked round about on them which sat about him and said: Behold my mother and my brethren!" Mark 3:33-34
THERE is something very tender and very dear to all our hearts in the ties of human relationship. The bonds of social life and kindred and fellowship are the dearest things on earth to all of us, dear as the link that binds soul and body together, and sometimes dearer. We come by these types to know all we do know about God. We cannot fully understand what home means without talking also of the heavenly home. We cannot know a human father well without understanding our Father in heaven better.
We cannot think of the love of friends, without being reminded of that dearer friend who sticketh closer than a brother. So God is drawing us up through these human links to the divine bonds of which they are the symbols, and we find the divine ties are larger and broader and fuller than the human. The earthly relationships are but types of the heavenly, and the Lord does not disapprove of them. He sanctions them and would raise us through them up to Himself, and the glorious everlasting relationship in which he seeks to bind us to Himself.
That is the thought our dear Saviour had in mind when He uttered the words of the test. He takes each of the ties of kindred that bind us so closely to each other, and would awaken something deeper in our hearts with regard to them. He reaches out His hands and clasps us in them in divine relationship to Himself, saying: ‘Whosoever will do the will of God, the same may be my sister, my brother, or even my mother.’
Let us dwell on these ties a little till we feel our hearts moved by them and drawn out in greater tenderness to our dear Lord.
I.
The first of these human relationships through which God speaks to us, is the filial bond. We cannot know God as a father until we have become His child, and so God gives us human parents that we may understand this relationship in which we stand to Him. ‘As many as received him to them gave he power to become sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.’ ‘As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba Father.’ Or, Papa Father, as it is translated in every language. It is the tender familiar name, by which a child can address a loving parent, lisping it out with its earliest accents. Many Christians are full-grown before they know the simplicity of its meaning. They too often become hoary-headed before they are children.
But God not only calls Himself, our Father, He gives us a softer and more tender name to address him by, the exquisite and resistless name of mother: ‘As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.’ These terms have all the sensibilities of the human heart embodied in them. God the Father is to us the loving tender father. God the Holy Ghost is to us the gentle compassionate mother. So God meets us in all the higher and deeper meaning of parental love. It is not so much fatherhood of which we speak as filialhood. ‘Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us.’
We are to walk in the likeness of God, but to do that we must understand the relation in which we stand to Him. We must get so near to Him that we can know the outreachings of His loving heart to us, and we must know of the child’s love and confidence going out from our heart to Him. As we come to comprehend all the meaning of this tender bond between us we can understand better His requirement of us that we shall be imitators of Him. As dear children our hearts are full of His tender love, our eyes are on Him always, we receive richly from His tender care and bounty. Then we are to give of all this to those about us.
Have we been always loyal and sometimes anxious and solicitous perhaps for His honor among the people? Has the true heart in the loyal child never wavered in allegiance and love to Him, which is the badge by which the sincere disciple can be known? There is a legend among the Arabs that shows the true filial test. A chief of one of the tribes was dead, and three sheiks came to claim the inheritance he left. One was his son and rightful heir, but he had been away for years, and it was impossible to tell which of the three was he. Each one had his partisans and friends. Finally a wise man from the east was called upon to settle the dispute.
His judgment was that as the father was known to be an excellent marksman, and his true son would undoubtedly be so, too; each of the three claimants should be furnished with a bow, and be required to shoot at the body of the dead chieftain, and that should settle the question of inheritance. Accordingly the body of the dead father was brought out and placed in an erect position, and the three men were told to aim at the heart. The first one shot and his arrow entered the quivering breast of the corpse very near the heart; the second came forward and with keen eye and steady aim sent his arrow straight to the very heart of the chief.
His look of triumph seemed to say that he had gained the prize. When the third stepped forward his eyes were moist, and his hand was trembling. His courage seemed to be gone, and when at last he pulled the bow string, the arrow went far above the father’s head, and fell upon the ground at some distance beyond. The wise man instantly exclaimed, ‘That’s the father’s child.’ He loved him too well to wound his dead body, even for the sake of the inheritance.
It is not smartness, nor keenness of thought God wants of us, beloved, but that we shall be followers of Him as dear children, and walk in love. If we are to be like Him, we must love as He loved. Don’t wound His Heart by any unfilialness. So it shall be known that we are His dear children. We can come to Him as closely as we will. We can bring to Him our greatest needs. We can tell Him the things we would tell to no one, but to our mother. There will come times in your life when you will feel you never needed a father so much as now. Then is the time to remember God is your Father.
