Reader, have you this peace with God?
Peace with God is a reality, not only for eternity, but for time. “We have,” said the apostle while yet living, “peace with God.” This implied that all that once stood between himself and God was taken out of the way; further, that God Himself was satisfied with the work of redemption, and that he was accepted in the beloved. So, today, is it the privilege of the believer to enjoy that peace with God which the Lord Jesus Christ has made through the blood of His cross, and with boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus (Heb. 10:1919Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, (Hebrews 10:19)) Are you seeking to make your peace with God? If so, learn from the written word that Jesus Christ has been beforehand with you, “having made peace”; give up, therefore, your peacemaking, and accept it at the hand of the Prince of Peace, the one mediator between you and God.
Let us for a moment look at what took place on that awful night when the destroying angel passed through the land of Egypt, commissioned with death to every firstborn son. We will enter a house. There is feasting; they are merrymaking; they seem to have no cares, no anxieties, no forebodings. How strange, passing strange. Does not that mother care for the fine youth at her side? Yes, she loves him as a mother only can. That father, has he no heart? Then why this carelessness, why this trifling when death is near? Tell them of the danger, warn them; there may not be a moment to spare. Father! mother! your son will be taken; death is on the wing; God has said He will smite the firstborn. But they are unmoved.
We seem as those that mock to them. They had heard the solemn proclamation, but heeded it not; they believed it not. In the morning that loved child is found a corpse, never more to cheer by his voice. They call, but he hears them not; he is gone, gone forever. Wailing takes the place of mirth, anguish and remorse fill every soul; alas! it is now too late; unbelief has borne its fruit.
We enter another house, the father, the mother, the eldest son and the younger children, are feasting. Joy, rest, and peace seem to be the portion of all. How can this be on such a night, such a fearful night, when that unrelenting foe to all earthly happiness is hovering o’er the land? Has no one warned them? Or having heard of the death angel is it possible they have not believed,? Ask them. Oh, father, oh, mother, care you not for your firstborn son? Do you not know that tonight death may lay his icy hand on that child? He may be even at your door. Calmly they reply, “Jehovah sees the blood.” “But, what of that” we ask? They reply, “He has said, ‘When I see the blood I will pass over you and will not suffer the destroyer to enter your houses to smite you’” (Ex. 12:2323For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the Lord will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you. (Exodus 12:23)). But has the blood been shed? They answer, “Yes, it has, and is put where God can see it.”
But are you not afraid He may overlook it and you? “No, He is faithful that promised.”
Peace reigns in that house, and the mother, in faith, stakes the life of her firstborn upon the word of the living God.
Reader, have you no care? Are you under no anxiety, as you think of sin, and death, and judgment, and hell? Are you careless because you believe not that “it is appointed unto men once to die but after this the judgment;” and after judgment the lake of fire? Awake! O sleeper, in time, or eternity will find you lost, forever lost.
God’s holy, spotless Lamb has been slain, His blood shed, and He is now entered into the holy place by His own blood. (Heb. 9:1212Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. (Hebrews 9:12).) “Having obtained eternal redemption for us.” God sees the blood, the sinner may come into His presence, sheltered beneath that blood that cleanseth from all sin.
“I hear the words of love,
Jehovah sees the blood,
Accepts the mighty sacrifice,
And I have peace with God.”
It may be, my reader, your condition is that of one troubled and anxious because you believe in these things, and yet think that as you are you dare not meet your God; your sins, you fear, shut you out from Him. No, not if you will come nom, but let it be NOW. The Lamb has been slain, the blood is before God. He is satisfied.
“Just as I am―without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come!”
S. P.