There is another fear that is apt to cause trouble, forecasting the trials of the morrow. How fertile is the heart, in creating difficulties, and forgetting our Father as a real and constant resource!
“Be not anxious therefore for the morrow; for the morrow will be anxious about itself: sufficient for the day [is] its evil.”
The morrow is in God’s hands, not in ours. And He gives us the place of sons, as well as of children, on a firmer ground than could be even when the Lord here addressed His disciples. As He said to the Father before His suffering, “I made known to them thy name and will make it known”; so too He did in the fullest way in His message through the Magdalene, “Go to my brethren, and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.” The relationship rested now on the definite ground of His death and resurrection, wherein their sins were blotted out, and themselves in the same nearness to His Father and God, as well as to Himself, the Firstborn of many brethren.
The one awful difficulty, sin, was not only removed by His cross for the believer, but made in His death the occasion of glorifying God as He never was before and never needs to be again. His love and man’s hatred met there for the triumph of good over evil to faith, as it shall be to sight when Christ takes His great power and reigns before every eye. There Satan was vanquished to faith, where he seemed to the natural eye absolute victor. There not only the outward, but yet more the religious, world disclosed to faith its hateful unrighteousness and its utter infamy. There the very disciples prove their worse than nothingness. There the righteous One suffered to the utmost that God might be just and justify all that believe, and that grace might send out the glad tidings even to all that do not believe. For God thereby clothes with the best robe the guilty, bankrupt, ragged prodigal who turns to Him in the faith of the Name, the name of Jesus.
Thus the work of Christ, and the present indwelling of the Holy Spirit consequent on it, set the new relationship in the clearest light and on the most solid footing which even God in Christ could give it. O what dependence on Him becomes such as know themselves thus blessed! What confidence in His love to us to-day and forever! Why then allow the least worry about to-morrow?
That men of the world should be troubled is natural. They know not God. Still less do they cry, Abba, Father. Their satisfaction is in their substance, their position, their pleasure. Their uneasiness is because all in this life hangs on a trembling balance, between their fellows whom they cannot trust, a life as uncertain as the wind, and a God whom they dread as their Judge, and with too good reason as they are.
But the child of God, why should he give way to anxiety about the morrow? He is entitled to happy boldness on his own part and assured love on His Father’s to do His will today, whatever the trial. God is equally above tomorrow’s anxiety, which he can cast on Him, if it come. Sufficient for the day is its evil. Christ is our burden-bearer. Through Him we more than conquer. If God be for us, who against us?
Some who read these words may be still in their sins, and not reconciled to God. If you cannot be contemplated in a warning to believers, you have an especial danger in putting off to the morrow the call of the gospel which God makes to you to-day. “Behold, now is an acceptable season, behold, now is a day of salvation.” Delay will only increase your sins, and harden your heart to resist the Spirit to your imminent danger. Be not like the naughty and foolish child, so quick to say, I will never do it again; I will be good tomorrow. Be honest with God to-day, and own the sin, and yourself a life-long sinner, and confess the Lord Jesus the only Savior, counting on God’s grace to save you in His name. How many have put off to a morrow that never came So perilous is it not to own the sins to-day to Him who waits to be gracious, and can keep as truly as He forgives.