I WISH to ask my reader a question, and one of the greatest moment in the matter of the soul’s salvation. To whose voice do you listen? If you look at the early verses in. Mark 9 you will read the description of a scene the teaching of which is very blessed. There are two groups on the mountain—the disciples forming one, spectators of the scene; Moses, Elias, and the Son of God, the other, Several transactions take place, and God Himself pronounces on the whole matter. Moses was a servant of God with a special mission―the deliverance of the people of God, and the one by whom the law came. “The law was given by Moses.” Elias the prophet had for his object the recovery of the people to the true God when they had got far away into idolatry. (See 1 Kings 18) “Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” It was not the law, it was not the recovery of that which was now proved hopelessly bad, but a new thing. No longer God demanding righteousness, and the law proving man had it not. It was not recovery, for recovery was no longer possible; but it was God in grace meeting His people’s need as lost sinners, and that in the person of His Son. At the mount the personifies of these three principles appear, and Peter, one of the spectators, would place all three on a common platform. But God does not for one moment allow this; for “while He yet spake,” as Matthew and Luke tell us, God signifies the difference of the new dispensation and the brighter glory of His Son. “For a cloud overshadowed them; and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear Him.” Not for one instant are Moses and Elias, blessed servants of God as they were, to be placed on a level with the “beloved Son.” No; Re is the One by whom God then, as now, speaks. He “who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, path in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.”
And now, dear friend, I repeat my question, To whose voice are you listening? To Moses; i.e. the law, with its threatening’s and lightnings, its demands and its condemnation, “the ministration of death” (2 Cor 3:77But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: (2 Corinthians 3:7))? or is it the thought of recovery that occupies you? Oh, then, you have not believed the truth, that the trial of man is over, the verdict of guilty returned, and the sentence pronounced; though, thank God, not executed. Now listen to His voice: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” ‘Tis the voice of salvation, not of condemnation. ‘Tis the voice of the beloved Son, and God in His condescending grace has given you advice, and His advice is, “Hear Him.” Oh, may you follow such blessed counsel! May you, like the disciples in the scene described, see “JESUS ONLY.”
E. C. L.