"GOD PREPARED A WORM, AND IT SMOTE THE GOURD THAT IT WITHERED." " TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST, AND TO DIE IS GAIN."
HI 1:21{You have to get through the fourth of Jonah, before you can know what it is to be in the first of Philippians.
You find in this book of Jonah, that there are two deaths that must be gone through by the soul to whom " to live is Christ." First, death on myself; and then, death on everything around me. Martha and Mary show out exactly these two classes of saints; those who have only learned the first, and those who have gone through both.
Jesus talks to the one; He walks with the other; He talked to Martha; He wept with Mary. There are none of the saints He will not speak to, but there are but few that He walks with. You get the two together in the fourth of Hebrews: " The word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow; and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." That is the talking. And then:," We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." That is the walking, and the weeping.
You must know what it is to have learned Him in the path of death, before He can say to you: I will bear you company. It was there Mary learned Him; and it was thus she was fitted for communion. It was first sympathy, and then communion, and so it must always be.
There is this difference between sympathy and communion. Sympathy is when the Lord comes to my side of things; communion is when I go to His side. You must know His sympathy, before you can know communion. I have a Person who accompanies me on my path, and my heart forms itself by Him and is occupied with His thoughts; and this is communion.
It is a wonderful thing to see, that death, which has been the terrible blot upon us, should have been turned right round by God, and made the door of so much blessing to us. Death is the great difficulty for the soul to learn. When I know deliverance, I am devoted; but I must learn Christ in the death of all dear to me before I am a devotee.
I can give you examples of this in the Old Testament. Jonathan sees David, who is a beautiful picture of Christ. He risks his life for my sake. Now, in reaching perfect deliverance, there are three stages for the soul. David meets the foe, and first, I am anxious to know the result of the contest. Second, I am hopeful; Goliath is down. Third, I am assured; his head is in David's hand. Then comes a change. Jonathan thinks no more about himself and Goliath; he is occupied with David. He says: David is my object! And he takes off "the robe that was upon him, and gives it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle." He does it before all the army, for he thought of no one but David. He was devoted.
Now I come to Ruth, another example. Ruth is a widow, and her only friend is a widow. Naomi entreats Ruth to leave her, and go back to her own people and country; but Ruth says: " Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest will I die, and there, will I be buried: the Lord do so to me and more also, if aught but death part thee and me." Now she is a devotee; she will follow Naomi anywhere.
There are two instances in the New Testament, that I can give you, the two alabaster boxes. In the one in the seventh of Luke, it is the sinner. She comes into the Pharisee's house and says: That is my Savior.
Scripture not only communicates light to you but it tells you how light will act upon you. It is not only the wardrobe to supply me with clothes, but it is the looking glass to show me how they are on.
She is behind Him weeping; that is the private thing; it is between herself and Him only. Then she takes the alabaster box and anoints His feet with the ointment; that is the public thing. She gave Him what she might have kept for herself; that is what love always does; it makes little of itself to make much of its object.
The second alabaster box is in the twelfth of John. Lazarus has died, and has been raised again, and now, at the supper, is sitting at the table with Him, whilst Martha serves. " Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment." Why was this? Why did she take all that she had most costly to expend upon Him? It was that He had taught her in that hour when death had done its worst for her heart, that she had " a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother." And, now that that dark hour is past, she comes out in the saint's house with her alabaster box-not in the world, as the other had done. She had done it in the Pharisee's house: the world can see when a man is converted, and makes much of his Savior. But Mary is in the saint's house: the world cannot appreciate or see a saint making nothing of himself, and burying all of natural value in the grave of Christ.
People are very unwilling to accept death; but, I believe, no one can know what Christ is personally, until he has passed through death with Him-until he has had to say: I have nothing but Christ. We have all some links to earth-some enjoyments here; I say: You are not equal to being deprived of everything; you are not fit to be without a gourd.-As to Paul, Jerusalem was a gourd to him.
I remember a poor woman once telling me of a time when she had been left with nothing whatever in the house, and she said: " It was the happiest moment of my life!"-I said: "Why?" -She answered: " Because, don't you see the honor the Lord put on me to trust me?"
The gourd was really a thing that softened him, and comforted him; and, when God took it from him, he was angry with God. Scripture does not conceal things it just tells us out the plain truth. You may be saying all sorts of nice things outwardly, and be as angry as possible all the time in your heart. He says: " I do well to be angry, even unto death." Now, says God, I brought you through all this just on purpose to teach you my own feelings.