There are many times in an orphan’s life when tears have filled the eye and the longing of the heart has been, ‘Oh! for a mother to run to now.’ Oh! if you could but remember, you have a mother still. ‘As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.’ Draw near to God, beloved; do not stay afar off. Do not let even your mother be so near. You know how the big-hearted child will get nearer the mother’s heart than the others will. God wants us to be dear, trusting, little children, too simple-hearted to have any doubts or fears; too loving to get away from Him for a moment. So may we ever be followers of Him as dear children.
II.
The next relationship we will speak of, is that of a brother. This bond we know was much more thought of in the East than it is now in more enlightened times. Our age rides over everything that is sacred, and blots out much that should be retained. Formerly the brother was the man who avenged all the wrongs inflicted on the family. Murder was not a matter for public justice. The brother was the avenger of blood. A judge was not needed. A person’s needs or wrongs would always find a ready ear to listen to them, in his brother. The picture of Jesus as our brother is the most exquisite one the Bible gives of Him. He is a true-hearted brother, and unlike the most of earthly brothers we see.
He is full of gentleness and tenderness and discriminating love. He first convicted us of sin, then forgave us, then blessed and honored us, cared for us and provided for all our need. Jesus calls Himself our brother. He is not ashamed to call us brethren. That seems to mean very much. He has got good cause to be ashamed of us, and yet He is not. It is a wonderful thing. I am afraid the most of us have some relatives we would not like to introduce publicly as such. We would be a little ashamed of them. Jesus knows the worst of us, and He calls us brethren. He takes that poor fellow all reeking with sin out of the gutter, and He is not ashamed to call him brother. He is willing to take him up to His glorious home in Heaven, and confer upon him all the dignity that He Himself possesses.
He admits him to the aristocracy of Heaven, far’far higher than that of earth. Jesus says of him, ‘I’ve got a new brother,’ and He is not ashamed. Perhaps tomorrow, and again tomorrow, that brother will do something that will bring the mantling crimson of shame to our cheeks. Jesus says, ‘I will forgive it. I will refuse to see it. I will wash it out, and bless him, and help him on until he is able to overcome. I will be his everlasting friend.’ Yes, He is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. What merchant or business man would not hesitate to introduce some forlorn creature to his partner as His friend. Jesus is not ashamed to call us brethren before anybody. Don’t be ashamed of Him. Be true to Him everywhere.
I don’t know, dear friends, what this means to you. I don’t, of course, know what life has been to you. ‘When we speak of a child, I cannot tell what picture of a father it recalls to your mind. If we speak of a brother, it may make you think of some noble-hearted brother who used to fight all your battles for you. I don’t know what it means, but I know that Jesus should mean more to you than I can possibly express. Have you learned to lean on His strength, remembering He is your elder Brother? When a school-boy among larger and tyrannical boys, what a comfort it was to have a big brother to settle things for you.
So Christ is able to become all-in-all to you. We can be lost in the fullness of His love. He only can teach us all that this means. Are you a weak, shrinking woman, wishing you had a strong brother to lean upon? You have, beloved, One full of disinterested love, far more pure and unselfish than any human brother’s can be. He is not far above us, but down here right at our side. He is saying God is my Father, and He is, therefore, your Father. Yonder is my throne, but it is your throne also. There is my God, but He is your God, too. I have strong faith in Him, but my faith is your faith, too. We are joint-heirs together of all these things.
It was a sweet meaning, a little Scotch lassie took out of the Lord’s supper. The dragoons of Claverhouse stopped her one Sabbath, and asked her where she was going. She replied, ‘My brother is dead, and I am going to hear the will read, and get my share of the inheritance.’ ‘Oh!’ they said, ‘if that is all, go along,’ and she went on to partake of the Lord’s Supper. She was going to hear His will read and divide His inheritance, but they did not understand it. Are we partaking of our Brother’s riches? He died to make it ours, and it is freely offered to us.
III.
Jesus stands to us also in the relation of a friend. We can apply this bond to Him with all the deeper meaning it is capable of expressing. ‘Henceforth,’ he says, ‘I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends: for all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, He may give it you.’
