WHAT an advantage it is to have been where the word of God is read and His love unfolded—where, too, the Holy Spirit was present to enlighten the understanding; with the knowledge of the work and person of the Lord Jesus Christ the Saviour! And where God’s testimony is received there is a new life given to the soul. Further, through divinely given faith in Christ’s redemption, heavenly peace is imparted, and the blessed Son of God endeared to the heart.
If others believe not, this in no way hinders the blessing to the one that does believe. The gospel is the truth of God, and rests upon accomplished facts. Its simplicity is worthy of its divine Author—God only wise; while its effect on those who truly receive it as God’s word proves it to be indeed the power of God unto salvation. Often do we see this in the very strongholds of Satan, where his servants are actively seeking to oppose the truth of God.
On “a day to be remembered” a large crowd of people was assembled on Blackheath—and amongst them was a man professing to speak of Jesus of Nazareth as a good man, yet disparaging the holy sufferings of the blessed Lord Jesus in words not fit to be in print, and sarcastically speaking of those who believed in the sacrificial suffering of Christ as void of common sense.
Attracted by this crowd was a man just fresh from the country, who drew near to listen. Hearing his own blessed Saviour spoken of in this awful way and the atoning work of Christ so contemptuously, he was compelled to vindicate God’s holy word and the Saviour’s wondrous death for poor sinners. The Spirit of God blessedly used His own sword—the word of God—against the power of Satan there working that day by his dupes, and on Satan’s own ground.
The child of God took his stand some distance from the crowd and began to preach Christ—the Christ he himself knew as his Saviour. He spoke of the grace of God that had reached him, a once guilty sinner—of the precious blood of Jesus, shed for the remission of sins. A day to be remembered it was. For the crowd gathered around the one who had taken his stand for Christ, and for the truth so real to his own soul; and many that really did love the Lord were gladdened by the testimony concerning Christ thus rendered. Others, too, confessed their faith in Christ through the words spoken that day; and the man who had sought to prevent the truth never ventured on this ground again, and has long since passed into eternity. Let us hope that the scales had dropped from his eyes, that he had learned to rest on the atoning work of Christ—the sinner’s only hope and security, and that he had received the forgiveness of his sins through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His redemption.
And now just a word to you, my dear reader. As an old man who has seen not a little of the ups. and downs of life, let me impress on you two great facts. One is, that you need in this life a Saviour, or you will be lost for all eternity. Here, the love and wisdom of God exclude all the thoughts of men. God has given His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life. If you die in your sins, it will not be everlasting “life,” but everlasting existence in the lake of fire with the devil and his angels.
The other is, that you want a friend, a guide, a counselor, and the Lord Jesus is all that to His own. Satan is bent on your destruction, and he rules where God is not owned and trusted. The believer indeed knows that the enemy is always against the one that seeks to walk pleasingly to God as a confessor of Jesus his blessed Lord and Master. But what of this, when God is trusted? Greater is He that is for us, than all that can be against us. It often is the case when Satan has lost one of his servants that all the serpent’s subtlety shows itself in producing what at first is not detected, but which brings out in the end trials which only God in His wisdom can give us to understand, and He leads His children through all.
A case of this kind is in my mind now. Yet, how the enemy has been defeated! The Lord had blessed him with a large family of sons and daughters, who came to be believers in Jesus as their Saviour. With his family around him he reads Psalm 28. This, he could say, is exactly true of me. God has been my strength and my shield. My heart has trusted in Him, and I have been helped. Therefore with my song will I praise Him. The clouds have all passed over, and he who had become a child of God through faith in Christ Jesus still finds himself in that love of God which first reached him, and from which nothing can ever separate him—the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. May this love, the key through faith to the unsearchable riches treasured up in Christ Jesus for our use now, and yet more to be unfolded, be the portion of all who read these words. Thus cleaving to the Lord may we be able to make the following lines our own.
Sweetly clinging to my Saviour,
Christ the true the living Vine;
All my hopes are centered in Him,
I am His, and He is mine.
While He lives I fear no evil,
Naught can wrest me from His head,
And with such a mighty Saviour
I may smile at Satan’s dart.
Sweetly clinging to my Saviour,
As the ivy to the oak,
Rooted in His deathless favor,
Simply through the words He spoke.
Time may cast its shadow o’er me,
And unfurl its withering blast,
But with Christ my precious Saviour,
I shall reach my home at last.
Oh, how sweet to rest in Jesus,
Fount of every springing bliss;
Weak and helpless, yet relying
On His strength and righteousness.
As we journey through a desert,
Full of sorrow, shame and pain,
‘Tis so sweet—possessing Jesus
As our everlasting gain.
E.