The fact is, death is a wonderful blessing, not merely for the person who passes away through it, but it has a wonderful effect on us who remain. I must find out Christ now in the place of the one whom God has taken from me. God lets you into His own feelings. He says to you: You are talking of your gourd; why do you not get into my thoughts? He took it away in order to get Jonah into His line of things. That is communion with God. He wants to show you what His heart is occupied with.
I do not say you always have to learn it through bereavement, for I believe you ought to learn it at the Lord's table. There I pass through the greatest death that ever can come upon me-the death of Christ. I am going through this scene as one upon whom death has done its worst; but to whom also, at the same time, death has opened out the most wondrous Person. I have communion with the blood of Christ, and with the body of Christ.
There is no spiritual elevation without natural humiliation. There is no natural elevation without apparent exaltation. Supposing the Lord is wrestling with Jacob, and he gets a great blessing, he is lame first. In another case Lot-he gets natural elevation, and he gets exaltation. " Well watered everywhere, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt." -Supposing the Lord takes my child to Himself, that is spiritual elevation, but I am humiliated. Now, instead of spiritual elevation, we are too often looking for natural elevation.
I never can know what the Lord is, until I am thrown entirely alone with Him, and nobody else there. That is really the force of those words in the seventy-third Psalm: " Whom have I in heaven but thee? and, with thee upon earth, I do not want any one else."
Are we then to lose everything-to lose everybody? No, no! for God knows exactly what is best for me to have, and what I really need, and that He leaves me. But, when He does come in, and take loved ones from me, the heart must fall back upon this: This is a moment when I shall discover something in Christ, that I never had an opportunity of discovering before.
I say to Ruth: What do you follow that Door old woman for?—She says: I have found in her in the hour of sorrow what I could not find elsewhere. When none other cared for me, she stood beside me. She has been my stay, she has been my prop, she has been my solace; my comfort, the companion of my heart; and my heart is bound to her; I will never leave her.
Another point in the second alabaster box is, that He is going to die. Then there is nothing of value to me here that I will not put into his grave. And that is a wonderful thing to do; it goes farther than Jonathan; his was devotedness; this is devoteeism. True, devotedness must come before devoteeism. People may object to the word; we know that it is used in heathen worship, but I cannot find a better for what I mean.
Now it is a fact, that you never get near Christ that you do not see His death. When John looks into the glory, he sees " In the midst of the throne a Lamb as it had been slain." The One who is on the throne is the One who has settled the whole question between us and God; this is what Scripture sets forth to us.
As to the difference between the New Testament and the Old: I say, that the New Testament is, as it were, the science of navigation, and the Old Testament, is the log book. A man says to me after reading Ephesians: Oh, I see the heavenly calling perfectly!-I say: Come to Exodus, and let us see. Are you out of Egypt?—Yes indeed I am!—Are you across the Red Sea? -Oh, yes, I hope so!-Are you across the Jordan?—Well I cannot say that I-Oh then I know where you are! The Scripture measures you.
A man who reads the Old Testament without the New will become legal. But go to the Old Testament with the New, and you will always get a practical illustration of what you have learned in the New.
What has made some poets celebrated is that they have dared to reveal thoughts that others never ventured to express; and that is just what the Bible does; it does not cover over things; it bring out the naked truth; it tell us Jonah said, " I do well to be angry, even unto death.".
As to the meaning of the words: " God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them, and he did it not." Repentance in connection with God means that He went back to His original thought. When we repent we cannot go back to our original thought; we have to repudiate our own thoughts altogether.
There is a natural shrinking from death, and yet it brings out all that is great and true by its presence. As a poet says: " There is no great thought but is allied to melancholy;" because, if you want to get to reality, you must get to sorrow.
When I come to look at the death of the Lord, I must say: All that came in order that God might say: I bring in a Man now according to my own counsels and after my own heart.
We must take Jonah as a converted man. God wants him to do a thing, and he will not.
Then, says God, I must break your will. Jonah insists on going his own way, and instead of bringing himself into easy circumstances, he brings himself down to the bottom of the sea.
There is a moment in the history of a converted soul when he finds that he is absolutely good for nothing. It is then that he becomes devoted, and then he is tractable.
Jonah begins to trouble about the work. He. says: " I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil." And he sat down to " see what would become of the city."-Now, says God, you must learn that you have nothing to trust to but me. The gourd goes, and then he learns to be a perfect servant.
It is an extraordinary thing, but, even in the world, a man who passes through trials is always hardened unless he gets sympathy. When I see a saint, who has gone through a great deal of sorrow, very hard, I can only say: He has never had Christ's sympathy in it.
(J. B. S.) BLACKHEATH,14th Nov. 1874.