Jesus Himself gives us this name, but, knowing how apt we are not to take all His gifts, He says: ‘Don’t be too modest about taking it. You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. I gave you this name: don’t be afraid to take it and call yourself by it.’ Do you know what it is to have true friends? How your heart warms as their names come up to your mind! They were not related to you, except through the love they bore to you. They drew you because they had a heart fitted to attract you; they were in every way congenial to you. They were each a special selection, and you were bound to them by some quality they possessed, some peculiarly sweet characteristic that made it hard for you to understand how any one could fail to love them.
Do you know what it is to be true to such friends, to trust them unreservedly, to know the joy of standing for them, although they be misunderstood by others, and of suffering with them in all their trials? Such friendships are rare in this life, where there is so much that is drifting and unstable in hearts and lives. Do you know what this true friendship is? Have you ever understood this congenial tie, in which you have common joys, common tastes, common trials, and common temptations? There is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Henceforth Jesus calls us friends. He has set His heart on us. We can come as close to Him as we please, and we will find His heart outreaching to us constantly.
The Bible is full of examples of strong friendship. Such was the tie that bound Jonathan and David together. The Holy Ghost lingers over this scene as if fascinated by the picture. Jonathan risks his father’s displeasure in being truer to David. He was willing to give up all for David’s sake, and finally died to get out of the way and let David be king. It was munificent generosity that, dying, blessed its friend with everlasting love. How beautiful a type of the love Jesus has to His people! A love in which we can rejoice, and sing: ‘I am His, and He is mine. He has chosen me, and He will not let me go. I have taken Him, also; I will trust Him fully. By God’s grace I will be true to Him.’
Notice how beautifully Christ speaks of this bond between us. It is not so much that Christ is our friend, as that we are His friends. Can He call you His friend, beloved? Can you call Him your friend? There is no doubt about that. Whatever the world may say, can you stand as the true and tried friend of Christ? The world may deride you for it, but do you cause them to know that you are His friend? The storm may fall upon you like lightning; but, let what will come, can you say, I am His friend? God marks you as you say it. You may have but little strength, but with that are you loving Him? You may have but little wisdom, but are you true to your Master? Are you saying, always and everywhere, ‘This is my Beloved, O ye daughters of Jerusalem’? If you are, He is looking down upon you from the battlements of heaven and saying,’ This is My beloved, O ye sons of light.’
IV.
Jesus calls Himself by another name, more expressive of tender love, and which may be ours even here in a heavenly reality’the name of Bridegroom. It means something more than friend: it means the exclusive love which can be typified by nothing so well as by the bond between a truly wedded pair. It is the love which separates each one unto Himself, and so dwells not with the many, but with the one. What has He a right to expect from His true-hearted bride? First, that she shall love Him only, then that she shall leave all for Him, and, lastly, that she shall be constantly watching for His appearance.
This is the Scriptural meaning of the tie all through the Word. It was the symbolic meaning of the union between Adam and Eve, and it was still more sweetly typified in the marriage between Isaac and Rebecca. The bridal of the Lamb awaits its consummation in the coming ages. Words can not explain to us what it shall mean to be thus united to Jesus. We know it is the most sweet and tender tie that earthly affection can put around our heart; and we know that, with Him, it means a deeper love and union than aught but the reality can express.
Christ is not only the Bridegroom of the Church: He has told each individual heart to say of Him, ‘Thou art my husband.’ Here in the heart’s deepest holy of holies, He Himself will make the meaning known. Here in that most secret recess, ‘Wrapped in deep, adoring silence,’ He will teach us His own love as no one else can make it known, and will show us how tender it is, how exquisite, how holy and lifted far above the heat of earthly passion; how intensely real it is, bringing His spirit into our very life and blood, and His strength into all our being.
May He whisper its meaning to our hearts today so that in our very flesh and bones, in our inmost heart of hearts we shall know what the Marriage of the Lamb means, and learn to long intensely for that glorious home when the cry shall resound from the heights of glory. ‘Let us be glad and rejoice and give honor to Him, for the marriage of the lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready.’ We must know the love of Jesus here if we would be with Him in that great day. It must be dwelling in our hearts, purifying us and transforming us into His likeness. Thank God it was granted to her to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white. She did not have to make herself ready.
It was His love, and His purity, and His righteousness that she was arrayed in. And thus she was placed upon His throne to sit with Him forever. May God make us to understand these different relations in which He stands to us. May we hear Him saying to us this morning, ‘Behold my mother and my sister and my brother. Behold my friend and my bride. For whosoever will do the will of God, the same is my brother and my sister, and my mother.’