LAST month we, as believers in God and in His care for His own, took heart in dwelling on the text “In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength” (Isa. 30:1515For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not. (Isaiah 30:15)). But what has a sinner to do with quietness? Are you offended at this word “sinner”? Are you hurt that you are not as a matter of course considered as a Christian? Are you a saint? Oh, no, you are quick to reply. Well, consider then that the Bible, the Word of God, knows only two gates and two ways, one wide and the other narrow. It teaches only two divisions of mankind in the sight of God, the sinner and the saint. A saint, in the language of God’s Word means a sinner saved by His grace and fitted for heaven by the Saviour’s sacrifice. You are only a nominal Christian, one only in empty name, and according to divine classification a sinner, a needy sinner, one of the lost whom Jesus came to save. Once more — what has a sinner to do with peace and quietness?
According to his deserts, he can only expect the wages of sin as the due reward of his deeds, and that is death. Death and the lake of fire — the second death; banishment from God forever, with all those whose names are not found written in the Lamb’s book of life, and whose unremitted sins, recorded in those other books, remain an indelible reproach to all eternity. In this life a fair appearance may be preserved; wrongdoing may be hidden and punishment escaped, ill speeches excused, and evil thoughts defile the sinner’s heart in secret; yet can his conscience rest? He would be relieved to think of death as the end of all, but he cannot. Within him a warning whisper disturbs: You have sown, what will you reap? Yes, the reaping is sure: “God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” Galatians 6:77Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. (Galatians 6:7). There is to be a resurrection of the unjust as well as of the just, and what has a sinner to look forward to that can set him at rest? Judgment — only holy, unerring, eternal judgment according to his deeds, and that is nothing to pacify him. No, he has no right to be quiet, no ground for confidence. There is One, his Creator, ever-living and all-knowing, who nevertheless has withdrawn Himself, leaving the sinner with faculties and possessions. These, the sinner boasts, are his own to do as he likes with them. Yet when he reflects what he has made of it all, quietness and confidence desert him. The inward reminder about having to render an account is there, an account of what he was so proud to think, so glib to speak, in such haste to do — how can he be happy?
Oh, that he might escape! He resolves to do so. And here Exodus 14 may help to an understanding how to be saved indeed. The children of Israel, so far as their foes could see were entangled in the land, shut in by the wilderness. They themselves saw nothing but death as the outcome of their predicament. Better, they said, that we had not aspired to freedom, and had rested content with our old slavery. So obvious it was that the net enclosed them. They were caught in a trap, so they thought. They had made a start for liberty, but now they were worse off than ever. Their old oppressors who were once satisfied with their bond-service, now thirsted for their blood. At least this military array seemed to promise nothing better, for Pharaoh pursued with horses and chariots.
Satan knows how to beset the way of escape with mighty fears. He is trying now to intimidate you, is he not? You have gone too far, is his whispered lie to you: you cannot change now. If you attempt it, you will break down. Thank God, it is a lie, for it takes account only of the tempter’s power, your weakness and sin, and the pass to which you are come. But it leaves out God. God is for you. It is true you cannot change yourself, but He can. Fear not, “stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.” He can both save you today, and keep you tomorrow. He Who that night led Israel dryshod through the sea which otherwise would have drowned them, rained down daily manna to sustain them in the wilderness till the promised land was reached. “If when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” (Rom. 5:1010For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10)).
Who dies on yonder middle cross of Calvary? A crucified thief by His side has recognized Him — the King, Who though now rejected and cut off with nothing is still to come into His kingdom. This could mean only One — the Hope of Israel, not to be lost through death, but to be more than gained when He rose again — the ever-abiding Messiah on Whose favor all blessing for sinful men depended. Against what difficulties the recognition came — the dying thief’s own present pain with its distraction, his own past with its blinding of all right perception, and added to these, that the Other was in the same condemnation, crucified. How came he to see that the mocking inscription was truth, and count on the dying Sufferer’s remembrance of him as everything to him, as salvation, in a word, and at such a time? Ah! he looked to Jesus, the Son of Man lifted up. Bitten by that old serpent, the devil, and in the very death-throes of his poison, the dying man looked to Jesus as the serpent-bitten Israelite looked to the brazen serpent lifted up by Moses in the wilderness — he looked and lived. Lived in the paradise of God though he died a felon’s death.
Ready to acknowledge his own sin and the sinlessness of One crucified by his side, the recognition came; God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light in that dark soul. Cornered, even as was Israel at the Red Sea, he stood still perforce, yet still longing for a real escape, and saw in Jesus the salvation of God, as Simeon had done at the beginning. His limbs affixed to the wood of the cross he could not move; his plight as pursued by his sins and faced with death he could not alter or avoid. Yet cornered and held as he was, this condition was only the providence that put him in the presence of Jesus. But also, he was now truly at a standstill within: he longed for the life he had done everything to forfeit, for the salvation he could do nothing to obtain. And the blessed illumination came as he looked thus on Jesus. Indeed, “There is life in a look at the Crucified One.”
Why does Jesus die there? Because “God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16).) He could not leave the sinner to his sin and its doom. As Israel’s unseen Champion and Defender, He met Pharaoh at the Red Sea as a “Man of War” and overthrew him, causing Israel to pass over to life and liberty. And now as true Man, a “Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” the Son of God becomes surety for all those who believe in Him, bearing their sins in His own body on the tree. Behold Him the Holy and Righteous Son of God, truly the Lamb of God without blemish, but on the cross “in the same condemnation.” Or rather, under the judgment due to you, dying the just for the unjust, to bring you to God. Does He not claim your confidence? Is not His atoning suffering a resting place for your faith?
Oh, sinner, what can you do in face of these eternal issues? Can you avoid “the harvest”? Can you hope to justify yourself to God? Or escape His wrath? Or bear its terrors? Now, with the inevitable wages of sin hemming you in, will you “stand still and see the salvation of God” while looking to the cross where died He Who is your Creator, the Holy One? And died, that giving His life a ransom for you, you might be redeemed from sin and death. Do you not see by the very immensity of this salvation, by the eternal dignity and majesty of the Saviour, how hopeless is any contribution or effort of your own? “Thou hast destroyed thyself, but in ME is thine help” (Hos. 13:99O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help. (Hosea 13:9)). Consider Who has become the Mediator between God and man, and then ask yourself if you dare have doubts of the atonement He made. Does not your look to the crucified Son of God make clear that what He suffered you deserved, and He who was holy bore it that by faith in Him you might live? Can it be a half-faith in such conditions. Read. Romans 4:2020He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; (Romans 4:20) to 25, and may you also, and at once, be “fully persuaded.”
T.D.